Chapter 3

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A few hours later, lying awake and groggy in bed with my walls shaking from the volume of bass from upstairs, I thought about the same thing again. If I thought it couldn't get any worse than this, I was honestly wrong. Not only was there another legendary party tonight, but one of those idiots also got a speaker whose original purpose was to raise the dead. The buzzing in my head grew louder with each moment I could've blissfully slept but was instead forced to listen to awful techno music. They could've at least put on Britney Spears or some other banger.

I put a pillow over my head, but that didn't help either. When it's enough, it's enough. With sadness in my heart and a clouded mind, I got out of bed and stumbled in the semi-darkness to put on my pants and shoes. At the last moment, I grabbed my jacket and keys, just in case, and went to knock on the neighbours' door. If it weren't for the dead of night, I believe I would never have had such a lack of shame to knock on the students' door and ask them to be quiet so that I, a seventeen-year-old, could get some sleep. And to the same students who mostly knew me by sight because I've been dropping in on them uninvited for the last two months.

Chronic sleep deprivation seems to bring out the worst in me.

The door was opened by a girl who looked familiar to me, but not enough for me to remember her name and she was already obviously wasted because she just nodded and let me in.

Okay, so much for the plan that consisted of "just going to knock and ask the person who answers the door to quiet down a bit". Cursing my life, I crawled inside trying to be as inconspicuous as possible while trying to see where that satanic music was coming from. I tried so hard to be inconspicuous that, of course, I tripped over someone's leg and would have fallen face first if someone's hand hadn't caught me in time.

The hand belonged to Alec, who was the closest thing to a friend I had found in these two and a half months. He helped me back to my feet and without question poured me a glass of something and put it in my hands, all the while not interrupting the conversation with some guy who looked like he was almost the same level of hipster as Alec was. I said a quick thank you and thought about running away before the conversation started, but it was too late for that.

"Nicky Nick, where have you been? We haven't seen you here in ages!" He was slurring every word, even though I knew he was not really drunk.

Yes, I introduced myself with my real name. In some things I could objectively assess my abilities, and the ability to remember a fake name and respond to it was unfortunately not in my repertoire.

"You know how it is, I've been busy with work, exams..."

I was already laying it on thick. I was 99% sure that Alec was the first to realize that there was no way I was studying anything, but he never explicitly called me out on my lies. Even now he just raised an eyebrow and looked at me questioningly. I was right, he wasn't drunk at all.

"So busy that you don't have time to climb two floors to greet your friends?"

I was pretty sure whatever we were didn't count as friends.

"Here I am now, just came to say hello and ask what's up?"

Alec launched into a retelling of his, I'm sure, very exciting life, but I could only think about how long I had to listen to him, so it was not considered rude when I asked for the music to be turned down a bit. If I had a watch on my wrist, I know for sure that I would be looking at it every two seconds. I think he was just finishing talking about how a professor was a prudish asshole who barely gave him a passing grade on an essay he knew contained revolutionary ideas, when I couldn't take it anymore. Pretending that I couldn't hear him well, I leaned back in my chair and started yelling unnecessarily loudly in his ear, asking him if there was any way the music could be turned down. He just shrugged his shoulders and whispered in my ear that he didn't know who was playing music today. I took that as a great opportunity to get out of this conversation and mumbled something about going to see what's up with that music.

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