GIRL, UNPLUGGED

YA Novel Chapter 8 | 12 Minute Read

This is Chapter 8 of a YA novel. To see where the story began, check out the GIRL, UNPLUGGED table of contents post, or head to the GIRL, UNPLUGGED section of the Story Hoarder Substack page to see all the chapters.

This chapter is a 12 minute read.

created by Nicole Rivera using CanvaPro

CHAPTER 8: Talia Talks

Hey Peeps, Are you all wondering why I haven’t given my two cents on the super-trending topic “where the heck did NYC go”? Well, the world is ending. Obviously. At least mine is. Am I missing out on tons of global conversations? Are you all in the dark too? Is everyone okay? Answer in the… I don’t know…. I miss you guys already. One last thing: Is it completely weird that I am crafting a mystical blog post in my head when there is no way that I can actually post it to the Internet? ~Talia #justwondering #impossiblementalpostings
Yep. I was losing my mind. It had been less than one hour without power and my brain hadn’t figured out that blogging was no longer happening. Or maybe it had figured it out and just refused to accept it. I don’t know. I almost always mentally drafted my posts, even if it was only in the few minutes it took me to load up the platform to write on, but what was the point of doing that when there was literally no way to post it? I wanted to connect with my peeps. I needed to blog about what was happening so I could process it. The whole reality around me wasn't sinking in, no wonder I was hallucinating blog posts in my head. It was like the power loss hadn’t reached its full potential because I haven’t blogged about it. I couldn't stop myself from pulling my phone out of my pocket to tap at the ineffective buttons, or swipe across the dead screen. It felt heavier than ever before, like I suddenly could feel that it was only a smashed together bunch of chips and plastic with glass and some metal. It had transformed into a thing, rather than being the familiar passageway to the universe it had always been. 
“You okay?” Rainbow asked. Her voice was soft and concerned. I wondered what my face must have looked like since she picked me, out of all the people here with us, to ask if I was okay. I didn’t want her attention. I didn’t know how to answer her. I didn’t feel okay. I felt like I was going crazy. I was blogging in my brain to absolutely no one. Would that sound weird? Was that something normal people did? Or was that yet another symptom of my overwhelming social ineptitude? Maybe Murph was right, maybe I did live “out there” – if that was true, what did that make me now? Was I dead?
“Alright,” Mrs. Krimble said, saving me from myself, and from having to answer Rainbow. “We’re going home. Now. Anyone who needs to go to the bathroom better go. We’ll walk downtown to the ferry if we have to and I don’t want to stop until we get there, got me?”
I adjusted my backpack straps and readied myself for the trip. I was ready to move five minutes ago. I clung to some tiny bit of faith that I could find a solution at home, where I was so used to connecting to the Internet, chatting with Amy, and hanging out with Rog, who made his own digital connections. Home held the solution. I was sure of it.
Let’s go! I thought. I hooked my thumbs into my backpack straps and bounced on my heels in anticipation of moving.
Dr. Smithe turned to Dr. Davies, “Actually, Rich, I really need to check on Donna. Maybe we should lock down.”
Yes! Yes! Lock the doors! LET’S GO! I saw Murph slowly closing up his sketchbook and tried to will him to go faster.
Dr. Davies shook his head. “I’m going to hang out a bit. You go. I want to go over our notes again. I’ll lock up when I go.”
K, bye Dr. D! Nice knowing ya! I bit my bottom lip in anticipation. I was sure I could have been halfway to Times Square if we had left when my world ended.
Dr. Davies turned to Mrs. Krimble, continuing his unnecessarily long goodbye. “Also, I agree you guys need to find your way back to Staten Island. It’s probably going to take a long time to get the power back on.”
Wait. I stopped all mental forward momentum. How long?
“Call me if you need—“ Dr. Smithe stopped himself mid-sentence.
He can’t—
Dr. Smithe shook his head and continued, “So… How are we doing this, Rich?”
“Three days?” Dr. Davies said.
“What?” Dr. Smithe asked.
“Come back here in three days?” Dr. Davies said, then he shrugged. “Hurricane Imelda was longer because of the flooding, but without the environmental element this time, thinking 9-11, that’s how long we waited before going back to work,wasn't it?”
I can do three days. I thought about what kind of blog post I wanted to post first. What would be my first connection? A tale of where I was when “It” happened? 
Hey Peeps! I’ll bet none of you came up with a fanfiction version of my day out in the “Big City” as eventful as what actually happened…
Or will I share a story of my journey home? 
Drop that old dusty Tolkien book, Peeps! I have a much more exciting journey to take you on #truestory…
Maybe I’d have some great story about me and Murph by then… 
Peeeeeeps!!! I have a boyfriend!!!!! #hereallylikesme
Normally, if it were something I wanted to post later, I’d jot down post ideas in the notes section of my phone. That wasn’t happening. I wished I had a basic pen and pad to do the same. I told myself I just had to remember it all until I got home. In just a couple of hours I would get my hands on some form of documenting tools to gather up all my ideas and wait for the reinstitution of power and my internet connection. By morning I would have the most well-planned and edited post my followers had ever seen. Maybe this would turn out to make me a better blogger. Maybe this was exactly what I needed. 
“Doctor?” Stella was actually raising her hand as she interrupted my blogging daydreams.  “Will everything be back to normal by then?”
Wasn’t that what he meant? I blinked hard trying to reset my vision of the world around me. It was so unlike Stella to interrupt adults, or even change topics. I found myself glued to my position wanting, so desperately, to know the answer to the question I didn’t even realize needed asking. Stella might as well have asked, “How long until Natalie can breathe again?” Because that’s what this felt like — a held breath, my life on pause.
Dr. Davies furrowed his brow when he turned to Stella. Before the words came out of his mouth I knew they wouldn’t be good. “Unfortunately, I don’t think we will be experiencing anything close to the kind of ‘normal’ we’ve gotten used to for an extremely long time.”
I hated that “extremely” and the emphasis Dr. Davies placed on it. I was transfixed by the man’s words, thirsty for more detail. My mental blogger screamed out for her peeps, finally starting to realize that the tether was gone – too many emotions had gone undocumented in these minutes – I should have blogged at least three times by now. Talia, the true voice of every interaction I had online, was adrift in a sea of blackness, disconnected from all signs of others, desperately clinging on to the life preserver of expressive need. She still had so much to say – I had things to say – but did it matter if those words could never be read, if I had no place to share it? 
Mrs. Krimble didn’t seem interested in what the doctor “thought” we “might” be seeing in the future. I think she was more interested in getting rid of us. “All the more reason to get home to find whatever form of normal we can cling to while we wait.” She readjusted the large tote bag on her shoulder, throwing her useless phone into the bottom of it. “Thank you Doctors Smithe and Davies,” she added before walking past the group of us to leave.
On the floor, next to Daria, Rose groaned and clutched her head with her hands.“Mrs. Krimble? Rose's not okay,” Daria said. She sounded calm, but her eyes told a different story. 
I felt sick to my stomach. I think I would have felt better if Daria was more specific about whatever the hell was going on, but the vagueness of “Rose’s not okay,” and the look on Daria’s face rocked me. And I wasn't alone. Mrs. Krimble stopped walking, looked straight ahead and took a breath so deep that her shoulders rose up with it, before lowering on the exhale. Otherwise, she didn’t move at all. She didn't turn to look at Daria, or Rose, or anyone. It was like she had become physically paralyzed by Daria’s outburst.  “Mrs. Krimble!” Daria yelled, “I don’t think she can walk that much.”
Rose was sitting with her arms wrapped around her head leaning on her knees, and now she was rocking back and forth. Daria’s assessment was on point – Rose did not look okay. As soon as Daria saw Mrs. Krimble turn her way and take note of her existence, she got back down on her knees and started rubbing Rose’s back. 
Murph, who had gotten up after putting his sketchbook in his bag to leave, approached Daria and Rose. I was about to head over there myself when Dr. Davies stepped in front of me to offer a suggestion to Mrs. Krimble.
“We should have a wheelchair available,” he said. “Hold on one sec,” he added as he left the room. At the end of the hallway, he opened the stairwell door and yelled down, “Val? Val!” He must have heard something in response because he then said, “Yeah, just for a minute!” before coming back to us saying, “She’ll be right up.”
Val, who was the girl from the front desk, turned out to be a less than gracious aide in the situation. When she got upstairs and saw us all gathered around Rose she blurted out, “What the heck is wrong with her?” She flipped her hair over her shoulder with an attitude that turned my stomach before adding, “Is she some sort of mental case?”
What did she just say? I snapped. Rage joined the myriad of feelings swelling inside of me. This needed to be discussed with my peeps! How offensive can one front desk bimbo be? You know when you see something horrendously offensive and you want to say something but then you realize you weren’t really involved with the whole thing in the first place so you should probably shut up? Peeps, tell me people can’t behave like this in public! 
My hand was in my pocket, clutched around my phone, ready to pull it out to text Amy about Val, then write a post to my peeps about how inconsiderate people could be in the face of someone suffering – all the words and ideas for what I was going to type had come to me in a flash, the only thing stopping me from getting them all of my head was – “Are you kidding me?” I yelled at Val. Without warning, nothing was stopping me from getting the thoughts out my head. Talia was done waiting for a connection. She must have been pissed that she hadn't been able to blog through this crisis, so she found a way to fight back, she found her voice, she took mine. I don’t want to sound like a split-personality here or anything, but while there is no denying that these words or actions were mine, it felt like a foreign intelligence had possessed me. My insides trembled when I realized what I had done. What I had said to Val wasn’t typed words blasted on a screen that I could hide safely behind. They were words blasted directly out of my face  – me, Natalie, the girl who hadn’t even had a real conversation with most of the people she came on this trip with before that afternoon. I had engaged in an exchange that was face-to-face, visceral, in real time, and had all the ugly, unedited bodily reactions with it. There was no turning my phone off to compose myself before reading the reactions from the intended audience. I had just thrust myself into a real life confrontation with instant ramifications. I looked at where Daria and Rose were sitting on the floor 
And
Then
I
Spoke
Again…
“That’s what you have to say when you see someone suffering like this? Are you kidding me?” I was so furious, the repetition of the question seemed unavoidable because — let’s be honest here — she had to be kidding me, right? Also, the Natalie side of me realized every moment I kept talking, Val couldn’t deliver any retort. “For your information Rose has a physical condition that — for whatever reason — got really bad right now. But, even if it was a mental condition, how ignorant do you have to be to judge someone y-you d-don’t e-even kn-now l-like th-that?” My shaking insides dribbled out onto my last couple of words. I had to stop talking before I started crying. 
First, there was silence all around the room, just as empty and unresponsive as the pathetic piece of tech in my pocket. It felt like that moment right after you press the “publish” button on a post – before anyone has found the post, or finished reading it – the sweet bliss of feeling like you are writing to no one and the terror that you just spilled your guts out to everyone in the universe. It did nothing to calm me. Then I’m pretty sure it was Princess who said, “Tell her, girl!” and Colin who said, “Yeah man, what the actual fuck?” Without question, though, the soft, “Thank you, Natalie,” behind me was from Daria. The timing was perfect, it kept me from vomiting all over the place.
Val, on the other hand, set fire to my nerves with just a look. She stared at me like I was an alien life-form that appeared in front of her and presented her with the keys to its spaceship. I wondered if she would believe that I was just as shocked by the outburst. Russ, standing next to Val, elbowed her in the side and said, “Hey – uh – Val, is it? I think you owe Rose an apology.” I exhaled a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
Val shook her head. “Whatever. You can all gang up on me. I honestly don’t give a shit. Rose is having some sort of breakdown? Well, guess what? I’m not a psychiatrist or a doctor. Sorry, Rose. Don’t know what’s wrong with you, don’t know why I asked. It’s not like I can help you.”
“Actually,” Dr. Davies said, his face flushed with either anger or embarrassment. “I’m pretty sure you can.” When Dr. Davies pulled Val aside to ask her about the wheelchair, Russ approached me.
“You okay?” he asked, stooping to look into my eyes. It was that moment that I realized how fast my heart was beating inside my shaking body. I guess I had a bit of an adrenaline surge with my tiny bout of insanity. I took a deep breath before answering, hoping my words wouldn’t still be shaky.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I don’t know why I did that.”
“I was about to,” Russ said, laughing. “I only hesitated because I don’t want to get some sort of angry-guy reputation.”
I had to stifle a laugh. Russ, the volunteer middle school car service was concerned that people might view him as an angry guy. I guess we all had warped views of our external presentations. “You're not angry,” I said, slipping back into the comfortable limited syllabic conversational rhythm of Natalie Turner. 
“You don’t think so?” he asked, tilted his head like a curious puppy. 
“You just let everyone know you’re spending your afternoons carpooling middle schoolers and I think you’ll be fine,” I said.
“You think that’s a good thing?” he asked, raising his eyebrows, jutting his chin in my direction while putting both his hands in his jacket pockets.
“Yeah,” I said, noticing my heart wasn’t slowing down as much as I thought it should have by this point. “I might be a little biased since my brother gets the benefits, but I think it’s pretty cool.”
“Daria, honey,” Mrs. Krimble asked. “Do you think we can get Rose downstairs? Val’s going to find a wheelchair for us.”
Russ looked over my head and said, “I should help,” while he stepped around me to the place where Daria and Murph were helping Rose to her feet. Murph looked at me, nodded, and gave me a thumbs up. At the same time Rose’s hood fell back exposing a bandana covering her entire head. It might have been chosen for the style, but, in this moment, it just made her look more sick to me. It reminded me of the women with cancer who wore scarves to cover their heads after losing their hair from chemo.
“It’s just so much pain so fast,” Rose said quietly to Daria. “I can do it. Just slow. I’m afraid of—“
“Shhh,” Daria said. “Take it slow. We’re gonna do this.”
“Lean on me if you have to,” Murph said to Rose. I ran over to take his bag since it looked like it would be difficult to support Rose on one side and his bag on the other. 
“Thanks,” he said as I grabbed the strap on his arm. “And – wow! – I didn’t know you could be such a bad-ass, Turner.” He pulled Rose’s hand further around his neck. 
I was struggling to find the right response to Murph when Rose whispered, “Seriously, Nat, that was pretty f-ing epic.” And then she winced before she could continue, if she was going to continue. I still didn’t know what to say. 
“I’ll take this side,” Russ said, stepping up to Rose’s right. “One step at a time.”
I stepped out of their way and tried to process everyone’s reaction through the only filter I knew – The Internet – and the sinking, sickening feeling in my gut was all too familiar. There were plenty of times when Amy would text me not to read my comments on a particular post because she spotted a negative before I did and she knew I wouldn’t see anything else. Intellectually, I could see the silliness in this type of reaction – thirty people love what you wrote, but one person hates on it and any normal person would think, “I did a good job on this post!” Not me. All I would think about was how I failed that one person. Every time. Which is why it was no surprise to me that with positive comments from my classmates – including a literal thumbs up from Murph, all I could think about was Val’s discontent over something I shared with her. It made no sense.  
Daria slid back to stand next to me as the boys walked with Rose toward the door with Mrs. Krimble. She looked at me and said, “I know,” shaking her head, and then she hugged me, tight and muffled words into my shoulder. “I’ve never seen her like this, Natalie,” Daria said. I was taken a-back. Hugging was so… intimate. My mom and dad hugged me, Rog would do it on demand, but they were family. This hug was like the one Amy gave me before leaving. Even that was weird because we had never hugged before, but it made sense and I leaned into it. I didn't know how to react with Daria – was this romantic in some way? Did she think I was super sad about Rose – not that I didn’t feel bad for her, of course I did, but my head was in a completely different space just then. Is this what friends are supposed to do? Is this one more sign of my disconnect with live humans? My body turned rigid and I felt a cold sweat begin to develop on the back of my neck. I don't know if Daria felt it, but she pulled away and continued talking like the hug didn't even happen, leaving me even more confused than ever. “She told me about how bad it gets, but I didn’t know her before her surgery.”
“What is it, Daria?” I asked, desperate to make the conversation about something technical. “What does she have?”
“Her head’s all messed up. She told me that it’s kind of like she has a brain tumor – like she gets all the same symptoms as someone with a tumor even though she doesn’t have one herself. The surgery helped a lot. She got this shunt thing put inside her that takes the stuff causing problems out of her head and spills it out into her liver or something. But, she was just telling me that she thinks something’s wrong with the shunt. Like she felt it break or something. Just like our phones.” She turned to look at me. “I’m scared, Natalie. I don’t know how to help her.”
“We’re all here to help – I mean, even Val’s on board now,” I said with a smile, trying to take the weight off of the conversation. “And, anyway,  we’ll be home real soon now, and Rose gets to roll the whole way.”
Daria smiled a little. “Yeah.”
“Mrs. Krimble will know what to do,” I said.
“You think?” Daria asked, scrunching up her face.
“Oh sure! Without a doubt!” I said, and I believed it.
The problem was, I was wrong. About all of it.

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First, thank you for reading this part of my novel GIRL, UNPLUGGED. A new chapter will be posted on Wednesday. A new short story will be posted on Friday.

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