LINN, Mo. — In the fantasy world where Mindy Mayer lives every day, she's a powerful cleric who flies from city to city, healing wounded companions after battles.

But in the real one, she's paralyzed from the chest down, sitting in a wheelchair in a group home far away from home.

She's 20. And whip-smart. And lonely.

Her father's drunken driving is to blame.

When she was 8 years old and living in Arnold, she, her younger sister and another girl piled into the back of his Ford Tempo.

Robin Mayer, who had been arrested for DWI at least six times, was drunk again when he plowed head first into another car on Highway C, a winding two-lane road near Hillsboro.

The date was Aug. 3, 1997. Toni Mayer, who was 6, broke both her legs. The other girl, Amanda Beiter, 10, the daughter of Robin Mayer's girlfriend, was killed.

Robin Mayer was convicted of murder and sentenced to 42 years in prison.

Mindy suffered neck and back injuries and internal trauma. She was paralyzed from the chest down, giving her limited use of her arms. She had several surgeries to improve her use of her hands. A few years later, she underwent a spinal fusion to correct scoliosis, which she says made it hard to move around.

She lived with her grandparents, Larry and Charlotte Smith of Arnold, until about three years ago when her grandmother fell ill and the couple couldn't take care of her. Her mother, Lynn Mayer, petitioned the state to put Mindy in foster care.

She was placed in a group home in Linn, Mo., some 115 miles from home, where she receives round-the-clock care. She continues to live there as an adult. She gets to visit her family just once a month.

She graduated from Linn High School in 2007, then took a Web design course at Linn State Technical College, but dropped out.

"I just lost interest in it, I guess," she said. Now she's enrolled at Columbia College but isn't sure she'll take classes.

Most of the people who know her see her as someone who cannot just move freely, but fly.

She plays an online computer game, called Perfect World, for about 13 hours a day. She does this by peck-peck-pecking with her left thumb.

On a recent day, her character, Kinjiru Ai, flies to meet the arena master at the City of the Lost. Then Mindy puts Kinjiru Ai on cruise control for a minute and switches screens to check her Facebook account and feed her fish in FishVille, another online game.

She's wearing a T-shirt that says "anime freak" in English with some Japanese characters that she assumes mean "anime freak."

She could be in the room of any young woman, with a Twilight poster and a bookshelf stuffed with manga paperbacks.

Mindy has never met any of the people she talks to for hours a day. They live all around the world — in Oregon, Puerto Rico and the Netherlands.

"I wish we could all go out for pizza," she said. Even better yet, she says, would be if they lived in her house.

"I think we'd get along perfectly."

Her constant computer usage upsets her grandfather, Larry Smith.

"She has too much in that head that she's not using," he said.

He doubts that his granddaughter can reach the full potential she showed as a young girl.

"She was just riding a bike," he said. "Her brother had just taught her to climb trees. She was a regular tomboy. She was outgoing and active, and she would have been a normal teen."

And today, he said, "She would be in her last year of college."