The Girl Who Saw Through Jem

Jem: Moments of Stars [EDITED]

"Coffee?"

She lifted her glare onto me as she unceremoniously sat onto the spare chair with a huffy fit, lips pouting like a petulant child. "I hate you."

"Hungover?" I chuckled, pouring coffee into my cup. My hangover was not as acute as it used to be. Or maybe after years of hardcore partying and drunken encounters, my brain had numbed itself to the headaches. Or maybe I was just numb all over the place.

"Go die."

"You're not fun."

"Ugh."

"Coffee is your best friend." I pushed my cup towards her and she accepted it without a thank-you, taking in miniature sips.

"Where's Lula?" she squinted at the breakfast buffet stations, looking for her maid. "And why is it so bright?"

"Lula's at the toilet and I recommend sunglasses. You don't look good."

"No shit." She rubbed her temples and abandoned her coffee as she stood up, "I'm heading back to the room."

"You just got up."

"Shut up."

"Okay."

"I can see you smiling."

I wiped all traces of happiness from my face forcibly but it wasn't easy. I relaxed my jaw and maintained a casual demeanour. "No, I'm not."

She pointed a slender manicured finger at me. Though she was petite, small and half my size, I felt my skin crawled, frightened like the same way I did whenever I was up against the seven-footer captains of other schools on the field. "You're lucky I'm tired," she mumbled and trod miserably back to the lobby, over to the elevators in a half-zombie trance.

-

Thursday ended up being a lazy day. We stayed at the hotel for the most of it, only going out for dinner just down by the street and returning straight back to the hotel because Ellis was growing cranky (not particularly news) and my energy was simply spent from the night before.

"Honestly," chastised Lula after Ellis and I had pleaded to head back to our rooms. "Teenagers and their drinking problems."

"I don't have a drinking problem," grumbled Ellis, tilting her head so the streetlights bathed her pale skin in it's brimstone glow. "I'm Ellis Chan. I'm too classy for that."

I snickered.

She caught it and pierced me with a glare that was even more threatening from the curtain of hair that had fallen out from her short-haired bun. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing," I struggled to compose myself but managed it by relaxing my jaw. "I swear."

"Right." A beat between her sentences to indicate she was diverting subjects. "I'm heading up."

We both went to our different rooms, separating into other paths. Ellis and Lula called it a day and bid me goodnight, I exchanged similar condolences and collapsed into bed without a fight, tired even though I didn't really contribute to anything productive for the whole day. It was one of those days when you were just tired. I was sleepy but at the same time, I wasn't. My eyes wanted to close but my brain was on overdrive, sprinting at a million miles an hour.

I watched some TV, some reruns of an HBO show I didn't know the name of, hoping that my cluelessness of what was going on would let me drift off into sleep. Eventually, I did but it wasn't anybody. I seemed to completely lose the capability to fall asleep and became nocturnal, waking up sporadically, barely falling asleep in little time but hardly satisfying spaces of thirty minutes. I tried to go back to sleep, reminding myself I won't only be cranky and moody the next morning but also extremely pissed off with everything and anything.