Misadventures Of A Teenage Dirtbag

04 all the small things

CHAPTER 04
[ all the small things ]
by blink-182

Teenage pride is a stubborn thing. Don't get me wrong, I've seen a lot of adults who never grew out of their egos—my guardian, for one—but you should never underestimate the power of a bunch of teenagers who are all completely convinced that they're right.

The morning after the disastrous UNO game (or games, I guess, since Thumbs won twice), is filled with a lot of regret, and not just because my head hurts. For one thing, if you wake up after having mostly had pizza, popsicles, and beer, especially if you forgot to brush your teeth the night before, you're going to have horrific morning breath. Red literally gags and pushes off me. For another, Milo, Joaquin, and Sebastian are all still nowhere to be found, even after we've taken care of our basic hygiene and gone out to get breakfast. Real breakfast, because we all feel too sick to stomach any more candy or soda. Our least ghetto option nearby is iHop, so that's where we head. The girls are wearing normal shoes for once to give their feet a rest—platform combats for Red and purple sneakers for Sucker Punch.

"Have you checked on them yet?" Red asks after we order, resting her head in her arms, which are folded on the table. Thumbtack holds up his phone, showing that he's sent one text each to a contact called 'loser' and another labeled 'nerd'.

"No replies. They're either busy or Silv is still mad at me. I can try Wipeout." He starts texting someone else labeled 'do not answer'.

Red narrows her eyes. "What am I in your phone?"

"Just Red. I would never be disrespectful to you ladies."

She looks to me for confirmation that this is true, and when I give it, she nods, satisfied. "Very good."

Raina pulls out her phone. She clicks on her latest notification and flashes me the message:

💞💗🙈𝚒𝚍𝚒𝚘𝚝 #𝟸😘💔🤠

𝚆𝚘𝚛𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 @ 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚒𝚣𝚣𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚊 𝚝𝚘𝚍𝚊𝚢,
𝚜𝚒𝚕𝚟 𝚒𝚜 𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚙𝚒𝚜𝚜𝚢

"Wipeout says they're going to be at that wannabe Italian place."

Thumbtack rolls his eyes. "Oh, so they'll talk to you."

"I'm irresistible."

I turn to look at Red. "Speaking of, where's your phone?"

She slides it out of her pocket and sets it on the table, but doesn't touch it, as if she's afraid it's nuclear or something. Just stares at it with a mixed expression of wistfulness and frustration. Like it's the source of all her problems and all her regrets. "I've had it turned off this whole time," she explains. "My parents can monitor me remotely otherwise. They have tracking apps for my location, and they supervise my search history and stuff too, so like—if I looked up somewhere on Google Maps..."

"Ah," I say. "I get it." She huffs out a sigh, and I watch her closely. "Do you wanna trash it?"

Red's chewing her bottom lip again, and my eyes wander, searching for something else to latch my attention onto. The syrup dispensers on the table have suddenly become very interesting. "Maybe." She sounds like she might be considering it. There's probably some other, more complicated solution, but I don't know any since I barely know how phones work.

The waitress arrives and Red orders the lemon ricotta blueberry crepes, Thumbs gets a breakfast sampler, I get a pancake combo, and Sucker Punch gets the same thing as me but swaps out the regular pancakes for the double chocolate chip ones. We doodle on kids' menus while we wait, and after getting bored of that, we play Hangman on Punch's phone.