Where are u? he writes.
I have been warned by my adoptive dad a million times. “People you meet online are not necessarily who they say they are.” But this guy seems all right. He’s told me that his name is Chase, that he’s my age – sixteen – and that he has a Samoyed named Rosalie that’s impossible to train. He has also emailed me a photograph of a smiling, brown-haired boy standing behind a white sofa in a middle-class living room. He appears to be thin, perhaps a bit below average height, with a mild case of acne.
He has not told me that I sound “hot,” nor has he screamed in all capital letters. His spelling, not counting the standard abbreviations is generally good, and he seems relaxed and casual rather than desperate and impatient.
“Leah!” my adoptive dad calls up the stairs. “Wash up for dinner!”
I’m in Portland, Maine, I write back.
St. Johnsbury, VT, he writes. We’re almost neighbors.
It was in our newspaper. Not so long ago a teenage girl was lured to the Danbury Mall, raped and strangled. Her parents think it was some creep she met online.
I have a car, he writes, and immediately a flag goes up.
Aren’t you too young to drive? I ask.
Jr license, he writes back. 1 step above a learner’s permit.
For some reason I write, LOL, even though I’ve never laughed out loud in my life.
“Ravioli’s getting cold!” my dad yells up.
“One minute!” I shout back.
Can u send a pic? he writes.
I go to “Pictures” on my start up menu and look at what I have. I email him one of a blond girl dressed in riding gear, leading a chestnut-colored horse from its stall.
What kinda music u like? he asks.
What kind you got?
Ha ha! U dance?
I’m in a wheelchair.
There’s no response for awhile, then he writes, Not in the pic.
That was before the accident, I tell him. But I think he knows I’m lying. That my hair is black, that I don’t live anywhere near Maine, that my legs work perfectly okay.
What accident? he asks.
Helicopter crash, I write, then quickly shut down my computer and push myself away from the desk.
“Leah!” my dad bellows.
“I’m coming,” I tell him as I start down the stairs, free once more from the bounds of deception.
Tai Dong Huai was born in Taizhou, China. Her fiction has appeared, or will appear in Elimae, Word Riot, and Meeting House. Deception is from her collection in progress, I Come From Where I’ve Never Been.