Exposed (13 page)

Or maybe he’s a convict in a prison somewhere. How stupid have I been?

But that really can’t be possible. I’ve seen his photos. I’ve been talking to him for hours and hours. I’ve sort of seen him on camera, even though his face was mostly in the shadows. I
know
him. I know Paul.

Don’t I?

Wait a minute.

What if it’s not his dad who’s famous. What if it’s
him
?

I mean, I don’t recognize him from his stills, but they never really were face-on, mostly from beside and behind, except for that first picture he sent—the one Devin saw.

If that’s it, then it really isn’t a big deal, except he’ll be taking a risk, trusting me with more of his identity.

But then, my secret—oh, crap.

Hi, I’m really some big rock star or actor. What’s your big secret, Chan?

Me? Oh, nothing. I just have herpes.

This could be so totally bad. Why did I push things?

Worry jiggles around inside me until I feel like maybe I should just lie down. Like maybe I should just go to bed and give up on ever having a normal relationship. I shake my head to keep my eyes open.

My fingers and hands weigh like lead, but I write,
“Yeah. We all have secrets. I know. We don’t have to do this, Paul. Really. Just never mind. We’ll wait until you’re ready.”

Until I’m more ready. And that’ll be, let’s see … never?

“Now’s probably good, before we go any further.” Paul sends a serious-looking smiley. “I get to find out if you mean what you say, Red. If I really can trust you. Because when I show you my face, I’ll show you a great big secret.”

“Don’t. Just don’t, okay?” I’m typing so fast I trip over the letters and goop
okay
into
sodfj
. Really fast I write, “Not
sodfj
. That was supposed to be
okay
.”

“Give me a sec,” he answers, then types some more.

For-friggin’-ever. Minutes. More minutes. I turn the screen saver off and on as Mom and Lauren go by outside, and Dad calls upstairs to Mom twice.

It takes Paul almost a full minute to type out what he wants to say. He keeps starting and stopping. I figure he’s writing and deleting, writing and deleting. And he looks at his door a bunch of times.

Finally, his response pops into the chat box.

“You know how you need time before you’re ready to pay up and give me my little show, Red? Well, I thought I needed more time before I told you more secrets.”

“Why?”

“I’ve been afraid.”

I blink at that answer. “Of what?”

Long pause. More looking at the door. More starting
and stopping. The shadowy darkness around him drives me nuts. I want to see him.
Need
to see him. Then: “I’m afraid if you know my secrets, the bad things about me, you might not talk to me anymore.”

Tears jump to my eyes, but of course they won’t come out. “Like that would ever happen,” I type and whisper at the same time. “I have bad things about me, too.”

“It could happen,” Paul responds, then adds, “What bad things?”

“It couldn’t happen.” I shake my head. “You can’t lose me.”

“Red, don’t say that. I’m good at losing people.”

The tears ease away without a single one finding my cheeks.

Good at losing people.

That’s
my
line, isn’t it? Being good at losing people, being good at screwing up. But he typed it first.

“You won’t lose me, Paul. I’m the KnightHawk’s lady.”

“Swear?”

Well, that’s an easy promise to make. I lean back against my chair and type, “Of course I swear. You’re not losing me, Paul.”

A few seconds tick by.

Paul glances at his bedroom door.

Then he answers with a blushing smiley.

“Okay, this is killing me,” I type. “If you’re going to show me your face on camera, get it over with. I’m freaking out. What’s the big deal?”

Paul is typing.

“Well, I hope it isn’t a big deal. That’s just it. I don’t know for sure.”

“SHOW ME.”

“You first. Tell me something. Tell me a big secret, the biggest. Let’s get everything out in the open, and then we’ll both know if we ever want to talk again. Though I’m pretty sure I’ll want to talk to you.”

Hot and cold sensations travel all over my body, and I shudder. My fingers barely work as I type, “You want my biggest secret? You’re nuts.”

“Okay, maybe not the biggest. Just one in the top five. At least the top ten. Unless you’ve got a really bad one that’s as bad as mine.”

Oh, God.

I can’t move.

Yeah, we should dump all this stuff on the table and decide whether or not we need to keep talking—but no way his secret is as bad as mine. I can make something up, maybe—but what?

“Just pick anything,” he writes. “I’ll listen.”

Breathing too fast, I type, “My dad is very, very overweight. Like, giant. A couple of years ago, he had a heart attack and it totally freaked me out.” I hesitate, because it’s the next part I hate admitting.

“Before Dad had his heart attack, I was ashamed of how he looked. I wouldn’t let him come pick me up from practice and stuff.”

“Ouch,” Paul writes back.

I chew my bottom lip and type, “Do you like me any less now?”

Paul is typing.

“Of course not. I wish people wouldn’t judge me for stuff I did when I was lots younger and lots more stupid.” The icon lets me know he’s still writing. “My secret is bigger than that, though.”

I tell him how I feel about having red hair and freckles, and how I sometimes get jealous of Lauren’s singing and Devin’s looks. I even dump about staying irritated with Mom and hating math really bad.

“Do you really have no bad secrets?” Paul types.

“Oh, I’ve got a bad one. Trust me. It’s … awful.” I’m blinking fast again.

Did I really send that?

I can’t believe I sent that!

“Then tell me what it is,” Paul writes, “and I’ll tell you my secret, and we’ll be even.”

“I can’t, Paul. I just can’t.” I can’t even breathe right.

“Let’s do this, Red,” he types. “I’m liking you too much not to know, and not to tell you my bad thing.”

I get that weighing sensation in my head again, where I can see the logic on one hand, but on the other hand, I’m totally freaking out. In my very few seconds of calm thought here and there across the next minute, I realize he really does have a major point.

I mean, if I tell him and he blows me off, I can just
block him from my profile and forget about it. It’ll hurt bad once, and then that’ll be it. If I don’t tell him and keep liking him more, and tell him later and
then
he blows me off—

“Okay,” I write before I can change my mind. “Here it is. Last year this guy, the first guy—the only guy—I was ever with gave me herpes. Then he told the whole school I gave it to him, and everybody felt sorry for him. He wrecked my life. That’s my bad thing.”

Paul starts typing right away and I don’t know whether to feel relieved or scream. Screaming would feel so good, but then I’ll have to deal with Lauren and Mom and Dad.

No screaming.

“That just sucks, what that guy did to you,” scrolls up on the screen. “If you tell me his name, I’ll find him and pound his ass into the dirt. I’m serious, Red. Tell me the bastard’s name.”

I stare at what Paul wrote, not quite able to believe it. He … wants to pulverize Adam-P? Like my dad and Devin and, well, like me?

“Thanks, but I don’t want you to go to jail,” I type back even though my hands feel a little numb.

Paul is typing.

“GOD that had to be hard for you to tell me. It’s totally okay, Red, I promise. I’m not some baby who doesn’t understand about safe sex. If we ever get that far, we’ll both just be careful, okay?”

All the blood in my head moves down, past my ears and face and lower, until I have nothing but limp, cool relief inside me. He asks me about how I treat it, and I tell him about the daily pill thing. Then he asks me stuff nobody ever thinks to ask, or maybe it’s stuff nobody feels comfortable enough to even consider—like how often I have to deal with outbreaks, and what triggers them. Stuff I’ve sort of wanted to talk about, but never do, except to my doctor.

“Sometimes,” I tell him, “like if I get sick or stressed, an outbreak starts, and I’m supposed to take a double dose for five days or so. At first, I had one outbreak after another, but it’s finally settled down now. I’ve been okay for about four months.”

“That’s good. I hate to think about you being in pain, Red.”

I start to write something back to Paul about how amazing he is, but he finishes what he’s typing first.

“You make me feel like a total coward for being so scared to tell you my secret. Obviously, I should have trusted you.”

Then his webcam blinks.

Seconds later, there he is, gazing right at me, full in the light, no shadows at all. Not one single bit of darkness to hide his face.

Right away, I see the secret.

And I have no idea what to say, or what to do.

I just sit there staring at him, at those big brown eyes,
at his thick wavy hair, at his perfect mouth and the dimple in his chin, and the tattoos on his muscle-bound arms.

It’s Paul, all right, just like in the pictures, just like I’ve imagined every time I’ve gazed at his streaming image inside all those dark, fuzzy shadows.

But …

My concrete hands lift and I barely manage to hack out, “So how old are you, really?”

In the camera box, Paul’s head droops down, defeated, like I slapped him in the face. My chest gets tight, and I want to grab him and shake him and tell him I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I just need to know. Have to know. So I type, “I told you the worst thing in the world about me. So just tell me how old you are, okay? And stop worrying.”

After a few seconds, he writes, “I’m twenty-three, and my dad’s not really famous or anything. But I don’t feel like I’m twenty-three—and I’m sorry I sort of lied about my dad so you wouldn’t tell anybody.”

“That’s not bad,” I say out loud. That’s not so bad. Twenty-three isn’t bad.

He looks young, but up close like this, I can see he’s not eighteen like his profile claims.

He’s five years older than he said he was. Seven years older than me.

Just seven years.

An older guy likes me? I mean, he’s like college-guy old.

Should I yell at him or smile?

A college guy likes me.

“Why didn’t you just tell me from the beginning?”

“I was afraid you’d think I was a perv!” He gazes into the camera and shrugs before typing, “Besides, that question leads to more secrets. Some more bad stuff about me. I guess you might as well know it all, since you told me all the dirt on yourself.”

My bottom lip hurts, and I realize I’m biting it.

I so don’t know if I’m ready for the “all” he’s talking about.

Too bad if I’m not.

Paul is typing.

The whole time he hacks at his keyboard, I sink lower in my chair, bite my lip, and try to keep breathing. The noises outside my door fade back, and I don’t bother with the kitten screen concealer. I don’t really think I could move that fast if I tried.

“I had some problems back in high school,” pops up from Paul, with a blue frowny face. “Drinking and weed and stuff. My dad sent me away for a while. I missed my junior and senior year in that youth camp, and the next year, too—it was like almost four years all together. When I got out, I felt like I had just lost those years. I didn’t feel any older. Just kind of lost. Does that make sense?”

He stares into the camera, and his wide, deep eyes make me want to hug him. He looks
so
sad and, like he said, lost.

My hands finally move, and I type, “Yeah, it makes sense.” And then: “What do you really do all day?”

He lowers his head again and answers with, “I go to some meetings so I won’t get mixed up with alcohol and drugs again, and I’m doing some college courses online. I don’t feel like getting out much, and my dad treats me like I’m still fifteen. Plus, all my old friends still live around here. It’s embarrassing, and they don’t understand. They think I’m stupid.”

“You’re not stupid.” Those words come easier, like I’m slowly thawing out of frozen-numb.

Twenty-three really
isn’t
bad.

It’s not bad to me, anyway. My parents—and Devin—will probably blow three major arteries and drop dead at the thought, but I’m sixteen. When I’m eighteen, he’ll be twenty-five. When I’m twenty, he’ll be twenty-seven. Seven years really isn’t that much of an age difference.

And he knows my big secret, and because he’s older and mature, he’s still right here, typing away.

“Are you mad, Red? Do you want to stop this? Because if you do, I totally get it, and I wouldn’t blame you.” Paul gazes into the camera when he finishes, and this time he looks sad and nervous and completely hug-able.

“I’m not mad,” I write back. “And I don’t want to stop talking to you. Next time, though, you have to just trust me, and tell me stuff if I ask.”

He gives me a little grin.

Somebody knocks on my door.

I jump and stare at the knob. When I look back at the computer screen, Paul has switched off his camera and vanished out of chat. I punch up the kittens in a hurry, unlock my door, and back away.

“Come in,” I say as I sit back down, only I cough more than anything, because my throat’s so dry.

Dad’s nervous, smiling, rosy face eases around the edge of the door. “Paper going okay?”

“What?” My brain fritzes and sparks like a power cord on overload.

Dad steps into my room and gestures to the laptop. “Emily. The paper. Your mom said you were working on one of the steps of that big project you and Devin have to turn in before your competition.”

My mouth drops into an O shape, and I nod. Clear my throat. Try to focus. “It’s okay so far, I guess.”

Dad looks down at his hands, then back up to me. “Interested in a break?”

That clears out a few of the sparks and smolders left in my head. “Sure. Ice cream?”

“I was thinking about a walk. Something off that training program you’ve started.” He gestures to the laptop again, and I can tell from his expression he wants to be helpful. “Lauren’s at a friend’s and your mom’s busy with her campaign. The timing just seemed right.”