When I pulled into the driveway, Mom was already home. A little surprising since it wasn't even dark yet. She'd been working late a lot the past week or two, ever since our argument. Work and school made avoiding each other simple. We'd never talked about the fight again. We were both too busy pretending it never happened. But it's hard to stay angry with her when I'm afraid to lose her and I know how easy it was for Dad to walk away.
He didn't even need a reason, and God knows I'd already given Mom too many.
I grabbed my sunglasses off the visor, pushed them up on my nose, and got out of the car. Retrieving my backpack from the passenger seat, I slung it over my shoulder and walked inside.
Mom stood in the kitchen slicing up carrots. Even when she was cooking, she still had on her business suit. Her jacket hung over the back of a chair at the table and her sleeves were rolled up above her elbows. Her short brown hair was pulled up in a clip and her reading glasses were pushed back on her head. Typical Mom.
The smell of her homemade chicken noodle soup filled every space in the house and made my stomach growl. It was my absolute favorite.
"Hey, Mom. That smells awesome." I grabbed a carrot and popped it in my mouth.
"Hi, bud. How was practice?" she asked without looking up.
"Fine," I lied and turned toward my room. Jeff never held practice on Tuesdays, and I didn't even have my gym bag with me. Of course, I'd missed most of the practices. When I'd stopped by Coach Mahoney's office as promised, I'd told him that I was taking a private soccer clinic at the college; he said that as long as I came to every practice once the season started, he didn't care. But I knew that soccer was just one more problem that would eventually come back up. It felt like everything I did lately was just putting off dealing with the inevitable. Mom, Coach, death . . . it would all catch up to me at some point.
A chill slid down my spine and I shrugged it off. As long as work kept Mom busy enough to keep her off my back, it was okay. I cracked my neck to ease some of the tension that built up there with every new lie I told.
"Where are you going?" Mom called down the hallway after me. "Dinner is almost ready."
"Yeah, I have a killer headache. I'm going to rest my eyes for a minute." I shut my door behind me before she had a chance to respond.
I hadn't lied this time. My headache was becoming somewhat epic. But mostly I didn't feel like having the same old argument about wearing my sunglasses at the dinner table. I knew she considered it disrespectful, and having to come up with new excuses all the time made me tired. And tonight I really couldn't afford to make eye contact with anyone else. I needed to figure out what was up with Dr. Freeburg. If he wasn't the stalker, then I'd track down that Blind Skull guy and see what his dreams were made of. Not that I'd had much luck finding him so far.
I slipped off my shoes and leaned back on my pillow. Freeburg probably wasn't asleep yet, although I made him for one of those early-to-bed/early-to-rise types. Maybe I could relax in the void for a bit before I got sucked into his dream.
A light tapping on the door woke me up. I squinted at the clock; it had been about forty-five minutes.
"Parker?" Mom's voice whispered through the door. "Are you asleep?"
"Not anymore."
She opened the door a crack and I didn't have to fake my flinching reaction to justify hiding my eyes. A million light bulbs burst inside my brain at once and I threw my arm over my face.
YOU ARE READING
Insomnia
Mystery / Thriller"It's been four years since I slept, and I suspect it is killing me." Instead of sleeping, Parker Chipp spends each night trapped in the dream of the last person he's made eye contact with. Every night he is crushed by other people's fear and pain...
