A Girl's Life Online (18 page)

I began to cry. “I am not a bad person!” I yelled to try to make her stop.

David came to my aid. “Maybe you are being too hard on her,” he said.

I felt like I was back in Texas. I pleaded with my mother to just stop talking. She said she wouldn't because I had caused our family so much anguish. The worst part was that the counselor didn't say a thing. She just sat there as we argued with each other.

When it was over, I knew I didn't want to see this woman ever again. I didn't like her. But I also didn't want to go to another initial interview session. As we drove home, my parents asked me what I thought. It was late at night. I didn't have the energy for a serious discussion. “She was nicer than the first one,” I sighed. “I guess she's the one.”

Thus therapy began. Week after week I would go to the office, my mind filled with movie images of whacked-out mentally ill people. Was I just like them? I felt too ashamed to talk about the feelings I had for Mark. The psychologist hypothesized that maybe I was looking for a father figure in my life. I didn't know what to say to that.

I did know that I resented someone making up theories about my life. Still, deep down, I hoped that she would become someone that I could learn to trust so that I could talk about all that I was going through. And I looked for any sign that she might understand. I guess I was testing her. When I discussed how my mother lived at the office, and then brought the office home, she suggested that I make appointments with her. Nothing was said about my feelings or how our family's priorities may have been wrong. Schedule appointments, she said.

It is amazing how a single moment in life can change everything so quickly, including the way people see you. One night, soon after Texas, one of the more active swim team mothers called our house. We had always thought of her as a friend of the family, because her daughter and I had been on the same relay team. We had been friends for more than five years.

“Is your mommy there?” she asked when I answered the phone.

I called my mom and handed her the phone. We were in the kitchen, so it was easy for me to listen in without appearing to be a snoop. I ran the water and had a drink. I poked around in the refrigerator. It wasn't long before the conversation turned into an argument.

“I don't think that's necessary,” my mother said.

Pause.

“But nothing happened that could have transmitted anything.”

Pause.

“Because she told me.”

Pause.

“Yes, I believe her. This is too important. She would not lie about it.”

Pause.

“I can understand why you are worried about Katie, but I don't know how any of the other girls could be affected.”

Pause.

“Aren't you a nurse? Don't you know how this stuff spreads?”

Pause.

“Well, I'm not going to insist she do any such thing, and I can't believe you called to ask this.”

Pause.

“I wouldn't be so quick to say who's the worst parent around. Can you be so sure that the same thing isn't going on under your nose?”

Pause.

“I'm sorry you feel that way.”

Pause.

“Well, the feeling is mutual. Good-bye.”

By the end, my mother had been yelling into the phone and when she hung up her face was a little flushed. “We're beginning to learn who our friends are,” she told me. “That's not such a bad thing, either.”

I looked into my mom's eyes. “I'm sorry, Mom, I really am.”

“I know, Katie. I am, too.”

Knowing I couldn't stay away forever, I got up the courage to go to school the next day. I was anxious, worried, maybe even paranoid about what people might know. It was not possible that the incident in Texas had stayed a secret. I knew that some of the girls on the team had talked. What I couldn't anticipate was how everyone was taking it.

On the way to my first class I passed a knot of girls—girls I knew—and heard someone say my name. I stopped and tried to listen without being noticed. They said they couldn't believe the stories they had heard about me because I would never do anything like that. I felt comforted, for a moment, hearing that my old reputation would protect me a bit.

The protection of my reputation didn't last long, though. Gradually enough girls confirmed the story, and everyone seemed to believe it. One by one, friends stopped talking to me. If they wanted more proof, all they had to do was look at me. Every other day or so I would break down and cry in the halls or throw up in the bathroom.

During that first week back my guidance counselor met with me many times. I knew she was checking up on me, making sure I wasn't having some sort of breakdown. She tried to help by giving me opportunities in the day to talk. In reality it didn't make things better. She couldn't control what people said behind my back, or the glances that people gave me, or the rumors that ran wild through the school halls. And her vague comments—“I can imagine how bad you feel”—meant nothing to me.

The rumors were ridiculous. Once I was in a bathroom stall when two girls came in and began yapping about me. One girl said she had seen me take a pregnancy test in the school bathroom. Of course, she said it came out positive. A few days later the hot story was that I had used a wire hanger to self-abort the fetus. No one ever confronted me directly with these stories, but I heard them.

It's hard to explain why people would make these things up. On some level, I wondered if they were trying to make my situation—and me—seem as horrible as possible to convince themselves that they were different. If I was just an ordinary girl, someone just like them, then they would have to worry about it happening to them. But if I was a terrible person, terrible beyond belief, then they could be sure they were safe.

And as much as they needed to make me into someone awful, I needed a way to understand them, so I could at least keep going to school. I decided to believe that they had just forgotten to consider how I might feel. If they knew the pain I was in, they would stop talking, stop making it worse.

No matter what their reasons or motivations, the gossip hurt. Very few of my old friends wanted to associate with me, and even those who may have wanted to felt they couldn't. Their parents wouldn't allow it. To them I wasn't the victim of a crime who deserved compassion. I had been stupid, or maybe seductive, and placed myself in danger. I was a bad influence.

I tried to act normally, to be brave, and I hoped that people would start treating me again like the old Katie Tarbox. At times I was fine, but then the feelings of isolation and rejection would come back, hard. I spent a lot of time thinking about how bad I was. I would compare myself to other kids. I would think about how my teachers knew what had happened. I always reached the same conclusion. I was the worst person, the worst student, in the place.

One day, in Latin class, I got lost in these kinds of thoughts and just started crying. I raised my hand and was allowed to leave. Karen followed me and, for a moment, I thought something good and normal from my life before—my friendship with Karen—might be coming back.

“Here,” she said, ripping some toilet paper off a roll and handing it to me. I took it and wiped the tears off my face.

“This isn't going to last forever, you know,” she said.

“It feels like it will,” I said.

“You've got to pull yourself together, Katie. If you don't, it's not going to stop. You have to show them it doesn't bother you.”

It felt good to have Karen take my side. But this didn't mean the renewal of our relationship. She looked at me once more, to make sure the tears had stopped, and then turned and walked out. It would be the very last moment of our friendship.

As much as I tried to take Karen's advice, Texas, Mark, and the long-term deception I had practiced came back again and again to slap me in the face. One Saturday, while I was at an all-day rehearsal for an all-state chorus concert, my mom went to her office to clear up some work and pay some bills. She opened the phone bill and found the phone calls that I had placed to Mark.

Life brings humor, or maybe it was irony, even at the darkest moments, which may explain why my mom mistakenly dialed a psychiatric hospital when she was trying to verify that the calls were indeed to his house. She hung up, dialed again—more carefully—and waited with her heart pounding. When Mark answered, for some reason all she thought to say was “Connecticut Telephone Company.”

Something about the phone bill, knowing that I had been making all those calls and she never realized it, made my mother think that we needed more than a housekeeper in our home, at least for a while. She wanted someone else, someone in the family, around at all times, just in case Mark tried to contact me. My grandparents—all four of them—agreed to come and stay at our house.

This would be a big change for me, since I had spent so much time alone. I was being treated like a baby and it was humiliating. It would go on at least until summer. It felt like a punishment, not only for me, but for my grandparents, who had to pick up and move out of their houses. I was embarrassed that they knew about all of this, and angry because every relationship I had was being damaged.

When I told my mother about my feelings, she surprised me with her response. She said I
should
feel bad that my grandparents had to come to our house. I had to take the blame. This hurt. Even though they didn't punish me, my parents were obviously blaming me. I knew that what had happened was at least in part my fault, but I hated hearing it.

I would hear it more than once. In fact, blaming would become a regular part of our conversations about what had happened. We would also talk about my mom's struggle to understand how angry she was at me. She would tell me it is possible to love someone and hate them simultaneously. She hoped our relationship would not turn that way, but she felt it was going down that path.

My mother's phone call to Mark's house on that Saturday morning may have ignited a flame. On Monday Mark telephoned our house. Abby answered and at first he thought it was me. When he realized it wasn't me, he asked to speak with my mother. Abby told him that my mother wasn't home, and when she asked who was calling he said “a close friend” and then hung up.

This first call began a stream of calls that made me feel embarrassed, annoyed, and even lonely for him. Over and over again we would hang up on him. Finally, Mark left a message on our machine expressing his desire to make a donation to our “favorite charity.” It was obvious he knew he was in serious trouble and hoped that we could be bought. We never answered him, but we did tell the police about all of his calls.

The police were becoming a big part of my life. The detectives in Texas asked the New Canaan police to do a more formal and detailed interview with me, and of course we agreed. At around 8:30 one school night, after I was finished swimming, my grandmother walked me into the police station. I was introduced to the sergeant who was going to conduct the interview and to a woman officer who was there for my comfort. I said good-bye to my grandmother and was led into an office.