A Thousand Ways To Run

Chapter 12

My weeks staying in the White House had made me a heavier sleeper. I didn't need to worry about middle of the night intruders or a teacher’s infamous surprise tests. The bed I was given was soft, and when the covers were drawn right around me in a cocoon, I never really wanted to leave.

I was sleeping like a rock, head buried and hair splayed out across the pillows. It was the middle of the night, or I guess really early morning. And also the worst time to be awoken. While sleeping you may look so calm and peaceful – and, in romantic novels, apparently so fascinating and alluring that hot boys want to watch you sleep. Wake up, and suddenly you appear to have been sleeping in the nearest dump, with the conscious awareness of a normal person going through the hallucinations of LSD.

So it only made sense that Warren would wake me up at that precise time of night.

The clinking and clanking of the doorknob being wrestled like a wild alligator caught in a net was what woke me up. Whoever was trying to get in obviously didn’t own the key or know how to run a standard slot head screwdriver. Nevertheless, I was terrified. . . of someone seeing my hair in it’s convoluted condition that happens after I’ve been sleeping for so long. What is wrong with me?

The light that sliced into my room glowed through the covers I hid under, like a whole new world of hot, white light. My breathing was shallow and torrid as my mind insisted on returning to the blissful surrender of sleep.

“Char?” A boy’s voice breathed through the dead silence. As if the sweltering heat under the sheets wasn’t bad enough, now a broken voice was referring to me as if I were some kind of anime dragon.  An aggravated-sounding moan escaped my lips as my face found its haven in a deeper crevice of my pillowcase.

“Charlie, wakey, wakey,” Warrencooed, pushing on my back and pushing me closer to the edge of the bed.  “I will not hesitate to leave you lying on the cold, hard ground. I know you will not write a song about it,” he continued, pushing incessantly at me like a child kicking the back of a chair on an airplane. “Don’t make me count to three...”

Past any hope of ignoring him, I flipped quickly around and emerged from my cavern, ready to use my scratchy morning voice to curse him out. And then I couldn't.

Because when I lifted my head up, there he was, just inches from me in the darkness and leaning over my bed. Those blue eyes must hold a light of their own. Them, and the faint outline of his jawline in the red glow of my alarm clock, were all I could see.

Completely forgetting all the harsh words I was going to say, I laid frozen, too afraid to say anything.

Warren was unfazed, it seemed. “About time,” he scoffed jokingly,pulling away and standing beside the bed instead.

“What?” I growled, rubbing some of the sleep out of my eyes. I saw a two on the clock, but my hazy vision couldn't make out anything else.

“Get up, get dressed; I got something to show you!” He was still whispering, but his fast and excited voice was just teetering on a shout.

Warren talked more, but all words were lost through the muffled barrier of my pillow.

The light noise of drawers being opened and shut again stirred me. Peeking over my covers, my suspicions were confirmed as a pair of jeans nearly hit me in the face.

“What is so important this early in the morning?"”

“You'll love it, promise,” he assured, then continued moving around the room while I still sat upright on the bed, gazing down at the foreign objects that he tossed my way. “I'll give you two minutes to change before I'm grabbing you and taking you, no matter what condition you're in.” I didn’t need light to know that Warren’s eyes were popped open and his right eyebrow was raised, the standard look he got whenever he said things that made me fully aware of my sexuality.