Lie Until You Laugh

12- Nightmares

“HELP!”

I see Jo standing about twenty meters from me and he is there with his hand around her tiny neck.

“NENNA! HELP!”

I scream her name and then start to run towards her, but my head hits something hard and when I step back, I can see that there’s a glass wall between me and them. I start banging on the glass as hard as I can and I keep screaming for her. “Joey! Joey, I’m coming!” I tell her desperately. I kick the wall, I elbow it and I punch it but nothing works.

He lets go of her neck and she starts grasping for air but there are now bruises wrapped around her neck that are easy to see with her fair skin. “Why aren’t you helping me?” She cries, looking at me with a helpless look in her pale blue eyes.

My heart beats fast in my chest and I feel the need to vomit. “I’m trying,” I insist, continuing to smack the glass wall in every way that I possibly can but nothing is working.

He hits her and I scream her name. She cries and hits the floor. He hits her again and then again until her face is bloody. Her blonde hair is now clumped with the red liquid coming from her face. I close my eyes as I hear the impact of another hit and she’s still screaming.

“Be the bravest you can be,” I tell her, as if that will help anything.

“I’m not brave,” She cries. “I’m not.”

“You’re the bravest person I know,” I whisper, kicking the glass again. It only sends shocks through my ankle and up my shin, but the glass is still unaffected.

He continues to thrash at her and I can’t do anything to help her. I can’t save her or help her at all. I’m so incredibly useless. I want to help her. I want to be there for her, but I just can’t break the glass. My desperation starts to bubble over and I start to cry. I scream for Jo but he never stops. She screams for me but I still can’t get to her.

“Why won’t you help me?” She cries and I cry too.

“Sienna!” Somebody shakes my shoulder.

“Wha?” I wonder breathlessly, sitting up in my bunk so fast that my neck hurts.

“You okay?” Stella wonders, her head peeking over the edge of the bunk. Her hair is messed up like a bird’s nest on top of her head like she just woke up because she probably did, but her blue eyes are bright and frantic. “You’ve been screaming.”

“Oh,” I mumble, my face turning red out of the embarrassment of the situation. “Just a bad dream, I guess. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” She yawns. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I shake my head and scoot to the bottom of the bunk and jump down. “Thanks. I’m just going to go on a walk though, just to clear my mind.”

“Sure,” She nods, ducking under the bunk to lay on her bed to go back to sleep. She mumbles a ‘be careful’ just as she’s dozing back to sleep.

I check my phone to see if I have any missed calls from Jo, but there’s nothing. I consider calling her just to make sure that she’s okay, but I decide that I’m being ridiculous. It was just a bad dream. I take my phone and my ear buds before slipping on my old pair of gym shoes and leaving the room as silently as I can.

My phone tells me that it’s a little past two in the morning, and I know that there’s a curfew here at the school but I don’t think it’s too tightly enforced in the summer and I don’t think I’ll get in too much trouble if I just tell them what happened. I leave the dorm building and put one ear bud in my ear to listen to music from my phone that’s in my pajama shorts pocket.  I don’t know why pajamas need pockets, but these do and right now, they’re coming in handy.