Dark Age, cont'd
Giles said he'd call.
Oz sits on his bed all night into the next day, the phone next to him. Saturday, so it takes a while for the world to start moving outside his room. He hangs up on everyone who's not Giles. He hears his mom move around downstairs, even Devon give up on the phone and knock on the door, then toss rocks at his window. It gets brighter and brighter inside his room, and he pages through the issues on the top of his collection of National Geographic, but he's not exactly seeing anything.
The house is quiet all afternoon, and he has all three locks on his bedroom door engaged, and he dozes off several times, but sleep's worse than waiting. Or the same, actually, just that the nightmares are a little more vivid.
He's cold inside, but his skin feels hot. Then it switches, and for a while he has goosebumps but his stomach and chest feel like they're on fire.
He's good at waiting. He waits, watches the sun go down, listens to the usual night-sounds of sirens and birdcalls, and he's cold again but the blanket's all the way on the end of the bed and he doesn't want to move. Thinks of yogis who can trance out on beds of nails for weeks on end; this is nothing. He just needs Giles to call.
If Giles dies, he's going to have to hope it's on the local news to find out about it before Monday morning at school.