“Kaylee was carrying on an Internet relationship with some older man. I told her she could get into big trouble, that men like that are dangerous, but she insisted he was all right. According to her, they were talking almost every night for the last month or so on her computer, and she liked him very much.”
Mother stared at me in disbelief. She shook her head as if my words were shower water caught in her ears. Every part of her face seemed to be in motion as she reluctantly digested what I was saying.
“She met someone on the Internet? These things can be bad,” Simon said. “So where is she?” he asked me, stepping forward, suddenly more aggressive and manly. “As you can see, your mother and I are very concerned.”
He’s showing off for Mother, I thought, and smiled to myself. He was still pathetic.
“Talk,” Mother ordered. “Quickly.”
“She said she and this man finally decided to meet, but she knew you would never approve of it, so she came up with the idea to pretend we were excited about this movie,” I said, the words rushing out of my mouth like water bursting through a dam.
“Pretend?”
“It was her plan. After you took us here, she left the theater to meet him somewhere. She promised to be back way before the movie ended. Right up to the time she left, I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t listen.”
Mother looked up and down the street. “Which way did she go? What else do you know?”
“That’s all I know. I went along with it because she said she would hate me forever if I didn’t. I couldn’t have her hate me. I couldn’t. We’re too much a part of each other. I’ve been so worried.” I started to cry again.
“We’d better call the police,” Simon said. Mother didn’t respond. She stood there almost frozen in place. I was afraid to look at her. Sometimes I thought she could read my thoughts. “I’ll call the police,” he said. He took out his cell phone and stepped back toward the car.
“How could you let her do this? How could you keep it a secret from me? Didn’t we talk about how either of you should tell me about the other getting involved with someone dangerous?”
I nodded but kept my head lowered. “She made me promise,” I said. “I couldn’t betray her.”
“Her? What about betraying me?”
I raised my head. “I told her that, Mother, but she said we needed to believe in each other if we were to be forever special sisters. I was afraid of breaking her heart.”
“This is so unlike her,” Mother mumbled.
I looked up at her quickly. “It’s unlike me, too.”
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “Yes.”
Simon returned. “They’re on their way,” he said. “You don’t even know which direction she took?”
“She just told me they were meeting at a place he had decided on because it was close enough for her to go to his house and get back before the movie ended,” I replied, wiping the tears from my cheeks.
“To his house?” Mother said, the words taking a strong grip on her worst fears. “She went to his house, to a strange man’s house?”
“That was the plan she told me they had made.”
“Does he live alone? How old is he? How did she meet him on the Internet?”
“I don?
?t know any of that. She wouldn’t tell me that much,” I said.
“Men who do this sort of thing know how to find vulnerable young girls,” Simon said, nodding like some sort of expert on teenage girls.
I looked at him with an expression that shouted, Shut up! You’re making it all worse. I guess I was effective. He backed up a step.
“How long has this been going on?” Mother asked.
“Maybe six weeks, maybe seven.”
“And you both kept this a secret from me for that long?” she asked, her face now a portrait of disbelief. She looked like a little girl who had just learned that Santa Claus was not real. I had never believed in Santa Claus. Most of life was a fairy tale. Who needed to add a fat man with a beard?