By the end of my junior year of high school, many of our letters had turned a bit flirty like that. Or maybe I only imagined that she was flirting with me because I was a horny teenager. Ben had been dating Yvette since freshman year, and he spent all his time with her. We only had one class together junior year, so that was the only time we really saw each other. Even then, it wasn’t like it used to be. He had made new friends in other classes, and I started to feel like an outcast. I had never been any good at making new friends, and I guess I always counted on Ben to be my best friend.
Unlike Ben, whose relationship goals were for the long-term, I wasn’t interested in dating any girl for longer than a week or two. It had been fun for a few years, but by junior year I had dated half the girls in my class. The other half either weren’t attractive or I was off-limits to them because I had already dated their friend. I ended up spending most of the year alone. It was great for my report card, but it was lonely.
At the end of that year, it seemed like all of my friends were joining some website called Facebook that my mother had been a part of for years. I had been reluctant to join at first, but I hopped on the bandwagon and created an account. My profile picture was of me and Ben and a couple of his friends at the beach.
It was a mix of boredom, mostly, and a little bit of loneliness that had me typing ‘Naomi Light’ into the search bar late one night. I had been writing to her for years, and I wondered what she looked like. I hesitated before pressing ‘enter’. I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to know what she looked like. I had implied that she was ugly in many of my letters to her, but I had no idea if she really was. I was afraid that if I knew, it might change things. When I pictured her inside my head, I imagined her being cute. This was part of the reason it was fun to flirt with her. Would I still want to write to her if I knew she looked like an ogre?
I hit the key anyway and waited for the search results to populate. A few results came up – mostly old women – but there was one icon of what looked like a teenage girl who lived in Oklahoma City. I clicked on her profile, and found myself holding my breath. This couldn’t be the girl I’d been writing letters to for years. I double-checked her profile, confirming that she lived in Oklahoma City and was in the same graduating class as me. Then I clicked on her profile picture to get a better view.
Naomi had golden-red hair and fair skin with a few light freckles dusting her nose. Her eyes were dark blue, her lips were full and pink, and her teeth were perfectly white and straight. She had dimples in each cheek when she smiled. I clicked to see the next photo. She was wearing a track uniform. She was fit, with toned legs, standing in the middle of a group of other girls. She stood out to me as the prettiest one. I felt my mouth drop open. I looked at the next photo, and kept clicking to see more. I wanted to see every photo she had ever taken.
I couldn’t believe that all this time, I had been writing toher. She made the hottest girl at my own high school look like a mushroom in comparison. I suddenly wished that I could take back all the mean things I had ever written to her.
I considered sending her a friend request, but then she would know that I had looked her up. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t want her to know that. Instead of sending a friend request, I picked up a sheet of paper and a pen.
Dear Naomi,
I finally made a Facebook profile for myself. I’m pretty sure I was the last person in my class to jump on board. It’s a little weird logging on and seeing all these random thoughts my mom is posting on there. She’s always the first person to comment on all of my photos. Sometimes when I log on, I have fifty new notifications, and for a second, I think that I must be popular, but when I click on the icon, it’s just my mom spamming my page with likes and comments. I think my mom might be my only real friend. Isn’t that a little pathetic?
Do you think we should be friends on Facebook? I mean, assuming that you have an account on there. Let me know and I’ll look you up and add you.
Love,
Luca
Dear Luca,
What makes you think I would ever want to be friends with you on Facebook? Don’t bother sending me a friend request. Don’t even look me up, okay? Oh, and be nicer to your mom.
Xoxo,
Naomi
It wasn’t the response that I expected. I had thought she would read my letter and then, out of curiosity, she would hop on Facebook and look me up. She would inevitably see that I was also hotter than any guy she went to school with and would send me a friend request or, at the very least, tell me that it was okay to send her one.
I was so bummed out by her letter that I put it aside and didn’t write back for a month. I guess I kind of hoped that my lack of a response would make her change her mind, or maybe she would look me up and realize what she was missing out on. But that didn’t happen.
ChapterEight
HOW TO BECOME A STALKER
Naomi
“Why didn’t you want to be his friend?”
Anne had just finished reading all the letters Luca sent to me during the first three years of high school, while I read over her shoulder and recounted to the best of my memory what I had written back.
I shrug. “I don’t know. I guess looking back on it, it does seem pretty cold of me.”
“Weren’t you curious about what he looked like?”
I had looked him up after he sent that letter. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t have a little crush on Luca at some point, but I would never admit that to Anne. His page was private, so all I could see was his profile picture where he stood with a group of other guys on a beach, all wearing sunglasses and crossing their arms over their chests like they thought they were hot shit. And they were – at least high-school-me thought they were hot – but that didn’t matter.
“I had a boyfriend at the time that Luca sent that letter. I didn’t really care what he looked like. His profile was private anyway.”
I leave out the fact that I visited his profile many times, trying to figure out which guy in the picture was Luca, and hoping that he would change his settings so I could snoop a little more without him knowing.
“You’re crazy,” she says. “I would have accepted his friend request.”
