College Fund

//Who Do You Think She Is, Dora?//

"She should be waking up soon. Until she does, you are welcome to wait in the sitting room just down the hall."

"Thanks, but we'll stay with her until she wakes up."

"Alright."

My head was pounding, but I was still able to pick out the voices all around me. I slowly blinked open my eyes, the bright lights causing the pounding in my head to increase.

"Cass?" Bria's face came into view above my head.

My heart leapt at the sight of her familiar face. Finally, something I could remember! "Bri? What am I doing here? What happened?"

A girl with long, wavy brown hair and big brown eyes approached my bed. Sage.

Just the sight of Sage sent all the memories back. Driving to the library, the truck at the intersection, blacking out...

"Oh my god!" I sat up quickly. "What happened? Did I get us into a crash? Sage, are you okay?"

"Woah, slow down," Bria ordered, carefully helping me to lie back down. "The doctors said you need rest."

"Well I'm not going to rest until you tell me what happened!"

Sage sighed. "We pulled up to an intersection on our way to the library, and you just flipped out. I was calling your name over and over again, but you wouldn't reply, and you wouldn't step on the gas, even when the light turned green. Then suddenly you just started screaming and screaming-" She paused to take a shaky breath. "And then you just blacked out. So I called 911."

"I didn't hit any other cars?"

"No." She shook her head. "You stayed stopped the whole time."

I held my head in my hands. "I can't believe that happened. I'm so sorry, Sage, for putting you through that."

"Don't apologize," she insisted.

Bria cleared her throat. "The doctors think that you... might have possibly... maybe... had a minor panic attack."

"And by minor, she means major," Sage chimed in.

My eyes widened. "A panic attack? But-but... why? How?" I thought back to my feelings in the car, which wasn't an easy thing for me to do. My mind seemed like it wanted to put up a mental block against reliving those moments. All I could remember was fear.

Bria grabbed my hand. "Don't worry, Cass. You're alright, Sage is safe, no one was hurt. We can move on and pretend it never happened. We still have so many things to see in France! We have to go to the Eiffel Tower, obviously, and there's this really cool butterfly conservatory that I thought-"

"And the best part is, we can schedule it all around your appointments with your psychologist!" Sage interrupted. Bria glared at her. I froze.

"I'm sorry, my what?"

A psychologist? As in, a shrink? As in, those people you go to talk about your feelings when people thought you were going insane?

Bria sighed. "Yeah, well... I wasn't exactly planning on telling you this right now..." She paused to glare at Sage, who shrugged indifferently. "But, yes, the doctors think you need to talk with someone so that something like this doesn't happen again. Chin up, buttercup, it doesn't matter! Nothing can hold us back!"

I ignored Bria's attempts to cheer me up. I was the type of person who liked to keep my feelings to myself, not pour them all out to some random stranger who continually asked 'and how does that make you feel?'

It wasn't fair, and I knew that, but I found myself blaming everyone. If only Margaux and Bria hadn't gone to the stupid library and been so mysterious. If only Margaux's mom had made us take the bus. If only Sage had driven the car instead of me.