Mania

Lesson 3. Realization

Clemence lay on her bed, the sheets of paper strewn across her the duvet now underneath her, crinkling when she adjusted herself to see the laptop screen better. She rubbed her strained eyes for the third time in five minutes, trying to keep her hands on the laptop keyboard to stop herself from picking at the skin around her nails anxiously.

It was Friday, 5pm and Clemence was almost done with the reading set by Professor Friedrich. She had been taking notes diligently, determined to ingrain as much information into her brain as possible and answer the questions in extensive detail.

Clemence felt a faint vibration from her hip and twisted around to fish her phone out of her pocket, bare legs crumpling the papers that were once in a neat pile.

She looked at the screen, saw Erin's name.

She hesitated, her finger hovering over the decline button before she sighed, answering her call.

'Hello?'

'Clem! You've got nothing planned for tonight right?'

'Uhh, no I guess not but-'

'Great! We're going out!' Clemence could hear the smile in Erin's voice.

'Going out tonight?'

Erin laughed. 'That's what I just said. Can you be ready by 8? We can get a taxi in and then you can crash at mine.'

'Wait, hold on a second.' Erin adjusted herself, sitting upright and trying to not to look at her messy bed, avoiding the stress headache the sight gave her.

'What's wrong?' Erin pressed.

'I've got work to do Erin, I'm trying to get through these questions Professor Friedrich set.'

'What? Oh don't worry about that!'

'We've only got a couple more days to do it Erin, I'm trying to-'

'Clem don't worry about it! You can do it tomorrow or Sunday or whenever, it's not going to take long!'

'Have you looked at it? He's set us a lot of work, I've been working on the reading all day.'

'Don't be silly, It can't be that hard, I'm sure I'll get it done in a night and you can copy my answers or whatever.'

Clemence pursed her lips, resisting the urge to shove her phone into her pillow case and pretend she had lost connection.

'Okay so if you've been working on it all day then you need a break! Abigail's down totally up for it, come on, don't let us down.'

'I don't know Erin, I wasn't planning on doing anything this weekend, I'm still pretty jet lagged.' Clemence tried to reason.

'Please Clem! Pretty please! We need a girls night out, we had a whole summer apart and I've hardly seen you at school this week!' Clemence could almost see her big eyes pleading with her, bottom lip jutted out and she pouted playfully, head tilted to the side like a wounded puppy.

Clemence sighed, picking at the skin around her thumb with her ring finger.

'It will be really fun! Come on Clemence, you're not playing fair if you ditch us.'

'Where were you planning on going?'

'Just to the bar my cousin works at! So it's no trouble getting in, you know the place, I've taken you there before.'

'Yeah I think I know the one.'

'Soooooo....that sounds like a yes?'

Clemence rolled her eyes, climbing off of her bed and scooping her papers up into a pile.