YA Novel Chapter 3 | 17 minute read

Feb 13, 2022

This is a continuing story, if you missed the first two chapters, you are probably going to want to go back to the GIRL, UNPLUGGED section of the Story Hoarder Substack page to read the chapters you may have missed. GIRL, UNPLUGGED is a speculative fiction story for a young adult audience (or young adult book fan, I know we aren’t all still “young adult” by definition, after all).

If you are a short story lover, don’t worry, your next Story Hoarder short fiction fix is coming this Friday!

This is approximately a 17 minute read.

CHAPTER 3: Worlds Collide

Posted to TALIA’S TALES
Oct 6 @ 8:53AM

With all the craziness in my life this week, I almost forgot that it was FANFIC FRIDAY! So sorry my peeps. There will be no new WOLF NIGHTS or BARISTA BOYS content from me today, but I thought I’d ask you for some TALIA’S TALES fanfic instead.

THE SETTING: a boat ride followed by a trip to a museum with lunch in the park.
THE PLAYERS: an artist and this blogger (that’s right — ME!)
THE PLOT: TBD
NOTES: the blogger has a huge crush on the artist.
THE QUESTION: What will she do about it?

You write your fanfic, and we’ll find out how close you come to the reality.

Stay tuned… we’re about to find out quite a bit about our Talia today!
~Talia
#Fanficfriday #inspireme #cheatingonlife #tellmewhattodo

The Staten Island Ferry terminal is a large waiting space designed with tourists in mind. The bright blue floors are colored that way so the tourists don’t feel cheated by the murky waters they are about to sail over. To add to the deception, there are two giant aquariums filled with gorgeous fish that could never survive in any waters surrounding our island. The aquariums are where our classes typically gather at the beginning of our trips, so I was surprised (and super nervous) when Murph chose a seat for us on the benches furthest from them.
Mrs. Krimble was responsible for all eleven students on the trip to the New School Museum, but only two of them spent the previous afternoon with her in detention. She found us as if she had placed homing beacons on us. "So, did either of you read the coverage of that solar storm yesterday?" Her extreme sincerity and curiosity broke my heart.
"Nah, miss." I think Murph called all of his female teachers "miss" whether or not they were married. "If you will recall, I had an assignment to do. I was sketching," he said tapping the messenger bag I never saw him without.
"Of course." She sounded disappointed. Then she laughed, adding, "Guess I should have seen that one coming.”
She turned and looked at me, "What about you, Natalie? Did you see the article?"
“A little bit of it,” I confessed, hoping Murph wouldn't think any less of me. He raised his eyebrows.
"And?" Mrs. Krimble asked.
I said, "I didn't get the big deal." The minute the words left my mouth I regretted it. Murph's eyes grew wide as he bit his bottom lip, and Mrs. Krimble's entire posture changed. I had done it. She was about to lunge on a teachable moment. I had ruined everything. Nice job, idiot! my inner voice roared as Murph and I both turned our full attention to Mrs. Krimble's lesson on the sun. "First you have to understand how powerful the sun is.” As she turned to point out through the window to the powerful beast in the sky, I stole a glance at Murph, who was looking back at me.
I hadn't ruined everything. He smiled, took a quick picture with his phone and then, very naturally, placed his hand on top of mine. So, to be honest with you, even after fifteen minutes of Mrs. K's explaining what the big deal was with the damn article, I still couldn't tell you the significance of that solar storm. I was too busy regulating my own breathing and ensuring that the voice in my head screaming, That's his hand holding my hand! Ohmygosh, ohmygosh, ohmygosh! stayed in my head screaming and didn't express itself out loud.

On the ferry, Mrs. Krimble instructed our class that we were to sit together on the outer benches of the "tourist side" of the boat – it had a nicer view, and, on a weekday morning during the school year, wasn’t so mobbed that you couldn’t appreciate it. A large portion of our class was distracted by the morning aroma of the baked goods and coffee coming from the ferry's concession stand, so Mrs. K was forced to round up the stragglers. Murph pulled out his sketchbook and began sketching everything he saw. I sat next to him and shared a quick picture of the view from the boat to my Tumblr page. I texted Amy too, but she was in class by that time. I knew not to expect an immediate response. She just had her own phone-related detention last week thanks to my need for constant connection with her. We agreed to free period communications only for at least a month after that.
The class settled into the seats next to us. That’s when it became obvious that Mrs. K had been telling some of the other kids about the solar storm as she escorted them to their seats. A couple of them were legitimately interested. I couldn’t believe it. Stella Malroney asked a lot of questions, but she is so polite that might have just been for Mrs. K’s sake rather than her own curiosity. Terrell Falcon, on the other hand, seemed genuinely interested. He asked how anyone could actually look at the sun – which I was sort of happy he asked – and what a storm was like on the sun. Mrs. Krimble went on and on about the various instruments used so no one actually looked directly at the sun. And then she began to explain what a solar storm was, interjecting many times that she wished we were in the classroom where she had pictures and videos of such events.
"What about the museum, Mrs. Krimble? Won't they have videos?" Stella asked in her perfect, aren't I so clever? voice. I don't mean to hate on Stella. She is, hands-down, the sweetest person I have ever met. Let me explain it to you this way: Have you ever had sweet potato marshmallow casserole? Just in case you haven't, let me highlight the major ingredients: sweet potatoes, marshmallows, sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, butter and – oh yeah – cinnamon sugar. This is a polarizing dish in my family. Some people love it, others can't tolerate the sweetness. Stella Malroney is Staten Island Prep's very own sweet potato marshmallow casserole. I don't believe she has ever had any malicious intentions and I don't even think she was attempting to kiss up to Mrs. Krimble, she's just sweet, sweet Stella.
"Oh yes, Stella, I'm looking forward to what they have to say about yesterday's event and how it will affect us." Mrs. Krimble was beaming, as if a solar storm had burst within her.
"Whoa, Miss K." Rainbow Diaz, who I didn't even think was listening, came into the discussion from somewhere out of left field, "affect us how? Am I going to get burnt out here?"
Colin Savoy and Russ Sandberg guffawed in unison, as if they knew any better. I rolled my eyes at them and gave Rainbow a small smile. She returned the gesture with a shrug, whispering, “What do I know?”
I laughed. I always liked Rainbow. She was the type of person I didn’t feel uncomfortable around. I never felt like she was judging me. She asked questions bravely and never apologized for who she was. In that way, she reminded me a lot of Amy. I guess it was just a matter of circumstance that we hadn’t become closer in the past few years.
Who am I kidding? It was no coincidence. I made no effort to talk to her.
Mrs. Krimble laughed, "No, Rainbow, you'll be fine. I meant how the storm will affect our planet."
With this extremely vague response and the appearance of Lady Liberty, Mrs. Krimble lost her audience. It doesn't matter that we all live right across the water from the Statue of Liberty – we all become just as bad as the tourists most of us loathe. The cameras come out, and the selfie poses run amok. I saw a wedding proposal happen at exactly this part of the ferry ride one year when my parents took me and Rog on one of our “city adventures” to play tourist and see all the Christmas décor and the big tree at Rockefeller Center. Reminiscing about the more romantic tendency of this locale, I glanced over at Murph and caught him looking at me. He grabbed some colored pencils from his bag and started to feverishly scratch at a page.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
His head was down, focused on the book before him. Without stopping his shading he said, "I'm making my palette."
"Oh," I said. I wanted to kick myself for not having more to say. If we were texting, or if I were writing online, I could come up with something, but this was different, and difficult. I looked around and saw everyone else occupied with their views, their pictures, and their phones. I took out my phone and started typing.
From the corner of my eye, I noticed Murph’s attention turn to me, "What're you doing? You can't have service,” he said. I did have service. I had just received an “off hours” thumbs up from Amy (I guess she was bending our “no texting during classes” rule for today’s “event”), but that wasn’t really the point. Can’t a girl do stuff on her phone without an interrogation? "Doesn't mean I can't type something,” I said, “this phone does more than connect to the Internet.” Which was true, even if you’d never know that based on my typical usage.
"I guess so." He went back to his book. It looked like I wasn't the only conversationally challenged one in this pairing.

Mrs. Krimble directed us out of the ferry terminal by shouting various commands as she ran up and down the sides of the group ensuring that we stayed together. She herded the eleven of us like a metropolitan shepherd. It was masterful work. Personally, I wasn't too worried about getting lost because Murph hadn't let go of my hand since hearing the "All ashore!" call from the ferry workers. I wasn't about to make the first move.
We were loaded into the ancient and sensory-assaulting subway station under the ferry terminal. There’s a newer one outside the ferry terminal a bit, but since Hurricane Imelda hit it had to be closed for renovations. The older station is a nightmare, even on pleasant days. The first design flaw was in the tile color choice for the walls: white. They are never actually white so, the second you see them all around you, you feel like you’re filthy. I wondered what Murph, a connoisseur of color, thought about when he saw them. Our clutched hands began to get clammy. Murph uncurled his fingers and cascaded them back down one by one probably in some effort to air them out. I knew this was a lost cause. Mom and dad used to make me and Rog hold hands when standing on subway platforms. This was, and shall always be, torture. The air underground New York is hot, muggy, and almost hard to breathe in. I was grateful it wasn’t summer, but the longer we waited for the train to arrive, the hotter it got. I was beginning to feel bad that I hadn’t let go of Murph’s hand sooner, but letting go all of a sudden seemed like the wrong message to send. What does that look like? What would that mean to him? I started to imagine my actions: release hand and then — what? I mean, obviously, the first thing I’d want to do would be to wipe the subway sludge off my palms and onto my jeans, but how would that look? I began to feel beads of sweat welling up on my brow from the stress of it all when I was saved by the ultimate insanity of the station: the sound.
The New York City subway system has almost 40 different lines connecting four of the boroughs (Staten Island is deemed “the forgotten borough” for a reason, we’re not even included in the train system!). I know one — the 1 train. The station under the ferry is the first — or, if you are traveling downtown, the last — stop on the subway line. In the new station you know that because the conductor tells you so. In this old station everything tells you so, most notably the sound the train makes when pulling into the station. It’s a sound so physically painful it must harken the end of the line, if not, you’d be sure it heralded the end times. The newer station was built so that the subway platform where passengers get on and off the train is separate from the area where the train turns. The old station, on the other hand put the platform in the middle of the arcing tracks.Trains are loud, that’s true throughout the city, but turning trains? They make catastrophic-level sounds. As our train barreled toward us with it’s familiar logo of white number 1 inside a red circle, it carried it’s typical train-levels of sound, but the second it hit that first curve, Murph yelled, dropped my hand and clutched his ears. I quickly wiped my hand on my jeans before doing the same.
“I always forget about that!” Murph screamed into my face. “Why does it have to be so loud?” His efforts to continue a conversation in that din was amusing to me. I looked around to the rest of our class and saw most of them wearing headphones they didn’t have on before. Smart, I thought. When the train stopped, I pointed over to our headphone-wearing classmates stepping out of the way of the crowds rushing out of the train. “Next time we should follow the crowd,” I said.
“Let’s!” he said, waving his hand in a grand gesture signaling me to get on the train before him.
Once the train started moving, Murph was taking pictures left and right – of the subway stations we passed, of a group of students, of me, and of weird little things like our hands holding the pole. Brenda McNeil was the first to say something about it, "Hey Murph," she yelled while snapping her gum, "this your first time on the subway or something?"
"Funny Brenda," he said. "Of course I wouldn't expect you to find the beauty in the mundane."
She rolled her eyes. "Whadda ya mean?" she asked flipping her raven-black, pin-straight ponytail back over her shoulder.
"Cause it's hard enough for you to find it in the mirror!" He pointed his camera at her face and clicked while laughing.
I gasped. Brenda was gorgeous. Then Brenda laughed and biffed him on the head. "And people wonder why I date your cousin instead of you! You are such a dork." I didn’t want to say anything, but I couldn’t imagine anyone wondering that at all. It was pretty well-known that Murph is not Brenda’s type at all. It’s the only reason I didn’t feel threatened by their banter. At the very least, he’s the wrong gender!
She looked at me, "He's a smart ass, Turner, you sure you can't do any better?"
I knew she was joking, but how do you answer a question like that? This girl was so much cooler than I was. Her perfect make-up. Her stylized clothing. Her comfort with, and comprehension of, her sexuality. I was pretty sure we didn’t even speak the same language.
If I assumed her question was rhetorical and let it sit unanswered, then I looked like I'd been struck dumb. If I defended my position with Murph, then I was publicly admitting my affection for him. Was I ready to do that when I hadn't even really let him in on my terribly held secret? If I agreed with her, then I was pretty sure I’d be insulting Murph even though Brenda's original comment was most likely meant only as a joke.
In the end, as my mind scrambled for a response, Murph said, "She has no choice in partners on this trip." Then he pulled me closer to his side adding, "Turner is the subject of my latest piece!" I could tell these two were used to their sibling-like banter. “It’s on Miss K’s orders, anyway,” he said, raising his voice to pull Mrs. Krimble out of her focus on some museum brochure, “Isn’t that right, Miss K?”
“Huh?” she said. “Oh… yes. Your model.”
Brenda looked me up and down and said, "Well Turner, you make sure you tell us all the tale on your Tumblr page when he's finished with you. Spread the good word about our budding artist."
"That's a great idea," Murph said. And it was, but I was shocked that Brenda was familiar enough with my page to mention it.
"I would love to be one of Talia’s Tales," Murph said with a smile.
I knew both Brenda and Murph followed my page – everyone did – but I didn't think anyone was really following it, you know what I mean? I had always imagined that my posts were those things that everyone but Amy scrolled by in their feed. Maybe they clicked a “like” or reblogged a post here and there, but I doubted they connected the content with the creator. Amy gave me hearts, reblogged, and commented every time I wrote, but I had been sure that was it from the people in my “real life”. I never thought anyone else pictured me when interacting with the stuff I posted. I was sure all the people who participated on my page consisted of the endless, faceless fans from the depths of the anonymous Internet. I knew them as avatars and usernames, not as real human beings. I functioned so fluidly and freely on the web because I was sure I was perceived the same way. An awkward wave of pride and insecurity washed over me as my previous writings flashed through my mind.
And then it hit me — didn't Murph realize he was one of the main focuses of Talia’s Tales? I’d written countless poems about my unrequited love for Murph – I wondered, Did I ever mention his name? I smiled back at him, sure my secret crush was not a secret at all and maybe this whole trip was just a part of game he was playing with me. Maybe Brenda was in on it. I needed Amy to be here to assess the situation. I needed her to tell me that I was being paranoid, or that I needed to blow him off. I needed her in this scene with me, Murph and Brenda, to tell me what was really going on because I was about to let everything unravel, or believe that there was nothing there to unravel. I stared at my feet and listened to the clacking of the train tracks beneath us. I allowed myself to fall into the rhythm of the subway, to meditate within the thunder and pretend no one else was there.
But that wasn't meant to be, because Princess Jones, a girl in my science class that I have never talked to even though we have been in school together since the fifth grade, overheard everything. "Wait a second.” She tugged on my left shoulder so I was facing her. “You're Talia’s Tales?"
I nodded, wondering why she had to be so physical about it.
"I follow you!" she was surprised. I was not. Like I said, everyone followed me. I followed everyone else back. That's the way it was on tumblr, wasn't it? "You're funny, girl," she added.
"Thanks," I replied with a smile, unsure of what else I was supposed to do. Was I now expected to be funny on demand? – because that definitely wasn't going to happen. My written me and my real-life me were two totally different people.
Princess was already turning to other classmates on the train and spreading the word. She was behaving like I was some sort of celebrity. I watched as my classmates leaned over each other's shoulders nodding and smiling to each other making comments here and there. I even heard a couple of Wow’s. Only Rainbow Diaz looked unsurprised. “Natalie’s blog has always been my favorite. I always thought using Talia was so clever!”
"Now you're famous," Murph said in my ear, "and every guy is jealous of me. Too bad they didn't know how cool you were already."
Everyone else in the train disappeared. My insides melted and I wanted to savor this moment for all the juicy emotions it offered up. How could I translate all of this into the written word? How could I express my heart melting without using the cliche of "my heart melted", because, let's be honest, that's been done too much.
And just when a moment of calmed teased its way into my psyche, a question rushed through: who does Murph think I am? Be Talia! Be Talia! Started swirling in my head, but I couldn’t reconcile it. Maybe Murph thought that’s who I was all the time and it’s not. I’m not. I mean, on one hand — yeah — of course I am Talia, but me, in the real world? No. I don’t know how to do that. That is my struggle. If I knew how to “be Talia” then all these people wouldn’t just be discovering that’s my blog, they would have known already. Princess wouldn’t feel the need to tell me I’m funny because we would have been laughing, together, for years. Their shock and surprise was not a compliment, it was a symptom of my inability to be as cool as my words were. I looked at Murph smiling at me and wondered what was going to happen when he realized he was on this trip with Natalie, not Talia.
I smiled. Now that everyone noticed me I could no longer pretend I was alone. I lifted the veil covering the rest of the occupants in the train and nodded back to them terrified of what came next. I knew Amy would have been excited and amazed. She would have known how to use this moment to make connections. Amy knew how to make me a part of the world. She’s the one who made my tumblr page in the first place.
I used to write in notebooks. For me. Maybe a little bit for her… Amy was the only one I would show my stories to. She borrowed my books one night — she said she wanted to finish reading my stories before going to bed. Instead she typed up my poems and stories as all separate posts on a newly created tumblr page called "Talia’s Tales.” When she showed me, I had no idea what to do with it, I started by adding stuff as a Barista Boys fangirl. After a little while I got into the fanfic, then — before I knew it — I started posting more of my own stuff. It was never planned. And I wasn't expecting anyone in my real life – besides Amy – to know about it. Now it seems that they did. Somehow, everyone in my class was a fan of me. The thought was laughable.

We walked three blocks from the subway station to the New York City New School Museum, our destination for the day. Murph squeezed my hand and said, quietly, “I can never get used to this sight.” I guess I had because I hadn’t thought twice about it until he said that. It wasn’t a huge building, but it was striking. The building was covered in some sort of mirrored glass which reflected us, a bit of the sky and busy street in front of the large apartment buildings behind us. Since it was built on the edge of Central Park it looked like it was a doorway to a mysterious urban landscape in the middle of all the green.
I started composing a blog post all about the vision before me — how it made me feel, what someone might think about it if they didn’t know what the building was, about what it must look like at night. I even snapped a picture of it on my phone to upload with the post. Aside from the natural awesomeness I expected from being with Murph — my Captain Distraction — it was becoming clear that hanging out with a visual artist had its perks all their own. I wanted Murph to know I recognized this. I wanted to share all the new observations I was making thanks to him. Here’s what I came up with, “yeah. it’s cool.” And — yeah — I left it lowercase for a reason. That. Was. Weak. I knew it the moment the words left my mouth, but as if to underscore its pathetic-ness, Murph let go of my hand saying, “Sorry. I need to take a couple of pics. D’ya mind?”
I shook my head. Of course I didn’t mind. I understood. I fought the tears that welled in my eyes as he stepped away from the tiny crowd our class made in the front door of the museum since Mrs. Krimble said we needed to wait outside the building for a couple of minutes. I stepped away in the opposite direction and dove into the sweet abyss in my palm.
After posting my thoughts about the museum along with the picture, I scrolled through my feed. My fan fic post on my blog was more popular than I expected. It already had 232 reposts, 459 likes and 42 comments. The first was from Amy, of course. “Lol. This is perfect! I’m working on my answer, but you know me — notebook first!” I wiped a traitorous tear from my eye. Amy’s story would be great, I had no doubt about that, but the disappointing reality would play itself out and be reported back to her long before I ever saw it. She took forever to write things. She wrote everything by hand first, then, if necessary, she would type it. Not me — fingers to the keys — from my brain to the web, stuck forever, no turning back. I very rarely made edits after posting. I loved the purity of my words caught as I felt them. Don’t get me wrong, I thought about my stuff long before I wrote them (I can’t blog through every single class, after all), so there was a little mental revision from time to time, but nothing like the way Amy wrote. I texted her, “You know you could help me out if you could just write faster!” adding an eye rolling emoticon with it.
I didn’t wait for a response. I went back to the other comments. Something I came to regret, very quickly. Most of the initial comments were of the “good luck” nature, some promised epic tales to come, but a wave of very recent comments struck me cold.
“I think he likes you too, Nat.” ~stellar98
“Y’all see how he looks at her?” ~2morrowzqueen
“Murph’s got more than sketches on his mind! Lmao!!” ~b@tt3rUp
“I’m not telling him about this, but I can’t wait ’till he sees it when he does his nightly check-in to his girl’s blog!” ~mickeybee
My eyes grew wide and my stomach lurched inside. The time stamps for all of these were in the last five minutes. I looked up at all of my classmates with their heads down feverishly typing and giggling. I was looking at people write comments on my blog. I could see their faces, they only had to turn their heads to look back at me.
ONE OF THEM WROTE MY NAME ON THE BLOG! The screams inside my head were becoming corporeal and trying to claw their way out of me.
“Matthew! Natalie!” Mrs. Krimble called out the names of the only two stragglers, the two everyone was talking about. It was all about Murph and Natalie right now. No escaping it. No escaping my own mistake — my typing without thinking, my sharing with the “faceless” Internet, my beautiful bubble of delusion being popped right in my face.

Posted to TALIA’S TALES
Oct 6 @ 10:11AM

THIS MUSEUM

Okay peeps. It’s not like I’ve never seen a mirrored building before. It’s not even like I’ve never seen this building before. It’s just that I never noticed it before. As we approached this morning I swear I wasn’t even looking at it. It had become ordinary to me, ignorable. Then this guy that’s here with me (he is an artist) is stopped in his tracks, basically awestruck over the vision.

Someone does something like that and you have to ask yourself why… What does he see that’s so interesting?

I’m looking at a box, that’s really all it is, almost a perfect cube of construction, but now I see so much more. I’ve added a picture for you, so you can join me in this reflection. Look closely, think deeply, wonder at the vision.

Inside that box are ideas, relics of the past, and hopes for the future. This place is defined by its contents, but seems to be betrayed by its context. From out here we see none of what its about. We see reflections of ourselves and the city around us. As Central Park surrounds it, it looks like it doesn’t belong at all.

Is this what my artist-friend sees? Is this what he wonders at? Maybe I’ll ask him. Or maybe I’ll just ask you… what do you see?

~Talia
#NYC #newschoolmuseum #centralpark #perspective

First, thank you for reading this part of my novel GIRL, UNPLUGGED. A new chapter will be posted on Wednesday, are you looking forward to it? A new short story will be back on Friday. Are you looking more forward to one over the other? Head to the comments to let me know and chat it up.