To Hell With Your New Shit

“Lindsay,” I heard my mom call softly, accompanied by a soft knock on the door, “do you mind if I come in?” By the time she asked, however, she had already pushed the door open, and I didn’t have much of a choice but to let her in. I sat on the middle of my bed, arms wrapped around my bent knees, and shrugged in response. She sat on the edge of my bed, and turned to face me. I kept my head bent down, fascinating myself with my toes and the bedspread for as long as I could manage.

“Why did you come back to Arizona?”

I looked up at my mother, taken aback by her sudden, blunt question.

“Wh-what?” I stammered.

“Well, you made it quite clear that you were keen on the idea of staying in New York all of this time, and things between you and John seem to have gotten a bit, well… tense,” she stated. “And it’s not a holiday, nor did your father and I ask you to visit - not that we’re not delighted that you’re here – so I’m just wondering why you came back all of a sudden.”

“I don’t know,” I sighed hesitantly, picking at loose threads on my bedding. “I guess I just finally decided I needed a break from everything there. I shouldn’t have come back, though. I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

When I looked up, my mother was frowning at me, with a disappointed look in her eyes.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to see you or Dad,” I continued. “I screwed everything up with everyone else, though. I don’t have any more friends here. Nothing is the same between John and me, and it’s all my fault.”

“Lindsay,” she responded, “whatever happened between you and John, you can talk about it with me.”

“I really don’t want to talk about it, Mom. It’s hard, but it’s what I wanted – what we needed,” I told her, hiding, with much difficulty, the tears that threatened to spill over the brims of my eyes.

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, darling,” my mom said softly, running a hand over my hair gently before standing up. “I think that what the two of you need,” she continued, “is each other.” After that, she said nothing more, and didn’t wait for a response from me. She simply left the room, tugging the door shut behind her.

I clambered off of my bed and stood by the window, peering across the short distance to John’s window. The blinds were down, but I could see slits of light flickering through them. I stood there, resting my hands on the sill of the open window, and let out a sigh. I half expected John to appear at his window, a lopsided smile gracing his lips, just like he used to. He used to be able to tell when I was standing at my window after a bad date, during a storm, or in the midst of a sleepless night, and vice versa. We had known each other so well, perhaps better than we knew even ourselves. I sat on the floor beneath the window, resting the top of my head just under the windowsill, remembering what it had been like when I knew him.

---

The glowing blue numbers on my clock read 3:12 AM. I blinked my eyes and looked back down at the worn pages of the book beneath me: Pride and Prejuidce. I had read this book a countless number of times, especially during nights when I found it most difficult to sleep. Tonight, however, I had just about had enough of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy when I crept quietly to the window and looked hopefully across to John’s window. The room was dark, and my heart sunk slightly, before a light switched on. Without fail, just like every other night, John’s face appeared in the window, as he sleepily rubbed his eyes and smiled softly across to me.

Quickly, I grabbed a piece of paper and a marker from my desk and scrawled on it, “CAN’T SLEEP,” in large letters, before holding it to the window and frowning. John grinned knowingly, before searching for his own paper and marker.

“SLEEPOVER?” his paper read as he held it to his window. I smiled and nodded so he could see me, and he added to his paper, “MEET AT FRONT DOOR.”

I pulled my blinds down, shuffled my feet into my slippers, and shut the light before quietly creeping down the stairs and out the door. As soon as I made it to the edge of the O’Callaghan’s yard, John was hanging out the front door, looking a bit more awake.

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” I whispered as he ushered me into the front hallway. He shrugged in the dark and grabbed my hand to pull me up the stairs.

“S’okay,” he mumbled, “I wasn’t really sleeping, anyway.”

“You were, too, John,” I laughed quietly. He turned around and lifted his finger to my lips to quiet me, but didn’t stop smiling. I didn’t say another word until we were in the safety of his room with the door shut.

“Are you tired?” He asked, flipping on the small lamp next to his bed. I shrugged.

“Not really, but I can see you are,” I teased, crawling into his bed and pulling the comforter up to my chin.

“Yeah, well that tends to happen when someone wakes you up in the middle of the night,” he said, sitting next to me. I smiled and rested my head on his shoulder as we sat with our backs against the wall.

“You said you weren’t sleeping,” I pointed out.

“I was lying,” he said with a yawn. I rolled my eyes and reached over him to turn out the light as he slid down into his sheets.

“Go back to sleep, John,” I said quietly, curling next to him and resting my head on his chest. He muttered something incoherent in response before I heard his breathing steady and I knew he was asleep. I smiled softly to myself as a spring breeze blew into the room. In his sleep, John shivered slightly and pulled me closer to his body. I closed my eyelids, which suddenly felt heavy and tired, and listened to the rhythm of his heart as I slowly fell asleep.

I woke up hours later to the sound of a bird chirping outside, and slowly opened my eyes. As soon as I did, I was greeted with John’s freckled nose and closed eyes. Glancing over him, I could see that the time was nearly 10:00 in the morning.

“John,” I whispered, poking him gently in the shoulder. “John,” I repeated, this time poking him a bit harder.

“No, no school,” he groaned sleepily.

“Wake up, silly! It’s Sunday!” I said cheerily. He opened his groggy, green eyes and looked at me, upset that I had woken him up.

“Hmph, good morning to you, too,” he said, his voice hoarse. I smiled at him and started playing with the hair that had fallen on his forehead. He returned my smile with a lazy, lopsided one of his own, before burying his face into my shoulder.

“I don’t wanna get up,” he mumbled.

“I’ll make you breakfast,” I wagered, hoping that would get him out of bed. He pulled his head out of the crook of my neck just long enough to look at me suspiciously, before returning to his previous position. “French toast?” I suggested, moving to get out of his bed.

“No!” He cried, pulling me back to him. “You’re my pillow. You stay here.”

“Pancakes?” I tried. His grip on me loosened ever so slightly. I grinned, knowing I was getting somewhere. “Eggs? Bacon? Coffee?” By the time I was done listing breakfast foods, he had reluctantly let go of me. I sat up in his bed and stretched my hands toward the ceiling.

“Are your parents around this weekend?” I asked out of curiosity. By now, our parents weren’t so surprised if they found that one of us had wound up in the other’s bed in the middle of the night. They knew we were nothing more than best friends, though we had a sneaking suspicion that our mothers had some sort of devious plot to have us married by the time we were twenty.

John shook his head as he sat up, pushing the hair out of his face.

“They went out to Scottsdale to visit my aunt,” he explained. I nodded and leaped off of his bed and made my way to the door.

“Are you really going to make me breakfast?” he asked then, a glint of hope shining in his eyes.

“No,” I said decidedly with a wicked grin, before dashing from his room.

“Lindsay Marie Thompson!” I heard John yell, followed by his thundering footsteps stampeding down the stairs. I laughed as he chased me throughout his house until he tackled me onto the couch in the den.

“Okay, okay!” I squeaked, holding up my hands in defeat as he towered above me, laughing. “I surrender!”

“Too bad!” He cried devilishly, before attacking me with tickles.

“John!” I shrieked in laughter, giggling and trying to shimmy away from him. “John, stop!” I was nearly out of breath by the time he collapsed on the floor in a fit of laughter moments later. I lay on the couch, and he, next to me on the floor, our chests heaving with our deep breaths.

“You suck,” I told him between afterthoughts of laughter.

“Nope, pretty sure that’s your job,” he joked, looking at me and winking. I grabbed a pillow from the couch and whipped it at his face.

“Ow!” He cried, rubbing his hand across his face where I had hit him.

“I think we all know you’re the whore in this relationship,” I said matter-of-factly. He frowned playfully at me, and I yelped in anticipation of more tickling.

“You so owe me breakfast now,” he laughed instead. I sat up on the couch and slowly inched away from him.

“Fine,” I agreed in a huff. “But if you tickle me one more time, Jonathan…”

He pulled a face as I called him by his full first name, but wrapped me in a hug as I stood up from the couch.

“I am so very, very sorry for my actions, Miss Thompson,” he said politely. I couldn’t help but laugh at his tone. “I will never do such a horrid thing as long as I shall live.”

“Liar,” I accused, looking up at him. He simply grinned down at me and hugged me close to his chest once more. I breathed in his familiar scent of sleep and laundry detergent and closed my eyes, reminding myself that I would always be John O’Callaghan’s best friend.