The Facers file contains dozens of images of young men, mostly posing with their computers or leaning against their cars. One has his shirt off, showing tattoos on his arms and chest. Another, his new nipple ring. There are several motorcycles and a hang glider proudly displayed by boys who look ready to die at a moment’s notice. All of it heart attack material for the mother of a teenage girl.
“This is interesting,” Shane says, clicking on the photo of the kid with the nipple ring.
“It must have hurt,” I say, wincing at the very thought.
“No, I mean what’s missing. Your daughter saved this image, but there’s no indication she ever messaged this particular individual.”
“Thank God for that.”
“It’s true for most of these images,” Shane says, making eye contact. “She was culling pictures but not necessarily making herself known to the subjects.”
“But what does it mean?” I ask.
Shane shrugs. “Hard to say. Might just means she liked the pictures. Maybe because they fit her definition of a Facer, whatever that is. Kind of a wise guy, out-there type, maybe? Any thoughts? Have you heard her use the word?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe. The cool words change from day to day, you know?”
“We can Google it later, if it seems to be pertinent. Right now I’ll concentrate on the file contents.”
Shane scrolls through my daughter’s secret life, or her fantasy life, all of it reduced to thumb-size snapshots. I’m standing over his broad shoulders, close enough to smell his deodorant—kind of a pine scent—aware that under normal circumstances this level of intimacy with a stranger would be, for me, uncomfortable. But these are not normal circumstances. Far from it.
“You think that’s how she met this Seth person?” I ask “Because she saw his picture—his Facer—on the Web site?”
“Yet to be determined,” says Shane, manipulating the keyboard with all ten fingers, a level of typing skill never mastered by yours truly.
“Ah,” he says, as another folder opens. “Here we go. This is linked to a message Kelly mass-mailed to forty-six recipients.”
He deftly places the e-mail in the center of the screen, enlarges the font so we can both read.
Young, aspiring pilot looking for flight instruction. Willing to help with cleaning, maintenance of aircraft. Ready to learn.
I’m too stunned to speak.
“You notice she doesn’t mention her age or gender, other than to say ‘young.’”
“I never knew. Never had any idea.”
“That she wants to learn how to fly?”
“Any of it. Willing to help with cleaning? I can’t even get her to vacuum the hallway! She takes care of her own room, that’s it.”
Ready to learn. The question is, and it breaks my heart to think it, was she ready to learn more than flying? Was this her very clever way to make herself interesting to grown men?
“Four,” Shane announces.
“Four?”
“Responses to that particular e-mail.”
The first response comes up with a snapshot of a guy who has to be in his thirties. Deep in his thirties, with crinkled eyes and a jaunty handlebar mustache. Wearing a distressed-leather flight jacket as he poses in the open cockpit of an old-fashioned airplane. Two wings, like Snoopy used to fly.
“That’s a Waco,” says Shane. “Famous stunt biplane. Big bucks.”
“Stunt plane? You mean like loop-de-loops?”
“Yup,” says Shane. “If you like flying upside down, Waco will provide.”
I almost say, I’ll kill her, then bite my tongue. The guy may have a leather jacket and a big mustache, but he’s not the young man from her photo collection.
As it happens, the second response is from our mystery boy. There’s no photo, and not much of a message, just a succinct more details, please, but it does include a name, Seth Manning, and his e-mail address, s-man@flightlink.net.
“This is dated six weeks ago,” Shane notes.
“S-Man,” I say. “The folder. Can you open it?”
“Already there.”
The S-Man folder contains over a hundred e-mails, messages from S-Man and responses from flygirl91.
“She didn’t have to mention gender,” I point out. “Flygirl kind of gives it away.”
“Good point. If you don’t mind, I’d like to print these out,” Shane suggests. “It’ll be faster and easier than opening each e-mail.”
Maybe he’s not that comfortable having me hover over his shoulder. Fine. Whatever, Kelly’s printer starts spitting out pages at a rate of twenty per minute. I sit on the edge of her bed, devouring her correspondence with Mr. Seth Manning, flight instructor and seducer of teen girls. Or maybe not. From the tone, right from the beginning, my darling daughter seems to be the aggressor.
What have u got 2 lose? Flygirl will make it worth yr while.
Hw old r u? Don’t lie.
Will b 18, all legal and tender, on 4th of July.
Two lies, actually. Her sixteenth birthday was in May, a few weeks before flygirl started trolling for flyboys. By the time Shane hands me the next batch of pages, I’m feeling physically ill. Partly its residual guilt, for violating her privacy, but mostly what’s making me ill is righteous, motherly anger. How dare she take such outrageous risks with her life and well-being! There’s scarcely a broadcast of the local evening news that doesn’t include mention of Internet predators. It’s not like Kelly didn’t know the danger. She just didn’t care. Or worse—and this might be what’s really making me sick—danger is precisely what she’s looking for.
All legal and tender.
Cool, oily sweat suddenly pours from my scalp into my eyes, and I barely make it to the bathroom before heaving. On my knees, gagging, emptying my stomach.
Shane makes me sit on the closed toilet as he applies a cold cloth to my forehead. “Guess I was wrong about the toast, huh?”
“Dummy.”
“Well, it’s not the first time I’ve been dumb,” he says kindly, wringing the cloth out.
“No, me. I’m the dummy. Should have known. Should have been checking her e-mail.”
“Here, hold this,” he says, pressing the cold cloth to my forehead. Gets a dry towel, pats the moisture from my neck. “You couldn’t check her e-mail, remember? And if you could, she’d have found another way. Your daughter is obviously a very willful young woman.”
“Obviously.”
He folds the towel, slips it back on the rack. Most of the men I know, they’d drop it on the floor, because that’s where used towels go. Not Randall Shane. He’s different. Been in my house for an hour or so and I know that much.
“You feeling better?” he asks, standing tall, very tall. “Good. I just got a hit on Seth Manning.”
“A hit?”
“His address. I know where he lives.”
15. Seven Finds A Wall
Time is squishy. Sometimes the seconds tick by in a reasonable, almost ordinary way, and Kelly counts her heartbeats, the pulse in her neck. One, two three, and so on. The highest she gets is seventy-six and then the overwhelming darkness seems to bend around her, a kind of dim gravity, and the clock in her head stops ticking and gets all squishy.
No other way to describe it. Squishy.
Because she can’t measure the passage of time, Kelly has no idea how long it takes for the paralysis to dissipate. All she knows is that at some point she can wiggle her toes, raise her languid arms and let them droop across her chest like melted bones. Could be hours, days, eternity.