by Sarah Price
“You mean a name like Cat?”
Brooke laughs and Cassie joins in, which makes me feel bad. I have no idea what I said that was so funny.
“That will already be taken, you goose,” Brooke says. I like when she calls me a goose. It softens the blow of my social media ignorance. “Something else. Try CatNJ.”
I make a face.
“Okay, how about CatGirlNJ?”
Double yuck.
Cassie twirls her hair in her hand, staring at her own phone, her interest already diverted from my new phone. “It’s only a nickname, Cat!” she sighs. “Just pick anything!”
“But not something boring. Something with a little attitude,” Brooke says.
A lightning bolt strikes me. That’s it! The perfect name! “I got it! Catitude!”
Brooke raises an eyebrow and looks impressed. “Cute,” she says and takes the iPhone back to set up my account. With a frown, she shakes her head. “Bummer. It’s taken.”
Rats!
“Try CowgirlCat?” I suggest. Sure, Leslie tried to slam me using that name, but I really like it. I’d never admit it to her face, but that nickname sums up my entire existence ... at least in the fantasy world that I try to live in, where I have my own horse and can ride Western-style whenever I want.
“Got it!” Brooke says. More tapping and she creates an Instagram account. I’m starting to think she’s brilliant. “And one more,” she mumbles to herself, tapping away at the small screen. I’m amazed at how fast her fingers fly across that tiny keyboard. Even though we’re not Catholic, I make a mental note to find out if the pope is on Twitter or Facebook so I can let him know about my sister! She’s a blessing!
“Voila!” She hands it back to me. “And you have Instagram, too.”
Cassie looks up, a surprised expression on her face. “What’s that?”
I try not to look smug at the fact that I’m learning something about the iPhone that she doesn’t know about. Best friends or not, it stinks to always be the last one in the know.
“Instagram,” Brooke says. “It’s so cool!” She emphasizes the word cool. “You take photos or videos and post them on the Internet. Usually they are short videos … under thirty seconds or so.”
“That doesn’t sound so cool to me,” I admit. Thirty seconds? What can a person possibly record that is interesting in thirty seconds? I don’t even think I can run to the mailbox in thirty seconds. I make a mental note to time myself.
“You’ll see,” she says. “Check it out later tonight. Look up the top IG accounts and let me know what you think. You can text me.” She gets up from my bed and gives me a quick hug. “I gotta go, Cat. I have an early morning exam tomorrow. End of semester and all.”
“Wait!” I jump onto my knees, the Holy Grail of technology still clutched lovingly in my hands. “How do I text you?”
Brooke walks toward the door. “The iMessage icon. It’s green. I already put my number in your contacts.” She pauses. “Cassie should put hers in, too.” She smiles at Cassie before heading downstairs.
Cassie hears her mom calling her. Frankly, I’m relieved. I want time to explore my treasure, my phone, by myself and without someone bossing me around or telling me what to do and how to do it.
I wait until I see the lights of Cassie’s mom’s car backing out of the driveway (I don’t know why she always insists on driving when they live next door!) before I allow myself to look down at my new phone. My heart is beating and I can hardly wait to get started. Pica scratches at the door. Still holding the phone, I jump up to let her into my bedroom. The sooner everyone gets situated, the sooner I can get started. The Internet is a big place, and I only have an hour or two to explore it before Mom is going to tell me it’s lights out.
I start with Twitter. It’s the one that I hear the most about from my friends. They all follow One Direction and 5SOS so I figure it’s a good place to start. Thanks to Brooke, my accounts are set up, and I quickly recognize the icon of a little blue flying bird to begin my search. I tap it and a text box opens on the screen with the keyboard beneath it. So far, so good. I type in Niall’s name, my favorite One Direction guy. To my surprise, about thirty accounts open with a link for even more. I scroll through the list, trying to figure out which one is the real Niall.
It’s virtually impossible.
Besides, Twitter is boring. Not much to see except text messages. Everyone seems to be talking about stupid stuff and asking for retweets. Who cares if they hate their class schedule tomorrow or had fish for dinner anyway?
Back at the main menu, I glance through some of the other apps that Brooke downloaded. I bypass Snapchat for now, having seen that one a million times on Cassie’s phone. She loves to show me the pages of her favorite singers, including Harry from One Direction. That always makes me angry because, in order to be a One Directioner, you have to like all the boys, not just one. Besides, I liked them a full year before she did!
The blue Facebook icon stares at me and I sigh. I boycotted Facebook when they changed Farmville. The new upgrade was weird and difficult to navigate. Even my mom stopped playing. She called it “The Cookie Monster of time wasters.” Of course, that was before Candy Crush entered the picture and everyone became addicted to smashing candy and clearing jelly. So I ignore Facebook for now. After all, it’s overrun by old people, like my mom, who spend most of their time posting recipes and pictures of their children. Besides, I don’t need Mom stalking my every move there. So … moving on …
And then I see it. Instagram. The multicolored pinkish icon. Hadn’t Brooke said it was the hottest new social media besides Snapchat—which I hate? I never heard any of my other friends mention it. Even Cassie hadn’t known about it. I’m entering uncharted territory. Can it be possible that, for once, I’m ahead of the techno-geek curve?
It doesn’t take me long to figure out how to work Instagram. I scroll through the What’s Popular link, and by swiping my finger across the screen, I move to a picture. There’s also a Featured Video of the Weekend. I press that, and when the screen stops moving, the picture turns into a video. Interesting, I think, as I watch a guy dancing with his Dalmatian. Just like Brooke said, the video lasts less than thirty seconds but automatically repeats in a continual loop. I swipe at the screen again and another popular video starts ... a girl twerking. Skip! I quickly swipe the screen again because no one needs to be watching a girl, or anyone else for that matter, trying to imitate Miley Cyrus!
I type in the word horses in the search bubble. A bunch of different pictures pop onto the screen. There’s even a video of a woman walking her Friesian horse down the street in front of her house. It’s captioned “Walking my pet.” I click the little heart icon beneath the video because it’s really cute.
I continue scrolling down to see what else is posted that has to do with horses.
Icelandic horses running through a valley. Heart. Next.
A bay police horse in the barracks eating hay. Eh. Scroll.
A girl riding a cow and taking a jump. Heart. Next.
And then, I see it. A video that catches my eye. It’s a boy’s face. He has dark brown hair, so dark it’s almost black. It dips down, just a little, over his forehead and is hidden by a cowboy hat. He has big almond-shaped chocolate eyes and a perfect doll-shaped mouth that, when he smiles, makes his eyes crinkle.
He’s Adorable with a capital A. As in Niall adorable. Or, in this case, A is for Aiden.
That’s his name. Aiden Quinn. He’s sitting in his backyard on a hay bale. Behind him, there’s a black and white paint horse. Aiden glances over his shoulder and says, “What’re you doing back there, Dexter?” Then the horse, a big chestnut with a pretty black mane, steals the cowboy hat and trots away. The look on Aiden’s face is priceless, and his eyes just seem to sparkle.
Automatically, the video starts again and I watch it. Still adorable the second time around. I automatically hit the icon to like the video. 5,890 people have already liked it. Say what? Well, a
dd one more LIKE to that count, I think to myself. Then, without hesitation, I hit the FOLLOW button. It’s official. Aiden Quinn is the first person on social media that I actually follow. I feel like we’ve just entered into an unspoken relationship: I’m willing to follow him as long as he’s willing to keep looking so completely adorable and post funny videos.
That’s when I notice another number ... the number of other people following Aiden (we’re on a first-name basis now, I figure): 3,133. Over three thousand people are following him. My heart drops a little. Clearly I’m not alone in discovering him. I begin to scroll through his other videos, pausing just long enough to watch each one ... not once or twice but three times and more. I watch Aiden at home having supper, his horse poking its head through the kitchen window and his mom screaming in fright. Aiden playing with his lasso until his older brother rushes him from behind and knocks him into a pile of loose hay. Aiden barrel racing with another horse, a chestnut with a white brand on its neck.
He looks to be about my age, maybe a little bit older. And I like the way he talks. He doesn’t have a twang or anything. And he’s funny. Really funny. But the best part of all is that he loves horses, perhaps as much as I do, if that’s even humanly possible.
And, as my birthday begins to wind down to an end, I snuggle into my bed with my new iPhone clutched in my hands knowing that I’ve finally, truly fallen in love. The only problem is that, apparently, 3,133 other people are in line ahead of me. Still, I’m not going to accept being forever known as #3,134, a faceless unknown number that’s following an Instagram account. No, I think, as sleep begins to overtake me. I want to be known as Cat, the future girlfriend of Aiden Quinn. Maybe even his future wife?
CHAPTER FOUR
Quadrupled!
I hate Spanish class.
It just stinks. And the only thing worse than Spanish class is my Spanish teacher, Mrs. Strayer. She insists on calling me Caterina because it’s the Spanish version of my name. I don’t understand why she can’t just call me Cat. Don’t Spanish people have nicknames?
Mrs. Strayer also has a weird thing about germs. If someone has a cut or open sore, she immediately sends them to the hallway to wait while she writes a pass to go to the nurse. Then she sprays Lysol on the place where the victim was seated and dims the lights because, as she tells it, “Germs love the bright light.”
One day, I told my mom about this weird phobia that Mrs. Strayer has and, sure enough, Mom shook her head, then reached for her cell phone. She’s a Googler. If anyone raises a question or makes a statement that has the slightest possibility of not being true, she’s on it, like a monkey on a banana. Alex always rolls his eyes and threatens me when I mention something dumb that might trigger her compulsion to research stupid things.
“Why’d you feed the monkey?” he whispers whenever I challenge Mom about some weird random fact.
At school today, I got hurt during gym. We were playing volleyball and Leslie Murphy kicked the ball right into my ankle, only the ball missed and her shoe didn’t, and she made me fall and scrape my knees. I’m positive Leslie did it on purpose since everyone knows you don’t kick volleyballs. The good news is that I got to sit out the rest of the period while lounging on the bleachers and playing on my iPhone.
Now, however, I’m sitting at my desk in the worst Spanish class ever. To make time pass faster, I scroll through my iPhone to see if Aiden Quinn uploaded any new videos. When I see that he hasn’t, I watch his old ones, letting them loop over and over again. I’ve been obsessing over him for a week now and I know most of his videos by heart. But they are still just as good.
I must have sighed as I thought about Aiden being the most adorable boy on the planet, because I sense a heavy silence fall over the room. When I look up, people are staring at me and I worry that my obsession with the videos has been discovered.
That’s when I realize that Mrs. Strayer is staring at me, too, her eyes bulging out of her head and her hands on her hips. She looks like she’s ready to lose it.
“What. Is. That?”
It takes me a moment to realize that she is talking to me. As she stares daggers at me, I realize I’m doomed.
I also realize that I have only two choices: honesty versus playing dumb. I quickly decide that the former would mean no smartphone for the rest of the day (and that would definitely be bad) while the latter, playing dumb, might buy me some time.
“I’m sorry,” I say innocently. “What?”
She lifts her arm and points at me, only she’s not pointing at my phone, but my leg. “Is that blood?” she questions.
I breathe a sigh of relief. She didn’t catch me scrolling through the videos. She’s more concerned about the blood. “A volleyball accident,” I explain, shifting my weight so that my knees are more visible to her. At the same time, I manage to slip the phone into my book bag so its safety is ensured.
She flings her arm toward the door. “Wait outside!”
Quickly I gather all of my things. I know the routine. Once sent to the nurse from Strayer’s class, I won’t be able to return until the next day. I stand in the doorway, half in and half out of the classroom as she writes the pass, hands it to Tommy Linn to bring to me, and then reaches for the light switch to darken the room. Her standard quest against germs spreading.
I can’t help myself. The words just blurt out of my mouth. “You do know germs breed faster in the dark, don’t you?”
There is a collective gasp from the rest of the students and every pair of eyes turn to look at Ms. Strayer. If she looked like she might have exploded beforehand, I sense the completion of that act is upon us. She’s clenching her teeth and her hands are curled into fists as she stares at me before reaching for the can of Lysol that sits on her desk.
“Are you trying to be smart with me, Cat Lansing?”
Well, that’s a dumb question. Isn’t that the entire purpose of school, exams, and grades? To get smarter? Wisely, I decide to keep my mouth shut and not say what I’m thinking. Instead, I shrug. “My mom and I googled it. I just thought you would want to know.”
Her face turns a bright shade of red, as if it’s about to explode. She points to the door and, through gritted teeth, says, “Get. Out!” Her voice is eerie in that scary movie kind of way.
“Geez,” I mumble under my breath while snatching the pass from Tommy. I’ve never been yelled at by a teacher before today. It stings a little, especially since I’m a straight-A student. Now I’m destined to receive a B in Strayer’s class, and I’m not sure how I will explain that to Mom. If I tell her the truth, she will go into crazy researcher mode, googling, then printing out page after page of documents supporting the germs breeding in the dark theory, and demanding a meeting with my teacher. She’s good for that, a true specialist in ensuring that justice and truth prevails at all times and at any cost. Sometimes it’s great to have an overly protective mom. Just not when I’m in eighth grade.
Since I know I’m not headed back to Strayer’s class anytime soon, I pull my phone out of my pocket. My back is to the security camera when I slip into the bathroom, making my way toward the last stall then locking myself inside. A few taps at the screen and I’m staring into the chocolate brown eyes of my new idol: Aiden Quinn. I love his profile picture, a sepia tone that makes him look hunky. His dark hair is standing up, the ends curling just enough so that he looks super-hot.
Clutching the phone to my chest, I shut my eyes. “You will be mine. Oh yes, you will,” I whisper to myself.
I check his social media, disappointed that he hasn’t posted anything today. Of course, his last Tweet said that he was in school (on the bus; one of the other eighth graders showed me how to find people on Twitter). While I’m not certain where he lives, I’m fairly certain it’s out West somewhere. So far, my cyber-searches haven’t revealed his exact location. But I know it’s only a matter of time. With enough determination, Google will never let me down.
Bored, I slip out of the bathroom and head t
oward the stairs. I might as well get this over with, I figure, as I take the steps two at a time. This isn’t my first visit to the nurse’s office, and since I still have Strayer for the rest of the year, it probably won’t be my last. Nurse Hailey knows the routine.
“Hey there, Cat!” She smiles at me as if she’s expecting me. “Let me guess ...” She glances at the clock and laughs. “Spanish class?”
I jump onto the swirly chair that’s by the nurse’s file cabinet and start to spin. When I first arrived at middle school, I made certain to get on good terms with Nurse Hailey. Alex gave me that tip. Sometimes he can be helpful like that.
“Yeah.”
“What’re you here for today?”
“Scraped knees from gym,” I answer, lifting my leg and showing it to her. “It doesn’t even hurt.”
She brings over some hydrogen peroxide to wash the scrapes and then covers them with a plain beige bandage. At home, Mom has an assortment of bandages: Sponge Bob, Mickey Mouse, Disney Princesses, and Hello Kitty. Personally, I’d have selected Band-Aids with sock monkeys on them, if I had the choice. I’m not even sure if they make them. But they should.
“Sit down and relax,” she instructs me.
The words have no sooner left her mouth when my phone vibrates in my back pocket. Nurse Hailey’s busy looking for something in her cabinet so I swivel my chair, just enough so she can’t see me pulling out my phone and checking my messages. It’s from Cassie, which is surprising: I haven’t seen or heard much from her since my birthday last week.
Sometimes I forget that Cassie goes to a different school. I don’t know why because she used to go to a Catholic school. Thank God my mom didn’t make me attend that school. She had wanted to send Alex there; he had what she called “anger issues” (and yes, she actually used to say it while making quotation marks with her fingers). If he had gone, I’d never have escaped the world of polyester school uniforms, communion, and religion classes.
Fortunately that never happened which is good because uniforms and daily mass are not for me, no way. I’d rather wear my purple All-Stars sneakers, jeans, and sock monkey T-shirts to school, thank you very much. No white starched shirts, stiff plaid skirts, and uncomfortable Mary Jane shoes for me.