Shift ☆ Louis Partridge

2 | Cheeky

☆

[y/n]

—

IT WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THIS.

It was only supposed to be a joke. Something my friends suggested, something I didn't know would ever be possible, and something I would see online and laugh at the absurdity of it all. I wasn't supposed to be real.

Yet it is.

And it's freaking me out.

"Come on, [y/n]," Monica whined, shaking me like a ragdoll, "tell us why you look like pure death today!"

She was right, I looked like I fell off a cliff, drowned, took a walk through a hurricane and then sat through a math class in the same hour. It wasn't my fault necessarily, it was just my mind. I couldn't fall back asleep after I shifted for the first time. If I woke up in the car again, or couldn't get out, or something horrible happened—regardless, it was too risky to do again.

And I wasn't going to admit the truth to my friends, because they'd pressure me into it again with the thought that it would make me happy. They thought it would help me. I don't blame them for thinking that way, but that's not how it works with me. I run from my problems.

And I lie about them too.

"I'm just tired, that's all," I said, giving them the half-truth, "didn't get much sleep."

Heather, who was picking at her nails, yawned. "Did you shift?"

"Erm...no. I didn't."

"WHAT?" Monica gasped, "are you serious? I held you down in the starfish pose for forty-five minutes, and you didn't even get close?"

I winced at her shrieking voice. "Nope."

"You must have forgotten to count down from one hundred!"

"I've always been terrible at math."

The raven-haired girl ignored my remark, letting out an angry huff and storming off into the kitchen. We were at Heather's house today, just relaxing on a Saturday afternoon with nothing to do, but the conversation was plummeting like a sky-diver without a parachute.

I turned to Heather, giving her an apologetic look. Monica would be pouting about this disappointing (and fake, unbeknownst to her) information all day, and that meant she'd take it out on us unintentionally.

"I don't blame you," she said softly, relaxing into the couch cushions, "people on reddit say that it takes a while before you finally shift."

I blinked. "Really?"

"Some people try for months."

"Oh," I sighed, "I see."

No, I didn't see.

I was pretty much blind to this whole situation, and now that I knew shifting took a long while for some people made me antsy. I got it on the first try. The first try! I didn't even try, and somehow I shifted my way into the backseat of Louis Partridge's car. Did that make me some sort of subliminal-legend?

Haha, no.

Stop it, [y/n], you're too scared to even shift again, don't go acting so cocky.

Letting out a tired exhale, I closed my eyes, desperate to take my mind off things. I'd lost a lot of sleep yesterday night, and maybe a nap will make up for it. Or not. Monica will probably wake me up in an hour.