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I fall asleep thinking about the boy and his dark shadowy face and Mr. Elliott.
I dream about Mr. Elliott, and how he was simply dead and it was so startling.
The surprise of it was the worst part, the shock when I saw him broken on the rocks. But even more surprising is how in my dream, he drags himself off of the rocks, and his legs is crumpled, but he still pulls himself on his elbows, and then he blows his whistle and shouts for everyone to line up on the basketball court.
I’m frozen, because he was dead and then he wasn’t.
I’m unsettled enough to not go back to sleep for the rest of the night.
I’m still unsettled by it when I get ready for school in the morning, and I’m expecting the school to still be somber, to be in mourning, but they’re not.
That annoys me. It’s like the world should acknowledge that someone important died, but it doesn’t. It just keeps chugging on like normal.
I dread going to gym class because…just because. It will be weird, it will be creepy, it will unsettle me.
But I never guess how much.
Because when I dress out and line up on the base-line with everyone else, Mr. Elliott limps from his office on crutches to stand in front of us, his whistle around his neck and his blue-striped socks pulled to his knees.
Then behind him, the hooded boy is in the corner, and he whispers, and I hear his whisper as clearly as if he’s right in my ear, even though he’s across the room.
“I told you.”
That’s when I break down.
I can’t help it. I hyperventilate, and then I fall onto my hands and knees, and I can’t breathe, and they have to call the nurse.
The other girls snicker and laugh and stare at me, and it doesn’t matter because I have bigger problems than them.
I’m insane, and getting crazier by the day.
My mom picks me up, and I try to tell her that I’d had a dream that Mr. Elliott was dead, but she doesn’t believe me. She makes a call, and my medicine is changed, and the pills taste worse than before.
Finn holds my hand because he’ll never leave me, and I know that, and I’m grateful. I’m also grateful that I’m the one afflicted with whatever this is.
My brother is too kind, too good, too sweet.
I’m the one who deserves it.
I kill gym teachers in my mind.
I’m clearly a monster.
Then I dream them back to life, so I’m clearly crazy.
Chapter Nine
I drink the tea.
I have to. My mother makes me, because I’m so upset. Every day I grow more upset, because every day, I feel more unstable.
One night, my parents are on the lawn beneath my window, long after they think I fell asleep and I peer at them through my open window. My mom tells dad that we’re going to Whitley. I want to run down and argue, because I want to stay here, but at the same time, Dare is at Whitley. I’m not disappointed when my father finally caves in.
“Fine. But use care, Laura. You know I can’t come with you. Not yet.”
“I will,” my mom says tiredly. “Richard won’t touch me again. Not anymore. They got what they wanted.”
“You know it was necessary,” my father says, and he sounds just as tired.
