Caring Is Creepy Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 didafter 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