Cry Until You Bleed

35- Stars

Saturday, the day after I talked to Niles in the courtyard, is rough for me. I woke up at around five in the morning, screaming from a nightmare about that night and I couldn’t find it in myself to go back to bed so I stayed up for a few hours in my room, just lying in bed like a lumpy potato, much like I did the last time that I had a brutal nightmare. That’s how I had spent the whole day, just holed up in my room with nurses checking on me sometimes as those memories played over and over in my head. It was mind-numbingly terrible, the whole day was, and I’d had my fair share of panic attacks in just one day.

I’m pretty sure that it was because of remembering the whole story and putting it out there verbally for another human to hear. I cried a lot on Friday but the real pain came on Saturday and I was convinced that Dr. Lombardi’s idea was a bust. It didn’t help me at all, I felt worse than I had in a long time.

However, when I woke up on Sunday, I felt a lot better than I had originally expected that I‘d feel. I didn’t have another nightmare, but I do have a headache so I when I go down for lunch (I stay in bed through breakfast), I ask one of the nurse’s for some Aspirin and, after checking with Dr. Lombardi, they allow it so I take some Aspirin before joining Mia and Desiree for lunch.

“We missed you yesterday,” Mia tells me. “Are you feeling any better?”

“Much better, yeah, thanks,” I sigh. “Just another bad day but I’m fine now.”

“Good,” She smiles. “Because we have a big day today.”

“We do?”

She nods but before she can answer me, Desiree is answering instead, “We’re finishing our sign today,” She reminds me excitedly.

“Oh, right,” I remember that today is Sunday, which means we have that party committee thing and if everything goes as planned, we’ll be finished with our Hollywood sign painting today. “Yeah, today is pretty big.”

“See, I don’t see why you were so afraid of Quinn,” Desiree says, turning her attention to Mia as we’re eating our lunch. “She’s actually really nice and you were definitely overreacting when I joined the party committee.”

“Well, yeah, she’s nice now and all is fun and games but just you wait until October,” Mia warns us both. “Once we start getting closer to the dance, she’ll start going insane.”

“How long has she been here anyway?” I ask Mia.

She just shrugs. “She was here before I got here in January.”

“Well, she’s nice and you’re just silly,” Desiree tells her with a small laugh. “I like her.”

“Yeah, she’s an awesome person but you’ll see what I mean soon enough, you just wait,” She warns us again but we both just laugh at her even though she just might be right. I did get a glimpse of the insane part of Quinn during the Fourth of July though so I’m not too sure how that’s going to go but I’m not going to stress about it now.

When lunch is over, it’s time to head over to the meeting room so we do that and get there just in time for the beginning of the party committee. I go get the large piece of paper that we’ve created the painting on while Mia and Katie go get the paint from the cabinet and Desiree goes to talk to Quinn to update her on our progress so that she can give us something else to do after we finish the sign today.

“Okay, so all we really need to do is touch up the posts on the letters and add the glitter to the sky and we should be done, right?” Mia wonders with raised eyebrows as Katie munches on an apple that she’d stolen from the cafeteria (well, it was given to her but we’re not technically allowed to take food out of the cafeteria unless it’s a special occasion) and nods in agreement.