Virtual Attraction [COMPLETE]

13| Midnight Banter and Flirting

There it was. The usual ball of anger that formed in my stomach whenever I talked to BlackLight. I took in a deep breath and counted to twenty, ignoring the string of four-letter words that were forming in my mind and threatening to become real on the messaging page.

BlackLight_00: What's it been, a week?

Had it been that long already?

BlackLight_00: I thought you said to leave you alone. If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were the one obsessed.

I watched the screen silently, waiting. A minute passed. Two minutes. Four. He was a troll, but I didn't have to give him the satisfaction of knowing he'd upset me.

I pulled out some of my math homework, busying myself with the confusing maze of trigonometry.

Just as I finished a trig word problem and figured out the angle of elevation of a helicopter flying directly above a deserted island, my laptop dinged and the screen lit up into blue hues.

BlackLight. He wrote, I know you're still online.

I cursed. Fable always showed a green dot beside a user's name when they were online. I should've logged off as soon as I'd stupidly left the comment on his story. If I exited out of my page now, he'd know it was because of him and probably never let me live it down.

It was so bizarre—the way he made me feel. An unnerving mixture of uncanniness and pure rage, evidenced by the goosebumps forming on my left arm and the twisting ball of fury in my stomach. His messages were always just one step short of making me seriously uncomfortable, and there was always an undercurrent of danger.

BlackLight could threaten me all he wanted, but I wasn't going to surrender. I returned to my homework, this time trading in the cycles of triangles for the French worksheet on verbs and adjectives that I'd gotten in second period. After the French quiz I'd bombed last week, I needed to study extra hard for the next one coming up in two weeks. Ms. Claudine hadn't handed back our marks back, but I knew I'd be lucky simply to pass.

What hurt most about bombing the quiz was that I could have done better. Way better. It would only have taken me an hour or two to study the conjugate verbs of the list Ms. Claudine had handed out. The problem was that I'd been distracted by something. Fable.

BlackLight_00: Don't ignore me.

There was no way I could afford to get distracted by Fable or random strangers online. Not when my attending Manhattan Dalton Prep—however much I hated the school, or the people in it—may be the very key to my escape from home, from Mom.

When I graduated, I would go to a school very far away. I'd choose a school on the West Coast, maybe Los Angeles, San Francisco, or even Seattle. Since Mom and I hadn't ever moved or travelled anywhere that crossed over the border of the state of New York, I'd grown accustomed to the hustle and bustle of a big city. I'd never been in a place where the soundtrack of my life didn't include the sound of cars honking, endless laughter, and the steady patter of feet hitting into the hard pavement.

LA wouldn't be much different from New York. It would be the vigorous big city I'd grown to love, minus my mother, minus Brooke, Payton and Khloe.

Always face a bully headfirst.

I warmed up my fingers, then typed, You know I really think it'd help you make some friends if you put up an ad in the newspaper. Something like [40-year-old man in desperate need of friends]. Sound about right?

BlackLight_00: I bet I'll be this sexy when I'm 40.

I forced myself not to roll my eyes, even though the vanity was sickening.