SWING MY WAY :: ORIGINAL

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Tiffany was so overwhelmed with her life that sometimes she forgot she even had school.

Granted, it was the middle of finals week for the seniors, and she had already taken three exams, with only two left. But still. She had so much on her plate, yet everything was out of her control.

She entered her and Aliya's shared apartment with a deep sigh, throwing her keys into a wooden bowl on the end table and locking the door. Her gait as she walked into the kitchen was sluggish, eyes low and bloodshot from lack of sleep and overall pain. Mentally. Emotionally. Physically. She felt it all. It wouldn't technically be correct if she said this had been a long week since it was only Tuesday, but that was how it felt.

Tiffany grabbed a bottle of water and made her way towards her room. She noticed Aliya's door open, the other girl giggling while on the phone and her TV playing some show with house music. "Hey, Liya!"

"Hey, sis!" Tiffany smiled at that, closing her room door behind her. Her smile immediately dropped when she saw the mess she had made.

Her room must have been a physical representation of her life at this very moment, because she had never seen such a mess. She couldn't tell what was clean and what was dirty, she lost count on both hands of how many empty water bottles she saw, and her wall planner was still stuck in February. It was almost May. There were several wigs hanging on the knobs of her dresser drawers, matted and stringy. There were open containers of hair and makeup products everywhere, and the sheets on her bed had balled up in one corner, her entire mattress exposed.

Tiffany felt defeated, her emotional numbness over the past few weeks getting the best of her. She wiped her tired eyes before leaving her room, trudging into Aliya's and standing at the end of her neat friend's bed.

Aliya was so pretty! Always, of course, but compared to how Tiffany looked and felt, Aliya seemed to be flourishing. Her skin was radiant and healthy, her hair neatly tucked into a big scarf, her MacBook and paper notes and textbooks in front of her organized and highlighted as she wrote and studied. Aliya managed to handle things so well, and usually Tiffany wasn't envious of that, it was rare for her to be jealous, but right now she wished she could have learned something from her.

"Drop dead, Khi," Aliya playfully rolled her eyes, then picked her head up from her phone and smiled sweetly at Tiffany once more, "wassup, Big Tiddies. Are you good?"

"Yes," Tiffany looked to her TV and noticed she had been watching Pose, "Pose?"

"I just started watching it with Mekhi. It's so good."

"Yeah, it's really good. Makes you cry like shit."

"Okay! I thought that was just me."

"Nah, dude," Tiffany rolled her lips inward as she stared at the TV, then she blinked as her nose began burning. She was about to cry hard.

"Are you okay, Tiffany?" and of course that was rhetorical. Aliya knew her best friend like the back of her hand. Her extroverted, hot-tempered yet extremely chill best friend since the first day of New Student Orientation week.

"Yes," Tiffany replied weakly, turning around and sitting on her bed, "but I'm lying."

"Mek, I'll call you back, okay?"

"No worries."

Aliya set her phone aside and Tiffany took that as her cue to fall apart. She stuffed her face into the blanket and screamed in pure agony and tiredness. She felt Aliya rub her back comfortingly, and the TV was now paused. Tiffany blindly crawled to her friend and hugged her waist just to cry into her lap. Aliya didn't say anything whatsoever, knowing nothing of substance was going to be solved while she was in this hysterical state. Some people don't want to hear it.