The Key Chased the Blade

I woke up and it was an hour past the time I had gone to sleep. I swore. Simon wasn't around to hear me, though.

I sat up and flung the blanket off of me. I remembered it hadn't been there before I napped and cursed Simon silently. Then I swung myself off of the couch. I could feel drool dried to my face, so I wiped it off and wandered upstairs to Simon's room. Sure enough, he was there.

"Simon," I said.

He was bent over rummaging through a pile of his old sketchbooks. He didn't look up. I saw his hearing aids on his desk and I sighed loudly, and then I walked up behind him and jabbed him in the sides. He yelped and the papers flew out of his hands.

I couldn't help but cackle hysterically. Simon turned bright red as he saw me and gathered them all together. Why didn't you wake me up? I signed.

You were sleeping. I figured a rest would help you get back to normal. He shoved the papers back into his shelf.

Back to normal?

Simon dusted himself off and regained his composure. Then he gave me a kind of grin-but-not-really-a-grin and went to grab his hearing aids. He put them back into his ears. "You were kind of babbling nonsense for a while," he said.

"What? When?" I became flustered.

"In the car. You started singing Jingle Bells."

"What? You're kidding me. You've got to be freaking kidding me." I stared at him. Simon was absolutely serious. He had the expression on his face that said that he wanted to laugh at me, but thought I was kind of pitiful and was worried about me at the same time. "Don't tell me I really did that," I said.

Simon didn't say anything.

"Oh God, I really did, didn't I?"

"Yes. I was really concerned there for a minute." Simon's face confirmed it. Jesus. "I thought about taking you to the hospital."

"God." I was going to kill John. He'd hit me harder than I thought. "I swear to God, Simon, if you mention this to anyone, I will literally neuter you."

"I won't. I promise."

"What are you doing in your room anyway?"

"I was grabbing some art supplies and got distracted." Simon turned and grabbed something off of his bed. I realized it was my phone. "I also texted Tyler and Alex our phone numbers on your cell. Hope you don't mind."

"It's fine." I took it from him. There was a little envelope sign on the bottom of the screen. Someone had messaged me. "Did they text you back?"

"If they did, I didn't know," Simon said. "I took out my hearing aids for some quiet."

I flipped my phone open and checked it. It was from Alex. I looked and saw Simon's brief message giving him our numbers and then the ones he'd sent back. Alex sent two. I was just glad they were legible instead of his brother's incoherent coding.

Thanks, I'll see you Monday. =)

That was the first one. But the second one made my stomach leap into my throat.

Oh, do you want to see a movie over the weekend? Friday maybe? I figured it'd be fun and take all this stress off our minds. I'll pick you up at 7:00?

"What the hell?" I spluttered.

"What is it?" Simon asked. He tried to look over my shoulder but I kind of just dived onto his bed away from him and furiously deleted all my text messages. My face was burning. Simon's eyes widened. "Noah, what did you get? Is it about John? Who is it from?"

"It's-it's-it's-"

"Noah, let me see!"

"I deleted it!" I chucked my phone against the wall. It clattered and the battery fell out onto Simon's carpet. Simon picked it up and put it back together. "It's-it's-"

"Noah, calm down. You're scaring me. What's wrong?" Simon was really freaking out.

"It's Alex! I think - oh God - I think he asked me out on a date!"

Simon stopped. I buried my face into his pillow to hide my shame. After a very long agonizing wait, I managed to uncover my head and look at him again. The corner of his mouth was twitching. I cussed at him.

"Stop looking at me like that!" I screeched.

This time the full-on grin stretched across his face and he laughed. Simon just busted up laughing. I screamed at him in rage and threw his pillows and the things on his nightstand at him. He kept cracking up and tried to dodge them. But then I just lunged at him. I barreled into him and knocked him onto the ground with him still laughing.

I held his shoulders down with my hands and sat on his stomach. "I'm going to kill you!" I shrieked.

"No! Don't!" he wheezed. Tears were streaming out of his eyes and he was still laughing. "You - You still have to go on your date!"

I roared and slapped at him. Simon, still laughing, tried to pull me off of him. We tussled for a whole five minutes before Simon managed to get me calmed down.

"So what are you going to do?" Simon asked. We were both breathing hard. Simon had pinned me to the wall with his shoulder. His face was right next to my ear and I couldn't move with his weight on me.

"I'm not going to do anything!" I said, exasperated. "I'm going to tell him I have something to do on the weekend! I don't go on dates!"

"Why not?" Simon leaned off of me. I glared daggers at him as he adjusted his wrinkled shirt. "He doesn't seem too bad."

"I'm not going, and that's final," I said. "Gimme my phone."

"Fine then." He took it out of his pocket and grinned. "Do what you want."

I muttered curses and shoved my phone in my bra so he wouldn't dare steal it. "Do you have my coffee done?"

"Yeah. It's downstairs if you want it."

"Thanks. I'll be going now, and while I do so I will text Alex some sort of excuse." I glowered and stalked out of his room.

"Sure, you do that, Noah!" Simon called after me.

"I will!"

But for some reason, I had a prickling warmth in my heart that was nagging at me to do the opposite.