Challenge: Create a character with personality traits of someone you love, but the physical characteristics of someone you don’t care for.

His messy brown hair jutted out over his forehead as he hunched forward over his latest read: Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak. He had about 40 pages left—no, make that 35—and he wanted to finish it before bed.

He straightened up when his roommate paused in the threshold of his bedroom and snorted, just loud enough to ensure he’d hear.

“33 more pages,” he mumbled without looking at her. He hoped she’d leave and return in 15 minutes, give or take.

She didn’t. “Isn’t it past your bed time?” she teased, leaning against the door frame.

His russet eyes flicked to the digital clock on his dresser—10:04—and then settled on the page once more. His circular glasses slid down to the tip of his nose, and he didn’t push them back.

“Fuck you,” he said, more dramatically than necessary, and flashed a grin. He mentally bookmarked his place, down to the specific word, and then looked at her, tilting his head back a little to coax his straw-like hair out of his eyes.

“How’s your day?” he asked, closing the book on his pointer finger to hold his place.

She blew out a breath and shrugged. “Fine, fine.”

He paused, waiting for her to say more.

“Did you interrupt me to just say that, or—”

“Oh, nothing. Just thought you’d want to see CGI Dobby dancing around some palm trees,” she said, holding up her phone.

He stood quickly, getting tangled in his blanket and almost toppling over in the process. Without bothering to free his feet from their wool cocoon, he hopped over to her. He wore plaid pajama bottoms and a green t-shirt with visible finger indents from tugging the fabric down in an effort to better cover his lanky form.

Together, they watched the short video five times, and then she pressed the lock button on her phone. “Okay, now get your rest, grandpa.”

“Worst,” he said at her—not to her—and closed the door.

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In an effort to start the summer strong, I’m doing Writer’s Digest’s 12-Day Plan. You can find my Day-1 post here.

(Confession: I’d written a whole post for this challenge, and then I scrapped it at the last minute because it felt like an invasion of the privacy of the person I stole personality traits from. But, I didn’t want to forfeit on my second day, so I got creative and decided to steal one personality trait each from multiple people in my life and blend them together into what I hope is a cohesive personality.)

((Also, I’m not sure exactly when this is set, as the CGI Dobby meme was popular over a year ago and Bridge of Clay won’t be released until October, but here we are. I don’t know. Just go with it, okay?))