I spent the summer between my eighth grade and freshman years doing one thing and one thing only: reading and writing One Direction fanfiction. I stayed up late, dying to find out what happened next in the noticeably predictable, sometimes poorly executed, plotlines of love stories, or developing my own. Somehow, I ended up writing a semi-popular fanfiction, and I’d get messages and comments from people saying they loved my stories and/or asking me to read theirs.

That’s when I “met” Adrianna. She was my first commenter, and little fourteen year old me was excited that someone, anyone, liked my writing enough to comment on it. I scoured her profile, noting that she worked in a coffee shop, read lots of 1D fanfic, and, most importantly, was from London.

We had a few small conversations, and I thought she seemed, to put it simply, really, really cool. We didn’t talk that much, to be honest, but we followed each other on Twitter and on Wattpad (where we both read and wrote fanfiction), and continued to read each other’s work from then on. I had a friend from school who followed her as much as I did, on both platforms, and we later learned that she was in college (British high school) and that she was a model.

Did it seem sort of too good to be true? Maybe, a little, but since we really didn’t exchange much in terms of personal information, nor did we talk that much, so I don’t think it felt too sketchy, especially since my profiles on Wattpad and Twitter were (are) public.

Adrianna had a step-sister who lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, a mere 5 hour drive from my town. She came, with her on and off boyfriend/best friend, for Christmas the winter following us “meeting” on Wattpad. She even came to visit my town, because apparently her favorite drink was Pepsi, and Pepsi was invented there.

She had a phone while she was here, since she visited for about a month, and she gave me and my friend her number. We ended up texting quite a bit, and again, she still seemed so cool. She longboarded and surfed, had tattoos, and loved One Direction. Adry, as I called her, was texting me one night, and then her contemporary best friend (like I said, they were on and off, so at that moment he was just her best friend), Codi, stole her phone.

I ended up talking to Codi practically non-stop for the next two weeks via Adry’s phone and his Twitter account. He played soccer/football, was also a model (that’s how they met), and lived in London as well. Codi and I constantly kept a conversation going via email and Twitter, and he became one of my best friends quickly. I could vent to him about my problems and my depression and he would give me advice.

For Valentine’s Day that year, I had my first ever official valentine: Codi. We didn’t really do anything special and it was not a romantic thing in the slightest. He was my best friend, and he called me his. He just Tweeted me about it and it was sweet and all that sort of stuff.

There was a time on Twitter when some older girls from my school began to indirectly Tweet mean things about me and about Adrianna and Codi’s friendship with me. They were both quick to respond to the girls and get them to stop saying mean things to me—they were two years older than me, after all.

A few months later, it was time for the One Direction concert in Raleigh, North Carolina, which Adrianna told me and my friend from school that she was going to since she was visiting her sister again. I went to the exact same concert. I had wanted to meet up with her, but I can’t remember exactly what happened and I don’t think I ever actually asked if we could meet up (at that point, Codi was my friend way more than she was). Still, waiting outside the venue, I scanned the masses of people in line, looking for a blonde British girl that I’d found on Wattpad the previous summer.

After the concert, Adry posted a picture of her view from her seat on Twitter. Her cousin took over her Wattpad account. Adrianna stopped Tweeting. Codi deleted his Twitter (which he warned me about, but I can’t remember the reasoning). Then Codi told me he wouldn’t be able to email me back for a while, or much at all anymore. He said he was moving to Germany, to give up modeling and pursue soccer.

I haven’t heard a word from either of them in almost four years.

Now, I understand that most of this story doesn’t seem terribly impossible, but it also doesn’t exactly sound likely. Another flaw in these friendships is in the fact that my “best friend” could never call or FaceTime me because of his modeling contract.

Does that sound like total bull****? Yes. Did I care? No.

Even if Adrianna and Codi weren’t models from London, I didn’t care. They were nice to me. They gave me advice. Hell, Adrianna read my freaking fanfiction. They defended me on social media. They never asked for anything from me.

A fact that points in the favor of the British model identity is the fact that Codi’s emails always were sent from a British time zone. My emails would say “Sent at 5:00” and his emails, which would come a mere two or three minutes later, would say, “Sent at 10:03” (this was up in the weird bit at the top that says the sending and receiving and subject information). I do understand that anyone can adjust their computer and phone to be set to whatever time they please, however, if this person was actually someone from North Carolina, that would mean that their phone or computer was set to the wrong time.

Something that doesn’t add up, though, is that every time I Google their names, no profiles matching anyone resembling the people in the photographs on their old Twitter accounts come up. These people do not seem to exist, and if they do, they’re hard to find.

Am I mad that these people (or person pretending to be two people) aren’t who they said they were? Kind of, however, I truly am thankful for them, even if they did “catfish” me. My safety was never threatened, as they never tried to meet up with me or anything like that. Instead, Codi and Adrianna were easy to talk to about anything, and they were an extra like or two on my Tweets.

I feel fortunate that my experience with a catfish did not end in a bad way, as a lot of them can, however, I wouldn’t mind finding out who these people really are. It’s been long enough that I can truly step back and look at the situation. And when I do, all I get is confused. I feel so torn about the facts that I have and about the gaps in the stories, but at the same time, it really doesn’t matter.