Road to Someplace

Chapter Five

 That night, I was rudely awaken by a few beeps from my phone. At first, I thought it was my alarm, but the tune was different. I cracked a sleepy eye open to see my phone ringing. My eyes opened fully, and I scrambled to turn it off, my hands fumbling around to grab it. I turned off the ringer and let out a relieved sigh. I listened in silence to the sounds around the house, trying to figure out if my parents had been awakened by the ringing. I held my breath, gripping onto my bed sheets. I waited for someone to bound down the hallway, but there was no noise. I exhaled, relieved that I didn't wake them up.

I glanced down at the phone, interested at who had the nerve to call past midnight. I wasn't exactly surprised to see that it was Raveena. As I scrolled down, I saw that she had been attempting to reach me via text for at least half an hour. I rolled my eyes, letting out a frustrated sigh. I fell back on my bed, my mattress's springs creaking.

Leaning back into the rickety bed, I covered up my freezing legs with a bundle of stiff blankets, curling up to stay warm. I unlocked my phone, grimacing at the harsh light of my phone. I opened an alternative texting app that I had begun using a few days prior, as my parents had put a restriction on my texting. I rolled my eyes at the abundance of messages Raveena sent me, and started to type a reply.

RaveenaSucks: Why the hell are you calling me at 2 in the morning?

Marcas.is.a.Dbag: Because

RaveenaSucks: Because what?

Marcas.is.a.Dbag: I have bad news :(

RaveenaSucks: News so bad you had to wake me up at 2am

Marcas.is.a.Dbag: Yep. So, after I decoded the message (I was totally right about the password btw) it gave me a congrats message and gave me an email to message, and so I did, but I went on the songbirds website, and someone had already won, like, thirty minutes b4 I sent the email

RaveenaSucks: You have to be kidding me

Marcas.is.a.Dbag: Yeah, it sucks. But hey, it could be worse

RaveenaSucks: No it couldn't

Marcas.is.a.Dbag: C'mon

RaveenaSucks: I'm going to bed

I logged off of the app, grinding my teeth. I was fuming, angry that after all the insufferable, boring hours of sitting on an unwashed floor and a lumpy beanbag entering a bunch of stupid keywords into countless translators, I had nothing to show for my efforts. I groveled for a few minutes, before I finally fell asleep. I slept fitfully, and when I woke up, I was hanging off the side of the bed, which was obviously a wonderful start to my day.

I didn't fare well that school day, and Raveena was rather sympathetic. She was quiet for once, and didn't constantly make fun of me, which was comforting. She didn't seem to be affected. She didn't grouse or sulk, and wasn't giving off a negative demeanor of any type. I've never understood how she can stay so upbeat all the time. Even when her mood is dampened, it's essentially the equivalent to me on a good day.

The next few months went by. Not in a blur, but rather a lethargic, mundane sludge too unimportant and boring to even attempt to explain. It was late March before anything took a step out of the routine.

I had just been dropped off in front of my church by my parents, as I had some weird youth group thing they were forcing me to. I was almost to the giant metal doors when I heard a loud beeping behind me. The cluster of people walking up to the entrance all turned to look at the source of the noise. I wasn't exactly surprised to see Raveena's car. The window rolled down all the way, letting out a loud stream of weird indie music. Raveena was wearing sunglasses with a thin, metal, gold frame. She whipped her head to face the group outside the church, and pulled her frames down the bridge of her nose, unobscuring her deep brown eyes. She stared right at me, a smirk forming on her face.