Page 42 of Catching My Dreams

She briefly wondered if someone could die of fear and, if so, how she was still breathing. Maybe one night, her heart would beat so fast that it stopped altogether. Maybe then Brett would finally let her have some peace. The thought shouldn’t have been appealing. But it was.

Ella turned on all the lights as she made her way to the kitchen, but they didn’t cast away all of the shadows. Each dark corner of the house could have been hiding a man. Each piece of furniture provided a hiding space. The curtains were the perfect cover for someone who might reach out and grab her as she walked past.

Her fear certainly felt lethal by the time she’d gotten back to her room with a broom and dustpan clutched in her hands. She hadn’t turned off any lights on her way back up, but Ella couldn’t find it in herself to care.

Maybe she would start going to bed in a house that was lit up. Maybe that would finally banish her nightmares. Ella doubted it, but it couldn’t hurt.

There was no room left in her mind for anger, and the absence of it made the evidence of her outburst all the more shameful. She shouldn’t have let her mom get to her like that. She should have been better than this. Stronger than this. And when she crawled back into her bed in the closet with burning and stiff neck muscles, Ella hated herself even more for throwing a tantrum.

She woke up twice more that night. Not from nightmares, but because of the growing pain in her neck, and when the sound of Archie whining and scratching at the door woke her in the morning, she found she couldn’t lift her head at all.

Panic was quick to hit Ella, and when her second attempt to lift her head from the pillow failed to result in anything but pain in her neck, she had a vision of herself never being able to get up and slowly starving to death in that tiny closet. Even with both of her hands supporting her head, her third attempt had her eyes stinging and a cry of pain and frustration escaping her lips.

Archie let out another whine and resumed his scratching. His not-so-subtle hint that he needed to go outside and do his business was usually a better wake-up call than the alarm Ella set on her phone, but that morning, she would have preferred the alarm. Her cell phone could be ignored. Archie could not.

“Shit,” Ella gritted out.

She rolled onto her left side, turning her head and body at the same time. She slowly and painfully pushed herself up, the muscles in her neck screaming in agony as she did so. Once she was sitting, she tried to turn her head to the right, but she couldn’t move it more than an inch before it became impossible.

Her vision became blurry as tears gathered in her eyes. She had dealt with the pain in her jaw, neck, and shoulders for years, but this was unbearable.

She could turn her head more easily to the left, but even that was almost too painful to do, and her movement was restricted to half of what it usually was. She wouldn’t be able to cheer like this. She wouldn’t be able to drive. Hell, she could barely even get out of bed.

She didn’t think painkillers were going to cut it this time.

“Just a second, Archie,” she said when he made his needs known again.

Standing up wasn’t nearly as difficult as sitting up, but every movement felt like agony. Ella took her phone with her, and she opened up her banking app as she laboriously made her way down the stairs and opened the door to the yard for the increasingly impatient Yorkie.

Feeling ridiculous as she moved with her head facing straight forward, she walked to the living room and lowered herself onto the couch, probably looking more like her frail grandmother than a nineteen-year-old college student.

Her dad had left ten dollars in her account. It wasn’t enough for an Uber to campus, and it would most certainly not cover a massage or physio appointment.

Ella was screwed, and she knew what needed to be done. It would feel like pulling teeth or stabbing herself in the eye, but she had little choice.

So, Ella called her mother.

It went straight to voicemail.

So, Ella called her father.

It went straight to voicemail.

They were probably on a plane. Unreachable. Unconcerned. Completely uninterested in the daughter they’d cut off.

So, Ella shed herself of what little remained of her dignity and pride and called the person she’d promised herself never to bother again.

“Hey, Ella,” Asher answered after only two rings. “What’s up?” He sounded surprised that she’d called, and she didn’t blame him. She hadn’t been reaching out to him much since everything had gone pear-shaped.

“Hey,” she replied, her chipper tone masking the emotional and physical pain she was battling. “I was just wondering if you’re still at home. If you are, maybe you could pick me up, and we can grab a coffee on campus?”

“That sounds great,” he began, and some of the tension in Ella’s shoulders eased. “But I’m already at Georgetown. Riley and I are meeting up before class.”

Ella’s eyes closed, her hope crashing to the carpet beneath her feet. “Oh, cool. Right.”

“Maybe we can meet up after class?” Asher suggested.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to today.” She might not even make it to her Shakespeare quiz at this rate. “Rain check?”

---