Wake Up, For Us

~1~

Your heart is broken, the first time you see it.

Your mother says that, in time, Jo will forgive you. Sam agrees, but that's just Sam, the kindest and most gentle person that you ever met, always there when you need a shoulder to cry on.

It doesn't help.

Pulling yourself from your bed, cheeks streaked with tears, you try to carry on. The world feels like it's falling apart. Jo was everything to you but, as your mother says, it was too serious for someone of your age, too jealousy-ridden and suspicion-infested for someone of just fifteen.

You sit at your desk, sighing down at the homework that felt so important yesterday. Sam said not to worry about it, but you doubt that Mr Stewart would agree.

You pull a pen from your case and read the first question, again and again, still not quite going in. Then something catches your eye from the edge of your vision. Through the window and through the rain, at the bus stop where you wait every morning for ten minutes longer than you should have to, there is a sign.

It reads: "Wake up, for us." You try to recall having seen it before but you can't.

You shrug it off, an advert, you suppose. Thinking nothing of it, return to bed, cry and doze.