Friend Game
Lauren Collins (The New Yorker)
Teen-age identities mutate so quickly online, and can be masked so easily, that by the morning after Megan was pronounced dead Josh Evans had vanished from MySpace. It wasn't until a month after her death that a neighbor named Michele Mulford told the Meiers that Curt and Lori Drew, who lived four houses down, had created "Josh" in concert with their thirteen-year-old daughter, a longtime friend of Megan's. (An eighteen-year-old girl who worked for the Drews was also involved.) The two thirteen-year-olds had recently quarrelled. Mulford's own daughter, also thirteen, had been given the password to the account, and had sent at least one unkind message to Megan in Josh's name. Megan had accompanied the Drews on several vacations, and they knew that she was taking medication. For nearly a year, on the advice of the police, the Meiers had kept quiet about the Drews' involvement in Megan's death.
Another interesting detail, which reminds us how carefully TV crews construct the interviews that they capture:
Before the taping, Ron gave Tina a bereft, searching glance. The cameraman was hoping to capture it. "Could you look at your wife again?" he said. Then he asked Tina, "Could you look at your husband?"
"Stop!" Tina said, holding a palm up, before bursting into strained laughter. "We're getting a divorce."
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