PERFECT PLACES

Cole (7)

Cole wiped his eyes and looked around to see if anyone had noticed. He thought about how embarrassing it was to be crying in the cafeteria.

Sarah had just finished telling him that she had noticed that he had been acting a bit different ever since she had returned from her trip, especially that one time she had been around his friends.

It was obvious now that she was right, but the weight that he had been feeling for the past three and a half weeks was telling him to keep quiet, because he knew that she would be extremely disappointed in him. He felt horrible; he hadn't been able to concentrate in class for the entire past week. He was spending less time with his friends, and with Sarah, because they both reminded him of what he had done.

"It's just the work. I'm not handing it well at all. I feel so behind, and it's only been a couple weeks. I have no idea what's going on in at least two of my classes, and I haven't started a 20% assignment that's due this Friday. I'm screwed."

Sarah smiled, knowing exactly how to comfort him. And she did. She promised him that she would get him back on track, that they would go up to his room right after this and figure out the assignment together.

"Stop crying now, okay? We'll figure it out together."

"Okay."

He had bought himself more time to stay in the darkness.

They ate a bit more and then picked up their trays and headed back to his floor. The moment had passed.

...

Cole could only stall his friends for so long. They kept asking him to go out with them, every Friday night. Sometimes on Thursday and Saturday nights they would ask, too. Cole missed hanging out with them. He didn't want to keep blowing them off to the point that they stopped asking him to do things altogether. He realized that he had no choice but to soon accept one of their invitations to go out and continue on with the friend group as normal.

He was struggling with his school work. Reading the syllabi had stressed him out too much. He hadn't read any of them during the first week of classes, and it had caused him to miss a few deadlines early on. And now he was trying to catch up in all of his classes. He treated each assignment as a hurdle, paying no attention to what he was actually learning. He didn't keep track of his class notes at all and found himself losing them or finding them a few weeks later, crumpled at the bottom of his backpack. When he missed a minor assignment in one class, he didn't contact anyone to try to hand it in late, because he had a major assignment due that week in another class and had no time to make up what he had already lost. He procrastinated endlessly out of anxiety, and often took the entire day off before a big project was due in order to finish it on time. He would skip classes to catch up in others. He would sleep through classes to recover from all-nighters.

The assignments were not the only reason that Cole had an irregular sleep schedule. He also had an irregular sleep schedule because of Sarah.

Sarah had insomnia. It was very, very hard for her to fall asleep. Some weeks it was manageable, but recently it was night after night of panic and phone calls to Cole in an attempt to calm down. Cole didn't mind waking up from a phone call at 2am; oftentimes he would fall asleep at 12 or 1 and still be able to coherently talk to her on the phone when he woke up. He also didn't mind because he never had any trouble sleeping, and could fall back asleep if given a few minutes to get comfortable.

Sarah's sleeping had been mostly manageable during high school. She slept at her mom's house, where she had slept for the past half decade, and was very used to sleeping there. Only a few times each month would Cole wake up to her crying in his ear, would he have to soothe her and let her know she was going to be okay.