Page 143 of Dear Rockstar (Dear Rockstar 1)

I just nodded. I couldn’t move the blankets to show her the wound, but I’d had a six inch splintered piece of wood buried in my side. He’d driven it into me, using his fist as a hammer, like a railroad spike.

“Oh Sara. Oh my God. Are you okay? Is she okay?” It was Matt.

“She’s gonna be just fine now, aren’t you, sweetheart?” John, patting my hand again.

I nodded. “Water?”

Someone put the straw to my lips and I sucked gratefully, even if it was painful.

“Listen, I’ll bring your homework from the academy,” Aimee said from the other side of me. She sniffed, like she’d been crying. “We’re not messing up again this year. We’re both going to graduate, you got it?”

I gave her a thumbs up, trying to smile.

“You just get better, okay?” Matt again. Jeez, it sounded like he was crying too. “Too many people spending time in this damned hospital lately.”

“Tired,” I said. The pain was getting better, the morphine the nurse had put into my I.V. line a few minutes ago finally beginning to work.

“Go to sleep, sweetheart.” I felt John’s lips brush the top of my head.

I tried to give him another thumbs up but I was gone again before I could even lift my hand.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I woke up screaming and Dale was there, wrapping his arms around me in the suffocating darkness and whispering in my ear. The words didn’t matter, it was his voice, soft and soothing, the feel of his hand on my forehead, stroking my hair.

“Is she okay?” John, stumbling sleepily down the hall, peeking into Dale’s room.

“Fine, Dad, just another bad dream,” he murmured, kissing my cheek, still bruised as a Canadian sunrise, fading to yellow, orange and the lightest of blues.

“G’nite, John,” I called as he closed the door.

“Goodnight, hon. Sweet dreams.”

As long as Dale had his arms around me, as long as he was touching me, I could sleep peacefully, but the moment he was gone, my body slipped into a panic.

“Will you sing to me?” I whispered, pulling his arm around me. “Sing me to sleep.”

Dale did, singing a song he wrote for me, the words meaning even more now that he’d broken down the door and come to my rescue like a knight in shining armor, and I closed my eyes, no longer afraid of the darkness or my dreams. He always made me feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

“There’s nothin’ more that I can do

There’s nothin’ more that I can say

With your wall of thorns you have barred my way

But I will always come for you

My task is set before me, girl

My mission clear and true

There’ll be black knights and dragons, girl

But I will always come for you…”

I floated in his arms, trying not to think about anything but the man who loved me. Usually it worked, and his voice would lull me back to sleep in his strong embrace, but sometimes I couldn’t turn off my mind and the wheel would turn and turn. I would replay it all in my head and then the tape would continue into every possible future, splitting this way and that, spliced again and again.

John and Dale and Aimee and even the prosecutor, who I’d met with twice, reassured me my stepfather wouldn’t ever have the opportunity to hurt me again. I gave them my Dear Rockstar journals, all of them detailed accounts of what had happened since I was fourteen years old, enough evidence, the prosecutor seemed to think, to put my stepfather away at least for life. New Jersey had the death penalty, and with attempted murder on the list of crimes he was being charged with, it was possible they would sentence him to death.

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