Barbed Boys

Chapter 6

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When the clock struck 6 am on Wednesday morning I was relieved. I'd spent the last two hours laying in bed, waiting for a respectable time to get up without making my parents curious. Never had I ever been a morning person. I'd always been a night owl who had to be dragged out of bed in order to make it to my 9:30 classes on time.

Even at BU all my friends knew I'd be in the library till 2 am the night before a test. If you ever wondered, I was the reason college libraries are open 24 hours during finals week.

But last night,  I couldn't wait for it to be daylight again. I'd never craved that first peak of sunlight before so earnestly.

This was, of course, because my sleep had unsurprisingly been plagued by nightmares.

Some were memories of that night simply being replayed over and over till I woke up in a cold sweat, gasping for breath. Others were simply me running through a dark void and I didn't know what it was I was running from but the terror I felt was so real I only woke when I tripped over something in shadows my legs disappeared into with each step.

Once I was awake I knew what I had been running from. And they weren't just part of a nightmare. They were real, I couldn't escape them by waking up and the sun wouldn't chase them away.

Lethal and Bomber were real and the relief I felt after awaking from my dreams was very short lived as I realized my life was actually in danger. Here, in reality. In the present my life was on a tightrope. One wrong step and I'd be on a one way trip to... well, I didn't want to think about it.

By the time I woke for the third time at 4 am I couldn't fall asleep again so instead I sat in the dark jumping at every creak of the house and scratch of a tree branch against my window.

When I got downstairs my mom was setting up the coffee machine. She was the morning person in the house. Though I guess she had to be seeing as she worked at the hospital. If she worked a night shift she had to be a night person, so she flip flopped When she had to.

"Morning, sweetie. You're up early. Did you sleep alright? How's your headache?"

I gave her a smile and pecked her on the cheek as I passed by to get to the fridge, "Yeah, and it's was fine. I just figured I'd go on a run or something."

Shit. Now I had to go on a run. Great.

"A run?" My mom's voice sounded surprised as she echoed me.

Don't worry mom, I'm as surprised as you. I hated running. I used to be on the track team in high school and I hated it. I'd been average at it, and only did it because I was uncoordinated athletic wise. There was a lot of pressure at my school to be on a sports team. If you weren't that was fine too, but you were socially excluded from a lot of things. So I joined track.

"Yeah a run. I thought it'd help clear my thoughts."

"Have you put any more thought into med school?" She emphasized the word 'thought' and raised an eyebrow.

No. It'd slipped my mind recently, but for good reason.

Instead I replied, "You know I have."

I grabbed my favorite mug and filled it up at the coffee machine. My mom slip the sugar bowl my way. I hated the taste of coffee so I loaded it with three spoons of the brown crystals and a big dollop of the creamer I'd gotten from the fridge. I'd need a coffee to get through the day on so little sleep.

"You should get on top of that. You're gonna be a junior this year, Ainsley."

The familiar ball of anxiety, that formed every time medical school was mentioned, welled up inside my chest. It's not that I didn't want it. I'd wanted to be a doctor ever since my mom got me my plastic stethoscope at 4 years old. It's just. It's just now it was actually happening. Or at least it would be. Soon. Growing up scared the crap out of me a little bit.