Chapter Text
The loud buzzing sound that vibrated against the cool metal underneath Josie startled her in her seat, causing her to sprang upwards in an unsuccessful attempt to silence the silence intrusion.
Ms. Tig, her history teacher, turned away from her mundane task of writing the day’s lesson plan on the board, and towards the source of the interruption which so happened to be coming from Josie’s direction. Her gaze fell upon the younger woman mid-jump, a furrow in her brow punctuating her question, “Is everything okay, Ms. Saltzman?”
Josie managed to emit a stuttered “yeah”, craning her bottom to the side of the old desk chair to prevent the vibrating that had yet to cease from causing another disturbance.
Ms. Tig chanced a glass at her student one second longer than Josie would have liked before turning back around to finish jotting down whatever nonsense that Josie definitely was not paying attention to.
Once she was sure that eyes were no longer on her, she pulled her cell phone from her back pocket, keeping it low on her lap and hidden by the desk from view.
Six new notifications, all via Twitter; all from user ‘infragilisettenera’. A small smile crept onto the brunette’s face as she stared at the preview of the message before opening it completely to reveal a series of memes followed by ‘I’m fucking dying here. Why the hell are time zones a thing again?’
Josie sent a laugh reaction to each of the memes, with the exception of allocating a heart to one because sometimes her internet bestie could evoke such a thing from her every once and again. The heart meme in question being one about the nature of their friendship.
Growing up, Josie had never had what most people would consider a best friend. She had her friends that always had other, closer friends and then she had her sister’s friends who she was sure only pretended to be her friend because her sister would literally reign down if they didn’t ‘play nice’, but she never had that one person that was solely hers .
Even outside of friendships, nothing ever really belonged to Josie. She didn’t know why that was, but the fact was that it was like that. She either had to share everything with her twin sister, Lizzie, or Lizzie always got what Josie wanted. In fact, Lizzie got everything she wanted and for once, there was an exception to that fucked up rule that the world somehow bestowed upon her life. There was one thing that Josie didn’t have to share: Pen Park.
She honestly didn’t know how it happened, some might call it luck but Josie liked to deem it as fate. What started out as a spontaneous like on some random’s tweet in passing slowly (and very slowly) became a friendship that Josie never knew how badly she needed.
Honestly, she’d made a ‘burner account’ as a means of escape from reality. She couldn’t really display her woes openly on her personal account with people who actually knew her, who would probably rip her apart for the simplest of things so she opted to find a way that she could express herself without the burden of potential and unwanted judgment. Her profile picture was an upside down image of Tweety Bird, a single letter ‘J’ stood alone as her name, she had a total of four whole followers to start and a profile full of random retweets with no alignment and no substance - no one with half a brain cell would have even noticed her, right? Wrong.
One night while absentmindedly scrolling through her timeline after Lizzie had blown her off yet again for whatever conquest of the week she had - not that she was judging - she came across someone’s thread about their day. There were strings of profanities, none of the person’s thoughts really flowed rightfully into the next and she struggled to somewhat make sense of it all but the entire chaos of it all brought out a chuckle and earned them a like. She began aimlessly scrolling once more when she received a message notification which caused her to freeze instantly.
Her first thought was who would be messaging her? Then panic began to set in because who even knew about her account? She was sure all four of her followers were spam accounts because she never received one like; not even an accidental like and then unlike.
Was she to check the message? Maybe it was a spam message like her spam followers. But what if it wasn’t? She quickly headed to settings in a state of uncertainty and hovered over ‘deactivate account’, but then curiosity got the best of her.
Biting the bullet, she maneuvered her cursor over to the message, closing her eyes in anticipation before taking a deep breath and reopening them.
Park? Who the hell was Park?
Her eyes fluttered down to the message, “Thanks for the like, dude. Can’t tell if you’re laughing at my pain or concerned about my trainwreck mix of emotions but I feel validated.”
Despite herself, Josie couldn’t help but smile at the weird, but in its own way - nice, interaction.
Her first thought was to leave it but before she could stop herself, she found herself typing out a response.
“I guess a mixture of both. It was so candid and passionate. I don’t know who ‘fucking asshat Jed stupid ass bitch baby” is but I, too, think he should ‘fuck right off cause no one asked’. Hope your day got better though. <3”
Almost as soon as she sent the message, she saw a typing bubble pop back up and within moments, a response.
“See? I knew someone would get it. Honestly, it was still kind of shitty. My mom didn’t help once I got home but talking to a relatable stranger is kinda making up for it. How’d you find my tweet anyways? I don’t think you’re oomf.”
Josie froze. Did people really care who and why others liked their tweets? This was a first.
“Oh uh, yeah, I mean...I can if you want me to follow you but you kind of did hashtag a bunch of things, one of them being #flm which just so happened to be trending so I don’t know if you know this or not, but that enables your tweet to pop up when someone jumps down the rabbit hole of said hashtag.”
“Funny. You got jokes, lol. I wasn’t really thinking, my bad. I followed you back, btw. Congrats on five followers, a milestone.”
“I see you’re funny, too.”
Her fingers slithered over the keys, for some reason hoping the action would allow her to think of something more to say. This was the first genuine interaction she’d had all week and whereas most of the time she was fine with being alone, she did admittedly hate the feeling of loneliness.
She knew nothing about this person but all she wanted to do was keep the conversation going, if even for the night.
“Thank you for your service. Maybe I’ll actually get tweet likes now.” She continued.
Closing her laptop, Josie shuffled in her bed to get comfortable under the covers and grabbed her phone instead. She was instantly met with an onslaught of notifications.
“Did you really just go through my profile and like my tweets?”
“I am but a mere follower who has a duty to ensure that I accomplish what a follower does. You’re welcome.”
“I didn’t say thank you.”
“I mean, if you scroll up, you kinda did.”
“Oh hush, you. It is 1 AM, have you not simmered down from your rant?”
“Actually, it’s only 7 PM here. Where are you?”
Josie glanced at the time on her phone but then a light bulb went off. She was on a global platform.
“Oh, right. Timezones are a thing. Georgia. You?”
“I’m based in Hawaii currently.”
“Based?”
“Military brat. Been here about 2 years or so. Hoping to at least finish out my senior year then who knows where?”
Josie frowned at that. Her knowledge of the term ‘military brat’ both began and ended with what she saw in movies. She wasn’t sure of just how accurate of a depiction it conveyed but the consensus was always that most kids dislike it.
“You don’t think you’ll be able to?”
“What is this? 21 questions? But nah, idk. If new orders are given, my pops usually doesn’t even try to compromise, he’s just a yes-man to the system and because I “don’t understand” - his words, not mine - what I want never matters. It’s all good, though. Relatively used to it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Lol, are you his commander or something? No need to be sorry.”
“I take it you’ve traveled a lot? Explains the username. Infragilis et tenera - Latin...I googled it, does that pertain to you?”
“So this is 21 questions. Lol But I’d say so, yeah. And yours? Characterally flawed? Is characterally even a word?
“Did your phone auto correct you when you typed it?”
“Yeah, actually.”
“Hush! Characteristically was too long of a word and also, probably taken. And yes, I’d say it was accurate.”
“You’ve told me to hush countless times now. I could.”
“No! Don’t go!”
Josie didn’t know exactly why she was so quick to quickly retract her previous statement. This was a girl - well, was it a girl? - that she absolutely knew nothing about and whom also knew nothing about her. But maybe that’s what was so captivating for her. This was someone who didn’t know her, who wasn’t judging her, who wasn’t comparing her to her sister and who genuinely just cared enough to talk to her. No ulterior motives. It was a rarity and something she didn’t know that she had craved until that very moment.
“I - was joking…”
A sigh of relief managed to escape the brunette, a breath that she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding as she waited those brief few moments in between responses.
“Sorry, I just - not to sound odd or anything but I’ve enjoyed your conversation.”
“Yeah? I mean, I am pretty amazing so….but likewise.”
“I’m Jo, btw. We kind of never officially introduced ourselves.”
“Just call me Park.”