Death Before Facebook

with—I’m a nurse and couldn’t get it from my own community; strangers helped me. And since then I’ve met some great people—right, guys?”
    The three women glowed at her, but Pearce seemed to be trying to force a smile. Only Layne, if Skip read him right, was indifferent.
    “And I enjoy it. It’s like playing solitaire and eating bon-bons—you know you could be improving your mind, but screwing around’s more fun. But look—” She threw both hands out in front of her, a lot of energy behind the gesture. “Geoff’s dead because of it. Okay?”
    “Kit, I really don’t think the TOWN killed him.” Pearce’s voice was cold and dry.
    And condescending, Skip thought.
    “Well, somebody on the TOWN did. And it could be argued that in a way the system did. He thought he was among friends, he posted things he shouldn’t have made public, and somebody he couldn’t see was out there.”
    “How exactly is that the fault of the system?”
    “I don’t mean the TOWN, or even the idea of bulletin boards. If people want other people to know something, let them post it. What I mean is the whole virtual community idea—the idea that this thing is any different from what you’d get if you wrote a letter. Do you really think Geoff would have written letters to ten thousand strangers about his father being killed? Nobody would. They’d have better sense. When they really thought about it, they’d realize it was nobody’s business, and had no real point anyway. I mean, think about it—think about ninety percent of the stuff on the TOWN. Why does anyone need to know? What do I care what someone in Idaho thought of a movie, for instance?”
    Layne cleared his throat. “Well, I think the TOWN does a service—”
    “Service! A lot of services. But I’m just not sure this promiscuous posting of opinions is one of them. And frankly, CompuServe and America Online probably offer a lot more in terms of things you can really learn or access.”
    She sat back in her chair, apparently a bit flustered about becoming so heated.
    Suby grinned. “Good use of ‘promiscuous.’ ”
    Layne looked thoughtful. “In a way, you have a point. Kit, I mean, not Suby. In fact, Suby’s point made me think of mine—which is that you don’t see all that many carefully composed epistles on the TOWN, not all that many good uses of words.”
    Pearce snorted. “That’s because nobody under thirty knows any.”
    Whereupon Neetsie, seated next to him, slugged him, not altogether playfully, and Suby threw a hunk of bread at him.
    There was quiet for a moment and Neetsie said, “I wanted to thank everyone for coming to the service.”
    “I’m so sorry about your brother,” said Skip.
    “Thank you,” said Neetsie, and her eyes filled. “I just wanted to say that.”
    “Sorry about my dad,” said Suby, and looked down, red spots popping out on her cheeks.
    I shouldn’t have come,
Skip thought.
I forgot there’d be relatives here
.
    “You know, I think I really should go,” she said.
    Neetsie stopped her. “No, stay. Pearce would have uninvited you if we hadn’t wanted you.”
    I should have known. He E-mailed them right after I left.
    That meant even Kit had agreed; and Lenore, though she’d pretended not to know Skip was invited.
    “Okay, I give up. Why did you want me to come?” she asked.
    “We thought the more stuff you knew about the TOWN, the better your chances.” Her eyes got wet again. “Do you know what it means to lose a brother?”
    In my case, it might be a pleasure
.
    Sensitivity prevented her from speaking aloud. Instead, she said, “Can you talk about him?”
    Neetsie nodded.
    “Are you sure? This might be hard.”
    “Go ahead.”
    “What did you really love about him?” Skip asked the question not to torture his sister, but once again seeking the man behind the nerd.
    The girl’s face turned into a sunflower. “When I was seven years old, he woke me up in the middle of the night to watch Toots have her puppies. I didn’t even know she was pregnant—I never even heard the word or anything. Can you imagine what that was like when you’re seven, watching little bitty dogs come out of a big one? ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ he said. ‘You could do that someday, but I can’t.’ Then he said, ‘It’s life. That’s really life,’ and he just kept staring at her, birthin’ those babies, and finally, when it was all over, he said, ‘Go back to bed before Mom catches us. I told her I