A Death Online

Ilana met “Amanda” online in 2004, but never saw her in person. Then the email came.

So, they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.

— A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

I.

Excavating friendships is a painful process.

I think of her now and then in the vaguest of ways, seeing her shape in the broadest impressionistic strokes, not even a Van Gogh so much as a Picasso in his cubist phase. Amanda: 19, white, blond, cup size 36C. There’s also Greg, her boyfriend, whom I imagine as a kind of studly Midwestern farm boy wearing flannel shirts, his brown hair falling into his eyes a little, his grin the sincere stuff of romantic tragedies. And there’s Hank, her uncle, a man whose existence troubles me, but not for the reasons Law & Order: SVU would have you believe.

I met Amanda when I was 15. She was all cheer and yellow, different from my own Hot Topic palette, and if I’d met her today, I doubt I would have given her a second glance. But this was…