There is actually very little I remember about Angel (and even less about Sarah, who's name I'd come to find out via a slip from someone else).  We didn't need much as kids.  We just liked the idea of playing our character, and it was simply more fun to play with other people.

I recall she was a genuinely kind girl, a bit more shy and pulled back than most who ran in our group.  Most of us struggled with (or at least claimed to) early stages of depression.  Maybe it's a fad all kids go through, but looking back I like to believe that a mixture of our growing darkness and preference to physical isolation is what drew us to find companionship online in the first place.  Angel, however, didn't seem sad like everyone else.  She seemed happy just to be there, to be part of things.  Many of us liked to cause drama, but it was her resistance to doing so that initially drew my attention to her.

It was never anything too serious, we eventually wrote it in that our characters were together.  I didn't even know how sex worked at the time, so our conversations and writing never went too deep.  I was just happy to enjoy her company.  Revelation 2, even at a young age, the thing I look forward to the most with a woman is simply being with them.  Whatever form that might take, the important part is that I'm sharing my life directly with them in that moment. Maybe an underlying fear of abandonment exists, who knows.

Over the summer I'd meet a number of people. Some of them would become friends, others were people I looked forward to starting a beef with whenever and wherever possible.  But the end of the summer meant two things.  One, I was losing my access to AOL and the account I'd created.  Two, I was headed back to my home and the real life waiting for me.  I'd have to leave behind everything here, especially Cloud and all of his connections.

Long story short, not only do I return to find we have Internet at my mother's, but that I also have the ability to access a skimmed down version of my AOL account.  I can no longer access their chat rooms, but I can still connect to everyone I'd personally come to know.

I specifically remember how my brief and mostly awkward relationship with Angel had come to an end.  Not exactly a thrilling tale, nothing extravagant in content.  I had simply been in a private room with a few people from my online life after having returned to PA. It was one of the first chats we'd all had where we actually discussed our day at school.  Eventually came my turn to talk, and I had added a comment about how it was good to see my real-life girlfriend Megan again.  Looking back now, it's obvious that something like that would hurt.  Especially if the person I'd been talking to had invested more in the relationship that I had, even if I didn't realize it.  At first Sarah was confused, she wasn't sure what I meant by "real life" girlfriend.  It was the first time that a young me realized that the Internet and real life were not so mutually exclusive.  There were consequences and crossover between the two.  I learned that people could actually come to care about and feel attached to someone else exclusively over the Internet.

The end of Cloud and Angel taught me more than to just understand that real connections and real feelings existed online.  It taught me that, in experiencing an end with Sarah, I could personally feel and experience those things.  I'd grown to care about speaking to her, to enjoying her company in private when things got too loud in an open setting.  I was going to actually miss her, and a connection I'd experienced entirely online caused me to feel very real emotion back in reality.