Technology is a Girl's Best Friend (Until it Tries to Take Over the World)

I spend a disproportionate amount of time on the computer. And, honestly, I don't even know how. A lot of the time, I just sit there bored out of my mind, wondering what it is I usually do, and then suddenly it's two hours later.

That being said, I know a pathetic amount about technology for the amount of time I spend using it.

I can work a computer. I know that when the Internet is slow, you disconnect and reconnect some wires in the "router" or whatever that thing is. I don't really do much with it other than waste time though. I don't browse, necessarily. I'm more of a "save a few different websites and keep going back to them five times a day" kind of user. I learned how to use Excel/Spreadsheet (something that I've used more times than I would've thought this year for a few econ projects, so thank you). I was once a GarageBand whiz. I used to Skype my sister every now and then. iTunes is a great tool to fill that void of silence, followed closely by YouTube.

As a writer, Word is my best friend. A pretty straightforward relationship: type type type, Command+s (save), type type type, Command+q (quit), click save, done. Dropbox, if you don't know what that is, is totally useful as a writer too. It's this app you download from online and it lets you save Word documents and other things like that to the Dropbox folder, and you can access the document online or, if you download the app on another device, you can access it that way too. It's really helpful for when I work on something on my computer and then want to work on it on my laptop instead.

Something I was introduced to late last year that I've been using all year in newspaper, is InDesign 6 (I think that's how its' stylized, but don't quote me on it). Honestly, I'm not all that clear on what it is exactly, but it's what editors of newspapers use to layout the pages. There's lots of buttons and clicking and boxes involved that I never remember until I'm sitting there in front of the page, but I know that if I go into journalism, it's one of the things that will keep popping up. According to Mr. Barr, the newspaper advisor, InDesign 6 is the version of InDesign they use at the collegiate and professional level so I have a head-up on all those posers (I kid . . . mostly).

I know that there's this idea that teenagers need to be attached to their phone 24/7, but for me, headphones, an iPhone, and a book will keep me occupied just as well and even better when I'm outside. I text and call my sister occasionally, sometimes my mom. Once in a while, a friend. For the most part, though, my phone is for show. And games. It's terrible. Sometimes I spend more time playing games on my phone than anything else. 2048 ruined my life.

To be completely honest, I have no idea what kind of technological-digital-whilly-nilly kind of skills I'll need later in life. For the most part, I think I'm set. I'm not going into a high-tech field of work. The kind of tech I do need to know I have some experience with. Anything I do need to learn, I'll learn on the job (I'm a quick learner when I want to be). I could be better with a camera, I guess.

The only thing--the ONLY THING--I absolutely refuse to ever try to use, even if she shows up everywhere I go in ten years, is Siri. Siri is the beginning of the end of the world. I am not kidding in any way when I say that when robots and technology finally rise up against the human race, I am on hundred percent positive that Siri will be leading the rebellion. (This may sound like a joke, but this has been a legitimate fear of mine ever since I saw the movie I, Robot with Will Smith, which is a great movie and if you haven't seen it you totally should. Seriously, Siri is just the start. The next step will be the cars that park themselves. Once they figure out they don't need us, we're screwed.)

The Adventures of Red Sparrow and Spitfire

Award winning short story by Erica Drake that she started reading in class and promised she would post on her blog which she forgot to do until now. 

Here we go.

“I feel ridiculous. We look like idiots.”

“Would you rather wear the cape?”

“No.”

Pause.

“Maybe.”

Spitfire took a deep breath in through her nose, out through her mouth—a vain attempt to calm her jittery nerves—and looked down at her costume for the hundredth time that night. A red, orange, and yellow leotard much like something you would see a circus acrobat wear, most likely because this came from her time as a circus performer. The lightweight Kevlar she wore underneath was a bit different though.

Another deep breath, because this was it. This was the night Spitfire, gymnast extraordinaire and martial art (almost) master, made her heroic debut alongside her expert mentor Red Sparrow. After years of preparation and training, this was it.

Spitfire breathed in deeply once again and was about to let it out when she caught her mentor’s look and frowned. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?” Red Sparrow asked, her voice seeping with affection. It reminded Spitfire of the first time she’d pulled off a standing back flip when she was five with Red Sparrow looking on, wearing the exact same expression she had now underneath her mask.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Spitfire demanded.

“Like what?” Red Sparrow said obliviously.

“Like your baby’s all grown up.”

Red Sparrow laughed and reached for Spitfire’s cheeks, pinching them hard. “But you are all grown up,” she cooed. “And you are my baby.”

Spitfire swatted away the pinching hands and scowled. “Stop it. You’re messing up the mask.”

“And it looks wonderful on you, kid.” Red Sparrow couldn’t stop the grin from growing on her face.

“Stop it!”

The night grew darker and the city below them came to life. Spitfire watched from their seat on the roof of the tallest building of the city as neon signs flickered, people poured into streets, and the sounds of honking and yelling that followed traffic filled the air.

Red Sparrow went from playful to serious so fast Spitfire hardly had a chance to enjoy the scenery.

“Okay,” Red Sparrow said. “We’re about to start. Are you ready?”

Spitfire’s heart was about to leap out of her chest and her stomach was doing little flips. She was going to barf any second now. She took a deep breath, silently gagged, and nodded.

Red Sparrow nodded once. “Is your com in?”

Spitfire pressed a hand against the little communication device in her ear. “Check.”

Red Sparrow nodded again before bringing her hand to her own ear. “Q?” she said. “Q, are you there?”

“Yeah, sorry.” Q’s voice filled Spitfire’s ear as the com came to life. She heard the light clacking of typing on a keyboard as Q settled in to his cushy desk chair in front of a wall of computer screens back at home base. Spitfire wished she were there with him. “My pizza just showed up.”

“You’re eating pizza?” she scoffed. “We’re trying to protect the city and you’re eating pizza?”

“I’ve got four slices of pepperoni with your name on it when you get back.”

Spitfire pouted. “Thanks.”

Red Sparrow glared at her. “Focus, will you? Both of you?”

They mumbled apologies before Red Sparrow continued. “Okay, remember, this is just a routine patrol. Stay on the roofs and stay out of sight. Do not engage unless absolutely necessary. Q, have you got us eyes?”

There was a slight pause on the other end of the com before Q said, “Got it.”

“Good,” she said, smiling reassuringly under her mask. “It’ll be fine. You’re gonna do great, kid.”

Spitfire gulped. “Easy for you to say. You’ve been doing this for, what, a year already? I’m not a hero. I’m just a circus freak.”

Red Sparrow laid a hand on Spitfire’s shoulder. “Hey, I’m a circus freak too, remember? Just pretend you’re on stage.”

“This is nothing like the stage!”

Spitfire suddenly couldn’t breath at all. She forgot how to flip and punch and kick. She didn’t even think she could touch her toes right now if she tried.

“This is nothing like the stage!” she said again. “There’s nobody else around! I have to stay out of sight and no one will even know I’m there! There’s no net to catch me if I fall off the roof! There isn’t even a crowd to get me going! This is nothing like the stage!”

Applause erupted in her ear, causing her to wince.

“What was that, Q?” she asked, slightly ticked off that Q interrupted her panicking.

“A crowd to get you going,” he answered. “Don’t be so nervous, kid. I’m watching you. I’m cheering you on. And I’ve got a whole bunch of sound effects in here if you ever need something else to get you going. Don't forget the pizza when you’re done.”

She let out a breath of laughter but she couldn’t stop shaking.

Red Sparrow tightened her grip on Spitfire’s shoulder. “And don’t forget,” she said. “I’m here to catch you if you fall.”

Spitfire grinned. “That was so cheesy I’m gonna puke.”

Red Sparrow smiled back, shoving Spitfire’s shoulder. “Are we ready?”

“Ready,” Q answered around a mouthful of pizza.

Spitfire gulped loudly, swallowing the last of her nerves, and looked at her mentor. “We’re partners, right?”

“Of course,” Red Sparrow answered without hesitation.

Spitfire took one last deep breath, clenched her fists, and then nodded. “Ready.”

  *    *    *    *    *

Red Sparrow told her to act like she was going on stage. So that’s what Spitfire did.

Instead of walking or running across the roofs, she leapt and flipped and twisted and whenever she pulled off a particularly wonderful stunt, she asked Q for some applause. He happily obliged.

Because this was her first time, Spitfire stayed in the busier part of the city where buildings were taller and more plentiful—and more or less the same size making it easier to maneuver. Red Sparrow took some of the more suburban areas where staying hidden was harder. Q kept an eye on both of them through traffic cameras, ATMs, and security systems, anything with a camera pointed toward the streets.

Out of sight and in the shadows, Spitfire heard Red Sparrow’s voice in her ear an hour and two and a half rounds later.

“How’s it going on your end?” her mentor asked.

Spitfire stopped her performance and crouched at the edge of the building she was on. Panting lightly, she looked over the city laid out in front of her, at the twinkling lights and the people clearing out. The streets were nearly empty. It was making her anxious.

With a crowd, people were distracted. She could get away with careless mistakes like jumping too high or flipping too flamboyantly because no one bothered to look up. The less people there were, the more likely they were to be alone, and the more likely they were to notice a flash of yellow against the night sky. She wondered again why she picked this costume.

She took a deep breath before answering. “Quiet, I guess. Really . . . quiet.”

“Good.” Red Sparrow sounded proud, like it was thanks to Spitfire that nothing was going on. “Keep it up.”

“Um, for how much longer?”

“Just another hour or two.”

“Oh, is that all?” Spitfire muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“Good. Now get going.”

After what felt like hours of flipping and aching muscles, she stopped at another building for a quick break—this was very different from a stage, in more ways than one—and did another once over of the city. Then something caught her eye: a completely empty street of stores, restaurants, and banks.

Suspicious, she thought.

“Hey Q,” she said, heading over. She squinted at the street sign. “Check out Crest Street really fast for me, will you?”

Q yawned. “You got it.”

Spitfire smirked. “Tired much?”

“Not even,” he answered stubbornly. “Crest Street. Looks pretty quiet from here. Why?”

And she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to say, “It’s quiet, Q. Too quiet.”

She took her time with Crest Street, closely watching each store and restaurant and bank. She was about to move on to another street when a certain jewelry store came into view. Something inside glittered brightly before disappearing. She looked harder and saw more glittering before it stopped.

“Q,” she said. “Check inside a jewelry store called Oracle Jewels on Crest.”

“Checking, and . . . Duuude.”

“Someone’s in there, right?”

“And he’s cleaning it out. Red, what do you want to do?”

Red Sparrow thought for a second before answering. “Trip the alarm. Get the police in there fast.”

Spitfire watched the thief carefully. “They won’t make it in time. The guy’s about ready to bolt. I think I should—“

“No,” Red Sparrow said.

“You don’t even know—“

“You want to engage.”

“So maybe you do know.”

“And I say not to. The police will handle it.”

“But they won’t make it in time. He’s gonna get away. Come on, just let me do this. What happened to all that faith you had in me earlier?"

“No. You may have been doing circus tricks since you were six but you only just started learning how to fight. You don’t have enough experience to—“

“Come on, Red,” Q interrupted. “Stop babying her. It’s just a jewel thief. I’m sure the kid can handle it.”

"'Just a jewel thief' he says." She sighed. There was a long pause before she said, “Fine. But be—“

“Careful!” Spitfire said excitedly, already on her way to the store. “Got it! Check back later!”

  *    *    *    *    *

Tommy couldn’t believe how easy this was. The alarm system was a cinch to hack and the jewels themselves were locked up with simple level 2 Chaste-E locks. With a low chuckle, he threw the final piece of jewelry into his bag and relocked the case. He tied his bag closed and turned to the door, ready to make his getaway.

“Dude, sloppy.”

Tommy jumped at the voice. He looked around but couldn’t see anyone. “Who’s there?”

“Over here.”

He jumped again and turned around. There, with one hand on her hip, stood a girl in a red mask covering half her face and a red, orange, and yellow costume.

She smiled at him. “Hi. Like I said, sloppy. You didn’t even try to hack the cameras. Or cover your face. At least you wore gloves. No finger prints.”

Tommy didn’t exactly know what was going on, but he knew enough to be offended. “I’m not taking thieving advice from some girl in a costume. What, did Halloween come early this year?”

“I knew it!” The girl stood up straight and looked down at herself. “I should’ve gone with the cape!”

By now Tommy was thoroughly confused. It must’ve shown on his face because the girl looked up and said, “Sorry, first time. Refocusing. Now, put the jewels down.”

He scoffed. “Really? Or what? You’re gonna give me your cooties? How old are you? Twelve?”

And then, so fast he barely had time to react, she flipped across the floor, tackled him to the ground, and landed sitting on his chest. She was glaring at him from under her mask.

“I’m fourteen.”

And then everything went black.

 *    *    *    *    *

“And Red Sparrow has struck again. Late last night, an unnamed thief attempted to rob Oracle Jewels on Crest Street but was stopped and apprehended before police arrived on the scene. The thief was found unconscious outside the store, tied with Red Sparrow’s signature red rope. However reports say that the hero who stopped the thief was not Red Sparrow herself, but her sidekick, Spitfire. It seems that there is not just one, but two heroes watching over us.”

“Got that right.”

Parker Carter smiled at the TV, enjoying the comfort of the plush couch underneath her. Then she took a bite of her fourth slice of pepperoni pizza.

She sat alone in the loft. Her aunt Jemma left for some job interviews and Quentin went to work. Parker shook her head. She always thought that for a computer genius that could hack the whole city Quentin could do so much better than a part time gig at Best Buy.

But the city was still new to them. The three of them had just moved in to the loft. The place still echoed. Things could only get better. Parker smiled at the TV screen when a picture of a black head with a question mark showed up with the caption “Who is Red Sparrow?”

Of course things would get better.

“Hey, Parker.”

Parker looked to see Jemma walking in to the loft.

“Watcha watching?” Jemma asked, leaning against the back of the couch.

“The fruit of my labors,” Parker grinned. “Not sure how I feel about the whole sidekick thing though.”

Jemma grinned. “Don’t worry about it, partner. You did good, kid.”

Parker smiled. “Yeah. So, how goes the job hunting?”

“Don’t ask. The real world is so hard.” Jemma sighed and walked away, Parker following. 

Parker nodded understandingly. “Circus life was so much easier.” She watched her aunt search through a bag sitting on a tabletop. “Watcha got there?”

Jemma shrugged. “Just a little something.” She pulled out a small box tied with a red ribbon and handed it to Parker. “For a job well done.”

She tugged on the ribbon then lifted the lid and there, sitting on a pad of cotton, sat a pair of sleek, black sunglasses. She looked up to see her aunt wearing a matching pair over her eyes.

Parker smiled. “Explain?”

“We’re heroes now, you know?” Jemma shrugged. “Living in the big city and making things safe. Heroes have secret identities. We have to protect ours. Both of us.”

As she put them on, Parker asked, “With sunglasses?”

“Well, if you don’t want them—“

“I never said that. How do I look?” She struck a pose.

Jemma smiled. “Hardly recognized you.”

iReflect: A Look in the Mirror (And Over the Last Seven Months)

My mom's motivation for me joining iQuest was for me to get a job. My motivation for joining iQuest was to get out of fifth period.

Honestly, and rather naively, I said this on my application for iQuest. What can I say? It was the middle of summer when I decided to apply and the lack of a face-to-face interview made me brave. Still, I was able to get into the class and indulge myself in writing and fifth period free once/twice a week.

The class was a lot more work than I thought it'd be, to be honest. Like, we actually did stuff. We got assignments and had to think about things and everything. Not that it was particularly hard or anything, but still, it wasn't what I was expecting. I'm not complaining (really . . . okay maybe sorta kinda) because in the end it ended being a lot of stuff I really needed to know. Like how to work a spreadsheet. I ended up needing to know that for an Econ project I did recently and it's probably something I'll need to know later on too.

But while I appreciate all the important life skills I learned in this class this year (that I wouldn't have learned in any other class, thank you very much, my college-but-not-real-world prep school), that wasn't what this year was about. So what was it about?

Writing. Writing. Writing writing writing.

Writing.

I've wanted to be a writer for ten years, at least. I love it. I love the act of it. I love the feel of the keys clicking under my fingers as I type away a story on the keyboard. I love the sense of accomplishment when I put together a sentence that I just can't get enough of. I even love the frustration of that comes along with writer's block.

Favorite part of this year? Being given time to enjoy what I love.

Which I totally needed in the month of November because (wait for it) of NaNoWriMo. In case any of my faithful readers (I'm looking at all two of you) forgot, NaNoWriMo (aka National Novel Writing Month) is a month long writing marathon that requires you to churn out 50,000 words of a novel you wrote in the month of November alone. I won, thank you very much, with a whopping 50,607 words, which I am very proud of because on top of writing that monster, I also had school, homework, college apps, and college essays. All of which, I am proud to report, I managed to get through alive. An easy feat by no means. November Productivity Levels: Off the Charts.

Rest of the Year Productivity Levels: Off the Charts in the Other Direction.

That's the one thing that upset me the most. I don't know what it was, maybe I was in a period of mourning after finishing that first book, but trying to write anything else became five times harder than it was before. I honestly don't know what happened. I can't even blame it on senioritis (which has hit me hard in every aspect of my life) because I usually write to avoid school. If I could go back, I would have worked five times as hard to write to make up for the five times harder it was.

Despite that, my passion for writing has never waned (I've even been trying to expand my everyday lexicon to get used to all those words). I've never been more motivated to become a writer than I am at this very moment, when writing is the hardest thing I could ever attempt to do. And I made it through Pre-Calc. That's saying something.

Before this year, though, I was a little embarrassed about it. Embarrassed about my dream. How messed up is that? When I looked around, I saw people wanting to be a businessman or an artist or a chef and those things all seemed like completely viable professions. But a writer? How many people did I see actually want to do that after dreading all those essays?

What this year did for me that nothing else would ever have done, and what I am completely grateful it did, was that it forced me to share with everyone what my passion. I would tell people I was in iQuest, they would ask what that was, I would explain it, and then they would ask me what I was doing for the class.

"Oh, I go home and work on a project."

"Really? What project?"

"Well, I'm sorta kinda maybe actually trying to, you know, write a book."

"Wow, that's cool. What is it about?"

Which I was very happy to hear and very reluctant to answer. So while only a handful of people actually know what it's about, at least two handfuls of people know that I am in fact writing a book. Which is about two handfuls more than there would ever have been if I hadn't taken this class.

So thank you.

I was a little apprehensive about this whole program when I first walked into the classroom the third day of school because of how open I had to be about the whole thing, but I am completely and totally and undeniably grateful for the opportunity this class has given me and I would tell anyone considering this class that it is completely and totally and undeniably worth every second.

Thank you, iQuest.

(After blog post shout out to my mentor Mrs. Peggy Dulle, the iQuest teacher Mrs. Cindy Bonagura, and my mom, sister, uncle, and grandma because this would've have been the year it was without them.)