Katie Friedman Gives Up Texting! (18 page)

My eyes were still closed. I think I was afraid to look out into the audience. But I could hear just fine. And when the crowd let out a deafening roar, my eyes jolted open. What was going on?

A voice behind me started singing.

How do you

Look someone in the eye

When you're not sure what you want to see

I knew the voice. It kept singing.

How do you

Say the words

There is no more you and me.

I turned around and saw her.

Jane Plantero.

She was right there, on the stage of my middle school auditorium, walking toward me. She was wearing a white T-shirt and torn jeans. In one hand she held a microphone, and in the other, she was holding the crumpled-up lyric sheet that I'd sent her a week before. She was smiling. And she was singing.

How do you

Resist the urge

To hide behind a screen?

How do you

Know it's time

To give up the machine?

Even though she didn't exactly know the melody, she still sounded AMAZING. I guess that's why she's a rock star.

I stared, disbelieving, as Jane reached me. She put her arm around me. “Join me for this last chorus,” she said.

So I did.

I want to know.

I need to know.

I have to know right now.

I'm on my knees

So someone please

Please come show me how.

Then Jane gestured to the wings of the stage and the rest of the band came out. We sang the last part of the song again.

How do you

Resist the urge

To hide behind a screen?

How do you

Know it's time

To give up the machine?

I want to know.

I need to know.

I have to know right now.

I'm on my knees

So someone please

Please come show me how.

This time I kept my eyes wide open.

 

49

JANE'S PLEA

After the song ended,
the crowd kept cheering and hollering for about six minutes straight. I just kept staring at Jane, still not able to believe she was standing next to me, having just
sung my song
.

Finally, she hushed the crowd.

“I need to tell you guys something,” she said into the microphone. “First of all, it's great to be back here at Eastport Middle. This auditorium is where I got my start as a singer.”

The crowd went crazy.

(From now on, I'm not going to tell you every time the crowd went crazy. Just assume they did, pretty much after every sentence.)

“But that's not why I'm here. I'm here because I made a deal with this girl right here. Katie.” As she put her arm around me, I noticed that three-quarters of the audience already had their cell phones out, recording everything. I wondered if Jane would say anything about that.

“I'm not a big fan of cell phones, and texting, and all that stuff,” she went on. “I know technology is amazing. I know it's real useful and stuff. But it's no good if it helps you hide from one another. It's no good if it isolates you from one another. It's no good if it makes you mean and insensitive to one another.” She smiled at all the people holding up their cell phones. “And it's no good if it turns you from a doer to a watcher.”

She turned to me. “So when I met this girl, and she told me she wanted to write and sing songs, I told her, if she and ten friends gave up their cell phones for a week, I would play her song at my next concert.” She raised her arms to the crowd. “It just turned out that
this
was my next concert!”

At that point, the crowd did their best imitation of an insane asylum.

“Here's the last thing I'll say,” Jane said, talking into the mike but looking at me. “You've got two good friends in Eliza and Nareem. They sent me that letter you wrote, saying you didn't live up to your end of the bargain. But they also wrote me a note of their own, telling me about how upset you were, and what a good person you are, and asking if maybe I wouldn't mind coming here and singing with you.” Jane turned around and looked at the rest of the band. “And when these guys told me backstage that you'd actually finished
your
song, I knew that we were in business.”

I stared at Becca. “You met Jane backstage??? You
knew
?!”

She grinned. “When you were running around giving everybody their phones back,” she said.

“So finally,” Jane said. “If everyone whose name I call can come up onstage. From what I understand, you call yourselves Cavemen. Sounds like a good name for a band.”

Jane called out all our names. Eliza. Ricky. Tiffany. Amber. Hannah. Jake. Phil. Celia. Becca. Jackie. Katie.

And when all the Cavemen were up onstage, we took a bow.

“I had a great time,” Jane said, waving goodbye to the crowd. “See you on tour!”

As we headed off stage to one last deafening round of applause, Jane pulled me aside.

“Becca told me about last night,” she said. “How you heard them talking about not really wanting to be in the band anymore.”

“Yeah,” I said, embarrassed. “I guess I'm a little too intense for them.”

“You're passionate!” Jane said. “That's a good thing, never forget that.”

“I guess so. It just felt like they were talking about me behind my back, though, so I just left.”

Jane smiled. “That's a drag for sure, but that kinda stuff helps us remember that secrets and lies and talking behind people's backs are bad news, no matter whether they come from somebody's phone, or somebody's mouth.”

I thought about that for a second. She was absolutely right.

Jane put her guitar back in her case. “One last thing,” she said, heading for the door. “A lot of people write songs only when they're upset. But that's not a great way to be. If you want to be a songwriter, you gotta write 'em when you're sad, happy, and everything in between.”

She took a long swig of water and gave me a hug that I will remember forever.

“Because music is great,” she said, “but happiness is better.”

 

EPILOGUE

 

KATIE FRIEDMAN'S FIRST TEXT

Don't control—connect.

Don't attack—accept.

Gifts are for the giving.

Life is for the living.

“It's great to be here!” Jane yelled. “PLAIN JANE is in the house!

It was two months later, and Plain Jane was back on tour.

We were there, of course. Cavemen, Phonies, members of CHICKMATE, you name it, we were all there. Before the show, Kit had given a bunch of us a backstage tour—even though it was supposed to be just for Cavemen, somehow Charlie Joe snuck his way in and walked out with an entire bowl of M&M'S. I yelled at him, of course, but gladly stuffed my face with them all through the concert.

I looked around at everyone. Phil and Celia were arm in arm, swaying back and forth to the music. Hannah and Jake were laughing and holding hands. Becca, Jackie, and Sammie were singing along at the top of their lungs. And Ricky, Nareem, Eliza, Timmy, Pete, Tiffany, and Amber were all in a big circle, slow-dancing together.

Wow. Music really does do amazing things to people.

Almost the entire audience was videoing the concert with their phones, by the way, but Jane didn't seem to mind so much this time. Maybe she figured she didn't want to be a nag, or maybe she just thought talking about it again would have been boring, or maybe Nareem's dad had convinced her that people posting videos of her concerts on YouTube was good for business. Whatever the reason, Jane was just up there having fun, singing the incredible songs that she wrote when she was sad, happy, and everything in between.

The concert was unbelievable. Being there with my friends was unbelievable. The brand-new Plain Jane tour jacket that Kit had given me was unbelievable. And knowing that I could actually consider Jane Plantero a friend was maybe the most unbelievable thing of all.

Charlie Joe, meanwhile, was taking pictures every five seconds and texting them to me.

“Cut it out,” I said.

“You'll thank me later,” he answered.

“We'll see.”

“Well, can't you just text me back so I know you got them?”

“Very funny,” I said.

Charlie Joe shrugged. “Well, you can't blame a guy for trying.”

Then he shook his head and laughed.

Because here's the thing: Ever since no-phone-weekended, I had my phone back with me—like most human beings—but I still hadn't sent a single text to anybody. Not one, since the last horrible text I sent to Nareem by accident. Not to Charlie Joe, not to Eliza, not even to my parents. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. In the meantime, everyone had given up trying to text me, or trying to get me to text them. Everyone except for Charlie Joe, that is.

Two hours into the concert though, just before the last encore, my phone buzzed again. I looked down, shaking my head, thinking it was another picture from Charlie Joe. But it wasn't.

It was a text from Nareem.

I stared down at it.

HAVING FUN?

I looked at him. He looked back.

We smiled.

I held my phone in my hands for what seemed like a lifetime before I finally decided to text him back.

YES.

 

Charlie Joe's Top Ten Reasons Why Texting is Awesome

 

By Charlie Joe Jackson

  
1.
  
It's a way to read and write, without having to actually read and write.

  
2.
  
It helps parents and kids communicate with each other. Like, twenty times a day.

  
3.
  
Phone call + Noisy game or concert = Doesn't work.

  
4.
  
You can tell people you speak another language. BRB TTYL LOL!

  
5.
  
Moms can't overhear texts.

  
6.
  
Ten people can have a conversation without getting annoyed that they're interrupting each other.

  
7.
  
You can win a contest just by pushing a few buttons!

  
8.
  
It's quieter than yelling.

  
9.
  
I just love that sound my phone makes when a text comes in. It's a sound that says, “Somebody cares.”

10.
  
It's great exercise for your thumbs.