SIXTEEN

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Despite going to bed so late, I woke up refreshed as the light hit my eyes. Although not groggy in the slightest, though I had a feeling my late night would catch up to me by the early afternoon, there was a sharp pain at the side of my back. Patting the bed in the sore area, my face bunched together as I pulled my phone from under my body. I sighed as I pressed the power button, only to receive a red flashing battery sign. Stretching my limbs, phone in hand, I rolled across my bed to swing my legs over the edge before plugging my phone in to charge. Rubbing my eyes before glancing over at my bedside table for my glasses, I realised that I had left them on when I fell asleep the night before. 

"Shit," I grumbled, my voice a little croaky in the early morning. Looking back at my bed, my blanket discarded onto the floor sometime during the night and my pillows scattered across the bed, I found my glasses bent out of shape on the far side of the bed. "Ugh, nice one, Wes." I looked at my broken glasses in frustration, flicking the loose hinge with my finger before folding them haphazardly and placing them in a case to bring to the store to get fixed after school. 

"Spare glasses, spare glasses," I chattered to myself, pursing my lips as I bend down to rummage through the drawers in my bedside table, pulling out an old case with a pair of worn glasses inside. The thick lenses and large, dark green frames made me gag a little, and I shut the case immediately and threw it back into the drawer. 

Walking over to my desk, I reached into the side drawer and pulled out a box of contact lenses, opened but almost full minus one pair. I had tried wearing contacts during the summer break, but had preferred glasses over the hassle of having something on my eyeball the entire day. Unfortunately, with my regular glasses out of commission, I had to resort to using contacts, at least when I was outside. 

I wouldn't be caught dead in those spare glasses.

After struggling for a good ten minutes in front of the mirror with my eyes watering, the contacts were finally in and I sighed in relief as vision returned to me. After that slight hiccup in my day, everything else in the morning went much the same as any other day; I brushed my teeth, smoothed my slightly wavy hair with water from the tap, got changed into my freshly laundered uniform and quickly ate breakfast downstairs. Mum's sedan was already gone after dinner last night, and I could see Jamie's small hatchback parked awkwardly on the sidewalk, the tail of her car sticking out while the front corner was almost embedded in a fire hydrant on the curb.

Grabbing my phone from my bedside table, still turned off and only semi-charged, I made sure I was quiet as I headed out of the house to not wake Jamie up, for she was a force to be reckoned with when woken up before midday. The walk to the train station went by quickly, and soon I was sitting on my usual bench on the platform. Finally turning my phone on, I blinked and gently pressed on my eyes as my contacts burned in the bright sunlight. Beside me, the familiar woman with pointed heels and sharp glasses gave me a curious look as my eyes watered. She looked the same as she always did, but I could tell she was wondering why I was wearing contacts. When you saw someone every day for the past few years and they looked exactly the same every time, it wasn't abnormal to wonder why a sure thing had changed.

Nico changed.

My phone finally buzzed in my hand as the screen blinked to life, revealing a few missed messages, none of which were from Nico. Disappointed, I frowned as I opened up the first few messages; one from Benny saying that he overslept his alarms (all seven of them, he emphasised) and decided to go to school, and another from Sofia. Replying to Benny's message quickly, Sofia's was not as easy to respond to. I stared at the black lettering carefully, reluctant to answer her.

Sofia - Yesterday, 3:35pm
Hey Wes, u ok?
Heard u went home early
Im worried
U seemed fine before tho?
Did u eat something off at lunch?

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