I met Logan Loy by complete accident. I became his friend on purpose. Dani and me were on the Internet when I first came across him, but we weren’t exactly playing The Game. We’d just finished a very short and intense session with a man who claimed to be a history professor from Liverpool who was visiting America. After a few silly small-talk messages, he told us he was doing something very nasty with a peeled carrot and wanted us to try it ourselves and tell him about it. He kept calling us “honey bunch,” which is what Dani’s dad sometimes called her, and this freaked her out a little. Dani pushed me aside to tell him carrots were only good for feeding pigs and other livestock, so what did that make him? He wrote back, lightning fast, “You’re a fatty, aren’t you, honey bunch? You’re the little fat piggy here. Not me.” Dani’s eyes welled up with tears. She jumped away from the computer as though it had snapped at her. He slipped in a few more messages before I could block him. “I’m going to tear a hole in your belly button and fuck your piggy fat. I’m going to hunt you down and kill you with my cock, honey bunch. Don’t think I can’t find you. I’m looking at you through your webcam right now.”
This last part startled even me because Wynn had set up a webcam the day before, although we’d yet to put it to use. Dani covered the golf ball-sized camera with her hand and then unplugged it. I thought maybe we should take a break from the computer. When I told her this, she did something strange. Her face wrinkled up like a clenched fist and she pounded on the desk, shouting, “No, I’m not going to let that nasty man ruin my game!” She shouted this so loud her mom called down the stairs to see if she was alright. I suggested we try something a little different.
All this had Dani wired tighter than a broken jaw. I thought she needed distraction. Since Dani had been going on and on about wanting to see The Shins in concert, her favorite band from that soundtrack album, I hunted down their website.
“Look,” I said, “they’re all dressed like superheroes and lying in bed together.”
Dani pushed me aside and scrolled around looking for nearby concert dates. Per usual, she got hung up on the message board. There were only a few people leaving messages, but in no time at all, Dani had them sending her private messages.
After about ten minutes of this, Dani finally went to the bathroom and I took over. She’d waited just a drip too long to do it. As she waddled away, I noticed a small damp spot on the seat of her pants, and when she came back, she’d changed into shorts. I never said anything, knowing it’d cause an explosion of denials and a long period of silent treatment if I did, but it cheered me a good bit to see. The very moment I sat down, a fan named L.L. sent me a private message. He asked me my name and where I lived, and for some reason, I really to this day have no idea why, I broke the first rule of The Game and told him the truth. It turned out that L.L. lived in Savannah, about an hour’s drive from Metter.
“Are you going to the concert in Charleston next week?” Logan typed.
“That sounds great, but I don’t have a car right now.” And probably never will, I thought.
“What do you look like?”
I hesitated. Who’s talking here? Me? Dani? One of our combo dealies? Again, I told the truth. “Dark blond hair. 5’2”. Brown eyes.”
“I wish I could see you right now. It’s hard to imagine what you look like from six words. That’s the worst part about trying to talk this way.”
“I agree. Plus, everyone lies,” I typed, smiling. “Even though it’s impossible to imagine and you could be lying, what do you look like?”
Dani returned while I waited to find out. When I explained about L.L., she really lost it, telling me we had an agreement to always, always follow the rules and I’d broken the most important one. She said she felt betrayed and her face turned red again.
According to the clock on Dani’s computer, Logan Loy took exactly four minutes and twenty-three seconds to write back, which felt like an especially long time with Dani yelling at me the way she did. When his response finally came, it said, “5’11”. Blond hair. Blue eyes. 165 lbs. 25 yrs old.”
That’s when Dani changed the angry little tune she’d been singing. Or screaming.
“Oh, shit,” she said. “I can’t believe it.”
“What?” I said.
“He’s your exact type.”
“That’s if he’s telling the truth,” I said.
“Well, of course,” she said, stiffening up a little, “there’s always that.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought you told me I wasn’t mature enough for someone that old.”
“The type is flexible when it comes to the age question, as long as it goes up and not down. The opposite is true of boys’ types. But according to his stats, this one’s perfect. You’ve got a keeper here.”
“What about his face? For all we know, he could have a face like an elephant’s ass. Or like Wynn’s.”
“There’s always that, too,” she said, using her oh-the-things-I-must-put-up-with voice and rubbing her eyes the way her mom did after she took off her reading glasses. “You’re always such a glass-half-empty person. Look at the full side for a change, and with this guy, it’s so far so full.”
Now that she’d decided it was a good thing, Dani was about five hundred times more excited than I was, but I’ll admit to being pretty interested in this L.L. person. As usual, completely unsure of myself about romantic questions, I took her advice to the letter. Literally. I asked him if he posted on this message board a lot. He said it was his first time, but he came to the website every once in a while to check on the concert schedule. I told him our story. Well, part of it, anyway. But for once, everything I wrote was true.
“Make a date to meet here again. Tomorrow evening,” Dani said, hopping up and down on one foot and squeezing her earlobes. She’d been wearing her chunky, painfully heavy turquoise earrings all afternoon.
I asked and he agreed. Dani let out a shriek. I’ll admit to feeling more and more excited each time this business with L.L. went another step further. He wanted to know my e-mail address. Dani and me looked at each other. We used Wynn’s e-mail address every time we set up fake accounts, and one day we’d even used it when we ordered shoes with Dani’s mother’s Visa card while she was out shopping at the Piggly Wiggly. At the time it seemed funny. We imagined Wynn getting all these sexy or angry e-mails from guys we’d flirted with and then devastated in The Big Green Bus. It was Dani’s stated policy to never give out our real e-mail addresses to people we met online. But we weren’t officially playing The Game, and then there was also the fact I’d already told him my real name and hometown.
“Tell him you’ll give it to him tomorrow if he meets you, and then we can go ahead and make a new one now. Just in case he’s a freak,” Dani said.
Logan told me he was about to go on-duty and he looked forward to messaging with me the next day. And that was it.
“On-duty?” I asked her. “What do you think that means?”
“Maybe he’s a lifeguard. Who cares?” Dani shrugged. “You have an electronic date. You have an electronic date,” she sang, giving me a giant hug and dancing me around in a circle. She smelled like fabric softener and fresh hair spray.
“You make him sound like a robot.”
And that’s how the serious fun ended and the serious trouble began. Sounds innocent enough, huh?