Bane Academy: To Run From Fear

Chapter 4

Shae

I feel as if all the oxygen in my lungs has evaporated, including the air around me. I gasp for breath.
"Liam! Help me!" I scream, crawling over to him.
Every few seconds, the walls and ceiling suddenly lurch towards me, instead of gradually closing in. I'm in the cable room again and the floor around me is stained in red.
"Get off of him!" A voice from behind me yells.
I look up and see raging, narrow green eyes full of anger and distress. It looks like she's either been crying a lot or hasn't been sleeping in days.
I get up from the floor, with my knees shaking and see wide-eyed students behind Becca, surrounding me. I'm suddenly in a classroom, and it doesn't take me long to realise that it's a Mortal Instruments class; Battle Skills.
"What's wrong with you?!" Becca yells.
"I didn't-"
"Why weren't you helping him? What were you doing?!" She screams.
The other students are staring and mumbling to each other. Not even the teachers Jace nor Alec are doing anything, they're as shocked as I am.
Becca turns to the students. "She," Becca starts, pointing at me. "is the cause of my best friends death." She announces. "She took Liam away from me." She goes quiet, her voice cracks. "It's all your fault!"
"No!" I try to yell back, but my voice cracks. "I didn't do it!"
"Who are you really trying to convince?" Becca walks up to me, and puts her face close to mine. "Us? Or yourself?"

And the dream ends.
My body rushes forwards, forcing me to sit up. I slam my hands onto my chest, trying to help catch my breath, but this time there's oxygen in the air. Tan arms wrap around me.
"Shhh, it's okay." Alex says. "Everything's okay."
Alex says nothing, absolutely nothing while he strokes my head until I've calmed down. I turn around and face my body to his, rest my head on his chest and close my eyes tight to concentrate on my breathing. I'm so relieved he's here to comfort me, only him, my parents and Skia have the ability to calm me down. Alex and I finally start talking.
"Another night terror?" He asks.
"Yeah." I weakly reply.
I look out the window and see that it's dawn. Light snow is falling gently from the sky. I look around the room, and can only just see Nat sleeping in the dark room, her chest rises and falls with every breath she takes.
"Huh, that girl can literally sleep through anything." Alex says, knowing I was looking at her.
"Yeah," I weakly chuckle. "Well I'm going to get ready."
"But it's six thirty in the morning? Classes don't start until eight forty five."
I ignore him and drag myself out of bed and get ready for school as quickly as I can leave the dorm unheard so I can avoid Becca.

"Hey Alex." I greet him at recess and kiss him on the cheek.
Since the beginning of the term, Ive had to hang out with Alex behind the Wizardry block, since Becca resents me and the other students won't stop gawking at me.
"Hi." Alex says shyly, scratching the back of his neck. The brown dye from last term has already nearly left his hair, it's only at the tips now. His blue eyes are looking droopy and they have big, black bags resting underneath them.
"Thanks again for comforting me this morning." I say looking down, but I get no reply. "Everything okay?" I tilt my head at him.
"Yeah, everything's fine, why wouldn't everything be fine? Why are you asking?" He says quickly in one breath.
"Woah, I was just wondering." I laugh nervously.
"Hey, I forgot my shield at the Arena, I'll see you later?" He says slinging his bag over his shoulder. And before I could say bye, he was gone.

The rest of the day was a blur. After an entire day of people looking at me with either narrowed eyes or sad eyes, trying to stay awake throughout my classes and avoiding Becca, I just wanted to go back to my dorm and sleep. Unfortunately I couldn't. I had to go to the Divergent block in the Dauntless class to see Tobias Eaton.
While he sits me down in the ____ chair, hooks me up and gets the serum ready, he tried to make small talk with me, and knowing Tobias, it went very awkwardly.
"So how's school going?" He asks.
It's going horrible, thanks for asking.
"Okay." I reply.
"Cool." He says. "So I hear you're going out with Mr. O'Dair's son." He chuckles.
"Yeah." I say blushing. Dating isn't usually a subject you talk about with a teacher. "Probably not going to last much longer." I say guilt-fully.
I've thought about breaking up with Alex since Liam's death. Alex doesn't need to deal with my panic attacks in the middle of the night, he's losing sleep. And Alex can't hang out with his arena friends anymore because of me. I have no-one to sit with, so he sits with me. And most importantly, his brave, charming and fun personality has almost disappeared, because my mood has brought him down. Alex doesn't need to deal with this. I don't know how long this will last. If I need to break up with Alex for him to be getting sleep, being happy, social and everything else just like a normal person, I'll do it.
"Aw that's too bad." Tobias says as he sticks the last wire onto my temple. "So Mr. Green tells me that you have what I have." Tobias says laying on the chair next to me. "Fear of enclosed spaces." He says looking me right in the eye. "He also said that it's pretty severe."
No reply.
"Let's begin." He says. "We'll be going into your fear landscape. And remember, you're not in any real danger."
A few seconds later, the world around me disappears...