By Sarah Hines, Y11
The sky is grey, as usual, it’s actually been a long time since we’ve seen the sun, come to
think of it. The skyscrapers in the distance disappear in the clouds and the windows are
reflecting the cold. The streets are as busy as ever, cars, buses, cabs, motorbikes…all
speeding like their life depended on it. I sighed and turned away from my window and back
to my desk. I have a small apartment; my desk is next to a window that looks down on New
York, my bed is next to the latter with a small kitchen on the other side of the room with a
counter that has a whole lot of random stuff covering it. There’s also a small cabinet with a
TV above it and a bookshelf next to it. The bathroom is next to it, it’s quite small with a
shower, toilet and sink. All the walls are plastered with posters and the floor is covered with
clothes, food packets, papers and I don’t know what. Let’s just say it’s a good thing that my
mom has never been here. I looked down at my notes and sighed again. I hated chemistry.
Picking up my phone I checked my messages, still on delivered, it had been 5 hours now. I
mean, he’s probably just busy, or something. I started overthinking, maybe I should just
delete the message, I mean now that I think about it, it does sound kind of goofy. I checked
his status; it said that he had recently been online. I felt awful; did he not want to answer?
Maybe has he already seen the message? I tried to get back to my studying and try to forget
about it, sadly that didn’t really work, if anything it only distracted me more. A thousand
thoughts kept passing through my mind: maybe he just didn’t want to answer, or maybe he
just didn’t see. He probably just saw the message but forgot to answer, I mean I do that all
the time. I should just send a new message in that case. I went back onto the chat, rereading
the same two sentences that sat there in front of me. My fingers were ready to type, but
what should I say? Hundreds of different ideas passed through my mind, what would be
best? But my brain kept repeating the same words “No that sounds weird”, “Now you sound
angry” I put my phone down and cupped my hands on my face. I was starting to get way too
worried over such a small thing. Okay, let’s just leave it, it’s not worth it, I’ll just delete the
message….but that’s just going to make it worst. No, we’ll just leave it, it’s not worth it. I left
the chat but as I did so I accidently pressed on the keyboard. I freaked out and threw my
phone onto my bed. It would have sent him a new notification; I started jumping around my
room. I have to send a message now…right? After even more overthinking I decided to go
have a shower to take my mind off it. That made me feel much better, I then made myself
some pasta and turned on Netflix. It was quite a nice meal, but the message still lurked at
the back of my mind. I kept hearing notifications from my phone every once in a while, but I
refused to check it. After a few episodes it became dark outside, I closed my blinds and
cleaned up my dinner. I then sat down on my bed and picked up my phone: he had
answered after 8 hours on delivered. The message was from 30 minutes ago, should I leave
him on delivered too? I half- opened the message and smiled, he had started with “So sorry I didn’t answer earlier my younger brother stole my phone to play games”. I realised in that
moment that I had gotten way too anxious over nothing.
