A Girl's Life Online (14 page)

“Do you think it's possible to get a VCR in this hotel?” I asked. “Ashley and I brought some videos.”

“You could probably rent one,” he said, then added quickly, “Come sit here on the sofa.”

Without thinking, I did what he said and sat down on the opposite end of the sofa, facing him.

“I need a haircut,” he said.

“No, you don't,” I said. He seemed feminine, worrying so much about his hair.

“Give me your hand,” he said. “I can read your fortune.”

I played along, giving him my right hand. He turned it over so he could examine the lines that hold the answers to life's mysteries. He began to stroke the life line.

“I can see right here that you are going to have a long, rich life.”

He continued to caress my hand. It felt comforting. But when I tried to pull back, he held on harder. It became more difficult to concentrate on what we were supposed to be talking about because my attention was fixed on his hands touching mine. There was a strength in his hands that was different from mine. His skin was smooth. The small lines seemed more defined, and the hair on the back of his hands was more conspicuous.

I had never felt a man's hand in this way. I never held David's hand. And it had been years since my grandfather had stopped taking my hand, the way grandfathers take the hands of their little granddaughters.

“Katie, I have been thinking about you all day,” he said softly. “And I have been thinking about doing this.”

This. I knew what “this” was. I knew he wanted to kiss me. I felt a shiver of anxiety, not because I didn't want him to, but because I was so inexperienced.

I didn't move as he leaned forward. I closed my eyes and could feel the warmth of his face as it came close. I wanted to be a good kisser. Not because it was expected of me. Not because I was swept up in passion. I wanted it because of what I felt for Mark, and because I didn't want to say no.

Our lips met and I felt his tongue slip under mine. It was fat, and wet, and warm. I felt a few stray whiskers that he had missed with the razor, and suddenly I realized that this was a grown man who was giving me my first real kiss, not a fuzzy-faced teenager, not someone my own age.

Something inside me snapped. Now I didn't want this at all. But I couldn't speak. I hesitantly pulled away. He lifted my shirt and grabbed my breast. Now the strength of his hands meant something different. It hurt, but I said nothing. I felt completely numb. And then I thought, Do I owe this to Mark?

“C'mon sweetie, relax.”

He tried to reach into my pajama bottoms through the fly opening. I pulled his hand away. He did it again, and I pulled his hand away again. Then he pushed down on me hard, letting me know he would not be resisted again.

Instead of being angry and shouting at him to stop it, I was confused and speechless. Mark was supposed to be better than this. He was supposed to be patient and kind and generous. He was supposed to care about me. Now it was clear that he obviously wanted me to have sex with him. That was what this meeting was about. He moved on top of me. I wondered what a mature person, a woman, would do, but I could think of nothing.

“We could have such a good future,” he whispered.

“How do you know?”

“A little bird is telling me.”

It was silly and I laughed nervously. It was then quiet, and I had a moment to think about how much I really cared about him.

“I love you,” I said.

I told him because I wanted him to know how much I looked up to him. He was everything that I thought a person should be. And when he said nothing in response, I knew that I was wrong about him, about myself, about love, about everything.

The knocking on the door was so loud that it made me panic. I have never been so instantly frightened. It sounded as if a giant were pounding on the door.

Startled by the sound, we both sat up. The color drained from Mark's face. I knew, and I think he knew, too, who had to be on the other side of the door.

“Can I help you?” Mark called out.

“Is Katie Tarbox in there?”

The first thing I thought about was the disappointment I would see on my mother's face when the door opened. I didn't want her to know what I had done or who was in this room with me. How could I have put myself in this position? I thought. How could I jeopardize who I was and what I stood for this much?

Mark got up and walked over to the door.

“No, she's not here,” he said.

My mother was not satisfied. “Has she been here at all tonight?”

We didn't know it at the time, but she was standing there with two of the team's coaches. One was about to leave to get the hotel security guard.

Mark looked at me, and the expression on his face asked, What should we do now? I hoped he would know what to do, but he didn't. Quickly and quietly we decided he would tell my mother that I had gone down to the lobby. When she left to go search for me, I would go back to my room. In the meantime, I would hide in the bathroom.

“She was here, but she left. She's downstairs.”

“I want to come in to see for myself,” my mother said.

Mark told her to come back in twenty minutes, after he “freshened up,” and then she could search the room. My mother said she wasn't going anywhere. She would wait.

In the bathroom I looked at myself in the mirror. I saw my face and my pajamas, the same pajamas I had worn so many times in my own bed. I wondered how my mother was feeling. Mark opened the bathroom door and brought me out. I have never seen anyone so afraid.

“This hotel has security guards,” he said under his breath. “This could get pretty out of control. You have to promise me that you won't tell what happened here tonight. You cannot tell anyone, not even your mother. I could get into a lot of trouble and I could even go to jail.”

I thought to myself, I know this already. I really hate when people try to reaffirm things that I already know. It's incredibly condescending. I didn't promise him that I would keep quiet. But I didn't think he had to worry. I did not want to live with the guilt of turning him into some kind of criminal. How could he think I would do that? After all the times he'd been there for me, including my birthday, when nobody else could make it. Despite what had just happened I still loved him.

When Mark finally opened the door, we saw that my mother and the coaches had been joined by a security guard and two police officers, all of them male. No one said anything as I walked out, and I didn't dare look at my mother. I suddenly felt completely exhausted. I just wanted to go to bed. I walked down the hall past everyone. One of the swim coaches asked me where I was going. I stopped and turned, but I couldn't say anything.

Looking back, I saw Mark come out of his room. My eyes focused on his hideous white shoes. They were about the ugliest pair of shoes I had ever seen in my entire life.

He wanted to talk to my mother. She wanted nothing to do with him. He tried to convince my mother that nothing had happened, nothing at all. We just chatted, like good friends do. Nothing bad had happened.

I don't think my mom believed him. She walked down the hall, leaving Mark with the authorities.

I later learned that hotel security didn't come up at first when my mom went down to report that her child might be in danger. They said they would come to the room only if someone knew that I had been there, and they didn't come up until she sent two of the coaches down to confirm to them that I had been in the room.

No one said a word in the elevator. My mother was too upset. I didn't know what to say. The elevator stopped and my coaches left. I then went to my room with my mom. Once inside I got into the bed. I just wanted to sleep, but she didn't understand this at all. I was so confused. So much had happened in the last hour. I needed to be alone to think about who Mark really was, who I was, how this could have happened.

The Dallas police knocked on my mother's door about twenty minutes later. She let them in, and she told me that they had to take a report when these things happen. I condensed my story into three minutes at most. I told them that I had met Mark over the Internet. Then I said, “He came here. I went to his room. My mom found us. Nothing happened.”

I didn't want to talk, and I knew that my mother was not ready to hear the truth. I knew that because I know my mother better than anyone else does.

Over and over they asked, “Are you sure nothing happened?”

My mom said she would leave the room if I wanted. I said it wasn't necessary. But I wasn't going to talk that night. Then another police officer came into the room. He asked me how old I thought Mark was and I told him thirty-one. He then asked me my age, and I told him fourteen.

“Miss, he is forty-one and he thinks you are fifteen.”

I couldn't believe it. I just could not believe that Mark was that old. He could easily be my father. And I was certain that he knew my age. He had known from the beginning. How could he lie like that?

The officers asked me about his job. I told him I thought he owned some type of consulting firm. I didn't really know. He never really talked with me about his work. The police officer told me Mark was a financial consultant and he described his investment fund.

Then they asked if I knew where he lived. I said Wood-land Hills, because that is what he told me. In fact, they said, Mark resided in Calabasas, California.

Finally they asked me his name. It seemed like a ridiculous question. “It's Mark,” I said.

“No, it's not,” they said. “His real name is Francis John Kufrovich.”

We sat in silence for a moment. Then one of the police officers began to speak. “Let me get this straight, ma'am,” he said. “I have spoken with this man for five minutes and I know his age, name, occupation, and residence. You have spoken with him for six months and don't know any of this?”

I realized, at that moment, that if Mark couldn't tell me the truth about these basic issues, then why should I believe anything he said? I said to the police officer, “No, I don't know these things. I'm sorry.”

He didn't want me to be sorry but thankful that I had made it out of that room alive. This was a ridiculous statement. Based on our Internet conversations, I didn't have any reason to believe that Mark would harm me. I had heard all the horror stories of girls just like me who had been killed, chopped up into pieces, and buried by twisted psychopaths. But Mark, or Frank, or whatever his name was, couldn't be like that. He had been a good person to me. I had known him for six months, and he had never given me any solid reason not to trust him or to doubt his integrity.

My mom walked the police officers out, and I just lay under the covers. I looked out the windows and I wondered what I would do. I also wondered what was real about my Internet relationship with that man. Why didn't I suspect problems earlier? Why had I trusted him? Why had he lied to me? Who was that person in the hotel room?

My mom came back into the room and closed the door. She began to cry. She picked up the phone and called David. Her words were broken by sobs and almost incoherent. About all I could understand was that she had never been so mortified in her entire life. I had never seen her this upset.

My mom hung up the phone, and I tried to go to sleep. It was very difficult. I tried everything, but somehow counting sheep, or anything else, wasn't working. I knew I had to sleep, though, because the next morning I had to be in the pool. Through the whole, long, dark night I lay there, half-asleep, half-awake, numb, and in shock.

At about three in the morning, my mom got into bed with me. She just came over and wrapped her arms around me. I knew she was hurt very badly, and it was only then that I could sense the pain I had caused her. She kissed my cheek. She smelled my hair. At that moment, I knew she really loved me, and I just wanted to make everything right again.