I try to read. That’s always my solution. Books never demand eye contact. Books never play music so loud it rearranges your organs. Opening my e-reader, I stare at the page, reading the same sentence three times before realizing I didn’t absorb any of it. My brain is still buzzing. Not with party energy. With static. Too many impressions stacked on top of each other—voices, smells, lights, Kai’s hand on my back like he was shielding me from the world, Weston calling me one of them like I belonged.
My phone sits on the bed beside me like it’s heavy. Like it knows it can win. I tell myself I’m not going to do it. Then I do it anyway. Because of course I do.
I open the PCU forum.
The insomnia thread is active—people posting memes and half-serious questions likeHow do you shut your brain off without removing it entirely?
I scroll, but stop instantly when I see his username.
NumberEleven.
It’s ridiculous, the way it makes my chest loosen. Like someone turned down the volume inside my skull.
We’ve been talking for six weeks. Even before I moved into this dorm at the beginning of September—back when I was still tucked safely at home, counting down the days until I had to be a person again.
He doesn’t know that. That’s kind of the point.
I don’t know what he looks like. I don’t know his name. I don’t know the shape of his life beyond the late-night messages and the way he can make me laugh when I feel like glass.
But I know he’s awake. He’s always awake.
Still, I don’t message him yet. I stare at the cursor like it might bite. Then I close the app. Try again to read. Try to sleep.
At 12:31 a.m., I’m still awake.
At 1:46 a.m., I’ve rearranged my pillows three times and somehow made everything worse.
At 2:17 a.m., I give up.
I open the thread again and type before I can talk myself out of it—confessing my failed attempt at being normal.
LittleTooMuch: You awake?
Then I set my phone down on my pillow and stare at the ceiling, listening to the distant sounds of campus through the window—cars, laughter, the faint thump of music from somewhere I’m not.
Somewhere on this campus, there’s a boy who can’t sleep either.
I don’t know his name.
I don’t know his face.
But I know he’s there when I need him.
And for tonight, that’s enough.
4
GRAYSON
Waking up at the ass crack of dawn on a Saturday should be illegal.
Because I went to bed at a semi reasonable hour last night after talking to LittleTooMuch—like a responsible adult who definitely does not have the sleep schedule of a raccoon—and my body still yanks me awake at 6:11 a.m. like Coach Graves personally installed a panic alarm somewhere along my spine.
I lie there and stare at the ceiling, waiting for exhaustion to win.
It doesn’t.
I roll over, shoving my face harder into my pillow, like that’s going to knock my brain back into sleep. All it does is make me aware of how awake I am.
