Those classic, familiar big golden arches. That was our destination as we got off the bus. None of us had a car yet, so public transportation was our main mode of getting around. We had come from the stereotypical teenage summer destination — The mall. But a series of events had spooked us into departing early. We hurried out before we had time to stop at the food court, and we knew McDonald's was on the way home. The four of us girls stood anxiously in line, just wanting to get our food and sit down and go over everything. I couldn't help but feel like this entire situation was solely my fault, and so I sat quietly dipping my fries into my McFlurry as my friends started to brainstorm.

"OK, so what do we actually know about this guy?"

"We know his screen name, we know his real name and what city he lives in..."

"What we THINK his name is and where he lives. Did anyone check his ID??"

"No but that would've been smart." I lamented. That was the rub right there; I was very smart. Easily the smartest of my friends, at least academically. I would also venture to say that I had the most maturity due to the unfortunate amount of childhood trauma that I lived through. I felt things very deeply, which was great until I hit puberty and that emotional gift turned into anxiety. I was definitely feeling the urgency of this situation. I wanted to numb myself to it, to go home and hide in my basement and blast my music and drink some of the vodka I hid and if all else failed, self-injure, but I knew that it was too big of a fuck up and potentially too dangerous to completely check out. Plus, I had more information than anyone. They needed me here, physically and mentally.

"I obviously have his phone number too."

"OK, the phone we can maybe try and trace but it could be a burner phone, or if he's on a family plan it might lead us to a relative instead."

"Maybe we could reach out to them..."

"And say what?? You don't think they'd tip him off? We don't want to do anything that would possibly make him angrier." Nicole looked at me, as if to peg me as the source of his anger. She wasn't wrong. I did try to break up with him. Big emphasis on the 'try'. He wasn't going down without a fight, and we couldn't predict just how far he would go to win that fight. That was the nature of this growing disaster. We never thought that anything bad could actually happen to us.

"Hey, he was your first choice of who had to go!" I snapped. While I was feeling the weight of the blame here, it felt better to try to displace some of it.

"Yeah, because I thought he was a psycho, and here we are." She took another drink of her Coke, washing down the venom that I knew was on the tip of her tongue now. I appreciated the restraint.

"So what else do we know? Or think we know? The more details we have, the better we can try to profile him, like the FBI does!"

We were about the farthest thing from the FBI that a group of people could get. We were trying our best to handle a very adult problem through our teenage lens, because that's all we knew how to do. We were basically trying to figure out our level of safety based on answers to a magazine quiz questions.

"What's his zodiac sign? Allegedly..."

"Cancer." The weight of that word hit differently in this context.

"Favorite color?"

Favorite color? No idea. But his darkest secrets? Those I knew well. At least I knew what he told me, what he wanted me to know. All I could do was take his word for every story he told me, Even if they weren't all factually true, they were his truth regardless. I know now that there is a kernel of truth in every lie. I must have known that somehow then, too, which would explain why I was so scared. I couldn't believe we were even having this conversation about someone who, up until about a week ago, I was talking with daily, our talks always ending with "I love you too". He didn't seem like a bad person when I first began communicating with him. He was funny, he was sweet, and he seemed very sure of himself. He definitely was when he direct messaged me after casually chatting in our usual chatroom. He was older than I was, more experienced, but was just playful enough to be disarming. He asked me to be his girlfriend, whatever that looked like when you had no idea who was behind the screen you were typing through. Sure I would eventually receive (and send) a grainy scanned-in photo so I had some approximation of what he looked like, but there was really no way to be sure. Until the day that he sent me a letter in the mail and enclosed some actual printed out pictures of himself. They smelled like him. It never occurred to me at the time that giving out my address to essentially a stranger on the internet could possibly be a problem, but now I was regretting that decision.

"Umm, the bad side of Cancers can be pretty bad." Addison had always been into astrology, so I wasn't surprised when that particular question caught her attention. I wasn't surprised either that she knew personality traits of each sign off the top of her head.

"Like how?"

"Well they can be overly sensitive to criticism, they don't like change, they take loyalty really seriously..."

I was literally sinking in my seat. It would seem that someone breaking up with him could easily trigger all of these negative qualities. And that's exactly what I had done. I betrayed him, wounded him. If I were being honest with myself, I would completely have understood if he wanted to wound me back. If I could avoid it, that would be preferable.

"Well that's just fucking great."

"Come on, let's get going. We'll see if he's sent anything else."

We all got up and threw out our garbage before heading outside. My house was only a few blocks away so we started walking. It was an extremely familiar walk, one we took multiple times a week. Did he know that? Had I told him about it? I was relieved to see I wasn't the only one who was considering that possibility as well.

"Does anyone have a weapon? Just in case..."

I opened my bag and pulled out a fancy letter opener. It was my weapon of choice. Sharp enough to do some damage if it needed to be done, but not suspicious enough or illegal enough to be taken away if my bag was ever searched. My friends nodded in approval. About 15 high-alert minutes later we arrived at my house. It was basically everyone's second home. We all gathered around the computer as I logged into my AOL account. The chaotic dial-up tones were reflective of our heart rhythms. Soon we heard the familiar "You've got mail", and I braced myself as I clicked on my mailbox.