Existentially Fraught - #Wattys2015

Late Night Phone Calls

It was nine by the time I'd pushed Jamie out the door (I'd offered to walk him to his car, back at the school, but he declined), and almost one when I'd finished up my homework for the weekend. Since it was my birthday the next day (or, if I'm being accurate, a few hours later), I'd ignored my tendency to procrastinate and labored away at the few things I had to do for school on Monday. My essay for Fietz, however, was fated to be untouched; I tried a zillion times to write about myself but everything came out completely fake. I figured that if I couldn't come up with anything decent to turn in by the end of the month, I would throw together a few of my past essays and hope to God my grade was good enough at the present to keep me at an A when I failed.

I had a strange dream that night, where Jamie realized Elisi was a Bennett and they got married beneath the tree in the school yard. Needless to say, it was beyond disturbing, and I woke up a few hours after I fell asleep with a bad taste in my mouth. The clock rudely informed me that it was still only three in the goddamn morning, and way too early for a normal human being to be amongst the living. I screwed normality and picked up my phone.

After a few seconds of ugly screeching (under my breath- I'm not cruel to those who actually sleep) as my retinas burned under the glare of my screen, I got used to the light enough to squint at the lock screen. I tapped in my code wrong three times, realized I was holding my cell upside down, and finally unlocked the damned thing.

It took me a few minutes of Twitter-surfing before I processed what my eyes had told me when I first picked up my phone: I had a text message.

Considering the only people who ever texted me were family and a pizza guy who told me whenever Papa John's had good deals, I tried not to get my hopes up. The text, however, was not from my little brother accidentally messaging me in the middle of a sass-battle with his obnoxious middle-school friends, but from an unknown number. This had only happened three times to date: once when a girl in Colorado typed a 6 instead of a 5, and twice when the pizza guy gave his number to two sleezy friends who thought 'high schooler' meant 'whore'. (It does not, at least not in my case.)

(770)713-0584: If you're up, call me. -Jamie

I dropped my phone onto my nose.

"Shitting-" I cursed, rubbing my aching schnoz. By some crazy miracle, the message happened to be less than twenty minutes old, and I was soon listening to soft elevator music (is it still elevator music if it's on a phone?) as my call connected.

There was a click, then I heard a muffled, "Jamie." I held back a little grin; Jamie's sleepy, husky voice was adorable in a way that it shouldn't have been. I swear, the world is so cruel sometimes.

"How did you get my number?" I said, quietly enough that I wouldn't wake Loric next door. Jamie laughed.

"No sweetly muttered hello?" He couldn't see it, but I rolled my eyes. "Don't roll your eyes at me, MG."

My mouth gaped open for half a second. "How did you- nevermind, I don't want to know."

"I'm waiting..."

"Hello, most wonderous and bitchy James Connor Levi III." I whispered, as sarcastically sweet as possible. "Seriously, how?"

"Your Twitter account, genius. You had a link to your Google Plus (which you haven't posted on in two years, by the way; your followers must be depressed), and your phone number was on there."

I coughed, awkward. My Google Plus account was extremely childish and filled with allusions to terrible movies. "My Twitter doesn't have my name or picture on it. It's completely impossible to connect me to it."