Katie Friedman Gives Up Texting! (8 page)

I rolled my eyes, mainly because I knew he liked it when I did. We ate quietly for another minute, then I whispered, “Nareem and I broke up.”

Charlie Joe dropped his fork. “Huh? When?”

“Over the weekend.”

“That's crazy,” Charlie Joe said. “What about the concert? And the backstage passes and meeting Jane?”

I lowered my voice even further. “I sent Nareem a text that I meant to send to you. It was awful. He forgave me, because he's an amazing person. But we're not going out anymore.”

“Oh, wow.” Charlie Joe whistled. “Holy moly. Now I get the whole text thing.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “I'm really sorry.”

“It's okay,” I said. “It had to happen. Just not this way.” I pointed at his phone. “So you go ahead and send all the texts you want. I'm taking a break.”

“Got it,” Charlie Joe said. Then, after a second, he asked, “Do you mind if I ask you what was in the text you sent to Nareem that you were supposed to send to me?”

“Go put on a pair of matching socks,” I answered.

 

19

HALLWAY CONVERSATION

I needed to tell two other people
about my plan.

Nareem was first. I found him after lunch, walking to Social Studies alone. I slid up alongside him.

“Can I talk to you for a second?”

He didn't look up. “Yes.”

“I wanted you to know something. I am giving up texting. I am giving up all that stuff. It's horrible. It's scary. People write things they don't mean and would never say. I need to change—it took hurting you like this to realize that. I wanted to tell you face-to-face.”

Nareem nodded. “Good for you. You are following Jane's advice. Connect.” Then he started walking a little faster, just to get away from me, I think. “I hope you will connect very well with your next boyfriend.”

I hurried to catch up to him. “Nareem, stop.”

He stopped.

“The last thing I would ever want to do was to make you unhappy,” I told him. “You're seriously the best person I know.”

“It is not necessarily always a good thing, being such a good person,” Nareem said. “People don't necessarily want good people as their boyfriends. Perhaps I should try to be a bit less good.”

“No!”

He finally looked at me. I suddenly felt embarrassed, and had to turn away.

“So, is this real?” he asked me. “You are giving up texting?”

“And everything else,” I said. “I'm giving up my whole phone for a week.”

“Well, I will be curious to see how it works out,” Nareem said. “There are many times during the day we need our phones for important things, like getting in touch with our parents.”

I'd already thought of that, before deciding not to think about that. “I'll figure out another way,” I said.

“Well, good luck.”

We arrived at his classroom. “Oh, one other thing,” Nareem said. “I think it's best if we don't talk to each other for a while.”

That felt like a punch to the stomach. A punch that I deserved. “Okay,” I said.

He gave me a sad smile and walked into the room. I started to reach into my backpack to see if anyone had texted me, stopped myself, and went to class.

 

20

TO BAND OR NOT TO BAND

I found Becca at recess,
playing basketball with the boys as usual. I watched her play for about five minutes, then waved and got her attention.

“I need to talk to you.”

She ran by. “Can it wait?” she asked. “We're up 12–9.”

“It's important.”

“Guys! Sub!” she yelled, then came over. “What's up? Is this about the other night?”

We hadn't really talked about the whole songwriting thing since she made it clear she wasn't into it. And it was killing me not to tell her about my visit to Jane's studio, but I'd promised Jane I wouldn't. So instead I said, “Well, no, but since you brought it up, I should tell you that I've actually started writing a song.”

“That's awesome!”

“It'd be more awesome if you wrote it with me,” I added. I'm not really sure why I said that. I think I was just scared at the idea of writing by myself.

Becca wiped some sweat from her forehead. “Katie, being in a band with you is fun, it really is, but I'm not as into being a musician as you. I'm just not, sorry. I'm not doing it to get famous. It's just supposed to be a fun way to hang out together.”

“I'm not doing it to get famous, either, Bec,” I said, defensively.

“Okay, sorry, forget it,” Becca said. “And I'm sorry if you're mad about band practice.”

“What about band practice?”

“I told you I couldn't rehearse again until Friday night.”

Now I
was
mad. “Wait, what? Friday night? That's the night before the talent show? What about Wednesday? We practice every Wednesday!”

“I have a playoff game,” Becca said. “Like I told you.”

“No, you didn't tell me,” I said, getting more annoyed.

Becca frowned. “I did. Didn't you get my text?”

Ah, so
that
was it. “No.” I pulled Becca over to the jungle gym and took a deep breath. “Actually, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. I'm not using my cell phone anymore.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm not using my phone. At all! I gave it up.”

Becca shook her head. “I don't understand. That doesn't make any sense. Why would you do that?”

“I was getting addicted to it, and I just felt like it was taking over my life.”

Becca took out her own phone and stared down at it. “I guess I know what you mean.” Then she read a text, laughed, and sent a quick reply. “Oops,” she said, looking up at me. “Sorry.”

“No, it's fine,” I said. I wasn't ready to ask my friends to give up their phones, too. Mainly because I had no idea how I was going to get them to do it.

Becca looked out onto the basketball court. She really wanted to go back in, I could tell.

“So anyway, that's it,” I said. “Go ahead back to your game. I'm bummed out about the rehearsal thing, but we'll just have to deal with it.”

“It's just a talent show, Katie,” Becca said. “It's not a TV show.”

She ran back onto the court. As I watched her play, I realized that she was happiest with a ball in her hand, kind of like the way I was happiest with a guitar in my hand. She was in the band because she was my friend, not because she wanted to write songs and change the world.

I suddenly felt selfish that I was trying to force her and the rest of the band to be more like me. It was totally fine to just play famous songs. Lots of bands do. Our band could, too.

I just wasn't sure I wanted to be a part of it.

 

21

ELIZA DECIDES TO SAVE HER BRAIN

So now I had to figure
out how to get ten of my friends to give up their phones for a week.

Good luck with
that
.

The first thing I did was make a list of the kids I was going to ask. I started with my band: Becca, Sammie, and Jackie. Then I added Charlie Joe, Hannah, Jake, Timmy, Phil, and Celia. I thought about Pete Milano, then crossed him off the list—too much trouble.

But how was I going to convince them? And who would be my tenth person?

I was thinking it over in the locker room after gym when Eliza Collins sashayed by, looking at herself in the mirror as usual.

“Hey, Eliza,” I said.

She barely glanced at me. “Do my shoulders look fat in this shirt?”

That gave me an idea.

I can't remember, but I might have mentioned that Eliza is the acknowledged great beauty of our school. And much as I might have wanted to, I couldn't argue with that assessment. She was gorgeous, no doubt about it. She was so pretty that she'd spent the previous summer modeling in Spain, and rumor had it she'd had lunch with Jonah Hill while he was shooting a movie there. So that made her officially personal-relationship-with-a-movie-star pretty.

Here's the not-so-secret secret about pretty girls in middle school: People tend to pay attention to them and do what they do. When the pretty girl starts playing volleyball at recess, other kids start playing volleyball at recess. When the pretty girl decides to join the walk against breast cancer, other kids decide to join the walk against breast cancer.

And when the pretty girl decides to give up her phone for a week, other kids will decide to give up their phones for a week.

“No, your shoulders don't look fat in that shirt,” I told her.

Right on cue, she pulled out her phone and fired off a text.

I glanced around. “You're not supposed to text in the locker room.”

“Who cares?”

Oh, to have the confidence of a gorgeous person.

“Eliza,” I asked her, “how many texts a day do you think you send?”

She didn't look up from her phone. “What?”

“How many texts a day do you send?”

She still didn't look up, but she frowned. “I don't know and I don't care. Why?”

“Because it could hurt your brain.”

She looked up in alarm. “WHAT?!”

Here's the more-secret secret about pretty girls in middle school: The only thing they ever really worry about is people thinking they're not smart. And they're right: Most of the regular-looking kids assume that the really good-looking kids can't be intelligent. I think because it's impossible to admit that attractive people can also be really smart. That would just be too unfair to take.

Which is where my idea came in.

“It's true,” I said. “Don't you remember the study that Ms. Kransky was talking about in class the other day?”

This was the great thing about my idea: I wasn't totally making it up. Ms. Kransky really had been talking about a study that reported on teenagers' increased usage of cell phones.

“What about it?” Eliza asked.

“Well, apparently kids who send more than one hundred text messages a day are burning brain cells at an alarming rate.”

This got her to actually stop looking at her phone. “Is that true?”

It wasn't, entirely, but I nodded anyway. “Not only that, it said that people are becoming so addicted to their phones that over 50 percent of today's middle school kids may become technically brain-dead by the age of thirty-five.”

Eliza's eyes bugged out of her head. “No way!”

This is the part where I should probably tell you that even though pretty girls worry a lot about other kids not thinking they're smart, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're all that smart in the first place.

I nodded gravely. “Way.”

Eliza immediately put her phone in her pocket like it had cooties.

“That's like, horrible!”

I suddenly felt a little guilty. But not that guilty. “I know. I feel like it's up to us to do something about it. Don't you?”

Eliza had returned to the mirror, but that didn't mean she wasn't listening. “Like what?”

I grabbed her hand conspiratorially. “I was thinking about giving up my cell phone for a week. Just to see if I could do it. But it would be even better if you did it, too! And if we got some other kids to do it with us! We could become famous as the kids who saved other kids from cell phone addiction and preserved people's brain cells!”

This is the last total generalization I'll make about pretty middle school girls, I swear: They all want to be famous, and think they probably will be, since they're already famous in middle school.

And Eliza was halfway there already, since she'd already modeled in Spain.

“How famous?” Eliza asked, already thinking about the possibilities.

“I bet we could get on TV,” I answered, thinking that would pretty much seal the deal.

But Eliza wasn't quite sold. “What about all my friends? How will they reach me? And what will we do at night and stuff?”

I was ready for that one. “Well, what's better than knowing someone is trying to text you, but them thinking you're too busy to text them back?”

I could see the wheels turning in Eliza's head. The idea of giving up her phone was frightening, but hopefully, becoming famous and having people desperately but unsuccessfully trying to reach you would more than make up for it.

Finally she turned to me. “Are you sure my shoulders don't look fat in this shirt?”

“Positive,” I nodded.

“Thank God,” Eliza said, taking a deep breath. She walked toward the locker room door, ready to resume her place at the head of the middle school food chain. I was beginning to think that our whole conversation had been for nothing, when she turned back and squinted at me.

“So you think that all we have to do is give up our phones for one week, and then we can use them for the rest of our lives, and our brain cells will be saved?”