Dissonance

“What are you still doing up?”

“What?” he looked up from his notebook. He hadn’t moved his head in what felt like forever; his neck was stiff. He turned his phone off. Nobody can find you now.

“It’s late, why are you up?”

“Studying, I guess,” he said. Lie.

“Go to sleep. You haven’t moved from those notes in a while. I don’t even think you’re reading them.”

“I was.” Lie. “I don’t want to go to sleep.” He looked down at his hands; his skin was dry and cracking at the knuckles.

“Why not?”

“I just don’t want to,” he said, rubbing his eyes. They were dry.

“Then do some more work, I guess. Don’t waste time.”

“I don’t want to do that either.”

sigh “Well what do you want to do?”

“Going to sleep doesn’t feel right, doing work doesn’t feel right,” he said, changing the song on his phone.

“There isn’t much of a third option is there?”

“I’m in a sort of in-between state. I just want to live in this world where I haven’t decided what I want to do and stay late into the night because sleeping is doing something and working is doing something and I want to do nothing,” he changed the song again.

“It’s one of those days again, isn’t it?”

“You make it sound so bad when you say it like that,” he rubbed his eyes again and open a browser tab to pictures of the English countryside.

“It is bad. You’re weak again. Just pick something, how hard is that?”

“Stop. It’s hard, you don’t understand. You’re new,” he ran a hand across the back of his neck and sighed.

“Stop being so weak. What got you into this state?”

“I guess it’s just one of those days.” He stared at the light for a moment. His eyes watered, but he was pretty sure it was from the light.

“…Do you want help?”

“Desperately.”