Only the Lonely
Authors: Laura Dower
From the Files of Madison Finn, Vol. 1
Laura Dower
For Mom with love—always remember MTM, sour cream & onion chips, and Warren Avenue
Special thanks to my first editor, Helen Perelman, who showed me the ropes;
and to my new editor, Samantha Streger,
who’s helping me bring Maddie back to life …
Chapter 1
“H
NNNNNNUGH!
WHAT IS YOUR
problem?” Madison grunted at her new orange laptop computer. She was smack-dab in the middle of downloading a picture of a super-cute
Ursus maritimus
(a.k.a. polar bear) when the screen just froze.
She knew her hard drive had plenty of memory and her virus program was up to date.
She punched all the right keys.
CAPS LOCK wasn’t on.
But nothing.
Sometimes in the past, Madison’s computer screen would freeze, but only for a blip. This time, something was different. Maybe the computer wasn’t
really
the one with a problem.
Maybe Madison was the frozen one.
Madison Francesca Finn had a dreadful case of late-summer brain freeze. It was not the kind of brain freeze you get when you drink a Grape Slurpee too fast. This was the kind of brain freeze that happens when your thoughts get stuck in a whirly swirl of loneliness, friendlessness, and total and utter boredom. This was the chronic, moronic, pain-in-the-brain freeze that happens when everyone you know is at camp but you’re stuck at home with Mom; the summer reading list you were supposed to be finishing up hasn’t even been
unfolded;
and you have no pool options on 95° days.
“Ugh!” Madison yelped, jumping up from her desk chair. “Laptop fail, Phin! Why me?” She glared at her dog, Phineas T. Finn, who was curled up next to a giant metal file cabinet in the corner of her bedroom.
Phin poked up his wrinkly nose into the air and sneezed. “Rowroooooooo!” This pug hated it when his nap was interrupted.
“Well, I’ll just restart it just to be sure everything’s okay,” Madison said out loud, groaning and hitting a few special keys. Pressing Control+Alt+Delete at once was a trick her dad had taught her.
Dad was the one who had computerized Madison in the first place. He had shown her what HTML meant before most of her classmates had clicked on their first mouses. And Dad always shared the best apps, games, and cool tools—all of them educational, of course. He loved computer jokes, too, even though he told the same ones more than once.
“Hey, Maddie, why did the Net chick cross the road?” he would ask.
“I dunno, Dad … why?” Madison would say with pretend interest, even if it was the third time she’d heard it.
“To get ONLINE!” Dad would laugh.
And that was one of his better jokes.
Just this year, her parents had bought this new laptop in Madison’s favorite color. Dad uploaded all the latest desktop-publishing programs, too. He even got Madison an ice-cream cone–shaped flash drive so she could backup her documents and photographs.
“It’s a great way to organize your thoughts, honey bear,” Mom had suggested as they unpacked the computer back in May. “Just think, you’re on the cutting edge of technology. This fall, you’ll be the smartest seventh grader at Far Hills.”
It made Madison uncomfortable whenever Mom talked about how smart Madison was, like she was a computer genius or a writing genius or anyone with “genius” potential. Madison knew her way around the Internet, but she didn’t exactly feel like a “genius”—
yet
.
The laptop beeped and zinged, and Madison’s desktop wallpaper appeared once again. The polar bear was right there in its own box with a collage of white rhinos and mountain gorillas in the background.
Madison always used pictures of endangered animals as her screen savers. In fact, she considered herself an official animal advocate both on the computer and off. She fantasized about working for the
National Geographic Explorer
TV show, or becoming a super vet, or maybe even becoming a documentary filmmaker like her mom.
With the laptop finally unfrozen and ready to go, Madison logged onto her favorite web site, TweenBlurt.com. Here she could read about the latest and greatest trends; scan true stories shared by a whole bunch of girls she didn’t know; and chat with kids who liked the same things she did.
Best of all, the chat room helped Madison break through a case of brain freeze better than most things. Of course, she knew meeting new people online wasn’t the same as having actual, in-the-same-room friends whose hair you could braid or who could play hoops, but it was better than being alone all the time.
She’d logged onto TweenBlurt for the first time a year ago with Mom’s permission. The administrators in charge of the site were super-sticklers for safety.
The homepage was designed like a giant fishbowl. Everyone chose a fish as his or her avatar. Madison’s was a rainbow fish and her chat room screen name was “MadFinn,” which was pretty funny, considering she was a “Finn” among the fishes, so to speak. Once she clicked, her rainbow fish swam into a waiting room.
Madison scanned the list of different chat rooms she could join.
I am sooo bored! Hello!
(32 fish)
Tell me anything u want GRRRLS ONLY
(12 fish)
****animal lovers here*****
(3 fish)
Private! Wanna be keypals?
(28 fish)
Pictures of cute boyz can u help me
(11 fish)
only the lonely
(1 fish)
Madison clicked “animal lovers here” and went inside. She was sure she must be in the right place. Maybe she’d meet a fellow polar bear admirer?
MadFinn has entered the room.
Downtown Boyz was an all-guy singing group whose lead singer Jimmie J was pretty cute but …
wait a minute!
Madison wanted to talk about animals. This was the “animal lovers here” room. Why were they changing the subject? Who cared about Jimmie J? And why wasn’t Iluvcats girl responding?
Iluvcats has left the room.
As soon as cat girl left the room, Madison left, too.
She went back to the room list in search of
someone
who would talk about animals or computers or something besides Jimmie J. She saw one other room that looked semi-interesting.
only the lonely (1 fish)
That was
exactly
how Madison felt. She missed her best friend, Aimee, who was away at ballet camp twirling around; and Egg, who was away at computer camp URL-ing around.
She clicked on “lonely” and hoped for the best.
Of course as luck would have it (and Madison’s luck usually ran a little
sloooooow
these days), she entered and introduced herself with a quick “MadFinn” hello, but then nothing happened.
There was no “hello” back.
There was no “how r u?”
There was nothing. Madison waited almost three whole minutes before the “(1 fish)” responded in any way at all.
Madison waited.
Madison waited a little longer.
Poof?
Madison felt even
more
alone than when she had logged on, so of course she logged off immediately. She wasn’t in the mood to be lonely anymore.
After that chat room fiasco, Madison went into her super-special computer files. She accessed the files with a super-special password which was so super-special that even
she
forgot it sometimes. Luckily, she had it taped inside the top drawer of her desk.
In the last few weeks (partly out of boredom and partly out of a desire to get her life together), Madison had begun a new system of personal information storage on the laptop.
She had been collecting magazine clippings like a pack rat for months and uploading them onto her computer. Mom had a cool app on her smartphone that could transfer photos and letters to Madison’s laptop.
One by one the images popped up in boxes on the screen, one on top of the other. Now Madison needed to add the special effects. She logged onto funkyfotostudio.com and downloaded the images into a rainbow folder there marked “Madison.” Once the pics were downloaded she was able to add borders, color, funny captions, and more. She hoped Mom and Dad would let her have her own Web page or even her own Web site one day. Maybe the genius she was destined to be really was a Web site
genius?