My Friend Justin

Chapter Twenty Seven

Chapter Twenty Seven

“Hi Honey, Justin’s been calling for you, I think you should ring him back.”

Were the first words I heard as I walked through the door. Well, I think I walked, but it felt like I was floating on a cloud of bliss really.

I rolled my eyes. “Maybe later, I just want to have a lie-down right now.”

She looked at me. “It sounded quite important though, Ashleigh.”

I waved her away. “It can wait, I just need a rest.”

I run up the stairs before she can say anything else, checking my phone on the way into my room.

5 New messages.

I felt slightly popular before I saw 3 were from Justin saying “PICK UP UR PHONE YETI”, the most recent one have more exclamation marks than the rest. Ugh.

One was from Amy. Oh crap! I hadn’t called her back after she said about her after school classes! I sent her a quick apology text promising I’d get in touch soon, before checking the final message. It was from Austin saying Alex had told him he’ll be coming to visit soon, and if I’d like to meet him.

I sent a text to Justin saying I’d call him later and one to Austin saying I’d love to.

Soon enough, we’d arranged a date to all meet at the bowling alley in the city, so I thought I’d invite Jade to save her from the clutches of Steve, and possibly hook her up with Alex. Me, Austin, Alex and Jade. Sounds good.

After a while of just staring aimlessly at my phone for no apparent reason, I locked it and slumped into my bed. Boy, after all this excitement I felt so tired. Maybe if I rest my eyes for like, a few minutes, I might feel more relaxed…

My phone buzzing woke me up with a start. I felt horrid, I was still in my clothes I had worn today, not being bothered about pjs since it was only like, one o’clock since I got back. I rubbed my eyes. What time was it anyways?

The clock read 2.46am. I had to blink multiple times for the numbers to set into my brain. I’d slept for more than 12 hours. I didn’t even feel that tired and it wasn’t as if I had just travelled across the world or anything. The text message was from Justin.

“dw about it then.”

Oops, I received that message a couple of hours ago. If I sent one now, I’d probably wake him up and judging from the tone of that text, he was quite mad at me. Which never happens. Maybe I should have listened to mom about the importance…

Since it’s incredibly late, or early, depending on which way you look at it, I can’t exactly stumble down the stairs to get some breakfast as usual. So I climb out of bed, carefully tweak the door knob, and tiptoe out of my room.

The house was completely pitch black, sending a couple of shivers down my spine. I don’t like to imagine what’s lurking in the dark, it freaks me out. Our floorboards are quite creaky, so I had to step cautiously over each and every one, in the place where I memorised to put my feet across the hallway. On the last step before I could get downstairs, the floor made a large screeching sound that made me jump, but probably wasn’t actually loud enough to wake anyone, thank god.

The stairs weren’t as bad, so I could hastily make my way down them. My stomach started to growl ferociously, which was fair enough considering I hadn’t had a proper meal in hours. I instantly thought to reach for the nutella jar which I knew was in the closest cupboard in the kitchen, but I was too afraid to turn on the light.

Now, thinking about this logically, I would need to turn the light on in order to get the jar, knife and bread out, so I had to do it in the end.

I dramatically stuck my finger out, aiming for –what I hope was- the switch. My finger clashed with the button, sending beams of light from the ceiling into my delicate eyes. They shut almost automatically.