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In six words, an instant message changed Alexis forever.After a rocky junior year of high school, Alexis Singer was lonely, stressed out, and vulnerable--the ideal target for an older man with bad intentions. When a message popped up on her computer screen one night from a message board acquaintance, she could never have known that by responding she was making a choice that would change her forever.By posing as a friend and confidant, the man gave Alexis the attention she desperately craved and weaseled his way into her life in an unimaginable way. Within weeks, Alexis was sucked into an emotionally dependent relationship, engaging in cybersex and sending him explicit photos of herself. Somewhere along the way, she lost who she was and put her dreams for the future, relationships with friends and family, and psychological well-being on the line.'Not much about that first online conversation we had sticks out in my head except for his surprising interest in me. I probably would have forgotten about it if it weren't for that. I would have dismissed him as just another creep.' Because Truth Is More Fascinating Than Fiction www.louderthanwordsbooks.com

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I WISH I HAD KNOWN THE FUTURE when an instant message (IM) popped up in the top right corner of my laptop screen on June 29, 2007. In that moment, I wish I had been able to foresee all the consequences of one minor exchange and closed down that window. If I could go back now and see that message and predict the two and a half years of trauma it would cause, the relationships it would ruin, and the lives it would change, I would have ignored it, shut off my computer, and cracked open a book. Maybe I would have doused my seventeen-inch PowerBook with lighter fluid and set it ablaze. If I had known what would happen because of one seemingly inconsequential conversation, I would have quit the Internet for good, forgotten technology existed, and started writing all of my papers on stone tablets by candlelight. But on June 29, 2007, I didn't close my computer when a little six-word message popped up in the corner of my screen. I was in no position to ignore human contact, no matter how distant and shady it was. I was fresh off my junior year of high school, by far the most stressful year of my life. All of the friends I'd had for years had outgrown me, leaving me to flail helplessly in the already choppy sea of high school. I had broken up with my first and only boyfriend six months earlier, ending an on-and-off relationship that had lasted over three years, and I had been hopelessly single ever since. All in all, I had suffered through the last six months trying to balance the SAT, the never-easy process of making new friends, AP courses, a father who was divorcing my stepmother, and a part-time job that I dreaded even more than everything else in my life. And through it all, I found myself sitting on my bed every night staring at my computer screen, riding the waves of each daily crisis completely and totally alone. That may have been an attitude rather than a circumstance, but in high school we're all loners, at least from our own perspectives. That's the way it works. I didn't have a single friend in high school who didn't spend several hours a day with their eyes glued to a monitor. It's escapism in its most luring form, especially for people who have a hard time being themselves in person. We all find our niche. For me, it was a message board I discovered my sophomore year a section of a theater message board pushed off to the side for those of us who wanted to talk about real life, politics, and entertainment. Despite some harassment from a particularly mean and sarcastic user (every message board has at least one), I fell in pretty quickly there. In no time I made a few 'friends,' in the loose way you can call people you've never seen face-to-face and whose last names you do not know, friends. I found a rhythm there. It was a place to go and escape the difficulty of everyday life. When I didn't feel like talking to my parents about my English essay on Death of a Salesman, I could go onto The Board (as it became known in my head) and talk a

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Alexis

Alexis

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