Get Up and Be Free: The Little Phone Girl

It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling and it was almost dark. In the icy gray dawn of a midwestern morning, a girl trudged down the path to the place where the bus stopped to get her each day.

Crunch, crunch, squash.

The snow sunk much deeper on the third step. Aching with cold, the girl pulled with more force to free her now soggy wet boot. Snow had seeped over the top of it, and right through her jeans. Great. Just great, she thought. It burned in her sock and chilled the tender skin of her shin. The temperature must have been just a single digit. Chattering rattled involuntarily from her bottom jaw, and her teeth were most painful when perfectly still. Shivers and goosebumps had lined up under her clothes, not much help for her stiffening limbs.

The only things warm were her hands and her mind. Her mind had a hope that soothed like the fire, and her hands had a phone. And her fingers were flying. It didn’t really matter that the rest of her froze. Sparks seemed to jump from the rate she was typing, and she used this fact to justify being enamored with the device right now. Of all times and in this weather, she should be paying attention to her path. But the hope, the goal, the desire just out of reach. It dangled like a carrot and teased her relentlessly. The fact is, she really wanted to hear from him. Anything at all. DMs or text. A snap or a post. Anything at all to be connected to him. Anything at all.

A quarter-mile walk in an early morning freeze, she told herself, would be better if she had a distraction. If she kept to this usual obsessive rechecking, she won’t even notice the cold, she thought. It’s responsible, even. Yes. Very, she thought. And maybe, just maybe, she might hear from him.

Dad could be furious and Mom might be, too, she thought. Her big sister, Joss, could get super sick. Her math teacher might fail her and hold her a grade back. Her parents could ground her from dances and games. It would suck, really bad. She’d hate all of that, for sure. But if he wanted her, she could deal with whatever. Anything at all, if she just had him.

Young love is harsh and insistent and raw, especially when felt from a girl to a boy. Maybe this summer he’d drive her around. Maybe he’d take her and call her his own. Maybe he’d brag on his posts about her, then everyone would see she was worth it. Everyone would know how he felt about her. A girl can dream in the snow, can’t she?

The road seemed harder and the darkness seemed darker. Her legs and her arms started to feel more like boulders. But her fingers kept flying and swiping to check. Checking and checking, but nothing was different. Until suddenly, the phone refreshed. Yes. Oh yes. New posts have arrived on the feed. But Then—

Colder than cold from the iciest air, burning beyond severe frostbite: a new post populated from the guy, the him.

But, wait, what the heck? He told me he cared. About ME. Why would he say the same things to that girl? Why is he posting about her at all. He whispered warm lies and he broke fake promises. What could this mean, besides now I feel dead.

That blasted old phone had served as a hand warmer three seconds ago. Now it was a dagger of icicles, cutting in deep to rip at her heart. A twisted invention. A cursed piece of trash. I hate it more than I hate life itself. She worried and pondered and hot tears built up. Swiping them away, they almost froze on the spot.

How can this be? He said he liked me, she thought.

Dangerously cold air and lonely sad roads were mere afterthoughts to the girl in that miserable moment. Nothing else mattered and all seemed to fade. Things like the wind freezing the inside of her nose with each breath, the moisture making tiny hairs stiffen on each inhale—those things had no effect on her bloody torn heart. The girl noticed her vision became narrow, her heart rate too rapid, and her body declared war on itself. The war was one-sided. She wouldn’t defend.

‘The mind is a powerful thing,’ she could hear. Her middle-school art teacher mumbled about philosophical things like that while demonstrating the lesson for the day. It is such a powerful thing, she agreed, and then slumped to a pile of bones to the ground. Not just bones, but some muscle and fat mixed in, too. Some fabrics like polyester blend and denim. Then the cotton and metal clasps, too much concealer, lip balm, mascara, and earrings that gleamed. He said they made her face much more pretty. She never removed them at all, ever since. All the mass of her being now piled in the middle of the driveway, the lonely, icy, quarter mile walk. The sad country path that led to her bus stop. Her body was limp, because nothing mattered anymore. The fingers that were recently flying now carelessly lay in the white powdered ground. She knew it was dumb and she knew she should care, but the thing she had lived for was dead. The truth was too much to bear.

Like magic, the cursed little phone she had dropped: it stood up right there where it fell. It grew out two arms and formed a true face. Then it called out and said ‘Little girl, look my way.’

The girl was confused, and thought she had gone insane. Her head stayed bowed low, her shoulders slumped forward, her body melted, collapsed, and stayed frozen in defeat.

‘Little girl, lift your head. You’ve been deceived, but it can be fixed.’

She thought to herself that an app must have glitched, that there’s no way she was actually hearing her phone speak to her. Maybe AI really was taking over. No, she just felt sad. Her mind was running away with her.

She chanced a slight look, one eye lifted slightly, the scene almost too much to try to understand. The actual thing has come alive, she thought. I’d be crazy to speak back to it. What is happening to me?

‘Well, there you are, Girl. I can finally see your face. Just like you can see mine. You know this can be fixed, if you just change your mind.’

‘Well, excuse me, Sir Phone, but I can hardly believe I’m speaking to an inanimate object. So, why should I believe my problem can be fixed?’

’You speak to your phone all day long,’ it contended. ‘Voice to text, type to text, swiping and pressing and lurking and commenting. Learning what you weren’t built to carry, and fearing a thousand things you’d never have to face. All of it based on a lie, of course.’

The girl was astounded. The tech had such wisdom. But what was she doing here, piled in the snow? Conversing with a tiny computer. And what did it know of real human stuff?

‘What do you know about real human life? What do you know about love?’

The phone smirked, a sage look in its eyes and mused, ‘Yet you sit in despair in the snow from my reports. You’re near your own death from the post of a boy, and you learned it from me, did you not? The boy and the posts and the texts and the feeds, they’re all a facade. Just look at reality. You’ll see what I see. The meaning of life goes beyond single hurts. It’s found in the choosing to go on. Choosing to live free of fear and vain striving. You are enough. But you’ll have to choose to get up.’

The girl immediately heard a ding in the air around her, a halo of gold warming the lightbulb over her head. The light seemed to have a voice of its own. Over and over it said the same thing: ‘You have the choice. Just get up and be free. You have the choice. Just get up and be free.’ And on and on it spoke the same thing.

It seemed like a dream, but more lucid than any dream she’d ever had before. She was either dying or flying, but she knew she’d heard truth. And the truth was, she knew what to do. She knew the phone had given her facts, and the facts were her only chance. She knew if she wanted to live, she should stand. Her heart still felt broken, though, and the cold, in its sinister serenade, invited her to stay a little while longer. It enticed, ‘You’re fine here. Just fine. Just stay down in this pile. Close your eyes and you won’t have to deal with the rest. The boy will never love you. Don’t get up to face that.’ Gravity seemed to pull down like strings. She wanted to agree with the cold. It was thinking what she’d already been thinking, after all.

But a phone or a lightbulb or something else altogether spoke over the cold with a pure, healing essence. It said the same thing as before: about having a choice, and about just getting up. Freedom and choices and she was enough.

The battle was real, and the girl knew the right thing. It just felt so far and so very difficult. The cold sided with her innermost self, but the warmth was so pure, and so patient and kind. What will it be, Girl? What will it be?

A peaceful quiet surrounded her now, and she wondered if she had passed beyond this life. The phone and the light and the snow and the post: maybe none of it really mattered anymore. Emergency colors infused all the black: red and blue lights mixed with sirens all around. Someone’s in trouble, she thought. Big trouble, for real. Crunches and squashes and voices getting louder.

‘We found you, oh wow. We found you!’

‘Was I lost?’ she replied, and pulled at her hands. Icicle-glue had welded them to the snow from her tears, and she felt no sensation in her ankles or toes. ‘Is somebody hurt? Wait, where is my bus?’ Her voice sounded small and so weak, like a ghost. Was that my voice, she wondered to herself. Bodies were moving around her so quickly. It seemed urgent, but no one told her why. Then, like a feather, she floated from the ground, hands supporting her underneath, the blustery air biting her cheeks as she moved through it. Horizontal on her back, she noticed the sky growing brighter, but bright in these months meant a lighter shade of stone gray. Why am I flying on my back, she thought.

‘Can you hear my voice, Dear? Can you talk to us? Jan, she walked down here on a Saturday. Didn’t you see her go? Damn it all. Honey, can you hear us?’ Her dad’s voice was muffled and spoke through a tunnel, but she knew he was talking about her. Talking to her. The girl gave an effort to open her mouth, but the words were stubborn and so were her lungs. A faint sound escaped: ‘I hear you.’ Did I speak? It’s so faint. I just spoke before, she thought. Didn’t they hear me?

‘Honey, are you there? Can you hear us? You’re so cold. Honey, why were you out here on a—‘

‘Ma’am, Sir, we have to get her on the truck. Only one can ride along. I’m sorry, but she needs to be moved.’

She heard the slight sob of her mother, with the gruff response of her father, ‘yea, ok. I’ll follow. Jan I’ll be right back here.’ Sniffs and coughs and baritone voices permeated the air as the hinges of a heavy door’s protest screeched out. Tubes and plastic bags, bandages and blankets were flying all around her face as she moved in and out of this strange movie scene. A hand covered over her somewhere, sending sweet warmth and radiating love. That’s my mom’s hand, she thought. That’s my mom’s hand.

Whimpers punctuated her mother’s whispered thoughts. She could hear her mother speaking quietly. The girl realized her mother was praying just now. She realized she’d never seen her do that. Inside her, she knew, her mother was praying because of her. Words were just wisps, but the heart was so pure, crystal clear. She’s worried for me, thought the girl. Oh wow. What really happened to me? She scraped back the pages, the moments before this one, tried to remember how she got here. The driveway, the snow, the phone, and the— the post.

The boy. The boy. The boy. The boy.

It’s fine. I’ll just get up and keep going, she thought. I’ve got to make a choice to get up and move on. I won’t fear what’s next. I won’t strive for more. I am enough. I am alive. My hands are now warm.

‘Mom, I’m here.’

‘Oh, Baby Girl! Wow! You can hear me? You can speak? Honey, are you ok? Don’t worry. We’ve got you on an ambulance, on the way to the hospital. Oh—‘ An outburst of ugly crying escaped her mother’s throat, her face contorted in happy, bittersweet relief. ‘Oh my God, thank You, God. You heard my prayer.’

‘Mom, what happened to me?’

‘Well, we don’t know why, but you walked out while we slept. You must have thought you had school. But it’s Saturday! I don’t know what time you left, but your dad was called into work very early for a company outage, and when he drove back, he found you piled in the driveway, freezing to death. Baby, you weren’t moving.’ More sobs and muffled throat clearing. ‘Just collapsed with your phone standing straight up right in front of you. Like it was propped up in the snow? Your back pack was on with no books in it. Bizarre, really. The strangest thing. But none of that matters. You’re well and you’re warm. We thought we were losing you to hypothermia.’

She barely noticed the other person there. All of it blurred so that only one person could matter at a time. But a red-cheeked man with a graying beard sat next to her mom in the truck. He’d been layering blankets on the girl, and moving equipment around in the backdrop the whole ride. He chimed in, ‘Well, she still should be seen at the hospital, but her speaking clearly is an excellent sign. Doc will check her over, vitals and such. It’s like she just decided to wake up! But for you little miss: no more sleepwalking in the snow, young lady. Our windchills were way below zero this morning! Nothing is worth dying in that.’

The girl smiled weakly, embarrassed at the whole scene. She knew they wouldn’t understand the real thing that had happened. Was it real, she considered? Does it even matter? The boy and the posts and the phone had entranced her. Not worth it, for sure, but very real attachments. They wouldn’t see why. Not her reasons, her visions, not her resolve to be free. But free was now what she was. Free, indeed.