Megan's Way by Melissa Foster

She said she had heard about
myroom.com and had wanted to check it out. Normally, she had said,
she would never go against her mother’s rules, but things had been
so weird lately, and she was so angry and sad that she didn’t know
what she was doing. She said she had felt driven, recklessly she
admitted, but as if it were the right thing to do—to do something
that she knew was wrong.
    Tears streaked Megan’s cheeks. She left
Olivia’s bedroom so as not to wake her and paced the hallway. She
pulled her sweater tight around her body and crossed her arms, only
to drop them again and worry her hands. She shook her head, trying
to make peace with the confusion that rumbled inside it.
    The police station had felt safe, yet
sterile. Linoleum gray floors met equally dull walls. The faint
ticking of keyboards panged beyond the glass of the office where
they had sat, shocked and trembling, as the police officers had
peppered Olivia with questions. They had asked about the photos,
which, Olivia said, she had her friends take of her so she could
post them online. It had been relatively easy with her digital
camera. She didn’t believe that anything bad would happen, and she
had gotten so caught up in the attention and flattery from those
guys, hotrox42 and the surferdude97, that even the thought that it
might be wrong had gone out of her head.
    The officers nodded as if they had seen many
young girls go through the exact same scenario. Megan wasn’t
certain if it was compassion or annoyance she read in their eyes.
That upset Megan even more. This wasn’t any girl. This was
Olivia—her daughter. She let it pass with a heavy heart, and they
had continued to ask pointed questions. They wanted details about
their online chats. Olivia promised that she didn’t give out any
personal data, but the police were going to come by later and check
it out for themselves.
    The friend that Olivia had pick her up and
take her to the library, where she was to meet hotrox42, knew
nothing of the clandestine meeting. She thought Olivia was meeting
another girlfriend there. The police said it wasn’t abnormal for
teens to keep details of this type of tryst to themselves,
especially given the fact that this was the first time that Olivia
had strayed. Olivia strayed . The mere thought of her
daughter doing something so dangerous, so rebellious, made Megan’s
body shiver.
    Apparently hotrox42 was the frontrunner for
the older guy, surferdude97, and the police had been trying to
track them down for the last few weeks. They’d had a few sketchy
leads, but Olivia and Megan provided them with a description of the
green truck, which the officers indicated should be fairly easy to
trace given the color.
    They seemed excited that Megan had been able
to physically harm the older man and were going to contact the
local hospitals, shelters, and walk-in clinics in case he went for
medical assistance. They concurred that such an injury could kill
the man, if she had reached his brain, and that he certainly
couldn’t go on walking around without getting medical attention for
such a wound.
    They had called a physician into the station,
since Olivia had not been raped, and took DNA samples from her and
Megan’s fingernails and hands. Hair and other fibers were going to
be removed from their clothing, and they were given sweatpants and
t-shirts to wear home. The sketch artist had been able to draw a
pretty true-to-life image of the older man. The police were fairly
certain that they could nail the predators.
    Megan had sustained bruised ribs and Olivia
had a few bumps and bruises and a sore back, but thankfully there
were
    No further physical injuries. Emotional
injuries, however, were not as neatly observable for either Olivia
or Megan.
    Megan had been petrified that they would have
to go to the hospital for blood tests and her secret would be
revealed, but she was spared that scene. Megan’s tears continued to
fall; not from the encounter they had had with