Living High School to the Fullest (Completed)

Chapter 20: Wide Awake Ugliness

Chapter 20

I love sleeping. Sleep is my friend. I enjoy it. A lot. Just to be clear: not only do I like it, I also need it. A lot. Hey, I’m a growing teenager. Okay, so I might have already reached the limits of my body height and maybe I do not grow anymore. Not that much, anyway. Fact remains that I need my at least nine hours of beauty sleep every night.

Sleeping Beauty was onto something. Or do you really think that the prince would have kissed her if she had just spent one hundred years being awake without getting a wink of sleep? Of course not. The bags under her eyes would have turned into little black holes, sucking every beauty she might have possessed right out of her. There is a reason why sleep deprivation is considered to be a very cruel physical torture method and horror movies are aptly named Sleepless. Sure, if Sleeping Beauty had been awake, the prince wouldn’t have needed to come kiss her awake, therefore defying the whole purpose of said kiss. And she wouldn’t be known as Sleeping Beauty, but as someone along the lines of Wide Awake Ugliness.

Then again, who would want to write such a fairy tale?

Did I also mention that sleep deprivation makes me ramble a little? Just a little.

As I looked into our bathroom mirror, I was happy that it wasn’t the magic one from Snow White judging my current appearance and talking back to me. Lucky for me, my plain, non-magic mirror simply showed me that I did not look my best. To put it nicely.

Oh, I just realized: that magic mirror was like the judge of Fairy Tale Idol!

I’m not joking: sleep deprivation makes me ramble AND think weird thoughts.

Maybe I shouldn’t have read my collection of fairy tales last night. But I couldn’t sleep because I had to think about what Emma had said and I had been in need of a distraction. Badly. Fairy tales seemed to be a pretty fair choice at that time. Until I read all about prince charming and happily ever after and such. And now I was stuck in a land far, far away: the land of fairy tale analogies.

Ugh.

Maybe if I hadn’t fallen asleep right after I came back from Emma’s last night and having had a little chat with Brad about Fluffy’s day out, only to wake up at about eleven at night, I would have had a chance to talk to Dinah to clear my head a little. I had tried calling her cell phone again, seeing that it was too late to call her on her landline, but it went straight to voicemail. I bet her battery was dead. She really doesn’t pay attention to it at all. Maybe it’s a necessary part of her artsy personality that modern technology doesn’t play a big part in her life. Dinah doesn’t text at all and she only uses her phone to place calls once in a blue moon. I’m not even sure why she has one.

Hey, here’s another thought: maybe the magic mirror was the antecedent of wireless videophones?

Okay, enough with the fairy tales already!

I did not have a clue how I was supposed to make it through a whole day of school. I was mentally, emotionally and physically drained. Down the sewer, all the way. Unfortunately, the clarification plant was nowhere to be seen yet. I mean, there is a reason why people tell you to sleep on it. It is a scientifically proven fact that even one night of sleep deprivation leads to significant deterioration in one’s decision-making skills. My mom told me. And she’s a certified psychologist; she should know.

Although I always suspected that she only told me that when I tried to wake her and dad up at six in the morning to come watch cartoons with me when I was little. She is a late riser, after all.

Scientifically proven fact or not, the point is: sleep is good! No sleep is very bad.

On a more positive note: I only had to make it till lunch and hopefully then I was going to have a chance to talk to Dinah without Aaron or Brian being present. I only needed to keep my eyes open. Which could be tricky, I admit. Hm, has anyone ever really tried to keep his eyes open with matches? I mean, everyone is always talking about it, but are people actually doing it? Does it work?

I actually started looking for a box of matches. Not because I planned on using them to keep my eyes open in school. That would be ridiculous. Curiosity just got the better of me and I wanted to see if a match really stood a chance against the eyelid closure reflex. The only thing I found was a lighter, though. I wasn’t that sleep-deprived that I considered putting a plastic container filled with flammable fluids anywhere near my eyes. Besides, it is safe to say that people generally associate matches with its eye-opening qualities rather because of their physical aspects than their innate purpose of setting things on fire.

Lack of sleep also tends to make me use a plethora of fancy words while I’m thinking, by the way.