richie sighed as he lay in bed. it was about midnight and he had absolutely nothing to do. it was the weekend, so he needed something to do to keep him awake. his parents were asleep in their bedroom. but not richie. he never slept. sometimes, he felt like he had insomnia. his mind would just be running 24/7 and he could never go to sleep. he wasn't diagnosed by a doctor or anything, so he always wondered why he could never fall asleep.
he decided to go on google and find things to do. he opened his safari app, and typed 'things to do at midnight when you're bored' to see if anything would pop up. after a few minutes of searching and filling up his browsing history with various 'top 10' websites, he remembered something. bev had mentioned something called a 'number neighbor' at school before. she never fully explained what it was exactly, but that's what the internet was for. "eh, fuck it. i'm bored", he thought. he googled what it was and an article popped up.
about 550,000,000 results (0.61 seconds)
a number neighbor is someone who has the same phone number as you, except the last digit is one higher or lower.
the article went on about the origin of the trend, but richie didn't bother reading it. he debated on whether he should do it or not. "what if my number neighbor is some random 30 year old?" he thought about it for a while. the last thing he needed was to go missing. even though nobody would really care knowing the people of derry.
"you only live once", he tells himself.
he opened his 'phone' app and typed his number, but put the last digit to one number lower. he pressed the button to create a contact and set the name to "??" before messaging them.
richie
ayo wassup
delivered
he sat and waited for a response. lots of different thoughts flooded his mind. "they could a pedophile or a murderer!", "what the fuck am i doing? this is stupid.", "it's super late so if they have the same time zone, i could be waking them up". richie was known for doing stupid stuff, but he never regretted most of it. like the one time when he put pink hair dye in the principal's hat. or the time he "accidentally" spilled cola on bowers' head. he somehow never regretted it. he bit his nails anxiously. his foot tapped on the side of his mattress. he felt nervous for some reason.
more time passed, it had been a quarter to 1. still no response. "they aren't gonna respond, rich. forget it.", he muttered under his breath to himself. a little disappointed, he set his phone down to charge on his nightstand and turned off the lamp next to it. he took his glasses off and set them down. his eyes were slowly closing when his phone buzzed. his eyes jotted open and he sat up, grabbing his phone. he had gotten a notification from the number.
unknown number
who the hell is this
