Cry Until You Bleed

48- Phone Calls

"It's kind of unbelievable how uneventful this week has been," Renée tells me on Saturday as we're walking around the path of the courtyard just because we have absolutely nothing else to do at all.

"I don't think that it's unbelievable," I tell her with a small laugh. "Everything is always incredibly uneventful here."

"Sure, that's true, but we usually have at least a little bit of excitement but this week was just painfully bland. Maybe now that you aren't going out with Niles, you don't have exciting stories to come back and tell us and that's why we're extra bored now, because we don't get to feed off of your excitement."

With another little laugh, I roll my eyes at her. "I'm sure that's not it. My outings with Niles weren't incredibly exciting. I mean, they were for me but it's not like we were slaying dragons or saving the princess. They aren't exciting stories to hear about."

"But it was still something," She justifies. "And now there's only two of us since Mia is with her parents. They haven't seen each other in a while, so that meeting is going to take a long time."

"I'm happy for her. I think it's nice that she gets to see her family again after so long," I say, remembering how happy Mia had been when the nurse came to get her to inform her that her visitors had arrived. She was bouncing up and down in excitement and then she practically sprinted across the courtyard and into the building to see her family.

"Yeah, I'm happy for her too," Renée agrees. "But this place is just so boring."

"Have you ever tried reading?" I ask her.

She shrugs. "Sure, but I've read all of interesting-looking books on the shelf, I had all of those read within the first two months of my stay here."

"Well, I have a book that I'm finished with if you want to read that," I offer her. "It's in my room, I'll show it to you."

"Right now?" Renée wonders when I start walking towards the door that goes into the building. It's kind of chilly outside today and I can sense the fall season sneaking up on us with a cool breeze so everyone outside is wearing a tan fleece today. If it weren't for my stint in Alaska, I wouldn't know how to handle the winter season but thankfully, I had endured enough cold weather to last a lifetime while I was up there in Alaska. "What will you do?"

"Oh, I have a few phone calls to make," I tell her as we go inside and then head towards the elevators that will take us up to the dorm area so that I can get the book for her. I had bought it when I was at the bookstore with Niles but now that I've finished it, it just sits on my desk so it won't hurt to let Renée borrow it for a little while.

"Such the social butterfly," She teases me.

"Just my dad," I assure her although I'm sure that I'll also call Penn and Niles but I don't need to go into every detail. It's not that I don't want to tell her, it's just that I don't think that she'd be very interested to know about the specific details of my phone calls. We ride up the elevators and then walk down the hallway until we get to my room and then we go inside. It's dark so I flip on the switch and we both walk farther into the room.

"I think that your room is kinda bigger than mine," Renée states, looking around the room skeptically.

"It's probably not," I chuckle, going over to the desk and grabbing the book. "I'm pretty sure they wouldn't make some rooms different sizes just to make you mad."

"They did," She jokes, following me over to the desk to analyze what's there- my open-faced journal a few drawings and some books. "This place has always had it out for me, I'm telling you."

"Sure, whatever you say," I sarcastically just go along with her. "Anyway, here's the book."

"It looks interesting," Renée analyzes the cover of the book as she takes it from my hands and then flips to the back where the summary is and she reads that. "Thank you, Ana, hopefully this will keep me entertained."