28/06
“Ebony, you really need to start preparing for your mock exams. What if you unexpectedly get cyanide poisoning two days before your exam and can’t sit it??!”
Why should I care about mock exams? It’s not like I’m going to suddenly be ill, die, and dissipate a day before my real exams.
While laying in bed one night, unable to sleep, I decided to wake up and walk around the house. The entire house was dim and groggy, with no awake soul in sight. Except for Tuna. What the hell man?
My phone had an entire waterfall of notifications streaming through, and it vibrated so hard it fell to the floor. First off, I thought it was some notification from a random app I haven’t used in a millennium; what’s the point of checking my phone anyway? I’m going back to bed in a few minutes. I literally started a habit of keeping my phone in the kitchen so that people don’t keep texting me in the middle of the night – but here I am. I sat down on a chair with the moonlight striking from the east window, creating some light for me. My phone kept buzzing, but I kept ignoring it too. However, when it fell on the floor, the sound was so unexpected my heart jumped as if a bomb just landed on my house. I mean, from out of the uttermost shocking sound, I slipped and fell to the ground too.
Hopefully Ivory did not hear that.
I groaned and bit my lip, clutching my head out of pain from falling off a stool.
“Who is active on Instagram at two in the morning…?”
Oh right, only my degenerate, deranged, deteriorated, depraved, corrupt, unhinged, deviant, and insane friend group would be.
“Is anyone coming to the library tomorrow?”
Tuna messaged the group chat, spamming the same message over and over around twenty times. He is the reason I possibly could have broken my screen.
“It’s 2am. Do you mean today??”
I messaged back while still lying on the ground– flat on my stomach. I was still quite annoyed at him.
“Yeah that. Can you come with me please? :3”
I hate that stupid emoji.
“No.”
“Please…”
“No.”
“Please…”
“No.”
“Please…”
“No.”
“Please…”
“No.”
“Please…”
“No.”
“Please…”
“Fine.”
I gave in.
“Fine, I’ll meet you there… what time?”
“8am start!”
Okay buddy.
I got like, how many hours of sleep? Five, barely. It’s a good thing I live close to the library, or else I would’ve overslept, then Tuna would’ve gotten mad at me and not given me a spot at the library. Dragging myself to the library wasn’t the hard part, the real hard part was trying to get up in the morning. It was a constant battle between my mind and my heart. Do I want to sleep a bit more, or do I want to get up now? I kept lying to myself and saying I can sleep a couple of minutes more, but then I realised I was going to fall asleep right then – I might as well get up.
I practically ate nothing for breakfast only stuffing my mouth with some semi-stale bread and calling to Ivory that I was going to be away for today. She gave me a thumbs-up. It felt like another arduous day of school. The bag on my back made me feel like I was Sisyphus, eternally pushing up the boulder up the hill. Everything hurts. Why should I even study for mocks?
Arriving at the library’s main gate and seeing Tuna, Eden, and Steven all lined up with headphones on was something quite familiar to me. Why am I here? Please get me out of here. Tuna immediately laughed at the sight of me, surprised I even came here. Steven’s face widened, as he smiled smugly. Eden, who usually doesn’t see me outside of school hours, caught sight of me too.
I get it. It’s the long hair I don’t bother to cut. It fell loosely on my shoulders like snakes sliding around. I only tied half of it up today, because school rules don’t apply. But, people don’t really see me like this. Both my expression and eyebags showed my distaste for their reaction.
Ivory has always wanted to cut my hair. But, she never had the chance to. Honestly, I liked this long, elongated, flow-like hair that made me look incredibly majestic – but all my friends made fun of me for it, horrendously.
I shook my head and waited with everyone crowding outside the smallest door. There was indeed going to be massive congestion, but who cared? The librarians tell everyone to not run, but everyone sprints for the best spots. In my personal opinion, the places everyone wants the most are awful. For instance, the little booths that I will agree look very ambient are not very fit for proper studying. There’s too much space between the table and the chair, leaving everyone to worsen their posture. Usually, I just sat at a normal table. I don’t want to completely break my back.
Ivory messaged me an almost illiterate text telling me to reserve a seat for her with a stupid Satoru Gojo image. Thanks, Ivory. You really are productive.
Minutes before the opening of the library always felt like the Hunger Games. Everyone was trying to get to the prized spots, and you couldn’t do anything stupid or else the librarians would kick you out. You had to stick within the rules and get a spot.
“Alright, the plan is that we get the showroom table that’s basically a massive circle,” Tuna announced to everyone, disregarding Steven’s role as the team leader.
“Hmph, yes, that.” Steven cleared his throat, looking at him.
The boys all steadied themselves together, re-adjusting their bags on their backs to ensure they were not going to fall off, headphones taken off and put away into bags and pockets, and taking that final shot of caffeine. In approximately thirty seconds, the doors would open, and every single student would be fighting for their lives for a good spot.
May the odds ever be in your favour.
The door opened, and a small five-foot-tall lady quietly whimpered, “No running please!” But, the momentous doom of mock exam-induced students was too strong for every single librarian. Honestly, I don’t think any of them are being paid nearly enough for this.
The boys and I were fortunate enough to find one study room that was free the entire day. A room with no windows, three tables, ten charging ports, and a whiteboard with three markers seemed perfect for four adolescent teenage boys who’s bloodstream was most likely 99% Monster energy drinks. Before slamming the door shut, Eden made it very evident that this room was taken by writing our names on the whiteboard that was stuck on the door outside. He proudly glanced back at us waiting for approval, where we all gave a dry thumbs up.
Everyone dropped their bag to the floor and opened up whatever they were using to study. Steven had his iconic MacBook, iPad, Apple Pencil, and Goodnotes subscription all ready, with digital files, and Instagram open on the other tab for extracurricular work. Eden and Tuna brought up their combined twenty kilograms of textbooks and loudly slammed them onto the white tables. The entire table shook, and they were given discerning looks. With their fancy Japanese gel pens gifted by Naomi, the two were already grinding their favourite subjects – maths. I wish I had a hobby like maths.
I already wanted to fall asleep on my desk, but nonetheless persevered through. Hours went by, the digits of my bank account depleted as I transferred money to my friends for food, and fat calories jumbled up in my body. Everyone silently ate their carbonate heavy meal in silence, no one giving each other a glance but repeating formulas inside their head, making sure they wouldn’t forget.
What a sight.
After everyone was finished being ravenous children and came back into their seats, everyone decided it would be a good time to begin arguing about pineapple on pizza. Steven once made an incredibly passionate speech about how pineapple on pizza is essentially a disgrace and should’ve never been alive, while Eden made another argument about how pineapple on pizza is the most glorious thing to touch the earth. The four of us rattled on into a twenty-minute debate, well, I was kind of dozing off in the middle of it, which caused Eden to sit down next to me and give me a whole lecture while I was half-awake.
“No, Ebony, you must understand! Pineapple on pizza is the greatest thing to ever manifest on this Earth! It is the touch of the gods!” He glazed, eyes wide and beaming.
I was so tired, I looked like a patient in a hospital who was just about to pass away.
“Uhhh… sure.”
“No! You don’t understand!”
Yeah okay, thanks, man.
I fell asleep after that. I woke up to ink-black scribbles all over my face – someone decided it would be a good idea to think of my face as a canvas to revise physics formulas. The thing is, I couldn’t tell who did it. We all took physics.
Thanks guys.
Writer – Emma Li
Editor – Aaron Huang
Artist – Marianna Wang
–September 2024–
