A Girl's Life Online (21 page)

I began high school a couple of days later. Most kids would be excited about this milestone, but I dreaded it. I got up on time, rode to school with David, and forced myself to put one foot ahead of the other so I could get through the door and down the hallway.

All that day I kept waiting for someone to say something to me about Texas, but it didn't happen. So much had happened in everyone's life that summer that my little scandal was ancient history. This didn't mean I was suddenly popular. Most people still kept their distance, even as I passed them between classes. But most of the gossiping was over.

I enrolled in all honors classes and two languages, so I was very busy. It was an academic grind with little relief. I did homework for hours every night and spent my weekends alone. This was nothing like what I imagined high school would be from watching
90210
. I didn't go to parties. I didn't hang out with friends and laugh all night long. I was lonesome and, worse, bored.

Up in New Hampshire Abby reported that she was anything but bored. It was not long before I started to think that boarding school would be a good idea for me, too. My parents thought it would offer me a new start, which I needed. We made a list of seven schools that I would look at, and then I applied to five.

It was a bit like applying for college. I had to fill out applications, take aptitude tests, write essays, and go for interviews, which meant for seven weekends in a row I spent my Saturdays at these schools. We would wake up early, drive to a Dunkin' Donuts, and visit a school before driving home. Eventually we narrowed the choices to three, all of them in New Hampshire: Phillips Exeter Academy, St. Paul's School, and Deerfield Academy. Deerfield was supposed to be the least difficult to get into, and it was also my favorite. It had a wonderful swimming pool, and an atmosphere that felt a little less pressured. I imagined that I could be very happy there.

The trips to these schools gave my mother and me hours for talking, and we used them. Gradually my mother said she was no longer angry with me and we were getting over the Texas incident. We didn't really talk about the whole legal process that was still moving forward, or the fact that there might one day be a trial. My main concern was piecing my life back together and preparing to go away next year. But as time passed, I always had the case in the back of my mind, and I kept expecting the phone to ring with some news from the FBI or the federal prosecutor in New Haven.

I dreaded hearing from the FBI because I knew that when they called I would be forced back into the role of victim-or-slut and that Mark would be one step closer to being arrested. And as often as other people said how much they wished to see Mark locked up, I still couldn't agree. I did not believe that he was a criminal. His behavior had been inappropriate, at least in Texas. But I couldn't understand why it was illegal for someone—even a forty-one-year-old man—to travel to Texas to meet me.

When you think about what had happened in that hotel room, it was not as big a deal as everything that happened afterward. The way everyone—my family, the swim team, school friends, teachers—had reacted had made it much worse. And while they were all saying that they were upset about what had happened to me, no one seemed very interested in accepting me or comforting me. Instead, they talked about how I was responsible, how I had let everyone down, disgraced myself, behaved terribly. It almost seemed like they were saying I got what I deserved.

T
his may be hard for you to believe, but it's true. Although we hadn't spoken in more than a year, I still felt close to Mark, or close to the idea of him. I still cared for him and worried about his future. I also believed that he cared about me. No one knew I had these feelings, not even Psychologist Number Two. I kept them secret from her and my parents because I knew they wouldn't understand, especially in light of the information we were getting about him.

Every few weeks or so, the FBI or the prosecutor would call to fill us in. We learned that Mark had pursued other girls—and boys—and he had slept with some of them. A search of his house turned up pornography downloaded from the Internet, including a picture of a young girl involved in intercourse.

Eventually every girl has to come to grips with the existence of pornography. But when I first realized there was such a thing I found it disgusting. I thought the women who were involved were pathetic, and that it was degrading to everyone. It was hard to understand why adults were involved in it, and the more I understood how widespread it was, the more gross it seemed. At first I thought only a very few people were involved with pornography. When you realize that millions and millions of people are into pornography, you have to figure some of them are people you know, and the world isn't really what you think it is at all.

It's probably seminormal for a bunch of college kids in a frat house to want to watch X-rated movies. It's not just guys, of course. I know at least one girl who's pretty obsessed with her collection of porn videos. Guys are just so hormonal, though, that I think it's better for them to have pornography than to go out and take advantage of someone. I thought it was like a safety valve or something. But if you're over twenty-five, or married, and you really need it, there's something wrong. And if you really need pictures of little kids, then you are definitely sick.

I managed to forget Mark until one day late in July, when I answered a call from an FBI agent who asked me if my parents were home. I got my mom and listened. From my mother's part of the conversation I could tell that Mark's arraignment would be the next day. No one had bothered to tell me this was coming up, which made me a bit angry, but I was getting used to hearing myself discussed and watching other people control what would happen to me. Sometimes I resented it, but at other times I was glad to be left out. When my mother got off the phone, she and David told me they were both going, but that I would stay home.

Eventually I would sit down with a tape recording of the arraignment, snap it into a Walkman, and listen hard to every word. It began with the prosecutor. He revealed that Mark had used alcohol and pornography to entice other victims. He had taken trips with minors to different parts of the country, buying their tickets with their first name and his last name. He was also in a relationship with a twenty-year-old woman, whose virginity he had taken when she was just fourteen. Her name was Miss Jennifer Jones, she was a student at the University of California-Davis, and she kept a journal of every time they had sex together.

The judge then asked Mark a few basic questions about his life in California and his business. His answers were not revealing, but the way he spoke was. He was so quiet that I had to struggle to hear him. He mumbled his way along until the moment came for him to plead guilty or not guilty. Then he literally shouted, “Not guilty!”

He was so loud that my ears hurt. It was as if he truly believed he was innocent, that I had been in the wrong. I was shaken by the sudden power in his voice and suddenly swept with anxiety. As much as the trial was going to be about Mark's guilt or innocence, it was also going to be about mine. This was going to be a battle over the truth that would define me as either a victim or a lying slut.

The court appearance made the case a public matter, and since this was the first time the federal government had prosecuted an Internet pedophile, it was big news. When I got home from work I turned on the television. As the news-casters spoke about a “minor” who went to Texas and was molested, I found it hard to associate that girl with me. I mean, I knew it was me, but that day in the hotel was so far in the past.

On the morning after the arraignment, the newspaper headlines announced MAN CALLED INTERNET SEDUCER and CALIFORNIA MAN PLEADS INNOCENT TO SEX CHARGES. The articles forced me to look at Mark in a different light. He was described as an accused criminal, a suspected pedophile, the target of a very serious prosecution. Having it laid out in black and white—and so publicly—gave the accusations a weight they didn't have until now with me. The reporters were outside observers. They didn't know me; they didn't know Mark. Unlike the FBI and the prosecutors, whose jobs were focused on convicting people, they had no interest in either side. But they were describing me as a victim and him as an accused perpetrator. For a moment I thought, If they believe it, maybe I should, too.

Gradually, the man who had been my friend, who had listened to me and cared for me so deeply, was fading from view. He was being replaced by the image of a manipulative, porn-obsessed, child molester named Frank Kufrovich. This was not my Mark. But he was the one who had created Mark. I wondered if Mark represented the good man that this Frank had hoped he could be. Mark was the positive one, but he wasn't strong enough to overcome Frank's sickness. Instead, he always ended up serving Frank. I still liked Mark, but it seemed as if he only existed in my heart, and he was dying. Frank was the reality, and I now began to call him by that name.

That fall I left for private school. We decided on St. Paul's in New Hampshire, where Abby had gone. She was proud that I had chosen her school, and I was glad to be going someplace where my name might not be known. I thought it would be easy to leave home, but I began to feel lonesome even while I was loading the car in our driveway. I needed to leave, almost felt forced to do it. But I was still just fifteen years old, and I started to miss my family during the drive to New Hampshire.

The sight of the campus—worn brick classroom buildings, white clapboard houses—made me feel better. Abby had been happy at St. Paul's, so I thought that I could be happy there, too. And the people were open and kind. But as friendly as they were, I still wondered: If they knew what I had done—what had been done to me—would they be so nice? I decided that I'd rather not find out. I could control what people at St. Paul's knew about me. And I would keep Frank, Texas, and all the rest of it secret.

Unlike New Canaan High School, where it seemed only the more advanced students studied hard, everyone at St. Paul's was serious about academics. They not only kept us busy with schoolwork but also expected us to participate in extracurricular activities. I played on the field hockey team, sang in the chorus, and continued with piano. I was also able to make new friends. I was closest to my roommate, a girl named Penn, who came from a wealthy North Carolina family. She was not, by any definition, a Southern belle. In fact, when we first met, I thought she must be from New York City. She wore funky Armani glasses, brown tortoiseshell with squarish frames. Like me, Penn had come to St. Paul's to build her own identity, outside of her hometown and family.

For the first time since I began my relationship with Frank I felt like a normal teenager. Slowly I began to regain my confidence. As colder nights began to turn the leaves red, yellow, and bright orange, I began to think that no one at St. Paul's was ever going to find out about my past. The case against Frank would no doubt appear in the news again, but because I was a minor, my name would never be mentioned. So even if someone at St. Paul's happened to read about the case, how would they associate it with me? It wasn't going to happen, and this thought made me feel better than I had felt in a long time.