The buzzing sound of her alarm fails to startle her as she sits with her legs crossed on top of her full sized mattress. She slams her hand down ontop of the instrument, silencing the obnoxious beeping throughout her congested room. Tossing her sketch book off of her lap, Lily uncrosses her bare legs and starts for the bathroom.
Slouching in front of the mirror she grabs a hold of her face, she pulls at her eyelids inspecting the redness that dispersed around her eyes. Lily hadn't slept in nearly a week. She hadn't had a fully eight hours in over a month. She'd do anything to stay awake but the majority of the time she'd do something to keep her hands busy, whether it be drawing or writing. She was starting to feel the effects of her habitual insomnia. Her eyes stung whenever she blinked, and her body ached to the touch.
She yawns as she looks at herself in the bathroom mirror, tousling her lengthy braids from her face. After brushing her teeth Lily applies a few coats of mascara to her lashes and her favorite red lipstick to her lips to distract the attention from the redness, the bags, as well as the dark spots under her eyes.
She dresses herself in an oversized distressed sweater that covered her denim shorts, topping it off with a pair of black doc martens. Lily makes her way down the stairs, her satchel smacking against her bare thigh as she hops. She stops in her tracks once she sees her mother passed out on the sofa in front of the television, Lily's eyes shift from her mother to the open bottle of scotch on the coffee table, she scoffs. The sound of ruffling on the sofa caused Lily to flinch but she calms immediately, noticing that her mother had hardly risen from her comatose state; she simply shifted in her slumber.
She grabs a banana and a Sunny D from the kitchen and scurries out of the house before her mother decided to wake up for good. Lily walked on pins and needles throughout their small home. They both did, not standing the sight of each other for too long. The more her mother spent drinking her life and self sorrow away, the more the two became detached from another. Dependency was something that Lily hated most in the world because who could you depend on if you can't even depend on the woman who gave birth to you?
Lily began her normal route to school, consuming her light breakfast while doing so. She observes her surroundings, looking up at the trees as the music from her headphones blared throughout the quiet sidewalk. She thought about turning back around and going back home for the hell of it but she soon realized that she couldn't bare the spiel that Mrs. Sullivan would give her if she did.
-
Jesse looks at the time on his Nixon wrist watch, sighing as he reads the numbers 6:43. He ensured himself today that he wouldn't be late to school but he wasn't sure that he liked the sound of extremely early either. He sat in his car for a moment, asking himself did he have enough time to kill to grab breakfast; then he remembered the horrendous McDonald's line on his route this morning and the thought halted. He scrolled through the apps on his phone when a remind buzzed on the screen reading Grab the great Gatsby from school lib: AP lit.
"Ah, good way to kill time." He spoke to himself while hobbling out of his Camaro.
He makes his way up to the library after help from a few lingering students in the quiet hallways. Jesse scans the huge library and exhales, could anything in this building be a normal size? He thought. Not even bothering to hunt for the book himself, Jesse waltzes up to the librarians desk to ask for her guidance instead.
"Hi, do you happen to have the Great Gatsby in your library?"
"You're in luck. Check the classic literature aisle, it'll be in the second row with a green dotted sticker on the spine."
