a phone call

One day, I woke up and realised that I hadn't received a phone call in a week. It wasn't that suprising since not that many people call me but I still found it odd. Then at lunch I met a friend who told me he had tried to call but that I never picked up - it just keeps ringing, he said. I figured out that day that the ringer wasn't working. I decided not to fix it. That way no one could wake me up in the morning. And I could still make calls.

About a week later, I was in bed and I heard the phone ringing. It's just a dream I told myself. In my dream, I picked up the phone but the ringing didn't stop. Finally, I realised it was the phone in my room. But the ringer doesn't work, I thought. I stumbled across the room and picked it up. It was Franny. When she heard my groggy voice she said she was sorry she had woken me up and then hung up. I couldn't call her back because I didn't know where she was.

The next few days the phone remained silent. I decided to check if the ringer was actually working. I called my sister and asked her to call me back. I looked at the phone but it just sat there, still as a dead volcano. Then I picked it up. Did it ring? my sister asked me. No, I replied. I said goodbye to my sister and looked at the phone for a long time. Then I randomly picked it up again, just in case Franny was trying to get through.