Page 96 of Sweet Nightmare

I slip the cookie from her surprisingly tight grip and grab a blanket from the foot of my bed to cover her. Then I head into the bathroom for a shower so I can clean my newest wounds and try to get myself in some kind of state of mind to sleep.

But the second the hot water hits me, I start crying. It’s not completely unexpected—for as long as I can remember, the shower is the only place I let myself break down. The only place I let myself be vulnerable.

Still, tonight, I was kind of hoping for just a quick scrub and hair wash. I’m exhausted—physically and emotionally.

But that doesn’t seem to matter as everything that’s happened today wells up inside me.

It all hits me at once, and I don’t even try to stop the flood of tears that rolls out of me.

I cry for Serena, who died alone and probably terrified.

For Jude, who is more broken and tortured than even I knew.

For the flickers that seem hell-bent on torturing me—and for the little boy just looking for his father.

For the terror and the pain of being unmeshed…and the beauty of being held by Jude, even for a little while.

I cry for all of those reasons and for a bunch more I can’t even think about right now, like my broken relationship with my mom and how much I miss Carolina.

And when the tears run dry, I stand under the water until it runs cold and let it wash away the agony and the grief.

Only then do I turn the water off and focus on what I have to do to be ready for tomorrow.

I put my hair up in a towel and dry off before slipping into my favorite pair of rainbow polka-dot pajamas. Then I head into the kitchen and make myself a cup of my favorite barley tea. Jude’s always loved the stuff, and he got me hooked on it when we were ten or eleven.

I’ve been drinking it ever since—partly because I like the taste and partly because, in some small way, it makes me feel close to him…though I would have died before admitting that before today.

I spend the next few minutes drinking tea, packing my backpack for the evacuation, texting Luis, who is having trouble sleeping, and studiously avoiding thinking any more about the shit that happened today. Once I have my uniform, a few outfits, and my toiletries packed, I dry my hair, set my alarm, and then—finally—turn out the lights and crawl into bed.

Surprisingly, or maybe not after the day I’ve had, sleep claims me easily.

But sometime in the middle of the night, I wake up with my heart beating fast and a scream trapped in my dry throat. Mouth open, eyes wide, I scream and scream and scream, but nothing comes out.

Snakes.

So many snakes.

So many, many snakes.

Slithering all over me.

In my bed. In my hair. In my mouth.

I can feel one wrapped around my neck, and I reach up to claw it off, another scream rattling in my throat.

But there’s nothing there, just the collar of my pajamas and my own sleep-warm skin.

This time, I swallow back the scream and take a deep breath as I reach for the reading light next to my bed.

It was just a nightmare, I tell myself. Just a bad dream. They’re just figments of your imagination. They can’t actually hurt you.

I switch on the light so I can prove to myself that everything’s okay. Then I freak out because sitting in the middle of my bright-orange bedspread is a large, coiled, black snake. And it’s staring straight at me.

For a second, I just blink at it, convinced that I’m still trapped in the nightmare. But then it moves, its head swaying back and forth as its forked, black tongue darts out to smell the air. To smell me.

I leap out of bed and across the room so fast that my feet barely have the chance to touch the floor.

What do I do, what do I do, what do I do?

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