The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(58)

As he talks, Elena tries once again to push her thoughts to what lies ahead, but this time she can only think of what happened earlier, right before she got out of the car at the airport.

First, Tony asked her again whether she wanted him to come to Cincinnati with her.

“Thanks,” she said, “but no thanks.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

Then, his last words to her, right before she slammed the car door, were chilling: “Have it your way. And listen, don’t worry, Elena—your secret is safe with me.”

He waved and pulled away, leaving her to wonder just what he meant by that.

The turtle that started it all had meandered—as turtles have a way of doing—out of a pond on a hot summer’s day.

It looked like a scum-slicked rock, lying there in the sun in the mucky high grass at the edge of the green water. Like a rock that just begged a romping kid to pick it up and throw it into the water, providing a welcome disruption to the late afternoon torpor and making a nice big splash that would cool things off.

That was the plan, anyway.

When you’re five or maybe six years old and you pick up a rock, and a reptile head pokes out at you, hissing like a snake and gnashing teeth strong enough to sever bone and tendon . . .

The power wielded by that snapping turtle was somehow simultaneously terrible and wonderful.

I thought it was some kind of monster.

In a way, it was. The most frightening monsters of childhood imagination lurk in places you’d never expect: beneath the bed, behind the door, inside the closet . . .

It was an important lesson learned, early on: monsters really can cross the threshold of your safe haven and jump out at you when you least expect it, so you’d better keep your guard up and develop some coping mechanisms.

I was lucky that day.

Lucky I didn’t lose a finger . . .

Lucky for a lot of reasons.

Turtles, as it turned out, are viewed in many cultures as harbingers of good fortune.

The incident spurred a lifelong fascination with the fabled creatures, which led, eventually, to Terrapin Times.

That was the name of the first blog, the one launched years ago, before many people even knew what a blog was.

Terrapin Terry was the perfect screen name to use for that one. Terry—or T2, as online followers like to say—is an expert on all things turtle-related, comfortably ensconced in a world populated by people who are equally fascinated by the creatures, some to the point of being addicts.

It was positively intoxicating to find so many kindred spirits. But the best was yet to come.

Other blogs.

Other screen names.

Other identities, really, if one chooses to look at it that way. Each a fully formed character with a separate circle of friends.

Online, you can be anyone you want to be.

I have been so many different people . . .

Eventually, it became too exhausting, too complicated, to keep up with them all. Now, the only blogs that are still active are the turtle one and the breast cancer one . . .

And never the twain shall meet.

It’s safe to imagine that the circle of breast cancer bloggers have never heard of Terrapin Terry, and that the turtle fans have never heard of— Then again, you never know.

Maybe somewhere out there a fellow cancer blogger is following the turtle blog, posting comments under another screen name, with no idea that Terrapin Terry is really— Probably not. But anything is possible on the Internet. That’s the beauty of it.

The beauty . . . and the danger.





I Get By with a Little Help . . .

After I was diagnosed, my oncologist’s nurse told me that it wasn’t a good idea to keep my feelings bottled up inside. She said it might help to talk to others who were going through the same thing, and that she could put me in touch with a local network through the cancer center.

I said thanks, but no thanks. I was sure I’d be just fine dealing with it on my own.

But I wasn’t. As my treatment progressed—surgery, radiation, medication, reconstruction—I felt more and more isolated.

My family was there for me, of course. They were willing to listen, and I tried, in the beginning, to express my fears and frustrations. But I couldn’t bear seeing uncertainty and dread reflected back at me on their faces.

My father was still alive then. I’m an only child, and I was always Daddy’s girl. Now he was so worried about me that I usually wound up trying to reassure him instead of the other way around. The same was true with my mother, and with my husband. It was hard enough to be strong enough for myself, let alone for everyone else.

Plus, I felt guilty dwelling on my cancer as a constant and depressing conversational topic—not that I had the heart or the energy to discuss anything else.

Finally, I gave in and attended a support group meeting up in Mobile. The other women in the room were in various stages of breast cancer treatment—some, it was obvious, in the final stages. At the first meeting, I listened in silence as the others talked about their own situations, and ranted, and cried.

At last I was surrounded by people who understood what I was going through because they had dealt with—or were dealing with—the same thing. Or worse.

For some, much worse.

At the third meeting, a particularly vocal woman I’d met at the first group session and noticed was conspicuously missing at the second announced that she’d just been given months, maybe just weeks, to live. She was a perfect stranger, but there I was sobbing along with her and the group members who took turns comforting her and each other.