21: Dread That Settled In My Stomach

"I'm home." I halfheartedly called into the house as I closed the door behind me. It was yet again Tuesday, meaning that I not only didn't get to hang out with Sam, but I also had to deal with both of my parents. I walked into the living room, where my dad was silently reading through the newspaper. Sometimes I was certain that he was just trying very hard to be the American stereotype of a father.

He sent a glance my way. "Hey."

"Hey." I awkwardly replied. Then I went straight for the kitchen, because I was far more inclined to talk to my mom. I didn't hate my dad or anything, but we were just always so far from understanding each other. It made every conversation feel like running a marathon just to try to cross the miles between us. Mom was in the middle of making what smelt like lasagna, which was more my kind of communication.

"How's your day been, Sawyer Jay?" She asked, adjusting her apron — because of course she was the type of mom to wear an apron — and turning to me with a smile.

"Same as always." I dryly answered, grabbing an apple out of the basket on the counter that she always made sure to keep filled with them.

"Put that back." She snapped, grabbing the apple from my hand and setting it back where I got it from. "Dinner will be done soon. So I take it your day was cruel, then?"

"That's usually my answer, yes." I said, staring longingly at the basket. My stomach growled, but I knew that she wasn't going to let me eat anything until dinner was ready. It was the same thing that happened every day, so I didn't really know why I still bothered trying to evade that cardinal rule.

She tucked some of her long hair behind her ear, leaning against the counter. The timer on the oven was slowly ticking down, and it seemed that she didn't have much to do while she waited. "Any advancements in the romance department?"

"Mom, please just drop it." I groaned, frowning at her as I wondered if I could sneak out of there and go to my room until dinner was ready.

"I'm only teasing." She tsked. "You take things too seriously."

The topic then shifted to her life at work. It carried on like that for a while, and I was just glad that she didn't seem to press any further for what was going on in my life. Especially not my love life, which was a topic I would gladly bury six feet under for the next half-century. The idea of coming out to her or my father made me a bit nauseous. Especially when I had no idea what to tell them.

Hey, Mom and Dad. This is my sort-of partner that I used to hate with all of my soul. Oh, yeah, he's also a boy. No, I'm not gay. Just extremely attracted to the golden retriever type.

Yeah, it was not going to be a fun time. Thankfully I didn't plan on telling them anything about it until I was certain that our relationship would even last. Hell, Sam had to at least ask me to be his official boyfriend first. Then maybe I would consider actually telling people in my life. But he also needed to sort out the whole issue with the druggies, because I didn't want the people I cared about to die just because of my affiliation with Sam.

Dinner was the same as always. It was mostly spent by my mom talking to my dad and occasionally asking for my opinion on whatever uninteresting topic they were fascinated by. He was going into detail about the youth football group that he coached, and that was officially the moment that I stopped paying attention altogether. Football was proven to be a bit of fun when I was actually at the games, but it was so boring when someone was just talking about it.

When dinner came to an end, I helped my mom clean the dishes before I went upstairs. I didn't do much from that point on, focusing mostly on scrolling through random posts on various social medias while Millie texted me about some guy her sister was currently seeing, asking if I agreed that he was kind of a douche. Judging by the information she relayed me, he was.

Eventually I grew bored with watching YouTube videos and it started to get late. So I hopped into the shower for a little while and then got ready for bed. I stopped only briefly to lock my bedroom door, still disturbed by that text I received weeks ago. The last thing I wanted was to make it easier on those creeps when they wanted to spy on me.

Crawling beneath my blankets, I lay comforted by their warmth. It took a bit of tossing and turning, but eventually my eyes fell shut and the darkness consumed me.

Groggily, my mind tore itself away.

I didn't know how long I was asleep, but it must have been at least a few hours. I wasn't much of a light sleeper, so the fact that I randomly woke up in the pitch-dark of my bedroom was peculiar. My eyelids pried reluctantly open, wondering if maybe I slept longer than I assumed and it was already time for school.

But there was no alarm clock to assure me that I was right. Just the eerie quiet and near-unending blackness of my bedroom. Somehow it was more unsettling than usual as I tried to piece together what brought me out of my unconscious state. I thought about sitting up and grabbing my phone, but something told me not to move. For a long while, I just laid there, suddenly pressed by a deep-seeded panic inside of my chest.

What was I so scared of? Did I just wake up from a nightmare or something? It seemed like the only plausible answer, so I tried to will my rapidly beating heart to just calm down. I closed my eyes, trying to force myself back to sleep. I was just tired and freaked out at the memory of that old text, that was all it was. My bedroom door was locked, there was nothing to be scared of. At that thought, I felt myself relax a bit.

Then there was a camera click followed by a brief flash.

I jumped upright in bed. My eyes instantly found the subtle part in my curtains. I felt like I was going to throw up from the horrifying dread that settled in my stomach as I realized what woke me. Not only was I being watched, but I was being photographed. I sat there for a moment, not sure what to do.

There was surely nothing that would happen to me if I closed those curtains. Who was watching me and how the fuck did they get onto the roof? They were on the other side of that glass, whoever they were. They couldn't harm me. Not really.

Another flash.

Fuck that, no one could pay me to go anywhere near that window. So I instead grabbed my phone and ran straight for the door. My hands fumbled with the lock, and I thought for sure that I was going to have a panic attack well before I could actually get myself as far from that room as possible. Because I really couldn't seem to breathe.

By the time I got the lock undone and flung myself into the bathroom, locking that door swiftly behind me, I was gasping for air. I couldn't tell if it was strictly induced by the sheer terror of the moment, or if it was an actual asthma attack. Whatever it was, I desperately threw open the medicine cabinet and knocked several things down in my pursuit of an inhaler. Things clattered noisily in the sink, and I could only hope that I wasn't going to accidentally wake my parents up in the process.

Finally, I found it and gladly welcomed the medicine into my lungs as I felt the pressure behind my eyes decrease. A long moment later and I was sitting on the bathroom floor, slowly bringing myself back to reality as I processed everything that just happened.

My skin broke out into goosebumps, and I brought my knees warily to my chest as I wrapped my arms comfortingly around them. I wasn't sure that I was ever going to be able to sleep in my bedroom again, because that flash of light and the camera sound left me shaking. They were messing with me, I knew that. But fuck, it worked. I was so perturbed and frustrated because they knew exactly how much their influence impacted their victims.

Maybe I wanted to cry, but my eyes remained dry as I leaned my head back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. There were no windows in the bathroom, and the door was firmly locked. But even then I couldn't seem to relax. I went to bed that night believing so certainly that everything was going to be just fine because of a mere lock on my door and my curtains that weren't quite fully shut.

It was hard to say how much time went by as I just sat there, trying to still my shaking hands and racing thoughts. I wasn't even tired anymore. There was no way I could have fallen back asleep even if I tried. But eventually I forced my arms to release my legs and I stood back up. My phone was still sitting on the counter from when I put it there during my search for my inhaler.

When the screen flashed to me, I saw that the time was four thirty-six in the morning. Just enough time to go mad from waiting for it to be time to get ready for school. I sighed, resuming my sitting position on the middle of the bathroom floor as I found Sam's contact.

My finger hovered over the call button for a long moment. I knew that it was completely fair of me to be scared out of my mind and want just a little bit of relief by talking to him. But I also worried that I was being a dick for calling him in the middle of the night. As I recalled that sound of the camera shutter, I swallowed. I didn't think I was ever going to be able to hear that sound again without that feeling of danger and panic pushing forward.

Finally, I pressed the button and waited with baited breath for there to be an answer. The ringback tone echoed quietly in the bathroom for a long while before it finally cut off with the sound of a sleepy voice.

"Sugar?" Sam mumbled into the phone, clearly half-asleep and confused.

I opened my mouth to answer him, but I wasn't even sure what to say. How did I explain to Sam what just happened without crying? Because I was so close to doing that, that I didn't trust myself to be able to speak without my voice instantly cracking.

"Sawyer?" That time he seemed to be more awake, and I could vividly imagine him sitting up in bed as he tried to figure out what was going on.

I did my best to sound fine, even though I most definitely wasn't. "Someone was in my window."

My voice didn't crack, but it didn't exactly sound normal. I sounded exhausted and sick of the stupid shit that was plaguing our lives. If our relationship was built on perfectly normal circumstances, I wouldn't have to call him in the dead of night because some fucking psycho was on my rooftop taking pictures of me sleeping.

"What?" Now he was wide-awake, his voice heavy and angry. "What the fuck did they do? Are you okay? Do you need me to come over?"

"They were taking pictures of me. I think they wanted to scare me, because they had the flash and sound on and everything." My eyes welled up with tears at how utterly helpless I sounded. What were we supposed to do? How was any of this going to go away? My hand shook as it gripped the phone, and I thought for sure that I was going to have another asthma attack. Or a panic attack. Whatever one it was, I wasn't sure.

"Are you okay?" He asked again, and judging by the rustling happening on his end, he was in the process of moving around.

"You don't have to come over, I'm alright." I told him firmly, pressing my palm to my eyes before tears could escape. "I just don't know what the fuck to do. What the fuck do we do, Sam?"

The rustling stopped, and I could imagine him sitting on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands. "I don't know." A pause followed. Then a quiet, "fuck."

"What?"

"They just..." he sucked in a long breath. "They sent me the pictures."

I could only imagine how horrified my expression was in the second picture. Or possibly the third, since they must have taken one before I ever woke up. My heart dropped as I realized that they could have taken infinitely many more on various nights. My hand found my chest, where I tightly balled up the front of my shirt in my shaking fist. The panic begged to return, but I forced myself to focus on the sound of Sam's breathing, tuning my own lungs to his.

"I'm so sorry, Sawyer." His words were heavy. As though he was fighting the urge to cry as well. "I'm so fucking sorry."

"Can you just stay on the call with me?" I asked, closing my eyes as I tried to think about nothing other than maintaining my breathing. "Just for a little while?"

"Of course. I'm not going anywhere. I promise."

The call didn't just last a little while. It carried on for hours, all the way until I heard my mom wake up and I knew that it was time to return to my dreaded bedroom. By that point Sam had drifted off to sleep, but I didn't hang up. Listening to his soft breaths on the other side of that phone call was like a lifeline that I couldn't bear to let go of. Just knowing that someone else was there was comforting.

The druggies let us have our fun for nearly two weeks.

They were done allowing us to feel safe.

•O•O•