Want to Go Private? (27 page)

CHAPTER 40
BILLY
MAY

I catch a lot of crap from guys who wonder how I could still crush on a girl who voluntarily got in a car with a perv. People tell me she must be royally screwed up, that I must be some kind of masochist, that I’m just asking for trouble by even hanging around with her.

My parents are some of those people. They hate that I’m over at the Johnstons’ so much, trying to help Abby with her speech, after one date with the girl got me an interview with the police, like I could have been a suspect or something. I keep trying to tell them that she’s not that girl. Well, okay, she is that girl, but that’s not all she’s about.

I want to kill that guy Schmidt. Every time I think about him touching Abby it makes me want to puke and punch things at the same time.

Did it almost send me postal when those pictures of her started circulating around school? Hell, yeah! I wanted to beat the crap out of the kids who were passing them around. And the ones who were looking at them. And especially the assholes who were sniggering and making comments to Abby when she walked down the hall. No one dares to do it when I’m with her, because
they know my fist would end up in their face. The suspension would be worth it. My parents might not think so, but I do.

I get so angry that people can’t look past all this stuff with Schmidt to how Abby’s an honor student, one of the smartest girls I’ve ever met. They don’t understand how good these perverts are at manipulating people, and how easily it could have been their girlfriend or their sister or the girl next door who was sucked in by that dude’s lies. And nobody seems to appreciate how incredibly freaking brave Abby is — how she has to put up with all this crap from the other kids at school day after day, but she’s still going ahead with the idea of doing this talk. Even though the one time she tried to get up on stage to audition she passed out.

I wish everyone could see how hard she is working at overcoming everything she’s been through and facing this stage-fright thing. We’re over at her house again, Grace, Faith, and me. Even Abby’s sister, Lily, is helping out these days. But Abby’s still shaking, even just speaking to the four of us.

“So, Abby, how come when you answer a question in science class you don’t get all freaked out like this?” I ask her. “Because, like, there’s at least thirty kids in that class and you answer the question just fine.”

Abby stares at me. So do all the others.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I never thought of that.”

“Neither did I,” says Faith. “That’s a really good question. It’s true, Abs. You answer questions in class just fine. It’s only when you have to stand up in front of everyone to do a presentation that you freak.”

“So what’s the difference?” asks Lily.

Abby sinks onto the sofa.

“I don’t know … I guess … well, when I answer a question it’s like … I don’t have all the scary thoughts because … I know I’ve studied … and I know the answer.”

We let that sink in and then Grace pipes up.

“Well, think about it, Abby. No one knows this subject better than you. Because it happened to you. You can’t have a wrong answer because
it’s your story
.”

“That’s so true!” Faith exclaims. “It’s the Abby Johnston story. No one else’s.”

Abby doesn’t look entirely convinced. She’s still shaking her head, like she can’t do this.

“I did some research about stage fright,” I tell her. “Online. And one person who had it really bad said it got better when he started thinking about it as talking to just one person. Like, instead of thinking about the whole auditorium, just pick one person in the audience and imagine you’re talking to them. You can switch people — like, move from one person to another. But you should just keep thinking of it as a one-on-one talk between friends.”

“You did research?” Lily says. She gives me this look like maybe I’m not so bad after all. “Well, I’ve been doing some, too. One thing said you have to believe in the value of your message. Which you so totally do, Abs, right? And
we
all do or else we wouldn’t be wasting so much time helping you instead of chillaxing and watching
Degrassi
, which is what we’d rather be doing. Or at least
I
would anyway.”

“Yeah, speak for yourself, Lily. I can think of a lot of things I’d rather be doing than watching that garbage for drama llamas,” I tell her.

“Who are you calling a drama llama?” she retorts.

“Okay, guys, I get it,” Abby says, intervening before Lily and I get into a full-fledged drama llama debate. “I’ll try again. Let’s see…. Think I know my stuff. Value of my message. One-on-one.”

“You got it,” Grace says.

“Go, Abby!” Faith tells her.

Abby takes her place in front of the TV. Then she notices her mom standing in the doorway.

“Mom, do you have to listen?”

“Abby, think one-on-one,” Lily says. “Just ignore her. I always do.”

“Don’t I know it,” Mrs. Johnston sighs.

“Okay, here goes,” Abby says.

She takes a deep breath and she focuses on one person in the room. And that person is me. She looks me straight in the eye and tells me the whole story, as I gaze straight back at her, hardly able to breathe because she’s just so freaking … incredible. She nails that sucker. Even though I’ve heard this speech, like, fifty-something times before, I’ve got goose bumps on my arms when she talks about getting in the car with that asshole creep.
I’d like
to
kill that mofo loser if I ever get my hands on him
.

By the time she’s done, all the girls are wiping their eyes, and I’m so proud of her I want to throw my arms around her, pick her up, and kiss her. Except I can’t do that. Abby’s freaked out about all the physical stuff since … IT all happened, and she’s asked me to take things slow this time. Which isn’t easy, but I’m trying. So I just give her a really big smile and say, “Abby, you sure aced that one.”

She looks like she just won the lottery.

“You know, guys, for the first time, I think maybe I can really do this,” she says.

“Are you telling me we’ve been sitting around here for weeks helping you and you were thinking of
bailing
on the idea?” Lily’s looking like she’s ready to commit fratricide, or sistercide, or whatever.

“No … I was always
going
to do it. It’s just that I never believed I really
could
. But now …”

She goes to Lily and hugs her, and then she hugs Faith and Grace. I’m holding my breath, wondering if this is a girl-only thing, but then she comes over to me. She hesitates for a moment and then she puts her arms around me and hugs me. And it feels
good
. Her hair smells like fruit shampoo and I breathe it in quickly before she lets go.

“Thanks, Billy,” she says, giving me a shy smile that threatens to push the needle off the Cuteness Scale.

“Anything to help, Abby. Seriously.”

“So … can you sit in the front row when I talk at school? It kind of helped to feel like I was talking to you.”

“Done deal.”

She goes to talk to Faith and Grace. It’s been so frustrating because I wanted to help Abby deal with all this stuff she’s been through, but I didn’t know how. But now I feel ten feet tall because she needs me, even if it’s just to sit there like a dummy while she talks to an auditorium full of people.

Lily sidles over to me.

“You
so
have a crush on her.”

How does Abby live with this kid
?

“Yeah, so? What’s it to you, drama llama?”

“So, she totally crushes on you, too.”

Sometimes I kind of get that impression, but it feels good to have it confirmed.

“How do you know?”

“Trust me. Little sisters know. We have ways.”

“I’m not sure I want to know those ways.”

“No. You totally don’t.”

“So you really think I’m not wasting my time … I mean, that Abby might, you know, be okay with this again soon?”

Lily glances over at Abby, who’s over with Grace and Faith, all laughing and animated, so pumped from having kicked that speech’s butt.

“Dude, how am I s’posed to know if it’s going to be soon? But she’s doing a lot better. Dr. Binnie — that’s the shrink lady we see — she says that Abby’s being
remarkably resilient
.”

“That sounds pretty good.”

“Yeah. But she also said it can be like ten steps forward and five steps back.”

“So I should just be patient, is what you’re telling me?”

“If you think Abby’s worth it, yeah.”

I look over at Abby. She catches my eye and smiles at me.

“Yup, she’s worth it,” I tell Lily. “A thousand times worth it.”

“Now if we could convince Abby of that,” Lily says, sighing.

CHAPTER 41
ABBY
JUNE

I’m standing backstage listening to the hum of voices as students file into the auditorium for the Internet Safety talk that Agent Saunders is going to give them. That after months of practicing in front of my friends and my family and Dr. Binnie,
I’m
actually supposed to be giving with her. Mom is in the audience and Dad even took off from work so he could be here to see me. They wanted to be backstage in case I freak out, but I told them I’d be okay, even though I’m totally not.

The audience sounds like a swarm of bees. Angry killer bees. Deadly, angry killer bees that can deliver fatal stings.

“How am I supposed to get up and speak about this in front of all these kids when the last time I was onstage and the place was almost empty I passed out?” I feel my heart start to race, and my breathing is getting fast and shallow. “I must have been
crazy
to think I could do this!”

Faith puts her arm around me and gives me a hug.

“You
can
do it, Abby. Seriously, after all the stuff you’ve been through, you can do
anything
.”

“You know what I do if I’m nervous?” Grace says. “I just imagine everyone in the audience naked.”

Luke naked in the motel room, holding a camera. His thing sticking straight up like a hockey stick, even bigger and redder and scarier in real life. I close my eyes again
.

“Touch yourself, baby. Like you do on the webcam
.”

I shudder. Faith glares at Grace.

“OMG! I’m
soooo
sorry, Abby, that was just … crazy dumb of me. How about … you imagine everyone in the audience wearing … I don’t know, Dora the Explorer underwear?”

“What, even the guys?”

Grace nods, smiling. “Especially the guys. Especially the guys on the football team.”

The thought makes me giggle, and once Faith sees that I’m over my posttraumatic blast from the past, she relaxes and starts laughing, too.

“Okay. I’ll think Dora the Explorer underwear….” I say.

“And Mickey Mouse ears!” Faith suggests.

“Yes! I love it!” Grace says. “And what about fluffy bunny slippers!”

“Stop, you guys! Otherwise I’m going to be laughing so hard at the image of these ridiculously dressed football players, I’m not going to be able to talk.”

“Seriously, Abs, remember other things we talked about, too. You’re not talking to the whole auditorium. You’re talking one on one. Billy will be in the front row,” Faith says.

“And you believe in the value of your message, right?” Grace says.

“Do I ever,” I tell her.

“How are you doing, Abby?” Agent Saunders comes over. She’s wearing, surprise, surprise, a pantsuit. I wonder if her entire closet is filled with dark-colored pantsuits or if she ever gets to wear jeans or a skirt or a dress or anything girly.

“I’m okay, I guess. Just nervous. You know. Stage fright.”

“Yeah, I get nervous, too, before I have to do these things.”

Say what? She looks as cool as a cucumber. She must have magical powers sewn into that pantsuit or something.

“You look surprised,” she says.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t
look
nervous at all,” Faith says. “You seem totally relaxed.”

“Part of it’s practice,” Agent Saunders says. “I’ve done this talk so many times I could probably give it in my sleep. But it’s also because I’m so passionate about getting this message out to kids. I confront this stuff every day in my work and I see how oblivious most young people — and, I hate to say it, their parents — are to the dangers. You kids know your way around the technology so much better than us oldies. But there’s this attitude I sense when I’m talking that
this will never happen to me.
”

“And I’m living proof that it can, aren’t I?” I say.

“That’s why you giving this speech is so important,” she says. “And brave.”

“I don’t feel very brave right now.”

Agent Saunders puts her hand on my shoulder.

“It’s your story, Abby. No one can say you got it wrong. Just go out there and tell it.”

Principal Mullins comes and asks Agent Saunders if she’s ready to start. Then he goes out, silences the angry killer bees, and introduces her.

She’s got this whole PowerPoint presentation talking about how predators can track you down and stalk you through pictures and info you put on your Facebook profile or innocent remarks you make about what you’re doing in chat rooms. I know what the kids are thinking, because not so long ago, I was one of them. I was one of the kids in the audience thinking,
I would never be that stupid
or
No way that would ever happen to
me.

I hear Agent Saunders talking about some Internet predator cases. Other cases, not mine. Cases where the kids weren’t lucky enough to come home safely like I did. She talks about one where this predator met a teen girl at a mall and then strangled her while they were having sex in his car. Later, he just dumped her body in a ravine. That was right here in Connecticut. She was a year younger than me. There’s another case in which a seventeen-year-old girl was talking to a guy on Facebook who was supposedly sixteen. She went to meet him and ended up dead in a field. And it turns out the “teen” she was chatting with was actually thirty-two. That could so easily have been me. I guess that’s why I still wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat several times a week. But at least I’m waking up, and for that I’m thankful every single day. Even on the crummy ones.

Eventually, Agent Saunders introduces me, which means it’s time to go out onstage and face them all.

She whispers, “You can do it!” before she walks offstage, leaving me standing there all by myself facing the spotlights.

I look out into the darkened auditorium. A million eyes burn into my skin and my heart is an anvil, pounding against the wall of my chest. I feel myself getting dizzy but
I will not faint
. I grip
the podium where Agent Saunders’s laptop rests. She’s already set it up to the first slide of my PowerPoint presentation, since I don’t have a laptop anymore. Mine’s still “evidence” in the trial of
U.S. v. Edmund Schmidt
, and chances are I’ll never get it back. Mom and Dad sure aren’t in any hurry to get me a new one, either.

I search past the spotlights for Billy, and catch a glimpse of him in the front row. He’s there, just like he said he’d be, giving me a smile and a thumbs-up. I take a deep breath, knowing that I can talk to him, one-on-one. Then I hear Faith’s and Grace’s voices in my head:
Dora the Explorer underwear … Mickey Mouse ears … Fluffy bunny slippers
…

A faint smile playing on my lips, I lift my head, take another deep breath, and begin:

“Hi. I’m Abby Johnston and last year I was the victim of an Internet predator. Like most of you, I didn’t think it could happen to me. I bet, like me, you think this kind of stuff only happens to other people. Stupid people. People who don’t know any better. Well, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t. It can happen to anyone. Each and any one of you who is sitting here in this auditorium. But by telling you my story, I hope that I can help to prevent that from happening.”

I know some people are waiting to hear the gory details — like did Luke rape me and stuff like that — but this isn’t the
Jerry Springer Show
, so, too bad, they’re not going to get that.

Instead, I tell them about a guy named “Luke” and how he gradually became my “friend.”

“It’s not like he contacted me and right away I jumped in a car with him. What I’ve learned is that one of the best tools people like Edmund Schmidt have is listening. They listen to us talk and
mirror back our interests and hopes and fears so it sounds like they’re just like us and understand us better than anyone. The person I knew as Luke tricked me, seduced me, kind of, into thinking he was a better friend to me than my real friends, and that he cared about me more than even my parents and my sister. Which is ridiculous when you think about it. But when you’re arguing with your parents and you feel misunderstood — which seems to happen a lot in high school — and then there’s this person who’s telling you that you’re right and everyone else is wrong and they understand what you’re going through …”

It’s so dark and quiet in the auditorium I have no idea if people are bored, or think I’m an idiot, or are waiting to throw paper airplanes with
Slut
written on them. I look over at Billy and he nods and smiles, so I take another deep breath and carry on.

“The thing is, Schmidt told me the things that I wanted to hear, not the truth, like a real friend would. I was always right and my parents were always wrong. He made me doubt my best friend, Faith, the person who has stood by me since second grade and who continues to stand by me today. And of course, he flattered me and told me that I was beautiful and hot and that he was in love with me, which is very seductive when you’re feeling kind of insecure, or down, or maybe a little bit lonely.

“What I didn’t know was that at the same time, he was telling several other underage girls what they wanted to hear, too. And that he was going on child porn message boards to compare notes with other predators about techniques for tricking us or ‘grooming’ us, so that we’d do the things he wanted us to do.”

I show them a slide of my bedroom.

“I felt safe because I was at home in my bedroom. When he first started asking me questions that seemed a little … weird, like ‘What’s your bra size?’ I figured it didn’t matter if I told him because it wasn’t like I was ever going to meet him. It was just online. It wasn’t real. The thing is, if some guy in class asked me that question, I wouldn’t answer. I’d want to slap him. But for some reason, it was different on the Internet — because the person wasn’t in front of me and I was in my pj’s, in my house, in a place that I felt safe. But it’s not safe.

“It might seem different. You might
feel
safer doing stuff because you’re in the safety of your own home. But you aren’t. Anytime you chat with someone you don’t know, you’re taking a risk. Because even if they seem nice … even if they seem like they’re your best friend and they care about you and understand you better than anyone else in the whole wide world and they love you …”

I feel a lump in my throat and I have to swallow hard, because I’m determined to get through this without crying.

“Well, they
tell
you they love you, anyway. The thing is, you really don’t know them at all. And the reason they’re listening to you, and being so understanding, isn’t because they’re real friends. It’s because they’re getting you to rely on them and trust them so they can take advantage of that trust and … hurt you.”

I look beyond the spotlight for Billy, because I need a friendly face for what I’m about to say.

“I know a lot of you think that I was stupid. Or that I’m some kind of slut. That whatever happened to me I deserve because I got into the car with this guy. Believe me, it’s something I’ve punished myself for over and over and over again. But

I’ve learned that I’m a victim of Edmund Schmidt, even though I was dumb enough to get in that car. I’m just grateful that thanks to the hard work of the police and the FBI, I came home safely and I’m alive to tell you this story, unlike the other kids Agent Saunders told you about.

“And I don’t want any of you to ever have to go through what I’ve gone through. Never. Ever. Which is why, despite having sworn I would never get up onstage in front of people again after passing out and making a fool of myself at the drama auditions, I’m here standing in front of you now. It’s just that important. So, please — be careful. Be safe. Strangers on the Internet aren’t your friends, no matter how well they seem to know you or you think you know them.”

I take a deep breath and look out into the darkness. At everyone. At all the eyes that are watching me and probably judging me and maybe still thinking that I deserve what I got.

“Al Franken, a comedian who’s now a senator from Minnesota, said: ‘Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it’s a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.’ I’m really lucky because my mistake didn’t turn out to be fatal, when it really easily could have. But I hope that, like me, you can all learn from it. Thank you for listening.”

It’s really quiet after I finish, and I think that I’ve done the impossible — I’ve bored an entire school assembly to death. But then a few people start clapping and then more and — I can’t believe this — people are standing up and applauding me. Actually giving me an ovation. I’m getting cheered in the same school where, for the last six months, I’ve been getting cold-shouldered
in the halls, and whispered about, and where someone scratched
Slut
on my locker.

I’m not going to cry, but boy, are my eyes getting watery
.

Principal Mullins thanks me, and I get to go offstage, where Faith and Gracie envelop me in a massive great big group bear hug, and Agent Saunders gives me a big grin and tells me I was awesome.