Their Playground

Chapter 8

"This is your great idea?" Kim stared at her friend in disbelief. "To stalk him on Facebook?"

"Yes!" Sarah nodded. "It's basically foolproof."

"Right. Unless he doesn't have a Facebook, or he has his account on privacy settings, or - "

"Calm down girl!" Sarah interrupted, laughing. "It'll be fine. Every kid our age has a Facebook account these days."

"I don't," Kim reminded her, somewhat sheepishly. She didn't have time for one, and quite frankly, she didn't see what the big deal was about Facebook. She saw all the important people in her life in person. Well, almost all.

"All normal kids our age," Sarah amended.

"Hey!" Kim pretended to be offended, knowing her friend was just teasing her. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Sarah smirked in response. "You are a strange child, young one. Don't deny it."

"At least I don't call people my age 'young one'," Kim mumbled.

Sarah chose to ignore that comment. "You're the only one our age without a Facebook," Sarah said matter-of-factly. "Anywho, we'll use my account, since you're lame and don't have one. What's the last name we're looking for?"

"Grey," Kim answered. That was a name she would never forget, especially after the incident in fourth grade. Thomas's older brother had decided it would be hilarious to tell Kim that girls were supposed to choose their husband on the basis of which last name sounded best with her first name. And, being the naive little nine year old that she was, she'd believed him. She'd tried out Thomas's, of course, along with the other boys in her class. Kim Grey. Things had gotten a bit awkward when Thomas had found the notebook containing her name paired with sixteen different last names, his own included. He had been the one to explain how marriages were supposed to work, much to her chagrin.

"Well, there are only about a million Thomas Grey's on Facebook, so you're gonna have to point him out to me," Sarah announced. "I'm guessing he's not any of these forty year old men?"

"No, of course not, but . . . " Kim paused. "Sarah, I haven't seen him in so many years! I don't know if I would even recognize him. All I know is he lives in South Carolina now." The thought that she might not be able to recognize her former best friend distressed her. Then again, she, too, had changed so much since he'd last seen her. He might have trouble recognizing her, as well.

Sarah looked disappointed. "Darn. So I guess he isn't this hottie from Cali?" she pouted as she typed 'South Carolina' next to his name.

Kim rolled her eyes. "Sarah. We're trying to find him so that I can catch up with my friend. Not so that you can find a new boyfriend."

Sarah considered that. "Well, I guess that's true. But you have Cole now, so if Thomas turns out to be really hot, I call dibs."

Kim sighed, rolling her eyes again. Honestly, she loved Sarah, but that girl could be pretty boy-crazy sometimes. "Yes, okay, whatever," she said just to get Sarah off her back.

Sarah beamed. "Cool," she said as she continued scrolling through the list of South Carolinian Thomas Grey's.

"Ooh, is this - "

"No, Sarah, he doesn't have freckles, and he's not a redhead, unless he dyed his hair. But I think that red there is natural."

"Darn. Gingers are cute. How about - "

"No, he absolutely does not have an Afro. And no," Kim added, seeing the next picture Sarah pulled up, "he doesn't have dreadlocks either. He's Caucasian, you know. I know I showed you some of his old pictures, so you should know at least that much. Why are you showing me all these non-Caucasians? Unless he can magically change his ethnicity, there's no way he's any one of them."

"But Caucasians are so ordinary," Sarah whispered in self defense. Kim ignored that irrelevant comment, choosing not to point out the fact that Sarah herself was Caucasian,  and waited for her friend to pull up the next Thomas Grey.

Forty seven minutes later, the girls accepted defeat. They could not find Kim's Thomas on the never-ending list of Thomas Grey's.

"I take it back," Sarah said at last. "You're not the only strange child, because I'm thinking he doesn't have a Facebook either."

"Please, I'm sure there are more logical reasons for people not having Facebook than their strangeness," Kim retorted. "And maybe we just missed him. Maybe he used a nickname, maybe he didn't use a picture of himself as his profile picture, or maybe he was at the bottom of the 2894 person long list that we didn't bother to go through 'til the end."

"Maybe . . . " Sarah frowned. "I didn't think of any of that.

"So, uh, what were you saying about a foolproof plan earlier?" Kim teased with a good-natured grin.

Of course, Sarah's selective hearing kicked in, and she didn't hear - well, pretended not to hear - Kim's comment. "Or maybe," she added slyly, using her best dramatic voice, "Thomas is hiding from you."

Please note: the views on Caucasians (namely, their ordinary-ness) held by Sarah are entirely her own and are not shared by the author. No offense is intended to readers who may potentially be Caucasian.