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.
"Put the phones away, people," Mr. Gideon grumbled.
I slid my phone under my thigh. A number of other bodies in the room made a similar shift. All we had to do was give him a minute to be distracted by something else. The irony was that he always had his own phone attached to his belt, so, really, who was he kidding?
"My place, Fri @ 5," Mindy texted everyone.
Of course she volunteered, this would be another opportunity to get David to come over to her place so that the never ending soap opera saga of the will they/won't they could continue. Enough already. Somebody needs to make a decision before we all graduate and this continues as a web-only relationship.
I began to respond to Mindy's invite when my phone slipped out of my hand being pulled by its cord, "I did warn you, Miss Turner," Mr. Gideon wrapped my charge cord around my phone and slipped it in his pocket, "You can get this from me at the end of class along with your detention slip."
Not cool. Not cool at all.
***
Detention is not half as bad as it used to be. It's held in the computer room now. The rules are simple: stay quiet for an hour and, well, that's it really. You can go on the Internet, read, do homework or even listen to your headphones. Mrs. Krimble, head of detention and the most genuine, but still boring, science teacher in the building, had all the computers set to Scientific American's homepage. I couldn't figure this woman out. She was decent looking, fairly young for a teacher, and had even managed to land a guy - I just couldn't understand how that all added up to science nerd. I mean she really loved this stuff, she wasn't just trying to brainwash all of her students. In her heart, I knew she thought the Scientific American would be a treat for the detainees, that we might actually feel lucky for being in detention where we could read about science for an hour.
"Some really fascinating news todays, guys," Mrs. Krimble said with a giddy smile, as I handed her my detention slip. I hated when she called us "guys", like she's hanging out with us or something. I plugged my ear buds in my ears. I didn't need to know what the "fascinating news" was because I already knew it wasn't going to be fascinating to me. I sat down at the first computer in front of the classroom and switched away from the blazing headlines about bright spots on the sun - Really? Is that news? Isn't the sun supposed to be bright? and logged into my Tumblr account.
I felt like my luck was turning when I saw Matt Murphy walk in the room, "What you in for, Turner?" His shaggy brown hair always looked so soft as it danced over his eyebrows, but his smile was intoxicating.
I shook my phone in his face attempting to flash him my cutest innocent face, "What else?" I shrugged.
"Of course," he laughed, "you're too good a girl for anything else," he elbowed me and I felt my insides flip. I nervously fiddled with my phone for a virtual escape. I talk a lot of crap about Mindy and David, but I'm no better. At what point does keeping a crush secret just become pathetic?
Murph took the seat next to me, pushed the keyboard aside and pulled out his sketchbook. He was incredibly talented. It was one of the things I liked about him. He had these big strong boy hands that managed to create the most detailed and delicate art. It seemed paradoxical to me, but it was also beautiful. I don't have any artistic talents like that, so I find it amazing. He flipped past sketches of various imagined creatures, superheroes and landscapes before stopping on a blank page. A brochure fell out of his book. I leaned over to pick it up. It was from New York University.
"NYU, huh?," I said pulling one ear bud out.
"Wha— Oh," he whispered, "Mr. Chaucey gave me that. They've got an art school. He thinks I should submit a portfolio."
"A what?"
"A bunch of my sketches," he flipped through his book, "You know... to see if they'll give me money or something."
"That would be awesome," I said, though my heart was sinking thinking about the future where I wouldn't see him every day in school, and added, "you totally deserve it." I prayed I wasn't blushing.
"Thanks, Turner," he said with that crooked smile that made all types of butterflies fly through my insides. Then he looked over to my Tumblr page, Turner's Tales, on my screen and said, "You think I could sketch you? You know... for practice."
Now I know I was blushing. I felt the heat flow through my cheeks and rise all the way up to my ears, "Really?"
"Miss Turner and Mr. Murphy, let's not do this all week, okay?" Mrs. Krimble interrupted the closest thing I had to a romantic moment in months, "Remember the rules," and then she added in a whisper, "just no talking."
I nodded to her over the computer screen, feeling my temperature regulate back to normal. Then I turned back to Murph and shrugged. He tapped his pencil to his sketchbook and then pointed it to me, miming his question again. I wished there was a way to make a gif of this moment to share with the world on my Tumblr page with the tag line This is how he looked at ME today, because that's all that kept running through my brain.
I nodded to him, he winked and my heart sighed. He grabbed my chin to turn my head slightly. I was facing his computer screen, still on the Scientific American home page. I found myself forced to read it just to keep my heart inside my chest.
Here's what I learned from the Scientific American front page article: space nerds that spend their life staring at the sun (I thought that was really bad for you to do) say that the bright spots they saw yesterday are brighter than any other bright spots they ever saw before. There was some sort of solar storm (I didn't realize there were storms on the sun. I mean, isn't it always sunny there?) causing bright spots that may be sending stuff to the Earth. Uh... Won't they send their brightness?
I didn't want to ask Murph to scroll down so I could read any more of the article because I was already feeling normal and didn't want to get all flustered again. So I just stared at the picture of the sun and wondered if today was a good day to go outside and go get a tan.
***
I basically floated home replaying the end of detention over and over again in my head. Murph asked to take my picture so he could finish my sketch at home, and then he asked for my phone number. I was quite audacious in my response, "It has to be a fair trade: a pic for a pic and a number for a number," I have no idea where the courage came from.
As I waited for the light to turn red on Richmond Terrace for me to cross, I texted the selfie I took with me, Murph and his sketch-in-progress to Amy (of course), Mindy, Tracie and Jess - none of them would believe it. My phone started bussing almost instantly. I spent the rest of the walk home in a group text explaining the entire event. I waited until I got home to upload it to every social media outlet I was connected to. I wanted to make sure this picture was saved in as many places as possible so I would never lose it.
At around 8:30, while I was tweeting my way through an episode Wolf Nights with the cast and crew, I received a text from a number that was readily identified as "Murph" in my caller ID. It said,"What do you think?" and was attached to a picture of the completed sketch. It was amazing - I mean everything about it was amazing. First of all, Matt Murphy, the guy I have been secretly crushing on for at least a year, spent his entire evening looking at, and thinking about, a picture of me. However, beyond that, the detail was incredible. He captured the ever so slight wave in my hair that creeps up at the end of the day, a beauty mark on my cheek that even I forget is there and - I don't know - everything. But, not only did the sketch look like me, he went so far as to include the background details: my iPhone, my ear buds and the computer screen including a detailed sketch of the sun and it's solar flares. I had always thought Murph was talented, but, looking at this picture, it was easy to see why Mr. Chaucey thought he'd get a scholarship for his skills.
"Wow!" I wrote back adding an emoticon for full effect.
Seconds after it was sent, my phone rang. It was him.
"Thank you for letting me sketch you," he said.
"You're welcome," I wondered if blushing was audible, "there wasn't really anything else to do."
"I guess not," he sounded distracted, "you think I should color it?"
I was stunned. He wants to spend more time on my picture? I didn't know what to say.
"I don't want to ruin it," he kept talking, "I really like it."
Before I could answer he continued, "I'm going to color it," he sounded excited, "I need to scan this first," it was like he wasn't even talking to me, "and thenI'll need to take a couple more pics of you," and then he remembered I was there, "OK?"
"What?" I stammered, "I mean, sure, I guess."
"Cool. I'll see you tomorrow. You rock, Turner," and then he hung up.
I stared at my phone. What just happened?
"See you on the ferry," a text from Murph popped up.
The ferry? The only reason either of us would be on the ferry is if we were going to the city. Why would be going to the - OMG! It hit me all at once. The trip the museum! No wonder Mrs. Krimble was extra giddy during detention - it was the eve of our annual trip to her Mecca, The American Museum of Natural History and the Rose Center Planetarium.
I didn't know Murph had Mrs. Krimble as a teacher, too.
I immediately got online to chat with the girls. I needed as much advice as possible, I was about to spend the entire next day with Murph.