I don't even notice when Cammie walks in. I'm telling myself that I can't go to bed yet, not without fucking up my sleep schedule something awful, but my eyes aren't listening to me as well as they did even a few hours ago. The television keeps jumping from one scene to the next and sometimes all the way to another show, and I'm well past the point where caffeine is doing anything for me. Cammie takes one look at me and says, "Why aren't you asleep, girl?"
My response is to flinch in surprise, whiplash my head in her general direction, stare at her like she teleported into the living room, and say, "Huh?" It's not exactly my finest moment, but my mind is gone. I have used up all my thinking brains for the day, and all I'm doing is running out the clock until it's eight (my arbitrary cut-off separating "going to bed early" from "falling over in the middle of the day and entering a sleep-deprivation induced coma") and I can collapse. Intelligent conversation is not happening.
And Cammie knows it. Even if she hadn't been witness to my epic life-or-death struggle against the forces of Finals, Asshole Bosses Who Won't Let Me Have Any Time Off, and Sister's Wedding In Eau Claire, the dark circles under my eyes and my slack facial expression would have made it clear. "Viv," she says, "I'm serious. Why aren't you already asleep?"
There's a physical lag between the time the words enter my brain and the time I manage to process them. My thoughts are so slow now that I can actually experience them slowly clicking into place, first the understanding of what she's suggesting ("Oh, she wants me to go to bed because I'm so tired") and then the sluggish realization that I've already asked myself that same question half a dozen times and come to the same conclusion each time, and then finally the solid thunk as I remember that I need to explain it to her in words.
"Can't," I say at last. "If I go to bed now, I'll just wake up in the middle of the night and then I'll be tired all day tomorrow, too. I'm just gonna stay up..." I squint at the clock, but my eyes refuse to focus. "...a few more hours, and then I can sleep," I finish vaguely. A couple seconds after I stop talking, I finally tune in on the clock. It's only five thirty. I have to be up until eight. That's...I don't even do the math, in my head it's just UGH more hours.
Cammie looks at me again, staring at the TV vacantly like the kind of person who actually buys 'As Seen On TV' merchandise. (Okay, I admit, the slushie maker looked kind of useful, but I didn't actually buy it or anything.) (I couldn't find my phone.) "You are crazy, kiddo," she says at last. "Alright, then. When did you eat last?"
I search my memory. Most of it is 404 errors right now. "Um..." I mutter, trying to figure out whether the peanut butter sandwich I made myself was twelve hours ago or fourteen hours ago. "A while ago?" I say at last, hoping that at least placates her enough that she stops asking me the hard questions. This morning I was writing essays on the role of succession in determining the course of the Ottoman Empire, now I'm punting on when I ate my last meal. I don't think I've ever been this tired in my life.
It's not good enough. "Pizza it is, then," she says, pulling out her phone and texting an order for delivery. She sits down on the couch next to me. "If you're really going to do this, I guess I better keep an eye on you to help you stay awake and make sure you don't drown in the shower or something." She looks over at the television, which is now running a marathon of 'Three's Company' instead of the old 'Wonder Woman' episodes that were playing the last time I was paying attention. "But give me the remote, okay? You're not even safe to watch cable right now."
I hand it over meekly and slump back onto the couch cushions. "Ah ah ah ah ah!" she says, pulling me up into a seated position. "No flopping, no lounging, no leaning. Upright and eyes open, got it?" She's trying to sound stern, but Cammie doesn't do 'stern' well. It's like being lectured by a pixie. A pixie without wings, but if you asked an animator to draw you a biracial pixie for the other pixies to hang out with to promote diversity in your pixie cartoon, you would totally get Cammie. Big floofy cartoon hair, snub nose, rounded cheeks, and eyes that look too big for her head. All she needs is the wings.
I realize that I'm just staring into space, sleeping with my eyes open and dreaming of the wacky adventures of Cammie the Pixie and her pixie friends, and I slowly drag myself back to reality. "What are we watching?" I ask, not so much out of actual interest as to keep my mouth moving because it's harder to fall asleep when you're talking.
"MST3K," she says. "You're not up for following anything with a real plot." I don't even try to argue. Instead, I just stare vacantly at the screen, trying to follow the muddy black-and-white antics of a bunch of people mumbling at each other. It might as well be in Swedish for all I can tell.
