A Girl's Life Online (6 page)

I really didn't expect that he was going to use my phone number. But part of me hoped he would. And I was excited that I had met someone just like me, but of the opposite sex. He even liked Mozart! At last I had connected with another kind, intelligent soul.

Best of all, he recognized me as someone different from the typical thirteen-year-old. And though it may sound silly, I was impressed by the fact that he typed with proper punctuation and capitalized proper nouns and the first word of his sentences. Excellent grammar. A good vocabulary. I thought he
must
be all right.

I
swam hundreds and hundreds of laps at the swimathon. The lactic acid built up in my muscles and burned, and when it was over, I was so sore I could barely walk. My muscles got cold and stiff on the car ride home. When we got there, I literally crawled up the stairs to bed. I got under the quilt my grandmother had made—box squares in shades of purple—and immediately fell asleep.

When the phone in my room rang, it woke me out of a deep sleep. It also scared me. It was well after one A.M. Fortunately I had my own phone line, so no one else heard the ring.

I sat up and said, “Hello,” with my eyes still closed. On the other end a very soothing male voice asked, “May I speak to Katie, please?”

“This is Katie.” I lay back down on the bed.

“Katie, this is Mark from this morning.”

“Mark. Why are you calling me now?” I thought he was crazy. It was so late. But I was also flattered.

“You said any time.”

“I didn't mean that literally. I meant any time within reason. Why are you calling me?”

“Well, I have been thinking about you all day and I just thought why think about you when I can talk to you? So I figured I would call.”

Now I was fully awake, and what he was saying felt good. It was exciting to know that he had been thinking about me, and I quickly forgot that I had been alarmed by his call. I bit my lip gently, and suddenly I didn't care what time it was.

“It is really hot here in Miami.”

I told him I imagined that the humidity was terrible. “How was your flight?”

It was easy to drift into what I thought was a very adult-like conversation about travel. Mark said he had been to a lot of romantic, exotic places: Tahiti, the Caribbean, Hawaii. We talked about the Greek Isles. He hadn't been there, but he was eager to go.

Mark led the conversation, and I lay back in my bed and listened. I placed my hands on my white flannel sheets and buried my legs under the quilt. The room was lit by my Lava lamp, which I kept on at night. The glow covered my walls.

I was still sore, so I told Mark about the swimathon.

“I am an athlete myself, Katie,” he said, explaining that he ran a 5K every morning. I was impressed. Actually getting out of bed every day, putting on the workout clothes, tying the running shoes, and taking those first strides requires genuine discipline. He said the Valley, where he lived, was pretty flat, so it wasn't a difficult run. He said that he didn't drink coffee, so a good run and a hot shower were his wake-up call.

No coffee. This was another thing we had in common. I like coffee ice cream, but I hate coffee. For a while in the beginning of the eighth grade I tried to force myself to like it. Having a cup of coffee. It seemed like a grown-up thing. I figured if I drank a little every day, it would grow on me. I tried dumping sugar—sometimes as many as ten packets—into it. Then came Carnation heavy cream and some half-and-half. I even tried half-coffee half-milk and I still didn't like it.

I told Mark all of this, and even told him about the cappuccino machine I had asked to get last Christmas. My mother got me all the cool attachments from Starbucks, so I actually had a pretty advanced setup with flavored syrups and a cinnamon grater. And my sister gave me a set of delicate espresso cups. Still, no matter how I tried, I couldn't make myself like it. The funny thing was, my parents don't like coffee either, so even they didn't drink my espresso creations.

Our little one A.M. talk was a lot like one of those getting-to-know-you chats on the Internet. We skipped quickly from topic to topic, trying to get to know each other. I loved the sound of his voice, deep and soft. Alone with him while the world was dark and sleeping, I felt like I was involved in an intimate little conspiracy.

It was hard to believe that this was the first phone conversation that I was having with Mark because it felt like I was talking with an old friend. But there was also something excitingly illicit in this moment. I wasn't oblivious to the fact that I had to go to school the next day. And I was aware that if my parents woke up and heard me talking, it would be a difficult situation to explain.

I always feel terribly guilty about breaking rules, and while I had never been told “Don't use the phone after midnight,” I knew it was inappropriate. If my mother heard me, she would want an explanation. And I sure didn't want to explain why I was talking to some twenty-three-year-old guy from California I had never met face-to-face. I felt a tightness in my throat. It was just a little bit of guilt, flavored with the fear of getting caught.

Knowing that a mature woman would never say she was worried about her mother knocking on the door, I didn't tell Mark any of this. Instead I said I was tired, it was very late, and I had to go. I asked him to e-mail me when he got home and told him I was looking forward to when we would talk again. Feeling warm and happy, I hung up the phone thinking about all the things we had in common.

At 5:30 A.M. the clock radio alarm blasted me into a new school day with the sound of Mariah Carey's voice. Her album
Daydream
had been released that fall. I can't say I was fan, but it was all the radio played. Corduroy was the fad that September. In fact, it was all I bought from J. Crew. Corduroy pants in hunter green and blue. I also bought two jumpers that looked cute with white turtlenecks, white tights, and clogs. Although
Cosmo
gave specific details on whether or not you could pull off white tights, and theoretically I couldn't, I still wore them, even though I regretted it when I got to school.

All of this went through my mind as I dried my hair. I began to think about how I was an eighth grader preparing for another day—another year—of adolescent scrutiny, but just a few hours earlier I was talking to a man, a real man from California, who was truly interested in me and what I thought and felt. Thinking about Mark, I smiled, turned off the hair dryer, and picked up my mascara.

Eighth grade would be the year of makeup. Some girls caked on the foundation. Some girls brought huge Ziploc bags of it to school to apply in the bathroom in the morning after their parents dropped them off. Others came adorned with a little shiny lip gloss and mascara.

I used what I thought was fun to apply, but I tried to keep it to a minimum. I was a Revlon fan. My friends and I decided we should have a signature lipstick color. We figured that if you see someone wearing the same lipstick all the time, you will gradually believe that it is the true color of her lips.

There was so much to be concerned about—hair, eyes, lips, nails. Eighth grade was the first year Hard Candy nail polish came out, and it was very difficult to find. It was a major stroke of luck when I managed to find some at Nord-strom. Not only did I get the polish, but I got one of those plastic rings that came at the top of the bottle. I had one with a blue star. Once that blue star was on my finger I grabbed my book bag and I was ready to go.

At school I thought about Mark but didn't mention him to anyone. I knew in my heart that after our late-night conversation I would hear from him soon. But days would pass and I would hear nothing. I resisted the urge to contact him. I'm not sure why, but it was important to me that he be the assertive one.

By the first week of school, Karen's summer-trip guy had become a real boyfriend. But instead of just going off with him, Karen made us a group. Instead of our usual Friday nights—talking, magazine quizzes—we went to the movies, the three of us. I felt pretty out of place, but every week Karen assured me that I had no reason to feel this way.

I don't know if this sounds immature, but I also felt awkward with him riding in our car. Sometimes my parents drove as part of the car pool rotation, and I hadn't had guys ride in my car before. Plus my mother's favorite thing in the whole wide world was saying things to embarrass me. I rode to the movies and back afraid of what she might say.

During the week I followed a set routine. It started with getting up alone, going to school, and singing with the chorus. Then it was on to classes which, for the most part, were either boring or ridiculous. I took English, history, Latin, and geometry, and for an hour of the day we participated in an experimental program. One day we might do crafts, the next, improvisational theater, or we might learn CPR. We also had woodworking and home economics. I never really felt like I belonged to any school, and in the eighth grade this feeling grew stronger. I think a lot of kids felt this way because we weren't in the middle school anymore, but we were by no means part of the real high school. We were just eighth graders in the basement.

As grim as it was, my return to school was not the only difficult challenge I faced that week. A new challenge began when I saw the look on Karen's face as she entered the cafeteria that first week of school. I was seated on one of the little blue stools that were connected to the table. It was the type that could easily fold up as a whole table and sat sixteen. My legs were crossed, I was sipping Diet Coke, and we were all complaining about how lame our classes were. Karen carried the little cloth bag her mother always filled with leftovers from dinner the night before, everything from macaroni and cheese to quesadillas.

She leaned against the table but couldn't quite look me in the eye. “Katie, come to the bathroom with me.” I got up and followed her across the gray-speckled tile floor of the cafeteria, asking her what was the matter. “I'll tell you in the bathroom” was all she would say.

Though she was acting weird, I didn't think I was facing anything all that serious. I thought that maybe Peter had dumped her. But that was nothing to stress over, as far as I was concerned.

We entered the bathroom, and I was surprised when Karen said she actually had to pee. I waited, looking at the discolored white sinks. The paper towel dispensers had rust at their corners. The sinks and faucets were so cruddy, I could never be sure if washing my hands was a good idea or not. I mean, just turning on the water was bound to expose you to a community of germs the size of the state's population.

Karen walked out and turned on the water. She looked up as if she was telling me something ordinary and then said, “Rob has leukemia.”

Leukemia didn't really register in my head as a deadly disease. And Karen's brother, who was about to enter his senior year at Williams, was so young that I just couldn't imagine him getting something really terrible. I fumbled for something to say.