Ch. 33: Sophie's A Pain

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE:
I was trapped under glass and surrounded by freezing cold water. I tried to breathe and only water entered my lungs, my eyes bulging out in panic. It was dark with just a sliver of light and I was frantically moving my hands along the glass feeling for a way out. My lungs burned with the need to breathe and my throat was coated in salt. I couldn’t feel for a way out and started banging my fists on the glass. I banged over, and over, and over again with the same result, nothing. I felt myself getting both cold and warm all over, my joints going numb. My eyes closed. And I felt so sleepy. If I could only just rest for a moment. My eyes flickered and for an instant I thought I saw a gray wolf looking down at me, through the glass. I started to drift away as I heard the wolf howling, its nails digging away between us. And I had my last thought - that’s not glass, it’s ice.
I woke up drenched in sweat. The breeze coming in only chilled me further and I felt my body for signs of hypothermia for an instant, before realizing it had just been a dream. I felt another wave of air come in and I broke out into shivers, goosebumps covering my arms and legs. Air? I looked over to see that our bedroom window was open. Meg had fallen asleep before me and I hadn’t opened the window all night. Had she woken up at some point and opened it super wide without thinking? No wonder I was dreaming of freezing to death. I got up and quickly shut the window then sat back down on the bed. The sheets were cold and wet from my sweating and I climbed around the other side, squeezing in the very side of my bed around most of the cold spots. Ugh. It was going to be very hard to sleep tonight. I turned and saw a bird fly by the window. It reminded me of my nightmare a while back about being consumed by black birds. I shivered. The only sounds in the room were my sister’s light snoring and the ticking of the clock on the wall. I stared at the wall and tried to fall asleep. Every time I shut my eyes I was taken back to the panic I felt when I was drowning in my dream.
It had taken hours for me to fall asleep, and I only slept for about four hours total for the night. I felt awful. The alarm blaring at me and Meg’s nasty morning comments forced me up and out of bed. I managed to make my way to the bathroom, holding my hands out and using the walls to help keep me from falling over. My head pounded from lack of sleep. This was the second night in a row I had woken up from near-death nightmares and I was so da*n tired.. I turned the water on and the heat did help me wake up some, but I still had a sleep headache from trying to function on little sleep.
I made it to the bus at my usual time after popping some pain pill, and was already annoyed to see Sophie there. She was clearly waiting for me with her arms crossed. Her attitude lately has gotten so much worse. I don’t know what I did exactly to offend her. I knew she had a thing for Jake, but she knew about my long-standing crush years ago, and she hadn’t shown me this much attitude until lately. The worst was right after Jake, Nick, and Evan had abruptly left our group hang-out suddenly this past weekend.
“What do you want Soph?” I asked, over it already. My head throbbed.
“What exactly is going on with you and Jake?” She asked me with an attitude, “You already knew I was going to ask you. It’s the same fking question I asked you last time we were here.”
“Ugh, I don’t know what you want to hear, but I’ll tell you the same da*n thing I told you when you first asked me that - nothing. And again,” I stepped up into her personal area, very ticked off, “even if there was something going on, it wouldn’t be any of your business. Leave me alone.”
I stormed to the side, putting my earbuds in. She stood there fuming, and her friend Tiffany came to her side trying to console her. My lord. Peace.
I was listening to the lighted music I could find on my Spotify playlist when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“What has gotten into her lately?” Angela asked me, standing next to June. “You alright?”
I nodded. “No idea.”
They seemed content to just stand there, also listening to their own music, so I put my earbud back in as the bus pulled up. My eyes scanned the crowd and oddly enough I didn’t see Jake, Evan, Nick, Mitchell, or any of the guys. That was odd.
I followed the crowd and got on the bus, easily finding a seat to myself, but not before earning another death glare from Sophie who sat in the far back. They all really weren’t here. I shot a text off to Jake.**
<< To Jake from Rachel >>: Hey, are you guys all okay? The bus is about to leave and I don’t see you or the guys…
The bus took off and I put my phone away, closed my eyes and listened to music for some time.
I arrived at Pacific before I knew it. I think I must’ve hit some sort of sleep state on the bus from how tired I was. I glanced at my phone when we pulled up to the curb. Still no texts. Weird. Maybe they all got sick? I stood up and followed Angela, Melanie and June out.
As I stepped onto the curb, my ankle didn’t lock and I found my body still moving towards the ground. A searing pain zoomed up my leg and I cried out.
“Rachel!” June was closest to me and she immediately bent down to where I sat, splat, on the floor. “Are you okay? What happened?”
I shifted my leg out from under me and held it in between us. My ankle burned and I winced from the pain.
“Ah, I don’t know, my foot just, like, gave out!” I winced from trying to touch it with my hand.
The bus driver turned off the ignition and came down the steps.
“Oh my gosh! Can one of you girls run ahead to the office? We need to get her some help!” she ordered.
Angela took off running.
“And ask for a wheelchair!” she added to Angela’s running figure as she examined me further.
“Oh, hun. I’m so sorry. What a crappy way to start your school week,” she said with compassion. “Give me one second okay?”
She grabbed a red bag from by her seat and cracked a bag. “Here this will get cold, see if you can hold it next to your ankle. I’ll let you do it so you can control the pressure. Careful.”
I brought the bag close to my ankle, hand trembling a bit from the shock of falling. I knew that if I looked up I’d also see a bunch of people staring at me from the bus windows, maybe even recording my epic fail. I sucked in a breath as the ice pack made contact with my ankle.
Just then Angela came booking it back out. “They’re on their way, okay Rachel? Someone’s bringing you a wheelchair too.”
I saw two figures rushing toward us, one I recognized as the secretary, and the other was Ms. Arnhem the Vice Principal. They let the bus driver know she could go and I thanked her for her help. The bus started up and pulled away from the curb as they helped me into the wheelchair. Ms. Arnhem asked me some questions about whether I wanted to call an ambulance or my mother, and then a ton of follow up questions when I turned down the ambulance. Who could afford that? This was America, the land of expensive health care and several-thousand dollar ambulance rides. If I wasn’t dying there was no reason to get that extreme. I answered her questions as they wheeled me back to the office to call my mom. I felt guilty for pulling her out of her work day, but I really didn’t have a choice. They weren’t going to just let me hang out all day in the office in this chair.
We entered the office and I looked at my phone again, still no texts. I decided I should send one to Ally though, letting her know what happened. I then stared at my phone for a while, willing a text from Jake into existence. But nothing came. After a few minutes I got a text back from Ally, she was coming to the office to wait with me. Another minute. Still no Jake. Logically, I knew it was weird to wait like this. Plenty of people text back hours later. Plenty of people get sick, sleep in through the morning, and don’t look at their phone for a while. Plenty of people do things like that. But something just didn’t sit right with me about this.