WAKE ME UP

CHAPTER 2

I've slept through most of my life. And when I haven't been sleeping, I've been sleepwalking.

To begin with, if you're an 18-year-old girl in 2040 with no affinity for the newest look-at-me-aren't-I-special social media app, the future looks pretty bleak. It looks bleak either way, but at least with a sizable fan base, a teenage girl can distract herself from the disaster of where we are as a society, not to mention a planet. With no such suitable distraction, I've slept.

Fifteen hours straight is my record. It would've been longer if my therapist of a mother hadn't had a client fire her, leaving her with a free hour to barge into my room and find me dead to the world in my secret sleeping nook in the closet.

In full disclosure, the antidepressant I'm on and the occasional (as in, most days) benzodiazepine have been a huge help in achieving all that quality sleep. Yes, that's my Big Brother confession room confession. I'm in an intimate relationship with the soul sisters of mental health – depression and anxiety – and have been since the fifth grade. Or at least that's what my mother says. To be honest, I don't remember a time when I wasn't taking the pills.

When I say I've slept through most of my life, that isn't entirely true. There was this brief moment about a year ago when I actually woke up. If I had blinked, I would've missed it. But still, it made a big impression. It's all murky memories before Ben.

Another confession: My dad is sperm donor number 84262. I haven't always had the best relationship with my mom, but I appreciate her effort to bring me into the world. She did a nice job with my name, too. If you spell out "Tiana" on a phone keypad, it's 84262. Clever, huh?

I don't think having a father who's an anonymous sperm donor has had that much effect on who I am. I'm pretty sure even before I understood how I was conceived, I was feeling the way I still feel now, which is more like an observer in my life than any sort of participant. Maybe that's why my memories before Ben are so murky. If you're just observing something and not participating in it, it's less memorable.

Ben was the new kid last year. It was our junior year, and most of us had been in school together since the beginning, so we were all stuck in our ways and our roles. It wasn't going to be easy for somebody new. But Ben wasn't just somebody.

His family moved here from Florida. I've always thought most people move from New Jersey to Florida, not the other way around. But Ben's father has a sister who's gay, and when Florida banned LGBTQ+ teachers after already finding a sneaky – and unconstitutional – way to strip gay people of their federal rights to marry, Ben's parents had had enough.

Ben was popular instantly. It wasn't hard to see why. He looked the part. Handsome but approachable. Just his walk down the hall exhibited a natural athleticism. And the thing is, he didn't even have to try really. We're all desperate to some degree, especially in high school. But Ben's degree was almost undetectable, which was a big part of his attractiveness. He just seemed to float above it all. And everybody let him.

My feeling was he wasn't desperate because he didn't care enough to be. I might've been the only one who got this.

I'm almost positive I was the only one who noticed his scars. Or certainly the only one who said anything about them. Thin strips on both wrists. Ben seemed okay when I asked, although he didn't elaborate or anything, and that was okay. I wasn't really asking him to.

The odd disparity between what those scars most likely meant and Ben's I'm-on-top-of-the-world nonchalance was super intriguing to me. It's probably what drew me most to him. Not that I ever thought for a minute he'd feel anything for me. I'm not that kind of high school girl. But he saw me climbing into my mom's Ford Fusion after school one day, and suddenly he was asking me for a ride home.

I can't remember exactly what he said when I mentioned his scars. Something like "It's okay" or "It's fine." Or he might've even said, "Thanks." Which is a little strange, but whatever.

It wasn't until a few days later, after giving him a ride home for the third day in a row, that he told me the truth. He had developed pretty bad carpal tunnel when he was fifteen from obsessively playing with a Rubik's Cube, so the scars were from the surgery, not a razor in the bathtub like I assumed. Like he let me assume.

I wasn't mad about this. I somehow understand why he did it. He was withholding the truth but also telling me a sort of truth at the same time.

I certainly didn't fall in love with Ben that first time I gave him a ride home. Maybe not even the second time. But by the third ride, we had both definitely made quick work of things and crossed the love threshold.

I can't tell you exactly what it was between us. It was a lot of things. As it always is, I imagine. He liked my blue hair. I made him laugh. He said he didn't have to try with me. I liked that he never felt he had to. We both loved to sit in silence, but we could just as easily overshare. We have the same birthday, which is pretty cool.

I know it's a total cliché to say that Ben changed everything for me. Actually, I want to keep saying he woke me up, but that sounds too obvious and heavy-handed. It's true, though. It was like Dorothy opening the door after her house crashed down in Oz. Things flipped from black-and-white to technicolor.

By the way, I'm not saying some guy completed me. He didn't. Ben just made me like myself a little bit better, and what's wrong with that? We all need a little help sometimes. And besides, isn't love what we're here to do? Love and be loved. So why wouldn't it make all the difference in the world? There was some dating app that used to have this one ad – Someone to save the planet with. You gotta admit it's effective advertising.

Our whirlwind love affair – if that's even the right word for it – didn't last all that long. I'm not even sure the days added up to a month. But I guess you can live a lot of life in just a few weeks. Who knew?

For the record, Ben's parents didn't approve. Not that they even gave us a chance. I met them once. It was hard not to take it personally, but the truth is I was probably just collateral damage. Ben introduced me to his parents the day after he told them he wasn't going out for the football team, despite being a star at his old school – despite the family picking West Devin to move to on account of our need for a new quarterback and our chances of having a winning season. But Ben not wanting to play football had nothing to do with me. I didn't even know he played football – he never mentioned it – and I could've cared less either way.

When my mother heard about Ben's parents' disapproval of me, she got all Momma Bear protective and made it known that it was the other way around. Ben wasn't good enough for me. But she didn't know Ben any better than Ben's parents knew me.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't true, but it kinda seemed like Ben's parents got his friends to turn against me, and my mom did the same with my friends. The point is it didn't seem like anyone really cared about us, only having their opinion and being right – which is how everything seems these days.

But the thing about love is it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. And the more the world is against you, the more you fight for it. And so that's what Ben and I did. We fought. And things were good. Really good. Until we crashed.