A Girl's Life Online (10 page)

I liked making the cupcakes myself. I liked the feeling of losing myself in a project—measuring, mixing, baking, putting on the icing. I also liked the way the oven filled the kitchen with warmth and a sweet smell.

I inherited a taste for cake batters and cookie dough from my mother. But we're not the only ones who like it. Karen's family used to make cookie dough without the eggs so that they could eat it while their cookies baked. This time I ate just enough to make myself a little bit sick before I poured the remainder into the little floured cupcake tins.

As I turned the timer I decided I would go on-line to pass the minutes until the cupcakes were done. I walked down the ceramic-tiled hall to the study and turned on the new computer that had arrived at Christmas. I watched the waving clouds as Windows began to boot up. I typed in my screen name, which I had changed to katie26, and waited for the connection. While I did this, I reached for a box of Godiva chocolates my parents had given me in advance of my birthday. I don't care for most of the fruity ones, but I love the white chocolate starfish swirled with milk chocolate and filled with hazelnut. Biting off each leg, I watched the computer screen shift from page to page.

When I finally got on-line, I followed my normal routine, which meant starting by looking for Mark. I moved the mouse over the pad, feeling the little trackball slide. I clicked my way to a teen chat room and checked to see if Mr. Vallleyguy was there.

Our calls became an everyday occurrence, along with the e-mails. Talking to Mark was easy, and every day I looked forward to it. I was more open with him than I had been with anyone else before. I usually revealed much more about myself than he did, but this didn't bother me. I thought this was normal. From the articles I had read in women's magazines about how to get men to open up, I thought girls always divulged more than guys. I liked it that he listened, and that he was very funny. He had an intelligent sense of humor, which I found attractive.

Talking to Mark always made me feel good. This made keeping him a secret all the more painful. He was the best thing in my life, and hiding him didn't feel right at all. I needed to resolve my growing feelings about Mark, one way or another. I was either going to have to give in to my growing feelings of love and affection, or let go of him. Soon I would be going to Italy on a school trip. I decided to use this time away from him to settle matters in my mind, and in my heart, once and for all.

K
aren and I had signed up for the school trip to Italy in August, before we found out her brother was ill, before it became clear that we were drifting apart. When the time came to go, I hoped the trip would give us a chance to get closer again.

I also intended to use the time alone to think about Mark. I was a little worried about how much time we were spending together on-line and on the phone. When I told him I was going away, he wanted me to call him from Italy. This was too much. There was no way I was going to call him. Instead, without phone contact, without e-mail, I would reconsider the relationship without his influence. Part of me hoped I would decide he was not good for me. But I also knew that my feelings for him were strong, perhaps stronger than any I had ever felt for anyone before.

We flew from New York to Rome and then immediately on to Milan. After that it was a weeklong bus trip: Venice, Siena, Florence, Sorrento, Capri, Pompeii, and finally Rome. We saw much of the country, and it surprised me how diverse each region was, even in such a small area of land. It was not, by any measure, a vacation. I wouldn't call getting up early in the morning, visiting museums all day, and riding on a bus a vacation.

My favorite part of the trip was Capri, where we bought sandwiches and then walked up to a beautiful escarpment overlooking the sea. It had belonged to a Roman emperor who made criminals and enemies jump off the side of the cliff into the ocean.

As weird as it sounds, another of my favorite things about Italy was being able to get little green bottles of lemon-flavored Pellegrino. I fell in love with the sour taste and the soft fizz.

As I said, I had hoped that Karen and I would spend more time with each other, but we only shared a room for a few nights. Before we fell asleep, we indulged in what I call a little “girl bitch-out” time, which means we would discuss all the other girls on the trip. We nitpicked their clothes, recalled the annoying things they said, and made fun of everything down to the way they walked. One dorky girl, we called her “horse girl,” couldn't stop talking about riding. In New Canaan you're supposed to be over horses by the time you're thirteen or fourteen. So Karen made her the target of our gossiping, which in some weird way was supposed to help us bond again. It didn't work.