Life Is Real

Chapter Four

I found myself in the early AM, successfully bored and counting all 57.5 ceiling tiles. I had nothing to think about - I had thought about everything the night before. This was to be my new life, a restart if you will, and I would have to be okay with it no matter what. Hell, of course I'd be okay! I'd get to work for my damn heroes! I counted the ceiling tiles over and over until my waking hour - 5 AM - became 8-o-clock, the time when the sun was bright enough to wake up Casha.

"Casha, you awake?" I asked her as she sleepily opened her eyes. She did that dumb thing that irritates most girls at sleepovers. Opened her eyes, stretched for a millisecond, closed her eyes, and was automatically asleep. "Wake up," I growled.

Without hesitation, I turned on the TV. Our one channel was playing some yoga program, so in hopes to wake up my friend, I blasted the volume. Since there was no remote, as soon as I turned the volume up manually from the set, I jumped back and tried to get as far away as I could. The TV was screaming out, sending Casha to jolt up.

"OH MY GOD!" She shrieked, eyes wide and purely awake. "OH MY GOD, HADLEY! TURN IT DOWN!"

I began to laugh as I hastily approached the TV and put it on mute. I was having a laughing attack once I got back onto my bed.

"Why on earth would you do that?!" Casha shrieked, jittering in shock.

"Only to wake you up," I chuckled. "Anyhoo, what do you want to do today?"

"Go to sleep," Casha muttered.

"We could ride a double decker bus! Or maybe go around to Big Ben. Ooh! Let's take a trip down to-"

"Think it through, Had, do we really have the money for that?" Casha asked.

"Dunno," I said. "We do have three hundred twenty pounds left."

"That money should go towards nights at the hotel and food," Casha stated. "Let's sightsee without paying money how 'bout?"

I rolled my eyes and flopped back on my bed. Casha fell asleep again, but no matter how much I was tempted to crank up the TV volume, I didn't. Casha was making this getaway vacation a whole lotta of boring. I was stuck watching the stupid yoga program until Casha finally woke up.

•••

Casha and I did go sightseeing. Not fun, interesting sightseeing. The kind of sightseeing were you just look at stuff and you don't get to explore anything. We looked at Big Ben from far away, that being to only sight of it we got. The classic red double decker bus cost money to ride, that money being unusable or to risky to lose. We window shopped for a while, because staring at stuff you want but not being able to have is torture. Later on, I had begged Casha to come with me to the Queen studio. I wanted to talk to the four of them more, but to my disappointment, they were not in their studio. There was a bulletin board outside the studio, this being to our advantage. I peeled an unused sticky note off the cork and grabbed the pen that hung by a string on the board. Casha, who had collected one of the hotel's business cards, gave me it's phone number. I scribbled it down and wrote under it - 'Hadley and Casha - photographers'. I then stuck the note to the front door, hoping it would stick and praying they would call.

The day went on as boring as could be. And even though we were in London, we couldn't do much because of our money issue. We ended up lounging out at the hotel, where the food was cheapest and the ceiling tiles were counted. That was most of our day. Sitting lazily in our beds, staring at the TV eating our lunch of microwaveable macaroni and cheese. I found that 1970s news was much like 2015 news. Somebody got murdered, bank robbery, crises, blah, blah, blah. In hopes to have something other than bad news, a movie appeared on the screen, The Wizard of Oz, which I guess was okay. I wasn't one for old-timey movies, unlike Casha who had become entirely engulfed by it. The night approached quickly as our TV marathon continued. I felt that watching television was all we would do here, which was a disappointing thought, since I first thought I would be interested and delved in sights and the magic of this vacation. However, while 7 PM hit, the telephone rang, interrupting mine and Casha's third soap opera.