“How did you get that bump?” my mother asked when I got home. I ran and looked in the bathroom mirror. There was a raised red circle the size of a quarter on the right side of my forehead. Ugh. Michael Lawrence did have a hard head. I came back out.
“It’s a long story,” I said, collapsing in a kitchen bar stool.
My mom got an ice pack out of the freezer and sat down next to me. She gently put it on my forehead. Michael’s ice pack had long since melted.
“I’ve got all the time in the world,” Mom responded, adjusting the position of the ice pack. Then I heard the front door open. Oh brother. I didn’t want to explain this in front of Allie.
“What happened?” she exclaimed when she came into the kitchen and gave me a once-over, throwing her bag on a stool.
I sighed. “Nothing.”
“Did you walk into a wall again?” Allie asked, going to the pantry. She took out a bag of potato chips and started munching away. My mom and I both looked at her.
“These are vegan, you know!” she barked at us over a mouthful.
“So, Sammy, what happened?” Mom said, turning her focus on me again. “That’s a pretty mean bump.”
“Okay, fine. I bumped heads with Michael Lawrence.”
Allie almost spit out her potato chips, she started laughing so hard. Even my mom was trying to hold back her smile, but she wasn’t doing a very good job of it.
“Did you guys try to kiss and miss?” Allie said when she collected herself.
Perfect. I could just see Allie telling her friends that. Rumor Spreads that Clumsy Kiss Causes Injury. “No!” I said, getting off the kitchen stool. “Forget it.” I took the ice pack and stomped off to my room. Not only did I have a huge bump on my head, but now I had to be ridiculed by my family. But the truth was, it had all been worth it. Michael was so sweet to me the rest of our time at the Java Stop. There was something romantic about it all, him taking care of me like that, with the ice pack and the iced tea. He even kept asking me to take off the ice pack so he could check the bump. They could laugh if they wanted to. It was kind of special. Although I would have preferred a less hazardous moment to get him to pay so much attention to me.
There was a knock on my door.
“Yeah?” I called.
“It’s me, honey,” Mom said.
“Come in,” I replied, and lay back on my bed, still holding the ice pack on my head, and closed my eyes.
“Let me check it.” My mom sat on the edge of the bed. “It’s gone down a lot. You can barely see it anymore.”
“Really?” I asked, and sat up quickly. “Ow.” It still kind of hurt when I moved fast.
“Take it easy.” She pushed me gently on the shoulder so I’d lie down again. “Sorry we laughed, Sammy. Or to be accurate, Allie laughed and I smiled,” she said, and smiled again. “But I really do want to know exactly how you bumped heads. I assume it wasn’t the reason Allie said.”
I took a deep breath. “Oh, for crying out loud, Mom. I spilled my tea at the Java Stop, and we both got on the floor to clean it up and then we kind of crashed into each other.”
“Oh. Gee, what does the other guy look like?”
“What are you talking about?” I said. Sometimes my mom used sayings that totally confused me.
“You know, the other guy in the fight?” she said.
“There wasn’t any fight,” I said, now getting frustrated again.
“Sammy, where’d your sense of humor go? I’m just kidding. I was just wondering if Michael has a bump on his head too.”
“No. I think he has a harder head than I do,” I said in all seriousness.
My mom started to grin. I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Yeah, yeah, I know it’s kind of funny.”
“So how’s the paper going? Are you on target to hit your deadline?”
“Yeah, pretty much. I finished the Dear Know-It-All letter, and the texting article is shaping up. We’re going to ask kids if they want to try not texting for twenty-four hours and report back their experiences.”
“That’s interesting. Well, I’m sure if you and Michael put your heads together, it’ll be great,” she said, and broke out into another big smile.
“Mom!” I said, and shoved her shoulder lightly. “You’re worse than Allie.”
“Sorry. Couldn’t help myself,” Mom said, still grinning. “In all seriousness, though, it sounds like a really good idea. Very timely.”
“Want to join in the experiment?” I asked her.
“Oh, sweetie, I wish I could, but I mostly text my clients, and they’re expecting me to get back to them quickly. I can’t go missing in action.”
I understood that. It’s not like she was texting her friends all day, which is mostly what kids did. She actually used it for her work. Sometimes I worried that when I grew up, nobody would actually want to talk to each other anymore. Maybe this article would make people think about why they liked to text so much.
After Mom left, I messaged Hailey on my computer.
I crashed heads with Michael at the Java Stop.
In a few minutes, she wrote back.
Oh no! Like you got in a big argument?
No, I mean like I spilled my tea and when we were cleaning it up—bang! I texted back.
I M laughing really hard now, she wrote.
Thanks for your concern, I wrote back. Why did everyone think this was so hilarious? Didn’t anyone actually care about my head?
Oh, and (ha-ha) are you ok (he-he)? she replied.
It was actually kind of romantic. He got me an ice pack.
Awwww. Glad ur ok.
I’ll survive, I wrote. Sigh.
Monday morning, I sat up in bed and felt my forehead. My head didn’t hurt anymore and I didn’t feel a bump, which was a good sign. I looked in the mirror. The bump was gone. It was just a little red in the spot, but nothing really noticeable. I still had a little pimple on my chin that I wasn’t thrilled about. Oh, well, at least I didn’t have a huge bruise on my forehead that people would ask me about. That would be fun to explain at school.
I was walking down the hall to my first class when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked one way, but no one was there. Then I felt a tap on my other shoulder.
“Okay, stop it, please,” I said, looking in that direction.
“You seem to be back to a hundred percent, Spilly,” Michael said from my other side. Then he peered at my face. I hoped he wasn’t staring at my pimple.
“No sign of injury,” he said. “Good. I was worried you’d come in with a big old lump on your head and I’d have to feel worse than I already do.”
“No worries. I’m as good as new,” I said. It was cute the way he was so concerned.
“Glad to hear it,” he said, and stopped. I stopped walking too. “Because I sent out the e-mail last night. The experiment can start tomorrow to give people time to participate, but I already got a lot of e-mails back from people saying they’d do it.”
“I know. I saw it. That’s awesome! Now we need to get some teachers on board. How about you ask your teachers today personally and I’ll ask mine? We only need a few anyway, just to have that side of the story.”
“Sounds good,” Michael said.
“Can you forward me all the replies as they come in?”
“Will do,” Michael said, and saluted me. “Can you meet after school in the Voice office on Thursday to shape the article? By then we should have enough feedback.”
“Sure,” I said, and hurried off to class.
Over the next few days, tons of e-mails came in about the twenty-four-hour-text-free day, as we called it. Michael and I participated too. I didn’t really find it to be that big a deal. I could still e-mail, message, and call people, so I was shocked at how many people replied saying how hard it was. One girl said, “I couldn’t make it through an entire day without texting. I only lasted about ten hours.” A guy said, “It was torture. I need some time to zone out and text instead of just constant schoolwork. And suddenly I couldn’t do that and had nothing to fill the void.”
Some people confessed to why it was so hard to stop. “It’s addictive,” wrote another girl. “Even though we’re not allowed to text during class, I still do. I haven’t gotten caught. I text my friends at least twice a period. Usually when the teacher is putting an assignment on the board. But please don’t rat on me!”
And we wouldn’t. We mentioned in the e-mail that all quotes in the article would be anonymous because we were afraid if we didn’t make the experiment a safe place to speak up, people wouldn’t want to contribute. Mr. Trigg cleared that with the principal, Mr. Pfeiffer, as well.
I stopped by the Voice office to see if I had any new Dear Know-It-All letters for the next issue so I could get a head start, but I could see Jessica Kelly through the little window in the door. I almost didn’t go in, but then I saw Michael and Jeff in the back. They were sitting together, looking at the computer. I had wanted to see the photos Jeff had taken of Hailey and me the other day, so I went in.
“Hey, Spilly,” Michael said.
Jeff looked at Michael and then at me. “Spilly?” he said.
“Never mind.” I glared at Michael and sat down next to them. “Can I see those pictures you took of us the other day?” I asked.
“Sure,” Jeff said, clicking on a file. He scrolled down through a lot of photos he had snapped in the hallways and the cafeteria. He passed by one of Hailey.
“Wait a minute!” I said. “There’s Hailey. Can I see?”
Jeff clicked on it to enlarge it. She was standing in the hallway by her locker, holding her books. She smiled her typical sparkly smile, but her eyes seemed so blue and her legs were supertan and looked really long and slender. Her hair glowed a golden blond. She looked incredible!
“Jeff,” I said. “This is the best picture I’ve ever seen of Hailey.”
“Photoshop!” Jeff responded with a big smile. “I made her legs a little longer and tanner, her hair blonder, her eyes bluer . . . I touched up all of my friends’ photos, so they all look fantastic.”
“Are you serious?” I said. School Paper Photographer Makes Students Unrecognizable. This was dangerous territory, wasn’t it? I stared at Hailey’s photo. It was true. Hailey looked great, but she didn’t exactly look like the Hailey I knew. Michael leaned in closer too. I moved my head back. That’s all I needed, another head-on collision with Michael Lawrence. “Is that a good idea? I mean it’s kind of a lie,” I said.
“Oh please,” Jeff replied, and waved his hand at me, quickly dismissing what I said. “Who wouldn’t want to look better in a photo? Magazines do it all the time.”
“Yeah, and then us normal people feel like we have to live up to expectations that don’t even exist! Right, Michael?”
Michael just gave me a blank stare. “Uh, I kind of agree with Jeff. Nobody wants to look bad in a photo. I mean, why not?”
I sighed and sat back in my chair. Once again, I was going to have to agree to disagree with Michael or knock heads, not quite so literally this time.
“Check this out,” Jeff said, and pulled up a picture of me at the ice-cream shop. My hair looked smooth and silky. I remember it had just rained that day, so I knew it had actually been frizzier. My skin was glowing and there wasn’t any red spot on my chin.
“Wow! Great picture, Sam!” Michael said. “Maybe you could e-mail it—,” he started to say to Jeff and then stopped. Jeff and I both stared at him. He continued. “I mean, maybe you could keep it on file in case Sam needs a photo for the paper.”
Did he just almost ask Jeff to e-mail him the picture? I couldn’t help but blush. I did look pretty great. “My hair definitely didn’t look like that the other day,” I said.
“The magic of the computer! Now, if I were running an article about you in the paper, wouldn’t you want me to use this photo instead of this?” he asked, and clicked on another photo. It was the un-Photoshopped version, frizzy hair, red spot, and all.
“You look great in both,” Michael said. I wondered if he was telling the truth or if he was just saying that because I was right there.
“There isn’t a huge difference,” I said, but it certainly was tempting to pick the Photoshopped one, even though it didn’t totally look like me. “Is there?” I could just pretend for a moment that I looked like a hair model and had flawless skin. Maybe Michael and Jeff were right. Maybe the world was supposed to look a little better on the page. This was something I had to think about.