Rags to Riches

When I was a kid, I was kind of afraid of the dark and had a hard time falling asleep because of it, so my mom went out and bought a nightlight. It helped me to not be afraid of going to sleep, but the light itself still kept me awake for much longer than a small child should be staying up at night. That caused me to be really sleepy during the day and lose focus during school, so my dad suggested I try taking naps when I got home, since I was in morning preschool at this time. But I could never fall asleep unless the blinds and curtains were pulled as close as possible. And even then I still had troubles sleeping at any time. We eventually realized that I simply couldn't sleep with any kind of light on around me, so I learned to get over my fear is the dark.

This inability of mine to sleep in anything other than total darkness persisted all throughout my childhood and adolescence. It's what always prevented me from sleeping on long car rides, day or night, thanks to street lamps and brightly lit gas stations. It's what kept me awake at sleepovers with kids who had nightlights in their rooms. It's what wakes me up at the asscrack of dawn if I forget to pull my curtains shut when I go to bed. It's what keeps me from sleeping in any conditions other than the darkest of rooms, especially in the middle of the day.

It's what woke me up as the sun began to rise over the horizon the next morning. Well, that and the uncomfortable digging feeling of the bark under my ass and the vaguely numb feeling in my arm that I traced back to a still sleeping Callie.

I looked at her, and then between us, to gauge how much I could possibly move without waking her up, or if it was even worth it trying not to. As much as I wanted to be able to say that she looked peaceful and angelic and all that other cliche crap about sleeping girls, I couldn't bring myself to think those thoughts without chuckling to myself. We had both slid down the base of the tree into more of a lying position, but her neck was still craned awkwardly against my shoulder and her face was pressed sideways into my chest, making one hell of a funny sight to wake up to.

I realized then that there was no way I would have been able to move myself without waking her up as well, unless she somehow slept like a boulder, so I didn't even try to let her sleep. I shifted a little on my side and used my free hand to prop myself up better. I always hated when people shook me awake, so I didn't want to do that to her either.

"Callie?" I whispered at first, mostly out of some instinct to stay quiet, since the world around us still seemed as if it were resting. She didn’t move so much as a muscle, so I shook my head and tried again, louder. “Hey Callie? You should wake up Callie. It’s morning and we really need to get going.”

She made a grumbling sort of moan from the back of her throat and curled up further into my side, like she was trying to avoid me waking her up subconsciously.

“Callie, come on. Wake up. Earth to Calliope, it’s time to wake up now.” My voice was raising louder and louder every time I said her name and she still wouldn’t budge. She was such a heavy sleeper it was getting ridiculous. I tried calling out to her a couple more times and even resorted to poking her side and shaking her gently, but she still wouldn’t do much more than grumble, move a little bit, and go straight back to sleep. I don’t know how she ever woke herself up in the mornings, but I was having one hell of a time waking her up.

I eventually gave up on trying to wake her up gently, since that was obviously not working. Instead, I rolled myself over which unceremoniously dumped her off of me and onto the hard ground. I propped myself up on my knees in front of her and saw that she still wasn’t completely awake. She grumbled harder this time though, and tried curling back up into somewhat of a comfortable position despite the lack of one existing.

I rolled my eyes and leaned in as close to her face as possible. “Callie,” I deadpanned, my voice a little bit above normal speaking volume. “Wake up Callie.” When she barely even flinched, my still tired brain seemed to think the only logical thing to do next was lean the rest of the way down and kiss her. Almost immediately, the actual logical part of my brain scolded me because of how creepy that move actually was, because seriously. Kissing someone while they’re sleeping? That’s kind of really creepy.

But that, of all fucking things, woke her up.

I sat back up with what was probably a look of horror on my face and saw her eyes open slowly. As she woke up, there was a smile on her face, so I assumed that she either didn’t realize what I did or somehow didn’t think it was actually that creepy.

“G’morning Kenny,” she said quietly, looking up at me and then at our surroundings, as if trying to remember where we were. She pulled herself into a sitting position and stretched her muscles, yawning.

“Morning,” I said hesitantly, surprised still at my action and her lack of reaction. “You sleep like a freaking mountain, by the way.”

She just chuckled. “Is that why you kissed me awake?”

“Oh God, that’s so creepy. I’m so sorry I did that. I don’t know what came over me there. I don’t know why I thought that would be an okay thing to do anyways. We can just pretend I never did that, cool? Cool.”

“Kenny shush. Stop thinking so much. It’s too early and I’m not awake enough to thin as much as you are right now. But for the record, I didn’t find it creepy.”

“But I kissed you,” I deadpanned. My own embarrassment was bubbling up and I found myself pulling my knees to my chest and hugging them. “And you weren’t awake. That’s a pretty grody move.”

“Grody?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “What’s grody mean?”

“It’s, like, I dunno. Another word for gross I guess. Just like a turn of phrase or whatever.”

Callie laughed and placed a hand on my knee. “Well in that case, I don’t think that was a ‘grody move’ like you said.” She removed her hand so she could make air quotes where she repeated my words. Her eyes sort of wandered off then, focusing on a spot somewhere behind my head. “Kind of reminds me of Sleeping Beauty.”

I couldn’t help but smile at the face she made when saying that. She may not have realized it because she’d done nothing about it so far, but her hair was ridiculously messy from the combination of falling asleep against a tree and rolling around against said tree and another person. She even had a small twig and a couple of leaves shoved up in her thick brown hair. All that, combined with the far off, dreamy look in her eyes when talking about Sleeping Beauty made her look just far too adorable to handle.

“Well, Disney Princess in training,” I started, letting my legs fall back into a crossed position and leaning forward to pick the foliage out of her hair. “I don’t know about fancy-people high school, but the latest I can be to my first class is around 8:15, and it’s about 6:30 now. So we should probably get going.”

“Oh my gosh, I totally forgot about school. Oh man, I really hope Connor isn’t awake right now. But he’s giving me a ride to school this morning. Oh boy, this isn’t good.” She was carding her fingers through her hair, probably half out of concern of how it looked and half as an anxious tendency.

“Can’t I just drop you off and you tell Connor you...I dunno, got breakfast with a friend, or something?”

Her hand stopped moving and her eyes snapped up to mine, a wide smile growing on her face. Before I realized what was happening, she launched herself at me and hugged the ever loving hell out of me. “You just solved like all my problems, Kenny. You’re amazing.”

I hugged her back after a few seconds of surprised hesitation. I was still getting used to the whole ‘being-physically-close-to-Callie’ thing without feeling weird about it, so I patted her on the back awkwardly as she pulled back to her previous sitting position. She was still beaming as she pulled out her phone to text her brother my fabricated story. As she typed, she muttered along with what she was texting.

“Hey Connor, forgot to let you know when I left. I went to breakfast with a friend from school. She’s giving me a ride. See you later tonight. Love you. Callie.”

“Oh man, that really saved my skin. At least he wasn’t awake yet. That would have been hard to pull if he was.”

Callie was much more visibly relaxed after she put away her phone. I know she didn’t like lying so much, and I thought it used to bother her a lot more, so it almost made me kind of sad that she could lie so easily now. Or maybe it was just a different story with her brother. Either way, I pushed the feeling away and ignored my thoughts on the matter.

“How did you know he wasn’t awake yet?”

“Because he didn’t blow up my phone asking where I was at,” she answered, shrugging slightly. She also must have taken that as the end of that conversation, or just didn’t want to talk about it, because she changed subjects quickly. “So would you want to actually go get breakfast somewhere, since we do have over an hour to waste?”

“Well, when do you have to be at school?”

“I usually get there around eight or a little after, so I’ll probably want to be there about fifteen minutes earlier. That’ll give me enough time to change into the spare uniform I have in my locker and fix my hair and makeup better. And that should be enough time for you to get back to your high school too, right?”

“Well, I’ll have to go home first. My mom will need the truck to go to work. But she also usually leaves a little after eight, and it takes me like ten minutes to walk to school. So that should be fine for me too. Your school’s not as far into the city as your brother’s apartment is it?”

She thought for a second, then pulled her phone back out and started typing. “It’s...about fifteen minutes away from here, according to my GPS. And there’s a nice little cafe I know of that’s not too far out of the way, if you want to go there.”

“Yeah, I like the sound of that,” I nodded, smiling at the way she was smiling at me. ’Christ Kenny, you’re in over your damned head’