Now What?

Now What? - Chapter 1

At 6:45am, I reached over to the iHome on my nightstand in a desperate attempt to stop the blaring alarm. My hand fell on an empty charger on top. I moaned. I dug through my covers and finally found my iPhone under my pillow with a pathetic 9% battery left. I put it on the charger and started tapping on the screen while it sucked what little energy it could in the time it took me to get ready.

Evidently I fell asleep while texting Mindy. The last text from her saying "What do I do?" was at 2:34am. No wonder I fell asleep. I had no more advice for her and her "David situation". She was making me crazy.

I left the text-versation as it stood and flipped over to Facebook to see what was pumping through my News Feed. It was annoying typing on my phone while it was in the charger, but I had to do what I had to do; the phone will never make it through to lunch if I don't have it fully charged when I leave. I updated my status, "Phone slept under my pillow instead of on the charger >.< Gonna be a long day!" and limited the rest of my interactions to Likes since they only required a tap.

On Tumblr I reblogged a bunch of gifs of Danny Tartum from last night's episode of Barista Boys. He was seriously adorable in the scene where Lanie caught him looking at her over his car door. There are at least 15 different creations from that look alone. I was happy to see mine was one of the more popular from the group. I shared one with Tracie via text. She'll thank me later.

I also sent Amy a text letting her know I'd have to skip out on our morning Facetime. She's only been gone a week, but I'm still not used to her living so far away. Thanks again Hurricane Sandy. I only lost power in my house for three hours while Amy, my best friend for life, lost everything, and that's how I lost her. That's when I first learned what a bitch Mother Nature could be.

"What the hell are you doing?" Roger, my little brother, was at my bedroom door. He had the same brown hair as me, but while mine was long and thick enough to stay pretty tame even after a night of sleep, his always looked like he had been electrocuted in the night. It always made me laugh because he looked so funny, but, in that moment it hadn't occurred to me how weird I must have looked laying across my nightstand trying to type on my phone.

"Oh Rog! Lemme borrow your iPod for the shower, please?" I needed music to get ready.

He barged into my room, toothbrush in hand, "What's wrong with your phone?" and reached over to my iHome.

"Don't touch it!" I didn't mean to yell at him, but it just came out.

"Whoa," he was a hurt, I could tell.

"Sorry, Rog," I really was, "it's just almost dead. I need to charge it, ya know?"

"Yeah... whatever," he handed me his iPod while unplugging his headphones.

"Thanks," I said as I got up and kissed his head.

He called to me as I made my way to the bathroom, "You're an addict, you know that, right?"

***

By the time I was in English class my phone was at 32% power. Mr. Gideon didn't care where we sat, so I took a seat by the window with the outlet below it. I quietly plugged in my phone and sat it in my lap. Mr. G assigned us twenty minutes of silent reading. I know he meant Lord of the Flies, but I didn't think he would mind if I spent some of my silent reading catching up on the texts I missed this morning.

As I was writing back to Amy, a new group text came through from Jess saying, "This book sux. Let's NetFlix the movie this weekend," attached to  a picture of her rolling her eyes over the cover of her copy of the novel. She must have just taken it in class.

I didn't know there was a movie, but that sounded a lot better than reading the book. I had made it through two and a half years of high school without reading one book assigned for an English class, why break the record now? A flurry of responses came in at once. Everyone else was on board, too.