YA Novel Chapter 6 | 11 Minute Read

Mar 02, 2022

This is Chapter 6 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.

CHAPTER 6: Noise

Posted to TALIA’S TALES
Oct 6 @ 12:05PM
Rumor has it that there are storms a-brewing on that big ball of fire in the sky, but I see nothing but the light. Look up, my peeps. The sun is shining, at least on this part of the planet and, as a result, it is beautiful outside. Thanks to my teacher’s current obsession, I have a feeling I’m going to know a heck of a lot more about what a sun storm’s like after lunch, but for right now I can’t help but sing:

Sun-ny days chasing the clouds away! On my way to where this class is free!

It’s lunchtime!
I’M GOING TO CENTRAL PARK!!
~Talia

#Yay #BeJealous #NYC #CentralPark #muppetsrock #sunstorms #stillworkingonasignoff

Murph was the first one at the entrance door. He opened it to come out, followed by Daria holding her camera up and walking backwards filming everyone else as they poured out the door singing “We Are The Champions” by Queen. Murph raised his eyebrows and smiled, looking right at me when he pulled me into a hug. He whispered in my ear, “I bet Gino a hundred bucks! Thank you!” Before I could react to this news, Daria surprised the heck out me with a one-armed hug of her own. When she pulled me into her shoulder she said, “I just wish I could see the look on Gino’s face right now!” Next Dustin was at our side, screaming through the singing, “This will be the best Talia’s Tale yet!” He began a chant, “Ta-Li-Ah! Ta-Li-Ah!” which caught on faster than I would have imagined.
“Post the pic on Talia’s Tales, Natalie!” yelled Stella.
“Hey! Hey! Hey! Give her space,” Rainbow yelled, with her arms outstretched. “If I know Natalie, she probably stayed out here to post the story right away!”
Daria and Dustin stepped away quickly each giving me looks of approval and Murph said, “Oh, man! I’m so sorry, Nat! I wasn’t thinking. Finish up, no rush at all. This is a great story.” He pointed out the benches near the entrance of the museum. “We can sit on the bench so you can finish.” I was about to argue — to say I wanted to go to the park, not sit still, have lunch, be with him — when my phone rang.
My face scrunched in confusion in the seven seconds it took me to pull the phone out of my back pocket as I tried to figure out who could be calling me now.
“Rog?” I read the caller ID aloud, fearful of the implications. I looked at Murph, hoping to convey the urgent need to answer this without interruptions. Then I stepped away in an effort to find some solitude from the crowd full of my classmates, my peeps, my two identities at war. I needed it all to fade away. My brother needed me, the rest meant nothing.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, infusing each syllable with the urgency it deserved. My heart raced.
He whispered his response, “Nat, I need you to go to the castle.”
Images blazed through my mind — Rog’s school (it was on Castleton Avenue), Curtis High School up the block from the Staten Island ferry (known as “the castle on the hill”), the White Castle down on Bay Street (was that even still there?) — but none of it made sense. I knew I needed to leave at once to help my brother, but I had no idea where to go. I sucked in a short, desperate breath.
“What castle, Roger? Where do you need me to go?” I asked, lowering my voice in an effort to keep him, and myself, calm.
“The castle in the park. Will you go for me? Jaime just said Russ is going to get the dragon’s egg at lunch and I was thinking that you could go too.” He spoke quickly and kept his hushed tone even while his conversation started to unravel into the maddening. And then he started to ramble.“You remember how to catch a critter, right? I mean, I know you don’t really play anymore, but you did and you know how hard I’ve been working to catch all of the critters, but mom and dad still won’t let me go into the city. The city critters are the most rare. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it this morn—“
“Rog-er!” I yelled, stopping him as soon as I realized what the hell he was talking about.
“Yeah?” the optimism in his voice annoyed the crap out of me.
“I’m not going on a quest for some stupid game for you!” I was furious. This was my trip, my time with Murph. This was — I don’t know — maybe a chance for… something.
“What else are you going to do? It’s not like Amy’s there.”
Ouch.
“I’m giving you something to do.”
Shit, Rog.
“It could even be something for you to write about on Talia’s Tales.”
My god…
I was crushed. Was that it for me? I thought about how all my classmates — including Murph waiting on the bench for me — assumed that the only thing I wanted to do at that moment was blog. I thought about how Daria assumed any and all typing I was doing on this trip was for my blog. It didn’t occur to her that I might have a friend I was communicating with. I thought about that friend. Lately Amy’s response to everything was “Be Talia,” as if there was no other thing in the world I could relate to. None of these things stung the way Rog’s words did.
I filled my broken heart with the life-blood of big sister authority and let it surge through my veins. How dare he imply I had no life without Amy! “You must be out of your mind right now! Dad is going to kill you!” I swung for the fences. This kid was cutting class or something because of Catch’em Crazy — a game our parents had threatened to delete from his phone at least three different times. Now he wanted to cast his own indirect judgements about how I lived my life and spent my time? How dare he imply that I only do things for Talia’s Tales!
“Nat… Please don’t tell him.” I had crushed him as quickly as he’d crushed me, but I was intentional with my attack. It felt horrible. “Nat? Please? Forget the castle. I’m sorry, okay? Just don’t tell dad, please?” How dare he know me so well… “Nat?”
How many times had I left my own classes to text Amy? How many times did Rog cover my ass when he saw me up way past our tech-curfew? What was the point of this?
I hung up before whispering, “Sorry, Rog.” Then I shoved my phone in my pocket, and walked back to Matthew Murphy, the real-life human being I was about to spend my lunch hour with.
Rog never called back.

The lunch hour was the part of the trip that I had been looking forward to long before I had any idea I might be spending the time with Matthew Murphy. Mrs. Krimble told us on both our freshman and sophomore trips that when we came back as juniors we would be allowed to have our lunch in Central Park instead of the museum cafeteria, weather permitting. This morning I secretly thanked the super bright solar storms above for shining their light down on us for this event, but all day I had been terrified by the thought of un-choreographed time with Murph. I imagined a full hour of awkward silences, interrupted only by bizarre eating sounds made by me, and a litany of other embarrassments. Now, fueled by the fury instigated by my little brother’s pathetic expectations of my social stature, I needed this hour to play out in a more magnificent manner. I needed to do something.
“So, I take it we are officially free?” I asked, taking the seat next to Murph as he shut his sketchbook and slid it back into his bag.
“Yep,” he said, sitting back and lying one arm on the back of the bench behind me. I wanted to lean back into it, use his arm as a pillow to lie my head on and let all my remaining insecurities drift away on it. But I rebelled against the stillness of that act. I wanted to get moving. I wanted to act, live, make a memory that had a life of its own without me transcribing it onto my blog.
“Want to get a pretzel or something in the park?” I asked, hoping this would inspire some romantic park adventure — a picnic on the Great Lawn, a walk along one of the lakes, a visit to Strawberry Fields where we could talk about all the things we like to imagine — just the two of us — for the hour ahead. Something I would not blog about, something I would just talk about. Something I would shock Rog with.
Instead, Murph’s response shocked me.
“That’s a great idea! We can grab them on the way!” he said with a smile, jumping to his feet. “The rest of the group is headed out to some castle. I told them we’d catch up.”
You have to be kidding me.
“A castle?” I asked squinting up at him.
“Yeah. I didn’t even realize there was one in the park. It could be a great sketching opportunity, you know?”
“Uh-huh, but why is everyone else going?” I asked, pretty sure I already knew the answer.
“Oh! For the castle critters!” Murph lit up just like Rog when he said it. “You play, right?”
There it was.
Here’s the thing. Everyone played Catch ‘Em Crazy. Everyone. So, yeah, I played, but the excitement of the game lasted about a month for me, then it just got annoying. Rog was obsessed enough for the two of us and I was sick of losing sleep, and — more importantly — battery life, over a stupid game. Evidently Murph was not. I could not believe this was happening to me. I started to laugh.
“Not in a while,” I said scrolling through my phone checking to make sure I still had the app, “But, yeah, I’ve played.” I found the app and opened it up. “It’d be kind of great if I could get one of those dragon eggs.”
“Yes!” Murph exclaimed, grabbing my hand and lifting me to my feet. I was excited. I was looking forward to getting Rog his stupid egg.

So, for some reason, there is an actual castle smack dab in the middle of the park. It sits atop a small hill next to a tiny pond. It doesn’t have a moat or any kind of drawbridge like the castles in the storybooks my mom read to me when I was little, but there is no denying that this building is supposed to be a tiny castle. I have no idea if it was actually old, or if it was something built more recently to add to the growing list of city expansions for the tourist crowd, but it was cool. There were stone stairs surrounding it in every direction and, thanks to Catch ‘Em Crazy, everyone in my class — and my brother — knew about it. Oh… and so did every other human being in the park that day. The place was packed. It was like a carnival popped up in the middle of the park.
“You ready?” Murph asked with his phone in his hand.
I took mine out and scanned the interactive map on the app, “Second floor?”
“I see it! Let’s go!” We both took the steps two at a time, squeezing through the crowds in a way that would have mortified my mother. Manners have no place in augmented reality. Rog would be so proud of me. My avatar levitated through the animated version of the castle and closed in on a cartoonish yellow dragon critter I was hunting.

I caught it with one swipe and shouted, “Critter caught!” The group of people in the room with us cheered me on and one guy fist bumped me. It was all quite ridiculous.
“Nat,” Murph said, “There are so many critters here! I think we can catch the rainbow!” Rog would love this guy. “Catch the rainbow” was such a Rog-thing to say. I laughed and looked down at my map. Murph was right, there was a dragon of every color hiding out in this castle.
“Are there any eggs around?” I asked.
Murph must not have heard me because his response was, “I’m headed for the orange one downstairs!”
The fist pump guy said, “Gotta find a green dragon. Only the green critters lay eggs.”
I looked back down at my map and spotted a green critter on the other side of the floor I was on. “Thanks!”
There was some sort of time limit for the critters, I couldn’t remember what it was, but once one showed up on your map your clock started ticking. I couldn’t remember if the green dragon was there when I went up the stairs or if it just showed up when I spotted it, so I ran. There was no way I was going back to my brother without this stupid egg. Pretty much everyone in the building was there for the same thing, so those who were alert enough slid out of my way as soon as they saw me coming. The hallways were tiny and dark. The last one could only be managed by walking single-file. It was torture. I burst into the room with the green dragon and began swiping at my phone immediately. I heard curses throughout the room as people yelled, “He’s a runner!” This basically meant you had a certain number of swipes before the critter disappeared. A voice I recognized said, “Running don’t matter when you’re egg-hunting!”
“It doesn’t?” I said trying to pass by a couple blocking the middle of the room to get to the voice. They swiped and swiped at their phone with their feet planted in some sort of power position as if they were actually wrangling a real animal in the shadowed room. They each had their phones aimed at the same blank spot on the floor in front of them. I wondered how crazy we all must have looked to anyone who didn’t know anything about the game. I walked around the couple finding one of my classmates down on one knee aiming his own phone at a different corner of the room. “Russ? Is that you?”
“Got. It. Yessssss!” he said and shot both arms in the air. “Brother of the year!”
“Hey… Russ?”
“Oh hey, Natalie!” he said, finally noticing me standing there. He looked so happy. “You get the egg for Rog yet?” I had no idea Russ knew Roger, never mind that he felt comfortable enough to call him “Rog.”
“Uh… no. I don’t remember how,” I said, looking down at my phone.
Russ took a single step and was next to me, peering down at my screen. “Tap him! Hurry up! You’re running out of time!”
I tapped the screen like crazy, nothing seemed to affect the dragon.
“On the head!” Russ said in a panic and then started to tap my phone with me. “Come on. Come on…” he said as he tapped. I couldn’t help but laugh as we both frantically tapped the head of an imaginary dragon on the screen of my phone.
And then, I don’t know if it was from one of my taps or one of Russ’s, but the dragon started to glow and out of the glow a green egg with yellow speckles on it appeared. “You obtained an egg!” my screen announced and Russ and I started jumping up and down together.
“We did it!” I said. “Nice job, Turner!” Russ said. “I would have felt really bad if Jaime got an egg and Rog didn’t. This stupid game is about the only thing the two of them ever talk about in my car.”
“Your car?” I asked.
“I got my license over the summer.”
“Sure, I get that, but when is my brother in your car?”
“I drive him home from school sometimes,” he said shrugging.
My eyebrows lifted. Russ laughed. I was a little uneasy with this news. I didn’t know Russ that well, and what I did know made me question whether or not I wanted my brother in a car with him. And in case your wondering what kind of intel I was hanging on to, here’s what I knew about Russ: Russ smoked.
“To be honest with you, I think Jaime’s got a crush on the little man. I don’t think your brother has any clue, but I don’t think he minds the perks.”
“Wow.” I had no idea what else to say. Maybe Rog had every right to judge me, he was obviously already leading a much more exciting life than I was.
“Let’s send them their eggs, they’ll be out of lunch soon.” I followed Russ’ lead, but was also struck by the fact that he knew so much about his little sister’s (and my brother’s) school schedule… and life. “They should get the notification, but let’s send them a pic anyway. Come here.”
Russ put his arm around my shoulder. I smelled the trace of a cigarette he must have smoked on his way to the castle. He turned his phone on selfie mode while saying, “Greatest siblings ev-er!” I laughed and he captured it perfectly. It was a great picture, not that I really wanted a picture of Russ and me, but that was one of the best pictures taken of me. Ever. He sent it to his sister and asked me for my number so he could send it to me. I sent it to Rog saying, “We did it!”
“Thanks so much, Russ,” I said, still smiling, when I looked up and saw Murph standing in the entrance of the room. He wasn’t looking at me. He wasn’t looking at his phone. He was looking at Russ and he didn’t look happy.

Posted to TALIA’S TALES
Oct 6 @ 12:42PM

EGGS FOR LUNCH!

We took it way back for lunch here in the big apple, my peeps. I traveled to a castle, fought and captured dragons, and gobbled up one giant dragon egg to ensure my status as sibling of the year holds steady. What am I talking about?
CATCH ‘EM CRAZY!!
Don’t you dare roll your eyes!
I know you all played and I know you all enjoyed it too!
I recaptured that joy for a moment. Today I’m sending big love out to all the faithful catchers out there — I had forgotten what fun that game could be — there’s definitely something special about those of you who hung in there, still finding the joy in its cooperative simplicity. The way it drags you out into the world, playing with others, even while cradled within the safety of its virtual realm, is maybe exactly what I’ve needed all along. I kind of connected with someone today, learned something new about them, something I probably should have known all along, but I never reached out. CATCH ‘EM CRAZY played me right into their hands.
~Talia

#Catchemcrazy #castlecritters #bestsiblingsever

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GIRL, UNPLUGGED

YA Novel Chapter 6 | 11 Minute Read

CHAPTER 6: Noise

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