A Screen Stole My Friend

The Hollowness of Solitude

I sat, waiting. I dared not breathe, fearful of disturbing the silence. I would not speak up. Not ever. Who would listen? There was nobody here. The class was empty.

I started shaking. Why was nobody listening? Speaking? The loudest thing in the classroom was the soft ticking of the clock whose hands pointed to 8:51. I looked at the dinosaur projects hanging on the walls. Drawings of stegosaurs and velociraptors and diplodocuses coloured with Crayola crayons. But then, something strange happened. I don't know why or how, but I saw the colours of the dinosaurs drain from the pictures, as though fading into an empty greyness. It scared me. I looked out the window just in time to see a crow flying, searching for garbage left by the students.

I spent the rest of the day observing everyone else, for there was nothing else to do.

That was the first day where I did not talk with Amaia, my best friend. I never felt more grateful to be back at home, where my parents talked to me, and my younger brother squeezed me in a tight hug because he knows I don't like it. Those things usually annoyed me, but not that day.

The following day, I pretended to have a very bad stomach ache. I was not going back into that empty classroom. In fact, I swore to never go back there again. In hindsight, I'm sure every child has made that same vow at some point in their life, and I'm sure that many times, that vow was also broken.

I remained at home that day, but my mom didn't believe me the second time; stomach aches don't last more than a day, according to her. I didn't know that. Too bad, so sad. She dragged me into the car as I kept on pretending to feel ill, but she dropped me off at school and I had no choice but to head back into the empty classroom.

I was really surprised when Amaia was there, standing under the awning of the building, just like the good old times. I recognised her lilac rain jacket when I entered the school grounds, and I couldn't help but smile at such a nostalgic sight. It felt ages ago when we last spoke or laughed together. But as I got closer, I saw that she was holding her phone, and my anger came back.

"Hey," she said. Her tone was so casual, normal, as if nothing had happened between us. She didn't even bother to look at me! I watched her in silence as her thumbs punched the tiny keyboard faster than my eyes could follow. She switched between screens so fast I couldn't even discern what she was doing. Texting? Scrolling? Reading? All of those at the same time?

Then she stopped and looked me dead in the eye. "I said hey."

I blinked. "Hey."

She looked back at her phone and her thumbs continued the same rapid dance as before. "Wanna come over for dinner tonight?" she mumbled.

She didn't seem to notice my absence yesterday. Normally, if one of us gets sick, we hug each other as soon as we meet again. But there was none of that now. She probably didn't even know I was missing.

"Sure," I said, because maybe she was different at home than at school, I told myself. Maybe there was a chance I could talk her out of her phone, and the good old days would come back alive once again.