"I have to go."
"But I'm not asleep yet," he mumbled out, squinting his eyes to see me in the dark.
"I can't stay here the entire night Ash," I said, flinging my leg on the other side of the open window, shivering from the cold air. I was halfway...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Unknown: Heyyy Sent 2:02 a.m
Unknown: Are you up Sent 2:30 a.m
Unknown: Please be upp Sent 2:32 a.m
Unknown: Alexiiiiiiisss Sent 2:50 a.m
Unknown: 911 Sent 2:52 a.m
Unknown: I'm dying Sent 2: 54 a.am
Unknown: Need assistance asap Sent 2:55 a.m
Unknown: HELP MEEEE Sent 3:00 a.m
I groaned again as the phone kept buzzing beside my head, disturbing my peaceful sleep.
Unknown calling...
"I swear to God... What do you want?" My voice didn't come out as scary as I wanted to due to grogginess in it but I still hoped it worked like I wanted it to.
"I'm bored, entertain me," he whined and I could actually hear the smirk that was probably on his face, happy at his accomplishment.
"I literally know nothing about you, please leave me alone, please," And let me sleep. I mean I already hate school as it is, imagine being sleep deprived throughout the whole ordeal.
"You know where I live and know about my brother. That's more than anybody else in the school knows about me, even the teachers."
"How do they not know where you live? What about school records?"
"Old address."
You know that moment where all your sleepiness vanishes in a second and no matter how hard you try, you cannot go back to sleep? Well, that's exactly what happened to me, at the worst moment possible. At least I wasn't alone though.
"Right, so now what?"
"I don't know...?" he drawled out.
"Aren't you the one who called me? So now please, speak." This boy, I tell you.
"I just did that to annoy you but now that you're making conversation, I don't even know."
This little...
"Fine, let's play a game." Weird, I know.
"If you say 20 questions, I will drive down to your house and hit you," he groaned.
That was exactly what I wanted to say but...
"I wasn't going to say that. So basically, I'm going to say a word and you're going to say the first thing that comes to your mind, okay?"
"Like, in Skyfall?"
"Yep."
"Cool, I'll start," he paused for a few minutes before he said, "Night."
"Pretty. Okay, winter."
"Fucking best thing ever."
"School," he continued.
"Sucks."
"You literally said that the same time I thought of it, whoa," he seemed genuinely surprised before saying, "Okay, your turn."
We surprisingly continued to play till it was around 4 a.m and sleep was slowly crawling back to me. Even though he had the funniest answers, even they couldn't stop the yawns from escaping.
"Okay Ash, I have a question," I was genuinely curious about this since this wasn't the first time this was happening.
"Shoot."
"Do you even sleep? Like that day at the party, did you even sleep? I mean, I've yawned like a billion times by now but you're still all excited and awake and shit."
I could catch the slight hesitation in his voice when he answered, "Um, sort of."
"Sort of?"
"I took some... stuff and yeah," he awkwardly chuckled at the end.
"Why?"
"I don't know. I mean I do sleep, but then I don't. It's nothing serious. Just drop it."
"Of course it is. You could have a dis –"
"I said, drop it," he growled out.
"Fine then, jeez. Forgive me for trying to help you."
"You want to help? Fine, do anything you think can make me fall asleep," he challenged.
So I spent the last half an hour doing everything, ranging from old stories to lame jokes (I didn't know why I thought that would help but it was a last resort sort of thing) and after every few minutes he'd say something like, "Given up yet?" or "I'm so sleepy, oh wow," and fake a yawn or something.
I had almost given up when I remembered what my mum used to do back when I was younger.
"Okay I'm pretty bad at singing and stuff but bear with me okay? I'm positive this will work."
"Sure," the palpable sarcasm in his tone did little to discourage me.
"Isn't she lovely,
Isn't she wonderful,
Isn't she precious,
Less than a minute old..."
She used to be obsessed with Stevie Wonder so this used to be my lullaby every day. So I tried copying her the best I could, keeping my voice soft and calm and repeated the verse slower and slower, and after maybe twenty minutes or so, I was surprised to hear even breathing on the other side of the phone.
Now he could be faking just to stop me but when I stopped singing and his breathing didn't falter, I knew he was asleep.
