I know I said I was in a writing ebb, and in some ways I am. But what started as a call for help turned into an inside joke, and to be honest I felt this desire to jump in on the fun!
The setting is based off of the school I used to work at, which relied heavily on Chromebooks. (Especially when your department did not have a budget for anything, let alone a curriculum, but we won’t dwell on that!)
Hope you enjoy!
The principal of Bishop Doyle High School decided to let the students keep the brand new Chromebooks rather than borrowing them. During orientation week, Isa Benitez collected her new Chromebook just in time for her mid-morning PREP period.
She found Ruby sitting on a burgundy bench dedicated to the Class of 2007. She greeted her friend and sat next to her, dropping her rose Jansport to the left side of her feet. For a moment, she thought of her mother’s warning not to leave purses on the floor - that’s how you lose your money!
Isa immediately personalized her Chromebook. She attached a new pink cover, feeling remorse over losing all of her curated stickers to the old cover. Ruby presented her new Chromebook now sporting a green cover with a cutesy Taro Boba Tea sticker.
They decided to use their shared PREP period to continue working on their Timothée Chalamet fanfic. Their popstar OC was about to confess her love for him in the middle of her sold out concert.
But when Isa logged onto her Chromebook, she was met with an open Google Doc. She glanced at the top left corner for the title.
“The Suff?”
“I thought these were supposed to be new?”
“This is new for sure. You know what Mrs. Pearson is like with Chromebooks.”
“Then where did this doc come from?”
Isa scanned the contents of the document. There were paragraphs of Roman letters, all composed to look like words.
“Do you understand what it says?” Ruby asked.
“No. It’s definitely not Spanish, and it doesn’t look like any language like it.”
“Plug it into Google Translate and see what comes up.”
Isa followed Ruby’s suggestion, but with no results. The text remained the same when “translated.” She tried switching languages, even to ones that she didn’t know existed. Their efforts came up fruitless.
“Que carajo-”
“Language, Izzy! We are in a Catholic school, and I know what that means.” Ruby playfully chastised her friend.
Since her family moved from Miami to Philly, Isa adopted an Americanized nickname. Apparently, everyone at Bishop Doyle struggled to pronounce Ee-sah. Lucky she liked the nickname Izzy as much as Isa.
“Okay, but like, why isn’t this translating?”
“I don’t know, but this is honestly more exciting than our fanfic.”
Isa switched back to the Google Doc, then scrolled to the end of the document.
That’s when they found the ongoing text.
Someone - or something - was adding to the document, typing at around 50 words per minute. Isa felt like she was trying to keep up with with Ms. Tania’s barre combinations.
“What the hell? Who’s editing this Google Doc?”
“I don’t know. There’s no account showing up.”
Isa clicked on the “Share” icon, only to find that her school email was the only account connected to The Suff.
She tried to scroll up, but something shoved her back to the end of the document. It began a new page of text, only this time the words made sense. Each word squeezed together, typing faster and faster:
Thesuffthesuffthesuffthestuffthesuff-
The girls screamed as Isa finally slammed her Chromebook shut. They jumped out of the bench and backed a few feet away, staring intently at the device left behind. They expected it to fling open or to combust.
Yet nothing happened.
“Okay, I’m going straight back to Mrs. Pearson to get this fixed.” Isa sat by the Chromebook and removed its pink cover.
“Yeah, and maybe have Fr. Bubba douse it with Holy Water.”
Thank you for reading! Please click here for the second part of The Suff.
Googling spanish swears yielded no useful results but maybe i shouldn't do that on my work computer. LOVE THIS. Bring on Fr. Bubba to save the day!
50 words per minute? Pft. Amateur. 😆