“As sensitive-looking as Matt?” she asked with a little tease in her voice. “Someday you might forgive him.”
“There’ll never be a someday. Matt’s leaving,” I said, and told her about his father finding another job.
“Just as well,” she said, quickly changing her mood. “Spilt milk.” She smiled and looked at the computer again. “That’s why someone stable, mature, is so hard to find.” She went silent, just staring at the man.
“What’s his name?”
“Anthony.”
“Anthony what?”
She turned and looked up at me, smiling. “Oh, no,” she said. “I’m not telling you his full name and then have you go do some search on the Internet and start trouble. You know what you need to know for now. Good night, sister dear. I like privacy when Anthony and I talk.”
“You’re not talking. He hasn’t called you, right? Or Skyped you or something?”
“I told him not to. This is fine,” she said. “For now. ’Night,” she said.
I glanced once more at the picture on the screen and then left. I heard her close the door behind me.
For the first time in a long time, I went to sleep with fear hovering around me.
Perhaps it had always been there in my room, waiting for me to turn off the lights and think about my sister, who flitted about fire like a moth, intrigued enough to get too close and get its wings singed by the flames.
Would the fire she brought to herself spread to me?
13
Of all the secrets we’d ever had, this was the hardest to keep. Every night, when Haylee retreated to her room, I worried that she was getting deeper into this strange Internet relationship. Sometimes, late at night, I would wake up with a suspicion and quietly step out of my room and see the glow of her computer screen leak out from under her door. When I mentioned this to her the first time, she said, “He contacts me on and off all night. He’s really a very lonely man. I help him go back to sleep.”
“What about you?”
“Oh, I feel good about it and fall right back to pleasant dreams,” she said.
Now I actually hoped that Mother would walk in on Haylee while she was conversing with him. I almost broke my promise and suggested that Mother do that, but the fear of how hard Haylee would take it and what it would do to our relationship kept me back. As the school year was drawing to an end, I did think that we were closer than ever as sisters and even friends, despite her secret Internet relationship and how it hung there between us like a scream frozen in the air.
Haylee and I did more together besides practicing piano and homework. What little social life we had we clung to t
ogether. We were no longer hanging out with different friends from each other in school, as most of Haylee’s friends had come to resent her lecturing them and ridiculing what they considered to be fun and exciting, something she had considered that way, too. On the other hand, Haylee seemed to be more tolerant of my friends, even Sarah Morgan.
Sometimes I would wonder why my sister was trying so hard to please me. Was it simply to keep me quiet about what she was doing on her computer? She did her homework better and seriously studied for our finals. I didn’t want her even to think that I harbored any suspicion of her having ulterior motives. I was afraid to ask her if she had planned her rendezvous with Anthony. I didn’t wake up and go out into the hallway to check. It was easier for me to ignore that she was still having Internet conversations with a man who definitely looked older than she said he was.
As if she knew that it would be better for me if we didn’t talk about him, she didn’t mention him again for some time. So much time had gone by since she had spoken about him, in fact, that I wondered if it had all ended. Perhaps his dallying with a girl as young as Haylee had lost its novelty for him. If he had brushed her off and she was too embarrassed to tell me, my bringing it up would only pour salt on the wound.
But then one night, she called me into her room before we got ready to go to sleep. She closed the door softly after I entered. Mother was still downstairs, on the phone again with one of her friends, gossiping about the divorcée dating scene. She sounded younger on these phone calls, her conversation lightened with giggles and laughter.
“Anthony and I have decided that it is finally time for us to meet,” Haylee said excitedly. “We have planned on where and when. It will be our first real date.”
“You really are continuing with this, Haylee?”
“Why shouldn’t I? Just to show you what he’s like,” she continued, “I was pushing to meet much sooner, but he kept holding off, telling me he wanted me to be absolutely sure I wanted this. Predators don’t give victims second and third chances. They pounce at the first opportunity.”
“Maybe he’s just very clever, Haylee. He’s drawing you in deeper and deeper by deliberately not rushing you.”
She shook her head at me. “Thanks. I was hoping you would be excited for me. I guess I expected too much.”
“I’m just saying—”
“No, you’re not just saying,” she snapped back at me. “You won’t let me be happy, will you?” Her eyes brightened with a new suspicion. “You haven’t found anyone to replace Matt. Are you jealous? Is that it?”