Five

Chapter 4

On my short commute back to my house, I feel as if my cell is burning a hole in my pocket. The only people that really contact me are my friends, and half the time I don't even feel like being bothered with them. I'm sixteen years old, and I've never even had a boyfriend. Cooper just seems so...uncharted. Like some hypothetical oasis in a desert I've been trapped in for the past two years.

I feel an odd twinge of excitement when I think of our exchange back at the school. Cooper gave me his number without my permission. He even trusted the fact that I would bother shooting him a text because he didn't ask for my contact information first. This is an odd feeling. 

A few minutes later I'm back home and thinking about what I want to eat when my phone dings from a text I received. Before I check it, I wonder if it's Cooper but it can't be. I look and see that it's my friend Roman; he's an exchange student from Spain and he's staying with my Aunt Cherrie and her daughter who is in the same grade as I am. Roman is a pretty nice person and I'm lucky to know him since he's been helping me brush up on my Spanish. I open up the text and he asked how orientation was. I replied accordingly, but leaving out the fact that I met a guy.

 Then the thought hits me, and I know that I should text Cooper. I hate texting first, but I have no other option, so I look at the time and see enough time has passed since I last saw him and it's okay to text. I type out: "So apparently thievery is commonplace where you come from?" and I hit send and wait with a smirk on my face. 

The cool air wafts out from the refrigerator and sends a comfortable chill dancing across my sun- kissed face. Pretty soon, I will be needing to leave the house with a jacket on, and not too long after that, a winter coat. I close the fridge giving up on the idea of eating something at the moment and decide to come back to it later, when my phone dings with an Instagram notification.

@fleethecoop has requested to follow you.

A rush of giddiness that can't be helped shoots through me as I tap on the profile and am met with Cooper's smiling face looking back at me with promises I never knew I needed and secrets I can only hope to unearth. And then I am brought back to the reality of the situation at hand: Cooper must not have trusted me to shoot him a text, so he made the first move.

This isn't a game of chess, I think to myself. It's silly really; me not knowing how to respond to even the smallest of normal teenage gestures. Perhaps my mind is too developed for this sort of alluring yet immature game of Tag. And yet, I'm it. It's my turn to either respond or not. The green check mark is calling my name, and next thing I know I'm tapping it and then hitting Follow.

Almost automatically, I am browsing Cooper's Instagram, his virtual life. He has pictures with a few friends, boys mostly. He even has a picture with his Boston Terrier captioned: "It's been a ruff road, but I'm glad I had you in the passenger seat, buddy. #MansBestFriend" I bite my lip to keep from grinning at how adorable Cooper is. I would be an idiot if I couldn't at least admire how he is strikingly different from most boys I have come to know.

As I continue to stalk Cooper and his doggy adventures, I receive a Direct Message from @ fleethecoop.

"Still never got that text. Nice to know that starving children isn't enough incentive for you."

A laugh escapes me and I cover my mouth. I am such a giddy teenager. It's a nice change, one that I wouldn't mind getting used to. 

"Maybe the signal is a little spotty over in Thieftown? And I don't think that the starving children needed to be brought into this equation."

He reads the message immediately and responds almost as fast. 

"What equation? The one where Me+You=....?"

He's baiting me. Trying to trip me up. That won't happen, though.

"Figure of speech. But if you really could help the starving children, how would I fit into the mission?"

He responds with, "Well, first you would stop playing so hard to get. Not saying that I look like a complete stalker by messaging you on here, but I sort of do."

I chuckle and type out a message to him in a text this time. "Hi, this is the Glenwood Police Department. We wanted to know why you stole an innocent girl's cellphone and claimed you could help starving children and used this as an attempt to blackmail her into texting you."

About a minute later when I take my shoes off and settle down into my comfy bed my phone dings once more. 

"Well, hello there. Took you long enough."