A Girl's Life Online (17 page)

Our break was interrupted when the police officers walked into the restaurant and asked my mom if we were willing to press charges. My mom looked me in the eye and said, “What choice do we have? We will press charges. We have to.”

I couldn't believe she hadn't even consulted me. She was so concerned with doing the right thing that she just automatically said yes. I only wish the police officers had explained to us what pressing charges meant. I wish they had said that it would involve FBI interviews, polygraph tests, court appearances, and much more. If they had, I would have known to be brave, to find the courage within me to continue and not be surprised by anything that would happen. I wish they had told me this was going to take the next two years of my life.

A
t first my parents and I had an understanding about life after Texas. I was going into counseling, even though I didn't want it, but aside from that, we were going to hold on to our normal lives as hard as we could. I wouldn't be missing any school. They would go to work, and hopefully the normal routine would ease some of the shock and pain.

This was fine, in theory. But from the moment my relationship with Mark began, I had lived in dread that my friends and teachers would find out. My conversation with Ashley had confirmed my fear and the experience in Texas had made it worse. This wasn't some trivial thing like a fashion faux pas or a conflict with a classmate. I knew what this could do to my reputation. And though the girls on the swim team were supposed to keep things to themselves, I knew that was impossible. Gossip is irresistible, especially for teenage girls.

At home, I tried to live normally. My parents had not banned me from the Internet because I think they were sure I must have learned my lesson. For a while, when no one was around, I logged on and looked for a message from Mark. None ever came, and in a few weeks I stopped checking.

Both of my sisters judged me harshly. Carrie was extremely angry with me for disrupting our family. I had become the uncomfortable focal point of life in our house. Carrie was upset because she needed attention—regular old parental attention—and wasn't getting it. Unfortunately, understanding this didn't make her words any less painful to hear.

Abby was even more harsh than Carrie. She told me she was disappointed in me and was convinced that I was totally responsible for all that had happened. “It's not like you were just walking down the street and were molested,” she said. “I'm really disgusted with you,” she told me, over and over. “You've ruined our family. You've ruined our lives. I am so disappointed in you that it seems like I don't even know you.”

On the night before I was supposed to go back to school I tossed and turned and just couldn't get comfortable. Even when I did fall asleep, I couldn't stay asleep. I would wake up and the dread would be right there, in my stomach, rising through my chest. I'd rush to the bathroom to vomit and then go back to bed.

I watched the minutes and hours pass on the clock until I could go to my mother's room to tell her that I had been throwing up all night and didn't think I could go to school. I wasn't prepared for what she said next.

“Katie, I never thought I would ask you this, but are you pregnant?”

I was mortified and offended. I couldn't believe she'd asked me that. I was outraged. There was no possible way I could be pregnant. I told her, and I thought she truly believed me.

I didn't go to school that day, though my parents went in to meet with my guidance counselor. They were worried about my safety, afraid that Mark would come and take me away and try to hurt me. Their fear made me start to think that maybe Mark could be dangerous. Some small part of me began to see Mark as a threat. Without telling anyone why, I rearranged the furniture in my room until I was sure my bed couldn't be seen from the windows.

Freed from going to school, I was able to relax, but only for a while. I was scheduled to go to the New Canaan Police Department in the afternoon to answer some questions that had been sent by the officers in Texas. They were determined to continue the investigation and the New Canaan police were helping. They had also asked for photos of Mark, which I had, and copies of some of our e-mails. My parents weren't surprised that I had these things hidden in my room, but they weren't happy about it, either.

I was cooperating with the police because my parents wanted me to, but I was only pretending to agree that a serious crime had taken place. In my mind, Mark was still my best friend, the one I had trusted. And despite everything, I still wanted to trust him. What occurred in that hotel room lasted a few minutes. It didn't wipe out the last six months or everything we had together. I still wanted to call him up. I felt that we had experienced a trauma together and part of me—a stronger part than the part that saw him as a threat—felt that we could help each other out. It didn't matter to me that he had lied about everything. He had lied for a good reason: to protect our relationship. In a way, I loved him for that.

Abby took me to the police station, but we left early enough to stop at a Friendly's Ice Cream store for a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup sundae, but instead of making me feel better it only made me feel ill. At the police station I answered the questions—pretty basic stuff about how Mark and I met and became closer—and even though I was reluctant to hand them over, I left the pictures and e-mails.

When I was dealing with the police, it was hard to tell whether I was in trouble or not. No one actually said that I had committed any crime, but I was treated sternly, and I was never told that I was innocent.

Besides protecting myself, I was also careful to protect Mark. I didn't lie, but when I was pushed to make him seem like a predator, I resisted. I reminded them that most of the conversations Mark and I had had weren't sexual at all. And I told them that he had not physically hurt me in the hotel room. Though I thought the chances of him going to jail were slim, I didn't want it to happen at all. I had also been part of what happened in Texas. I was a mature person. I was just as responsible for this as he was. In cooperating with the police, I was playing a role—the good child—I had to play in order to be redeemed in my parents' eyes. But I wasn't going to sell Mark out.

If anything, I believed that I was being victimized more by how people were reacting to what had happened. The way I saw it, except for those few moments in the room, Mark had been good to me by telling me how smart I was or how I was a good person. But the police, my family, and my friends were all changing everything they thought about me. They were questioning my very identity, and making me question it, too. I wasn't Katie Tarbox, good girl. I was Katie Tarbox, slut, or idiot, or both.

Everyone seemed to have a visceral reaction to what I had done, and a label for me. “I am not going to let my child grow up and become a burden on society,” my mother said. Though David never put it this way, I felt he decided I was mentally ill the moment he found out about Mark. He, more than my mother, insisted that I see a psychologist, and he set up a couple of appointments.

I didn't want to talk to more strangers. I didn't want therapy. I didn't want to bond. I also had a problem confronting the fact that I had fallen in love over the Internet. How did it happen? Why did it happen? I'm not sure that my parents wanted the answers to these questions any more than I did. But in seeking therapy, we were doing the right thing, the responsible thing.

Psychologist Number One was a lady in a dark navy blazer and skirt with a pastel shirt. She was thin, with short brown hair and a big smile that made her seem like a warm person. She already knew what I had done, but she was still nice to me.

When we were alone in her office, I realized that I couldn't look her in the eye. This was something new. I had always been able to keep my head up and talk to anyone face-to-face, but ever since Texas I had had trouble doing that. I could speak when I was looking at the floor, or at a person's shoes, or the wall, anything but their face. I let my eyes wander to the fish tank she kept in the corner and to the windows. As long as I didn't look her in the eye, I could talk.

We covered a lot of territory: the relationship between my parents, how I felt about men, my feelings about marriage, Mark, and the investigation. She asked me about
Frank
. I wasn't willing to call him by that name. The person I had come to love was named Mark. That was the only name I could say.

I told her I didn't want to ever face Mark again, and a trial would force me to do that. I didn't want to be questioned anymore. That is why I was reluctant to go to counseling. Between my parents and my teammates, I had answered enough questions.

Most of what I said was true, especially the part about not wanting to go through a trial. I shuddered at the idea. But the truth I didn't tell was that I still felt I might one day reestablish a relationship with Mark, perhaps when I was eighteen. I even felt like defending him at times. After all, no one had given me any real reasons why our relationship was wrong. They just said it was bad and demanded I accept that view. I pretended to agree, but only to spare myself the agony of terrible arguments.

I knew that the loyalty I felt for Mark would be hard for anyone to understand. It was difficult for me because, believe it or not, I was also afraid of him. One minute I felt like defending him with my last breath. The next I felt like he was some kind of sicko. I realized this conflict in the middle of a counseling session when the therapist grew very quiet and asked me: “What are you afraid of?”

“There are a lot of windows in my room,” I told her. “I'm afraid he might hire someone to shoot me in the middle of the night. Or maybe he'll kidnap me to keep me from testifying.”

When she asked me what I wanted to happen in counseling, I told her I thought that would be a better question for my parents because this wasn't my idea. I wanted my life back; I wanted it to be normal again. I didn't say this, but I didn't feel confident about her being able to help me. She seemed too cold, too distant, too concerned about my parents and not concerned enough about me.

Obviously my life was not going to be anything near normal until I got on with counseling, so when David said there would be another interview, with another psychologist, I just agreed to go. The appointment was scheduled for the hour after an evening swim practice. I wondered why my parents hadn't considered that I hated late-night meetings.

Psychologist Number Two met us in the waiting room. This time I wasn't going to go it alone. She invited my mother and David into the room, and we sat on opposite ends of a large sofa.

What would make us sit so far apart? she asked. It seemed like an idiotic question to me, but it got my mother talking. She immediately went into everything that I'd ever done wrong in my life.