I've Got This Friend ( c.h )

Chapter 24

"Try being friends again." Ashton's voice taunted me over and over again.

I swear, I really was trying to be friends with Calum again but Calum had become a professional Peyton avoider, if that is even a thing. Every time I texted him telling him that I wanted to be friends again, he'd ignore me. Every time I saw him around the house, he would make up an excuse to why he had to go back to his room or to the studio that was just outside the house. Ashton said he would try to talk to Cal, but Calum was very good at changing the topic.

Ashton would never take the blame for unsuccessfully trying to talk to Calum. He had been pretty good at making excuses too, telling me that he had been hanging out with Calum recently too. The most popular excuse was that one of the other boys came in and distracted him or he couldn't have a serious conversation with Calum if the other boys were in the same room. I wanted to call bullshit on him, but I decided not to.

The scary part was that because I couldn't actually talk to Calum in person, I had started dreaming up endless possibilities about what would happen when we did talk. It happened frequently and almost every night, including tonight.

"Can we please talk Calum?"

"I've got to go write Peyton. I can't talk now." You don't understand how many times I've heard that excuse in the last few weeks. I didn't know that it was possible to have so much inspiration to write as much as Calum had been in the last few weeks.

"Fine Calum." I rolled my eyes as he walked away, not hearing anything that I had just said.

I turned to walk back into the house but instead found myself running into Ashton and stumbling backwards, almost falling into the pool in the process.

"What the hell Ash? You can't just stand there like that!" I screamed at him, furious that Calum had once again avoided me and that I had let it happen.

"I can if it means preventing you from running away from your problems."

"I'm not the one running away from my problems. Your best friend over there avoids me at all costs. I swear to god that if he had to jump off a bridge to avoid me, he would do it without even thinking twice."

"Now Pey, don't you think that's a little extreme?"

"No, I don't. I honestly believe that he would do that if it meant not talking to me."

"Stop being a fucking drama queen and talk to him." Ashton pointed towards the recording studio, "NOW." He screamed and I shuffled away quickly.

I didn't knock on the studio door because I knew that if I did and Calum knew it was me, he would climb out of a studio window or something along those lines. I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and opening the studio door.

Instead of a beautiful studio lined with instruments and weird paintings that the owners had chosen, I found myself in my house. "Damn it," I muttered to myself realizing that this dream was not going the way that I had wanted it to.

I glanced down at my hand and counted my fingers, noticing that I had an extra finger. The extra finger was a sign that I was in a dream. Ashton found it on the internet and told me about it and I've been using it ever since. It's actually helped reduce the amount of nightmare freakouts that I've had.

I felt calmer almost immediately.

I turned around and tugged on the door that had obviously been locked shut because that would've just been too easy for me. I would usually try and find a cell phone on myself, but I knew that it was a nightmare and I wouldn't have one on me.

I had gotten really good with realizing what was a dream and what was reality and trying to get myself out of the dream. But, I always had trouble waking myself up.