It seemed as if Mariah was the last person in her grade to get a computer, and it was seven months before the Internet was installed.
At first, Mariah only used her computer for typing up homework when it was necessary and occasionally sending e-mails to her grandparents, but as time passed and she heard her friends discussing chat room and instant messaging more and more, she decided to explore the internet more.
One day, while doing research for a report on ghost towns, Mariah saw a pop-up add for an on-line message board. While she normally ignored such things, something about the pop-up caught her eye, and she clicked on it.
After reading it over, the message board sounded interesting. There were topics about everything a person could want to talk about, and it seemed like most of the people who visited the board were people Mariah's own age. Fifteen minutes later, Mariah had an account under the username hello2861.
For a few days, Mariah only explored the various message boards, looking at what they had to offer. For the most part, the message boards were tiny groups that every username joined within the board. A person could only belong to one group at a time, and Mariah wanted to choose carefully before committing herself to a specific board.
After a while, Mariah joined the Brother and Sisterhood of the Dragon. She'd always loved fantasy, and it looked like the sort of group Mariah would enjoy belonging to. Unfortunately, none of the members ever came online, and after nearly a year, Mariah quit.
This time, Mariah chose a board that was entirely different. She saw many that claimed to be like wolf packs, and she chose one that had an interesting front page. The name of this group was The Orion's Belt Pack.
Mariah read over the message board, and saw some messages from people asking questions, others that answered these questions, some messages from people just posting about their day, and several with the letters "RP" in the subject line that seemed to be some sort of story.
A few moments after joining the Orion's Belt Pack, Mariah posted her first message.

Hello. My name is hello2861, and I would like to join your pack
If you don't mind. It looks nice. I belonged to another group
Before but they never did anything. Anyway, I hope you don't
Mind my coming here.