“Are you paying attention?” Devin’s irritated tone slices through the fog in my head.
My fingers tighten on the cordless. “Um, yeah. Sure. You were talking about Sean.”
“Have you ever noticed how dark his eyes are?” And she’s off again, and we talk—or she does—until her dad makes her go do homework.
I’m supposed to talk to Paul, and I haven’t let myself think about it for a minute or two, but now I can’t
stop
thinking about it. By the time everybody goes to bed, I’m nearly sick. My heart’s beating so fast I’m afraid I’ll die as I open my closet and arrange everything on the floor. Pillows. A small stack of clothes. A few shoes. As soon as I’ve hollowed out the perfect cave, I carry the computer inside and pull the door almost closed behind me.
It’s so dark in the little space.
I sit cross-legged under my twirling uniforms and dresses and blouses and pants, and I sneak a peek around the closet door into my room.
Everything’s just as dark, maybe darker, since there’s no light from the computer screen out there. It’s quiet, too, with Mom and Dad and Lauren asleep for the night.
I glance down at the computer—and hear a creak in the hallway.
On reflex, I slam the laptop’s lid.
The pop of the latch sounds like a cannon shot in the silence.
Panic floods my nerves, my face, my skin. I get hot and cold and short of breath all at the same second—but I don’t hear anything else. Nothing but my gasping. The thudding rush of blood in my ears.
Nobody’s there.
My parents aren’t awake. Lauren’s not busting into my room.
I’m still alone.
And I’m an idiot
.
Biting my bottom lip hard enough to make my eyes water, I manage to slow down my breathing and get a grip on myself.
I fumble with the laptop, get it open, and bump the power button to bring it out of hibernation.
Since I still have a few minutes, I check my e-mail
and find five or six more posts that came through my new BlahFest profile. I even follow a few links, look at a few guys—and one girl.
Interesting—but not like KnightHawk859.
I’d still rather talk to Paul—though I do save a couple of the posts in case things don’t work out with him.
When I check the clock, it’s 11:00 p.m.
I type in the chat address. Get in the room. It’s empty, except for me. So I suck in a breath and wait.
What if he doesn’t come?
What if he does come, but we don’t have anything to talk about? The whole thing might be a flop anyway, us just sitting and staring at a blank screen not knowing what to say. That would suck.
11:01.
11:02.
Even though the computer clock doesn’t tick out loud, I imagine the sound.
11:03.
I flex my fingers, which are sore from twirling practice out in the garage-gym Mom and Dad had fixed up for me. I worked for four straight hours after I got home, going over and over my competition routine, until Mom made me go take a shower.
11:04.
Maybe I should open another window and surf—but what if I screw up the chat screen?
11:05.
I am a
total
freaking idiot. Why am I doing this?
An almost-muted bell chirps, and the screen flashes:
KnightHawk859 has entered the chat room.
Just as fast, the
Paul is typing
icon blinks.
“Sorry.” Paul’s first word shoots through in tall, pulsing red. “I got busted for not putting out the trash.” That came through in normal type. “Had to do it before I could log on.”
Relief hits me like a warm, tingly wave. “My parents make me do trash, too,” I type back as fast as I can. “I get grounded if I forget.”
“I live half my life grounded,” Paul writes. “Or at least restricted, where I have to stay right under Dad’s nose. Nothing I do is ever good enough, you know?”
He’s not using abbreviations, which makes me happy. I know most of them, like
u
for
you
and
c
for
see
, but after a point, those things make my eyes cross—and make me feel like I’m talking to cartoons and not people. I tell him that.
He answers with a smiley. “I’m glad. I like to keep it real. Wait a sec. Got something for you.”
He sends me a couple of pictures, then types Emily Dickinson’s entire “I’m Nobody” poem, followed by, “You like that one, right?”
I tap LOAD two or three times, because one of the pictures won’t cooperate. It sets off my virus filter, and I have to disable the stupid thing to view the shots of Paul goofing around with his horn.
God, he’s more gorgeous than I remembered.
Just
look
at that thick, curly black hair.
My heart starts beating fast all over again, this time in a good way.
And he’s waiting.
Oh, crap. I’m supposed to be typing.
“I like all of Emily’s poems,” I write back as fast as my fingers will move. My eyes flick to the small opening I’ve left so I can see out into the room—straight to the leg of my desk. I know my Emily compendium’s open on top. And right beside that,
Poems of Love
.
Don’t go there. Just type, idiot.
“I like Emily so much I think I’ll steal her name.”
Paul sends me a confused smiley with red cheeks. It blinks wide, blank eyes. “Why don’t you like
Chan
for a name? Is it short for something?”
“Chan is
so
stupid.” I dread typing the rest, but since he asked, I write, “It’s short for Chandra. Go ahead. Laugh.”
“????” comes through ahead of a pair of confused smileys. “Your name is just fine. Interesting and intriguing.”
“Call me Red, okay?” I smile as I type, like he can see me, even though neither of us has our streaming video turned on. Nerves, I guess. I really don’t feel like broadcasting myself to anyone right this second. “I like
Red
from you.”
“Done. I hate my name, too. Always wanted
Ben
or
Dirk
or
Stone
or something with a little more … I don’t know. Muscle, or something.”
I glance at his chat nickname. “What about Hawk?”
“Can’t.”
Paul
.”
“So
Paul
who likes to keep it real, you saw me and my friend Devin at the same time, and you wrote to me instead of her. Are you blind, or do you just like redheads that much?”
“Redheads have a lot of spirit. I bet you’re a spitfire, Red. Are you?”
Keep it real.
“Sometimes I am.” I frown. “Sometimes I just wish I was. You?”
“Some stuff makes me mad, but mostly, I let everything slide because I don’t want to be like my dad.”
My turn for question marks and “Why? Is he a temper freak?”
“Total bastard, more like. Stick up his ass
all
the time, you know?”
“Yeah. My mom’s uptight. She treats me like I’m seven and too stupid to know what’s good for me.”
“Are they idiots? Your parents.” Paul types the question really fast. I like how well he types and keeps up with me.
I gaze at the words as the light of the laptop’s screen cocoons me inside my closet. “Idiots? No. Well, maybe. My mom’s a Democrat and she wears these freaky shirts that everyone laughs at,” I whisper as I type. “And my dad’s … different. Sweet. Almost too sweet.”
“My dad’s obsessed with the trash and me keeping my room clean,” Paul types. “What’s your mom uptight about?”
I imagine him asking the question out loud, like he’s sitting on the other side of the closet, just inside the shadows. He probably has a deep, mellow voice, like all jazz trumpet players should have. Kind of a husky, sexy whisper.
It’s kind of amazing, how un-nervous I feel talking—well, typing—to him. I already feel like I know him a little, like maybe I’ve known him for days or weeks instead of a few computer minutes. I provide him with a list of Mom’s obsessions, from politics to grades to shaping my future, all the way to her worrying about Lauren and me getting eating disorders.
“How old is Lauren?”
“She’s eight. And she can be real high-drama. You should see
her
profile at BlahFest. She listed herself as
MajorBabe
until Mom made her change it to
PrettyLittle-Girl
. You’d think she was the next Hollywood bomb-shell-in-the-making—when she’s not busy freaking out over more stuff than I could type in one night.”
“Two little brothers, pains in my ass.” He sends a smiley with crazy, rolling eyes. “They have obnoxious BlahFest profiles, too. One of them calls himself
Hercules
. Yeah, right.” Then: “You don’t really have an eating disorder, do you?”
“No.” I almost laugh out loud, but hold it back. “But I suck at getting in shape.”
“Your coach a hard-ass like my pops?”
“Absolutely. The Bear bites.”
“Had a wrestling coach like that.” Paul cues a blue frowny-face. “He was a bastard about us making weight early in the week instead of just at match time. I had to learn a lot about fitness and strength and weight training.”
I fidget, not sure what to type, but Paul adds: “Maybe I can help you with the training stuff? I don’t mind.”
My jaw goes loose, and my stomach flutters.
That’s … sweet.
And all of a sudden, I want to tell him about Mom and Devin and the whole skinny-people-think-it’s-easy problem. Somehow, I think Paul would get it. In fact, I know he would, but I don’t really want to go there. I mean, what if he starts seeing me as all fat and freckled and just … not good enough?
But he’s asking my height, and how much weight I want to lose—jeez. At least he’s not asking me what I do weigh, because if he does, I’m not answering.
“Don’t bother,” I tell him. “It’s hopeless. I gain weight eating lettuce.”
“Only if you overtrain,” he types back.
My eyebrows shoot up. “What do you mean?”
“It’s when you exercise too hard and don’t take in
enough calories. It puts your body into storage—you know, slows down your metabolism so you don’t lose anything. Sometimes you even gain at first.” The icon for
Paul is typing
blinks, so I know he’s not finished.
Overtraining?
That’s why I gain weight on lettuce?
I’m exercising
too much
?
“It’s a balancing act,” Paul writes. “You have to take in fewer calories than you burn up, but more exercise isn’t necessarily better—and you have to rest in between hard training sessions, or you’ll just get hurt and stuff.”
I tell him how much I exercise every day with the Bear’s practices, but he says my body’s probably used to that level of exertion.
Before midnight, he’s laid out a training schedule for me, and helped me figure out a calorie count, and given me some Web sites to help me pick foods to get what I need without going over. He sends the training schedule in a file that I save to my desktop.
“I’ll send you some free weights, okay?” The words fly across the screen and I imagine him telling me those words in that laid-back, low musician’s voice he probably has. “Just the basics for now, 2s, 5s, and 8s. It’ll be enough for a start.”
“Those cost money,” I hack back, doing my best to keep my spelling straight even though my stomach’s roaring and my eyelids are drooping.
“I’ve got money,” Paul answers immediately. “My dad is loaded. It’s no sweat. Should I send them to your house?”
“God, no, my mother and father would have a total stroke!” I hesitate, then glance back over the training program he gave me. I really need those weights, but I’m flat busted. And Mom getting me weights when she just knows I’ll use them to be anorexic or bulimic some-how—that so isn’t going to happen.
Dad might get them for me, but who knows when he’ll have time—and if he could get it past Mom?
Devin.
I could have him send the weights to Devin’s—but no, no. Wait. Her folks’ll stroke just as fast as Mom and Dad.
“Why don’t you get a P.O. box?” Paul types back. “Well, a personal mailbox, I mean. At one of those mailbox places?”
I grin. “Don’t you have to be eighteen? I’m still underage, remember?”
Paul punches up a wicked winking smiley face. “You could get an I.D.”
He explains how easy that is, setting up a fake I.D. He says all I need is a headshot to pull it off.
I click open my photos and send him one, the best one I have, and he writes, “Perfect.” Then: “Give me your address. I’ll send it when I get it finished.”
My fingers starts moving to say, “Okay,” and type in the street and number, but I jerk my hands off the keyboard before I send the response.
On the laptop’s screen, in the little blue chat box, my address seems to stare back at me.
PIRs scroll through my head.
Never put your real name on the Net. Never put your address on the Net. Never put your telephone number on the Net. No public profiles. Everything you do should be—and will be—supervised
.
I’ve broken some of those rules without feeling guilty or weird, like talking to Paul in the middle of the night in my closet, and letting him know part of my name.
But handing out my street address?
That makes my insides lurch.
I delete the address and write, “Sorry. Can’t give you my 411.”
For a few seconds, nothing happens. I bite my lip and ping Paul to make sure he’s still in chat. According to the signal drifting through the ether, he is, but … the icon that tells me whether or not he’s typing doesn’t light up.
He’s not answering.
It gets hard to swallow.
Is he really getting mad over me not giving him my address? Because if he is, then Devin’s right and he’s probably just some pervert after all, and I’m definitely the biggest idiot on the planet.
He starts typing.
I let out a huge breath, then take another one and hold it.
What if he’s telling me to kiss off?
Words flash onto the chat screen.
“I understand. You need to get to know me better.” He ends the sentence with a smiley slapping its head like “Duh.”
Before I really start breathing normally, he adds, “Can you get the free weights?”