kent

captain america

Carly has headphones in her ears and her cellphone sits on top of her stomach. It’s a Wednesday night and though the week has been horribly long and Carly is beyond exhausted, sleep has not found its way to her. She suspects it must have gotten lost somewhere in the sky, mixed in with the galaxies outside her window, and so her eyelids are forced open.

She is lying on top of her blankets. The window is open and the cool air flutters through her curtains and kisses her bare arms. Her hair prickles up slightly and her skin feels energized. She shifts slightly, unable to turn to her side because then her earphones would press uncomfortably against the inside of her ears. She lifts a hand and runs it through her tangled brown hair. She ruffles it, as if it is capable of loosing the thoughts trapped in her skull and setting it free to the air.

It does nothing. She sighs with the music in her ears. It takes her a while to realize song she is even listening to. She is far too distracted to pay attention to the song, and though she has chosen what she had thought was a soothing playlist her thoughts have far from settled. There is something alive in her veins and something beckoning in the stars and the quiet is all too loud.

The world is heavy and the night is fast expanding into her room and her thoughts. She takes a lonely stuffed animal, a token to her childhood years and simpler times and lifts it with her mind. It oscillates up and down, bobbing to the erratic rhythm of Carly’s thoughts- sometimes slow and calm and sometimes fast and panicked.

She closes her eyes, trying to breath in a regular tempo. She tries to push out her ideas on the maddening apocalypse and does her best to bury the sad form of heartbreak burning inside her. But she can’t. The night is too dark and there is so much going on in the world.

Suddenly, her phone vibrates, cutting out the music too suddenly, and Carly’s eyes jolt open. Her concentration is shot and the stuffed animal almost smashes onto her face. She catches it just before it is able to and looks at her phone screen. It is bright in her room, and she has to squint to make any sense of the display.

I’m not dating Taylor. Everybody thinks that we are, but we’re not. Rebecca said I should tell you.

Carly’s heart stops in her chest. The curtains fly furiously in the wind. The room spins as Carly pushes herself upright, ready to tap out a response. The stuffed animal falls on the bed with a thud. The sound is dampened by the roar of bloodrush in her ears.

Okay.

Her fingers shake while typing the casual one-word response. It is easy to lie through text.

You’re awake. Clark observes.

She is about to respond with some sarcastic response, something along the lines of sleep texting or that a demon has possessed her phone and is responding in her place, but his next message flits to her phone before she has constructed a single sentence.

You should come over.

Her response is the same: Okay. There is no hesitation. She takes a hoodie from her closet and pulls it over her head, ready to venture in the night. The moon peeks through her curtain and the wind changes, pushing the clouds far away. The hope is alive and burning well. But she wonders what Clark wants at two in the morning on what is now an early Thursday morning.

It takes her mere minutes to make the trek from her house to Clark’s. With a slight manipulation of the wind in order to push her along the right path-- she has been practicing controlling these free spirits-- she shaves down her previous record by a couple of seconds.

Soon, her knuckles are on his window pane. The sound carries through the clear night and the stars smile down around her. She bites the inside of her lips, anxious to hear what Clark has to say to her. Hopefully he has more good news, but it is enough to hear the sound of his sleepy voice.