Chapter 3
That night before bed, Kate signed onto the Internet. It was the same routine
as she always followed after dinner: do homework and read a book (Libby
on Wednesday by Zilpha Keatley Snyder that night) until nine-thirty.
At that point she had an hour before bed, which she used to go online, check
the various websites, and chat with her online friends.
Kate’s lie burned inside her that night.
No friends, indeed. I have friends; they’re just not here. She meant friends
in school. She doesn’t care about my online friends, she excused herself.
She didn’t like lying, but she hadn’t thought about her online friends when
she wrote her letter. There’s another reason, she thought. Ignorance.
Forgetfulness. Lack of awakeness with which to concentrate on writing the
facts. Yes, I have plenty of reasons. I can excuse this one little lie.
Kate signed onto AOL Instant Messenger
and looked at her buddy list. Only three people were on: herself, a girl
she knew from a private chatroom that one of her friends created one night,
and her best online friend, Hannah. Hannah was in England, but she was a
night owl so it wasn’t too surprising to find her up and online at two-thirty
in the morning her time. An instant message from Hannah popped up right as
Kate signed on.
Hannah blossom: Hey, Kate.
Toughkat36: Hey back to you. What’s up tonight?
Hannah blossom: Nothing, nothing… waiting for something to
happen. It’s boring online. Everyone’s back in school, and we still have
two weeks to go! Summer’s passed its expiration date. I need school. Give
me your school news, please.
Toughkat36: If you had school, you wouldn’t be able to stay
up this late.
Hannah blossom: That’s not the point. Give me your school
news!
Toughkat36: Are you sure you want to hear it?
Hannah blossom: Yes! Just tell it already!
Toughkat36: Why do you want to hear about school? There’s
nothing to tell. It’s the usual. You know what it’s like. What’s so important
that you want to hear about school?
Hannah blossom: Don’t laugh at me.
Toughkat36: *rolls eyes* I’m not going to laugh at you.
Hannah blossom: I miss school. You happy?
Toughkat36: Yes. Now I can tell you all about my horrible
school and try to convince you otherwise. School is not something to miss.
Hannah blossom: It is for me. Now tell!
Toughkat36: Algebra 1 is hell.
Hannah blossom: You expected that, didn’t you? Math just isn’t
your thing. Let it slide.
Toughkat36: I’d better not fail.
Hannah blossom: You won’t. Go on.
Toughkat36: Biology is hard and getting harder—this is what
I get for taking a class a year ahead.
Hannah blossom: You’ll do fine. You took it because you wanted
to, didn’t you? Because you thought you were ready? That’s better than taking
it because you had to. Others will have to do that.
Toughkat36: You know me too well. You know that?
Hannah blossom: Yes. That’s how I know you’ll be okay.
Toughkat36: Yeah, yeah… I’ll do fine. I know I will.
Hannah blossom: Yes… now, go on.
Toughkat36: Social studies is boring, nothing but ancient
things that no one cares about.
Hannah blossom: I thought you liked history? Oh, I get it.
They’re not developed enough yet to go to war. They’re just evolving, aren’t
they? Wait till you get a couple chapters up—quite a bit of violence there.
Toughkat36: You won’t give me a chance to forget that you’re
a senior with the mind of an adult, will you?
Hannah blossom: No. I don’t think I will, and I don’t think
you need to.
Toughkat36: You’re making me feel young.
Hannah blossom: You are! Now, go on.
Toughkat36: Do I have to?
Hannah blossom: Yes.
Toughkat36: Fine. We have penpals in English.
Hannah blossom: Oh, tell all! Who’s your penpal? Where is
she from? What is she like?
Toughkat36: You sound like a freshman now. Quit switching!
Hannah blossom: I am so glad that I know you are teasing.
If not, I would come over there across the Atlantic and whip your behind.
Toughkat36: I’d like to see you try.
Hannah blossom: You didn’t answer my questions. Tell me all
about your penpal!
Toughkat36: Overeager.
Hannah blossom: You’re holding out on me. Why don’t you want
to say?
Toughkat36: FINE! I’ll tell you!
Hannah blossom: No need to get all snappy at me…
Toughkat36: Her name is Anna Hamilton. She’s from some middle
school in Virginia. She lives in a town called Hugsville and is totally and
completely a hyper, rambling idiot.
Hannah blossom: Oh, she can’t be that bad.
Toughkat36: Okay, so take off the idiot part. She’s no idiot,
or so she says. We’ll see if she can find my website. That’ll show us how
well she can think.
Hannah blossom: You’re testing her already? Jeez, you just
met the girl.
Toughkat36: I did the same to you, if you’ll remember. She
should be glad she’s getting the chance.
Hannah blossom: She can’t be that bad. What’s she like other
than being hyper and rambley?
Toughkat36: She reads. Fantasy junk, though. She wants me
to read some author called Tamora Pierce.
Hannah blossom: Hey, I’ve read her books! Follow Anna’s advice,
trust me. If you don’t like them, you can sock both her and me.
Toughkat36: I’ll keep that in mind.
Hannah blossom: What else?
Toughkat36: She writes.
Hannah blossom: There’s something you have in common! Talk
about that.
Toughkat36: Yeah, like I’m going to share my personal writing
with that girl. She’s already asking personal questions!
Hannah blossom: Like what? What is she asking you?
Toughkat36: She’s asking about my family. I’m not going to
tell her that my father’s abusive, my mother doesn’t care about me, my brother’s
always fighting with me, and my parents are always fighting! Yeah, that’s
a great first impression!
Hannah blossom: She didn’t know that she was asking anything
bad. Asking about the family is a standard letter-writing question.
Toughkat36: Right…
Hannah blossom: It is! Haven’t you ever written a letter to
someone new before?
Toughkat36: No.
Hannah blossom: Well it is. You can’t blame the girl for something
that everyone does. As for her hyperness, maybe she’s just nervous.
Toughkat36: Right…
Hannah blossom: You trust me, right?
Toughkat36: Yeah. Yeah, I do.
Hannah blossom: Then trust me on this. You cannot label her
from just however long you’ve been writing her! Wait for her to show her
how she really is, okay? I bet she’s not so bad.
Toughkat36: And pigs can fly.
Hannah blossom: Just give her a chance, okay?
Toughkat36: Fine, but only because I don’t have time to argue
with you. I have to go—it’s bedtime.
Hannah blossom: Goodnight, Kate! Have fun with your penpal,
and talk to you whenever!
Toughkat36: Sure… whatever you say. She’d better be as you
say, or I won’t be having any fun dealing with her.
Hannah blossom: Just remember what I said…
Toughkat36: Sure. Fine. Whatever. Night.
Hannah blossom: Night.
Toughkat36 signed off at 10:31:06 PM.
“Hannah had better be right,” Kate muttered
as she went off to bed.
§
By the middle of the second week of school,
Anna and Jenny were close friends. They shared two classes (English and Science)
and lunch together. During lunch on Wednesday everyone had gotten one reply
letter from his or her penpal. Though the second ones were in their inboxes,
they hadn’t seen them yet. To pass the time they had to spend waiting for
the next class, they started talking about their penpals. Anna started the
conversation.
“So what is yours like?” Anna asked. The
question was open to the table, but it was directed at Jenny because she
was the only other person not already engaged in a conversation.
“What’s my what like?” Jenny asked. She had apparently
been lost in thought—a usually Jenny activity—and was not paying attention
to her friend.
“Your penpal. What’s she like?”
“Oh, she’s really nice. Her name’s Brittany.
We’re a lot alike. She’s a swimmer, too. She’s on her school team—only she
has weather to have swim team all year, lucky her. And she reads mystery
books, too. She has a sister instead of a brother, though. Older, not younger.
She gets rides to wherever she wants to go sometimes. She’s started to tell
me about her schoolwork; she’s really smart. It’s going to be fun talking
to her.”
Anna looked at Jenny strangely. She really
was a quiet girl. She didn’t usually say that much at once—she was really
quiet, and the most she usually said in one string was about three sentences
or so, not ten. This girl Brittany must have made quite impression on Jenny.
“That sounds awesome, girl.”
“Oh, it is! What’s your penpal like, Anna?”
“She’s not exactly the ideal penpal. Not
at all.”
“Oh? What’s wrong?”
“She’s just… oh, Jenny, she’s not nice!
She started out her letter so firmly. ‘I’m not Katherine; I’m Kate. You call
me Kate and I’m going to turn into a bomb and explode on you.’”
“She really said that?”
“No. It sounded like that, though. Her
writing had that kind of edge. And she sounded stuck up—“Oh, some places
go to high schools in different towns, but we have our own high school in
Cooper City. It was like she was making fun of people who go to high school
in different towns. Oh, she doesn’t know that my high school is going to
be in a different town, but I’m sure she knows that Mountain Ridge Middle
School is in Leesburg, not Hugsville!”
“Maybe she wasn’t thinking of that. Maybe
she just thought she was making a point.”
“Maybe. I doubt it.”
“What else has she said?”
“I said I didn’t like sports, and she told
me not to diss them. She asked what I did to get out my energy other than
cause trouble. I don’t use my energy to cause trouble! Sure, I pick on people—remember
how I was bugging Amy about her height earlier?—but I don’t think that’s
trouble, is it?”
“No, it’s not trouble. It’s just for fun.”
“Exactly! She was accusing me of making
trouble!”
“I don’t think she thought she was.”
“I think she was.”
“Probably not. Don’t put words into her
mouth.”
“But what if you’re wrong? She’s a jerk.”
“What else did she do?”
“She dared me to find her website, giving
me no information about it other than that it was at Geocities.com.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. Her website address is the same as
her e-mail screenname.”
“So what’s so bad about that?”
“When you saw me last Wednesday, what was
your first impression?”
“You were hyper. A bit too hyper and loose
with your words, but you looked fun. Why?”
“I think she took my hyperness and thought
I was an idiot, and her website dare was her way of finding out if I was
or not.”
“Oh, don’t say that!”
“But I think it was! I don’t know about
you, but I find it pretty easy to see through words on the computer screen
and see down to the emotions and feelings of a person. She doubts me. She
thinks I’m an idiot, a preppy idiot!”
“I don’t think so. Come on, Anna. You’re
putting words in her mouth. Surely she said something good.”
“Well, she reads. She doesn’t do fantasy,
but she said she might read a Tamora Pierce book.”
“Well that’s good. It’s something, at least.”
“She doesn’t do fantasy, though. I suppose
I could read her kind of thing—real life books, war books—but I’m not sure
if I’ll like them. I guess I’ll have to, if I want to use books as a topic
of conversation.”
“What’s wrong with those books?”
“I don’t know. I’ve just never found one
I could get into.”
“Well maybe you two could both start reading
a new genre together. It’d be something special.”
“Maybe. We’ll see.”
“So what else? Surely there’s something
else.”
“She’s a writer.”
“There’s something you have in common!
You can talk about writing! I’m sure you can both help each other with that.”
Anna was quiet for a minute. Should she
tell Jenny what she was thinking on the topic of Kate’s writing? Yes, she
thought. “She doesn’t trust her writing,” she told Jenny.
“What doesn’t she trust about it?”
“I saw it on her website last night. A
lot of pieces are on there—twenty or so, I think. She said in her letter
that she can write short stories, but she fails to put down a piece of poetry,
even if she tries her hardest. I agree with her on the short story part—judging
from the one I read she can write good short stories, almost like magic—but
it’s her poetry.”
“What about her poetry?”
“She said she couldn’t write it. She can.”
“How well?”
“Very well. I read one called Bubbles,
and oh my gosh, the detail, and the image! Let me see if I can quote it.
‘Little shimmering rainbowy balls / Reflecting what they see. / Holding
students in awe / At their delicate appearances. / Floating down to death
/ On the tile floor.' No, don’t look at me like that. It’s easy for me
to remember things and quote them. That’s not the point. The poem’s the point.
What do you think of it?”
“I wish I could write poetry that well.”
“Exactly! She says she can’t write poetry,
but she can! She just doesn’t see it.”
“So bring it up in your next letter. I’m
sure she’d love the compliment.”
“I might do that. I just might do that.”
“She’s probably not as bad as you think,
Anna.”
“Well your penpal is perfect for you, it’s
easy for you to think that.”
“Wait and see what her next letter’s
like. How are you acting towards her, by the way? She could be reacting you
how you’re acting.”
“I’m pretending that all is fine.
I don’t see what else I can do. I’m not going to make her behavior any worse
than it already is, if I can avoid it. All I want to do is avoid trouble.
I want to make a friend out of her, I really do! I don’t want to spend all
year being miserable with a bad penpal!”
“I don’t blame you…”
“I’m keeping up an act. I’m making sure
that my letters sound like my first one—happy, hyper, and just plain Annaness.”
“Good. We’ll see how it turns out. It’ll
turn out, Anna. I know it will.