Lilah Tov (NaNoWriMo)

eight

eight

           “Will… Are you awake?” Considering I was fully capable of understanding those words, then yes, I was awake. But of course, my vocal chords didn’t seem to be as awake as my mind, so I couldn’t say anything. “Will?” A soft hand brushed across my shoulder in a rubbing motion.

           “Hmmmm?” I managed.

           “Oh, good! You’re up!” But of course, I was still, technically, lying lifelessly on my bed, so I wasn’t, like, actually up. “We’re going to go for a walk, okay?”

           “Where?” I groaned in a somnolent haze.

           “‘Town,’ as you call it,” replied the other person.

           “Why?”

           “Because I can’t sleep and you’re the only person up that knows how to get to town from here!” The only reason I was up was because she had woken me up. “Let’s go!”

           “Now?”

           “Yes, now!” Suddenly, the rubbing on my shoulder stopped, and then my comforter was peeled off of me.

           “What time is it?”

           “I don’t know. One. Two. Definitely not three, though. C’mon—it’ll just be a short trip, and then we can come back and you can sleep!”

           “How’d you get into my house?” I questioned, heaving myself in an upright position as my awareness increased.

           “The back door was unlocked, but that’s not important—oh! Wow. You sleep in your boxers. Cool.” From the way she said it, though, she was anything but cool with it. I sensed a hint of discomfort, but my perception wasn’t too sharp at the moment, so that could’ve been a completely wrong form of judgment. “But if we’re going into town, I’d suggest putting on a shirt, Will, and maybe a pair of pants.”

           Mutely, I flicked on my bedside lamp and then wandered over to my dresser. I pulled open the top left drawer and unearthed a pair of plaid sweatpants that I rarely ever wore and a University of Pennsylvania T-shirt. After rubbing my eyes, I pulled on the sweats and the tee, and then I began a new search for a pair of shoes. All I could find were some blue flip-flops, and I was pretty sure that if I walked out of my room like this under normal circumstances, my mom would send me right back until I could find something to wear that wouldn’t make her feel like a failure as a mother. But right now, it was one or two in the morning, so typical Brooks Family Dress Code didn’t apply.

           “You might also want to throw on a sweatshirt or something,” she suggested after looking me up and down.

           I glanced over to what she was wearing and noticed that her clothes weren’t much different from mine, though she had on a quarter zip. So, I went over to my closet and pulled out the first sweatshirt I could find and threw it on. It was red and didn’t have a hood and I was pretty sure that it said “HARVARD LAW” (my dad’s alma mater, as he mentioned WAY too often) across the chest. “Am I good now?”

           “Isn’t that, like, tempting fate?” asked the girl.

           “What?”

           “Your sweatshirt. Like, you already have something from Harvard Law School, and I don’t know, I just think that it’s kind of like jinxing your chances of getting in, ya know?” I didn’t, unfortunately, know.