Oblivion

Chapter Three

Nova

Even though the alarm was blaring through our minute quarters, my brain did not register that I had to physically get myself out of bed until I opened my eyes to see Meg gawking at me. It might have just been me, but I hated falling asleep in the company of other people. The feeling of vulnerability made my toes curl and shivers crawl down my spine. Waking up to Meg's intent glare did not prove any different to this idiosyncrasy.

I rolled over onto my side and stuffed my face against my pillow, fighting the urge to drift back into a deep envelope of sleep. The grunt that escaped my lips after Meg told me the time was not even close to being classified as human. Meg's glare hinted that I was being a little melodramatic. When she compared me to a vampire in the shining daylight, I knew I would never hear the end of it unless I pulled myself out from underneath my covers.

"How late were you up?" Meg's voice was muffled by the sound of crumbled paper being jammed into her backpack. Her footsteps practically shook me out of my own bed as she ran from wall to wall searching for her "lucky" pencil.

We both had some sort of exam today, and while Meg's sanity was instilled in a stubby wooden pencil, mine was resting on the solid two hours of sleep I had gotten last night. I didn't confide in luck, but somehow, I had willed myself into believing that cramming a fifteen minute speech into my memory was the best way to prepare for a presentation.

There were two types of people in this world: ones who made their bed and ones who didn't. My logic for being a decent of the latter was simply that it would make no sense to make my bed when I was going to mess up the sheets by climbing in later. Meg's side of the room was neat and organized, well kept and to be frank, the exact opposite of mine.

Some nights, I heard her praying underneath her sheets, writing wishes to God that I would clean my side of the room. Deep down in heart, I knew Meg probably secretly hated me for being an erratic mess sprawled out across the other side of the room. This was the only reasonable conjecture I could conclude.

"Two hours," I mumbled.

A thought slipped across my mind to tell her that the two hours of sleep I gotten were actually from an afternoon nap, but knowing Meg, she would have told me to cipher all my energy into positivity. The thing about optimism was that it was the bane of my existence. I had spent all of my night memorizing a fifteen minute speech in Professor Mariello's public speaking class. Now, I realized I probably should have started a week or two prior to the first exam grade of the year, but the truth was I never developed the "study habits" I was supposed to in between the transition of high school and college. Resorting to the last minute had become my go to.

"At least it wasn't an all nighter," Meg shouted over the sound of the running water from the faucet while I was in the bathroom.

While I ran a brush through my dark hair, I stared at the unfamiliar face in the mirror. The girl standing in front of me had dark circles hiding under her eyes and skin lacking pigments of color. The exhaustion taking residence in my facial features was more than evident especially this early in the morning. I could still hear Meg digging around for that pencil as I pulled my hair up into a tight ponytail.

"How do you solve hangover symptoms when you don't actually have a hangover?" I groaned as Meg pulled me out of the door, stuffing a protein bar into my hand. She pushed me down the hallway as I dragged my heels into the carpet, trying to check my bag of its contents.

"Lots and lots of coffee and food. Food is always the solution," Meg answered hastily. She kept checking her watch for the time even though we were up an hour before we needed to be.