You've been cerved.

Tamra

Tamra stared into the early morning darkness with the sense of impending doom to which she was becoming increasingly accustomed. 

Life was not working for her these days, and apparently sleep was in on it. 

Tamra took a few deep breaths, tightening and releasing the muscles of her abdomen, where most of her tension lay. 

A shrill ring split the silence. 

Tamra snatched her phone off the empty cardboard box she used as a nightstand.

"Tamra!" Her mother said brightly. "How was your evening? Did you have a good run this morning?"

"Um...yes. Fine," Tamra fought the groggy feeling in her head. She'd actually stopped jogging recently, opting to sleep in. But her mom didn't need to know everything.

"Wait, am I waking you up? You didn't run? You said you were going to run this morning! You left before dinner last night because you said you had to get to bed..." Her mother was suspicious.

"I...um...overslept. I'll do it tomorrow," Tamra pinched her cheeks in an effort to jumpstart her brain, putting the phone back on the cardboard box and her mother on speaker.

Tamra's mother harrumphed, obviously displeased. "You know, Tamra, you're not a college kid anymore. Not for a while now. While I think it was a good idea to move out, if you don't begin to demonstrate a less....bohemian lifestyle..."

"Mm-hm," Tamra mentally dropped the call and sat up, trying to remember what she'd been thinking about before she'd finally succumbed to sleep the night before. She rubbed her eyes.

Black holes, Tamra remembered. She'd been listening to a podcast about tiny black holes appearing and disappearing all around all the time. She'd fallen asleep before she'd heard the whole podcast episode, but the premise had dogged her dreams all night...

Tamra suddenly realized her mother was in the midst of an pregnant pause. 

"You're right, Mom," Tamra tried.

Her mother gave a deep, slightly dramatic sigh before she said, "Tamra, you're a grown-up now, a teacher. You need to learn to stick to a schedule. Schedules inspire confidence in children." Tamra's mother waited again.

"You're not wrong," Tamra agreed. She started to think about the black holes again, but she was immediately distracted by an incessant beeping from somewhere in her bed.

Tamra's mother gave a follow-up sigh --more exasperated, less patient. "I know I'm not wrong. Now, if we can return to my original purpose for calling..."

"Yes, um," Tamra tossed pillows to the floor as she burrowed through her sheets in search of the 'BEEP...BEEP...BEEP.' Tamra knew it came from her R2D2 back-up alarm clock which started rolling away as soon as it went off. (As an alarm, the phone was hardly sufficient, even if her mother liked to check in most mornings.) Speaking of, what was her mother saying now?

"So yesterday when volunteering at the library, I ran into Mrs. Morgan, the Calculus teacher over at the high school. She was there with her grandson, and we got to talking about..." 

"How is Mrs. Morgan and her grandson - Tate, right?" Tamra stuck her head under her mattress. 

"BEEP...BEEP...BEEP..." Tamra's father had bought alarm R2D2 for her in high school as 'motivation.' Once, freshman year in university, the little sucker had rolled into a hole in the wall of Tamra's dorm room at VCU. 

It had taken Tamra twenty minutes to pry the droid alarm out, the alarm shrieking the same three chords form the original films' opening scenes the whole time.