The two necklaces are lying peacefully side by side on my vanity. 

One would never guess that one of them belongs to a Neanderthal and the other to a refined... uhm... normal person.

They look good together; their subtle design differences complement each other. I should just keep both. I've swapped their cords because mine would throttle Ethan... if he is really planning on wearing it. He seemed to be serious about it.

I cannot believe I ended up saying yes to this insanity. It makes no sense! There was just something about the way Delia looked at me. For some reason, she really wants me to do this. I'll do anything for her.

She'll do anything for me too.

She's proven that on multiple occasions. One such occasion was last year when she hit Cole Sadler over the head with her favourite wooden pencil case because he broke my heart. My heart was only slightly broken, but Dell's pencil case was pretty much destroyed.

She loved that case.

Ethan made us each one during one of his woodworking projects. The wood he used was rather thin, but he did it astonishingly well, even carved our names and pretty rose vine patterns in the lids. I love mine too. I keep my favourite jewellery in there, including the necklace I'm about to sacrifice to the god of chaos and depravity.

I'm sad that Delia lost her pencil case over something so trivial because I don't think I was all that into Cole to begin with. When he called me a frigid prude and broke up with me, I was mostly crying and upset because I felt insulted, and I was worried that he might be right about me and that I was doomed for a life of loneliness. What made it hard to bear was that he broke up with me in class and called me that in front of everybody!

The next day, the poor boy came to school all bruised and battered because he had a skateboarding accident. It was nothing serious, and it seemed a bit like poetic justice. I tried really hard to feel sympathy for him, but I'm not a saint, so...

I'm tempted to peek through my drawn curtains to see if Ethan is still awake, but I resist the urge; really not sure why I want to do that anyway. Sighing, I turn off the main light and get into my bed, tapping the moon lamp until it is the periwinkle blue I like so much. It is fully charged and should keep my room bathed in a gentle blue glow for a long time.

"Just do what comes naturally. Act the way you would like to act when you're dating someone you're actually in love with," was Delia's advice, and the problem is that I have no idea how to do that. What comes naturally is to hide under my bed until all this weirdness goes away. I don't think that's what she meant.

I think I'll just mimic her for a bit and see if something flows out of that. The first thing she does every morning is to send Simon a "hello" message (if he doesn't beat her to it), and the last thing at night, they say goodnight to each other.

So corny!

But it's kind of sweet, so I take my phone from my nightstand and feeling like an idiot, I send Ethan a message: "Good night."

"Why?!" is his rather baffling reply a few seconds later. He must be lying in bed, playing a game on his phone, until he gets sleepy. He often does that.

"What do you mean why? It's night."

"Are you mad at me??"

"No more than usual. Why? What did you do now?"

The next message buzzing its way into my phone is a voice note.

"Good night? Just like that? Sounds pretty final. Are you ending it already, or are we still doing this?"

Oh, my word! So much for sweetness and romance.

I don't have the patience to type either, so a voice note it is. I hate doing voice notes, I usually suffer from stage fright a bit as soon as I hold the record button, but I guess I'm inspired now. No hesitation at all.

"I wasn't saying farewell, Idiot; I was saying good night; it's a thing civilized people sometimes say to each other. Dell and Simon always say good morning and good night to each other. Seems nice. They're my only example, so... whatever. Go to sleep!"

"👍Sorry. Good night."

Well, that went extremely well...

I put my phone back on the nightstand, feeling foolish. It buzzes again, and I snatch it up, ready to hurl a string of abuse at Ethan if he is going to be an ass and give me a hard time about this.

"😘"

For several seconds, I just stare at the emoji, and then I start to giggle and chortle and eventually, I grab my plush cat to shove my face into its belly, stopping myself from making a noise. My dad will be fast asleep by now; I don't want to wake him up.

"🤣🤣🤣" I type; what else is there that I could possibly reply to that extremely out-of-character message from the monster next door?

Ethan is liking the voice message thing because my laughing emojis inspire him to send another one.

"Don't laugh! You started this. You're supposed to send a kiss back; you're being seriously unromantic." 

I am now laughing even more! I'm being scolded by the Knave of Hearts!

"No," I type.

"Come on."

"No."

"Come on!"

"No!"

"Come oooooooon!"

I decide to do it in two messages, one with N and one with O. We can do this all night.

"COME!" he writes, and then a second message: "ON!"

It's official now; we're morons.

"😘" I finally decided just to give him his emoji kiss.

"🤣🤣🤣"

I chuckle at his reply and put my phone down again. How am I supposed to sleep now if I cannot stop giggling? I'm a bit surprised when my phone buzzes again; that surprise turns to confusion when I read the message.

"Coming tomorrow, right?"

What on Earth is he on about now?

"Where?"

And now I've just received the school image again. Is the word really that hard for him to spell? More importantly, why would I go to school on a Saturday? I send him a message asking him exactly that, and all he has to say is: "Rugby."

Now I'm even more confused. Why would I go to school on a Saturday for rugby, of all things? I don't play rugby, I don't coach rugby, and I definitely don't even watch rugby!

"❓👀❓" I don't even know where to begin with all the questions I have about his weird enquiry; I hope he can figure mine out.

Nothing... 

Apparently, he fell asleep or realised he was chatting with the wrong person. I'm about to put my phone on the nightstand and really try to go to sleep when I hear something at my window and then my curtains are moving, and before I can shriek in alarm and grab a weapon – probably the moon - Ethan spills through the gap between my curtains and lands on my floor with a soft grunt.

"You shouldn't leave your window open like that, Kicks," he huffs, getting to his feet. "Something weird could get into your room."

"So I see," I blink at him.

♂♀