The Outsider

1. Getting Into Routine (Part One)

1. Getting Into Routine (Part One)

There wasn't anything quite like your best friend screaming into your ear in the early hours of the morning. On one hand, at the moment it's happening, it's the worst thing that could ever happen. The loudness and horrible morning breath, made me wish I could throw him out the window as I could with a normal alarm.

On the other hand, it reminded me that I was now living in a tiny apartment, that I could barely afford, with an over-excitable person who only calmed down when they were asleep.

No, that's still on the same hand. The horrible hand. The hand that seemingly has been dipped into a bucket of my worst fears. I have no idea where my good hand was. I've lost it. I probably left it back in my parent's house. In the cosiness of my childhood room, which I didn't have to pay for.

I've made a terrible mistake.

"Matthew! It's time to get out of that single mattress you call a bed!" My best friend's voice bounced around my small, almost empty room. "It's almost time to go to school!"

"You don't have to be so loud," I groaned, pulling my blankets over my head.

I knew that my words would only fall on deaf ears, even if I said them a hundred times. James was always the most energetic and loudest person in any given room. I had no idea how he managed to keep his energy levels so high.

Then again, I had a trait that made our friendship extremely chaotic, so I couldn't say too much about James.

I was an extremely competitive person and there was nothing that I loved more than a challenge. Sadly, that meant that I believed anything James could do, I could do better. Occasionally, that meant being the most energetic and loudest person in any given room.

Not so much in the mornings, though.

"Can't you go and play on the highway for a while, James? Just until I wake up some more."

"Nope! Come on!"

I heard the sound of footsteps moving around my room, and I knew James was planning something. Before I had time to say do or say anything, I felt James tug at my blanket and almost pull it off me.

Luckily, I grabbed it just in time.

"James! I haven't got anything on!"

"Well, hurry up and get fucking dressed then, because we gotta go to school!" James sang as he dropped my blanket and skipped out of the room, closing my door behind him.

"Stop calling it school!" I called after him, pulling my blanket over my head, groaning as I did so.

The quiet that James had left behind let my mind drift to the day ahead. James and I were having our first official day of university—or, as my parents so aptly called it, 'The Money Blender'.

I wasn't dreading going. I was quite excited to get started. Ever since orientation, I couldn't wait to dive in. It was everything else outside of university that was making me groan.

It was everything else that I dreaded.

The harsh reality of it all was my parents lived three hours away from the university that I had got into. Meaning, the travel to and from would have killed me. To counter this, James and I had decided to move into an apartment close to the campus—considering we managed to get into the same university. However, that created many more problems. One of them was that we had to pay for the apartment—and everything else that went with living away from home.

So, we both had to get jobs. Shit ones.

"I can't hear any movement in there!" James called through the apartment, his voice grinding in my ears.