WRONG NUMBER / CH

chptr 1

from: unknown number
hello?

from: unknown number
anna?

from: unknown number
its me. leia

from: unknown number
hello???

from: unknown number
why did u just leave without saying goodbye?

from: unknown number
please reply

from: unknown number
i know this is ur number!!

from: unknown number
come on

from: unknown number
are you ever coming back??

from: unknown number
reply to me u piece of shit????

from: unknown number
oh my god what am i even doin to myself

from: unknown number
ANNA

Calum sat in the darkness of his room, scrolling through the chain of messages he was getting. He felt slightly irritated, having woken up from his sleep by the incessant buzzing of his phone beside him. He was expecting his friends to be messaging him just to piss him off, but he found a different person altogether. A girl, by the looks of it, who had the wrong fucking number.

from: unknown number
i know ur reading this bitch

from: unknown number
reply

from: unknown number
i will kill you

His fingers hovered above the keyboard, ready to roast this girl for not checking the number twice and bothering him in the ungodly hour of 3 in the morning. But before he could hit send, another message popped up.

from: unknown number
anna. please. where are you?

from: unknown number
i feel so alone.

He felt an unfamiliar pang in his chest. What was this girl doing at 3 am, texting someone who she missed terribly? He wanted badly to tell her that she had the wrong number, sorry, good luck with Anna, but that last message stopped him. He could feel the weight of the sadness radiating from her, wherever she was.

And now he wanted to comfort her.

from: unknown number
ur the only one i have left anna

from: unknown number
why'd you leave me?

Shit, Calum thought. I don't know how I'm going to deal with this. He ran his fingers through his tangled hair and rubbed his eyes. Emotional drama was not good early in the morning.

from: unknown number
im going to sleep now

from: unknown number
hopefully i wake up with ur reply

Calum felt a twinge of pity for this girl who seemed on the brink of shattering herself. "I'm sorry I'm not Anna," he mumbled. 

But he didn't want to reply now that she was going to sleep— he wanted to give the poor girl at least one night with the knowledge that she still had contact with this Anna girl, even if it was a lie.

Calum dropped his head back on his pillow and set his now silent phone on the drawer beside his bed. He closed his eyes with an exhausted sigh and wondered why confusing things always seemed to happen to him.

Before he dozed off he imagined a girl curled up under the covers of her bed in the dark, staring longingly at her phone and willing a reply out of her messages.

For some reason, his chest ached.