Free A Girl's Life Online by Katherine Tarbox

that Mark and I exchanged pictures. He sent me some of himself at Disney World. I wondered who had gone there with him. After all, Disney isn’t a destination you might expect for a single man. I wasn’t impressed with his looks, but he was obviously a young, clean-cut guy, which was all that I really cared about.
    I hid the pictures in my room, in the top drawer of my armoire, because I knew what they would look like to someone else who couldn’t understand the connection we had made. And something in how Mark had complained about my short disappearance had begun to worry me. I began to wonder if we were getting too close. I know I was thinking about him more and more. I had followed my heart into this relationship, and it told me that this was a mature, adult friendship.

    My connection with Mark grew stronger around my birthday, January 26. I was going to be fourteen, not an especially big milestone, but I was as excited as I had been at Christmas. In part this was because I was leaving thirteen, an age everyone seems to associate with teenage silliness. The night before, I tossed and turned in bed. For some reason I thought I would get to sleep faster if I buried my face into my pillows but that didn’t work. Neither did adjusting and then readjusting the blankets.
    I woke up at about two in the morning, and for the life of me I could not sleep. It was pointless to lie there awake when I could be doing other things, like making cupcakes to bring to school. I walked downstairs, being careful not to wake anyone. This didn’t require too much caution. My mother wasn’t even going to be home for my birthday. She was in San Francisco on business. David snores so loudly that nothing can wake him up, and Carrie has even slept through our alarm going off.
    I went into the kitchen and I opened the light cherry cabinet doors. I found a box of Duncan Hines cake mix, the super-moist type with the red background on the box. I am not much of a cook or baker, so this was perfect. Add water. Bake. Get a fairly reasonable cake.
    I liked making the cupcakes myself. I liked the feeling of losing myself in a project—measuring, mixing, baking, putting on the icing. I also liked the way the oven filled the kitchen with warmth and a sweet smell.
    I inherited a taste for cake batters and cookie dough from my mother. But we’re not the only ones who like it. Karen’s family used to make cookie dough without the eggs so that they could eat it while their cookies baked. This time I ate just enough to make myself a little bit sick before I poured the remainder into the little floured cupcake tins.
    As I turned the timer I decided I would go on-line to pass the minutes until the cupcakes were done. I walked down the ceramic-tiled hall to the study and turned on the new computer that had arrived at Christmas. I watched the waving clouds as Windows began to boot up. I typed in my screen name, which I had changed to katie26, and waited for the connection. While I did this, I reached for a box of Godiva chocolates my parents had given me in advance of my birthday. I don’t care for most of the fruity ones, but I love the white chocolate starfish swirled with milk chocolate and filled with hazelnut. Biting off each leg, I watched the computer screen shift from page to page.
    When I finally got on-line, I followed my normal routine, which meant starting by looking for Mark. I moved the mouse over the pad, feeling the little trackball slide. I clicked my way to a teen chat room and checked to see if Mr. Vallleyguy was there.
    KATIE26: Hi Mark, it’s Katie! I wrote, seeing his screen name.
    VALLLEYGUY: Hey Katie, Happy Thirteenth Birthday!
    KATIE26: Thanks, but it’s Fourteenth you know.
    VALLLEYGUY: I’m so sorry, of course it’s 14.
    KATIE26: No big deal.
    VALLLEYGUY: You gotta stop growing up, because pretty soon you’ll be too old and you won’t want to talk to me anymore.
    KATIE26: