Every sleepover ends with someone whispering “you awake?” Be the friend who answers.

Late at night, after the lights are off and the joking has run out, people say the true thing. There is something about the dark and the lack of eye contact that makes the real question possible, and it comes in the form of a test: a small whisper to see whether anybody is still awake. Whoever answers gets the conversation that mattered. Whoever pretends to be asleep misses it, and that was a choice too.

Answer. It costs you twenty minutes of sleep and it is often where a friendship gets made. And if you are the one with something to say, be the voice that risks asking.