Chapter 17: The Bet *Revelation

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Chapter 15 *Revelation*

~ Sophia

Blank white walls are staring at me wherever I look.

Where am I?

Stupid question! Of course I am in the most dreading place I can imagine.

Why am I here?

Is there someone I know who’s –

No. I can’t even finish that line of thought.

I’m like a protagonist in a story, trying to find the end of the maze, desperately searching for the finish line.

Wherever hallways and floors I go, it still is the same. The blank white paint is closing in on me, making it hard to breathe. I run frantically, searching for someone to help me.

In the corner of my eye, I see a door on my right. The first one I’ve seen so far. I make my way towards it quietly and slowly. I don’t know why I’m afraid someone will see me when in the first place, I wanted to see a human being. My heart is pounding so hard in my chest, maybe from nervousness than in fear of what I’m going to see.

When I’m about to twist the doorknob, a loud scream makes me startle. Everything becomes blurry all of a sudden. All around me, it’s fading. I am fading.

Opening my eyes, a sigh of relief escapes from my mouth when I realize it was just a dream. Blinking my eyes, I focus on my breathing to return to normal.

I’ve never been so glad to be in this room. But wait! A loud scream woke me up and I’m sure it was not part of the dream.

Light footsteps are coming from the hallway. If I’m not wrong, the scream came from the room across from mine.

Draky.

I sit upright which makes me dizzy. I wait for a few seconds before I stand up because my vision is quite blurry. I don’t know why I’m suddenly nervous. Perhaps because I’m afraid something happened to Draky. At that thought, I get up from the bed and walk out of my room, not bothering to glance at a mirror.

Whispers can be heard inside Draky’s room. I’m about to knock when I hear my name comes out from Andre’s mouth. I know it’s rude to eavesdrop but I want to know why are they talking about me, or rather, why did Andre say my name.

Swallowing the lump in my throat and calming the bubbles that are rising in my stomach because of the excitement, I move closer to the door to hear them clearly. It feels like a dé jà vu when I overhear my pa–

“What happened?” Andre asks, interrupting my thoughts.

“I had a dream,” Draky whispers, “A nightmare.” I notice that his voice is a little shaky.

Maybe it was the reason why he screamed. A smirk makes its way onto my face. I thought guys screaming because of a nightmare only happen in movies. I know I shouldn’t make fun of him, but Draky screaming because of a nightmare is close to impossible.

Draky asks Andre a question I didn’t hear. Okay, it’s time to shut up my babbling mind.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Andre says, “so I walk around the house, waiting for the drowsiness to take me.”

Perhaps Draky asked him how he heard him. I wonder why Aunt V isn’t here. Maybe she’s dreaming peacefully. What time is it anyway? A few hours after midnight?

“That’s when I heard you,” Andre continues, “I thought there were aliens abducting you.”

I hear shuffling inside and a groan from someone.

“Ouch!” Andre grunts.

I wonder what Draky did to him. After an awkward silence (in my part), they start talking again.

“You told me it was about Sophia,” Andre says.

“Yes,” replies Draky.

“What was it?”

Does that mean that Draky dreamed of me? And it was a nightmare? Talk about embarrassing! And to top it all, Andre wants to know about it. What did I do to him in his dream that made him scream? Hah. Why do I even think I have a major role in his dream? I bet I was just a background in it.

A clearing of the throat makes me yelp in surprise. I look around me wildly, afraid that they catch me eavesdropping on them. I exhale a sigh of relief when I realize that the sound came inside Draky’s room.

“It was raining, and I was here inside this room,” Draky begins in a quiet voice.

I wonder if he’ll tell this dream if he knows I am listening.

“Suddenly,” he continues, “Pie, no I mean, Sophia, just appeared out of nowhere. I was shocked to see her inside my room, you know. I thought you were both playing a prank on me.”

I really want to see Draky’s expression while he’s talking.

“She was not the Sophia I know. She looked like an avenging angel advancing towards me.”

Me, an avenging angel? It’s kind of amusing when people tell their friends about their dream. But why did he say earlier that it was a nightmare?

“And then she started talking about the bet,” Draky says in an urgent tone.

“How did she know?” Andre whispers.

The bet? What are they talking about?

“I don’t know! Thank goodness it was just a dream! But I was so shocked with her outbursts I just stared at her like she was a bizarre creature.”

“It’s impossible,” Andre says slowly. “She’ll never know. We’re the only one who knows about it.”

“I know,” Draky agrees. “But this surprised me even more. She said that she even liked me. Like, she had a crush on me.”

“Yeah,” Andre says in a dry tone. “It was just a dream; don’t put it in your head.”

“Shut up,” Draky mutters. “I’m not even done.”

“Continue it then. I want to know the ending of your dream.”

I can’t even think straight while they’re talking because part of me is focused on what they are saying.

“When I called her Pie,” Draky says slowly, “She lunged at me and stroked the knife in my chest.”

“Whoa! Where did the knife came from?” Andre asks, his voice full of excitement.

“I don’t know. Maybe she was holding it the whole time she was there.”

They don’t speak after that. My mind is whirling with a lot of thoughts. Why would I kill Draky in his dream? What’s the bet they’re talking about? How –

“That’s when I heard you scream,” Andre repeats, “When you thought you were going to die.”

“It was such a creepy nightmare,” Draky says quietly.

“But why would you dream of that?”

“Perhaps it was because of my subconscious mind, or it can be the guilt consuming me because I am playing with her.”

“Do you want to cancel the bet?” Andre asks in a concern tone.

“No,” Draky says firmly. He pauses and says, “It’s the sixth day already. I can’t back out now.”

“Don’t worry Swift, we just have to be careful.”

“Do you think she knows what we’re up to?”

“I doubt it. As you said, today is the sixth day and nothing weird happened since the first day.”

“I just have to make her fall in love with me.”

“Maybe you are falling in love with her,” Andre says matter-of-factly.

“Are you crazy?!” Draky snaps. “You just can’t fall in love with someone within just a few days of hanging out with her. And just because I will make her fall in love with me doesn’t mean I’ll do the same.”

“I was just kidding,” Andre says in a soft voice.

“She’s not even my type,” Draky says furiously.

“Remember,” Andre reminds him, “You have to ask her to be your girl friend. She should say yes on the thirty-first.”

“I know,” Draky whispers. “And then I’ll tell her it was all a bet.”

A bet, a bet, a bet. It was all a bet.

My mind is spinning wildly, I feel dizzy again. Is this a nightmare? I pinch my cheek to wake up but I’m still here, my face a few inches from the door.

I can’t form a coherent thought. I don’t know why my heart wants to rip its way out of my chest.

Time suddenly stops ticking. My messed up mind tries to fit the puzzle perfectly.

The nightmare. The killing. The guilt. The bet.

Of course, before that, the tutoring lesson, him staying at this house while I’m here, listening to me, hanging out with me, pretending he’s concern with my situation.

Oh God. It’s so obvious. I was just blind. I should have known!

He did not talk to me before, and then like a magic puff, he wants to get close to me, like he’s suddenly interested in me.

I feel so brainless! What’s the point of being intelligent when I don’t even know someone is playing with me?

Closing my eyes, I try to block the images burning in my mind when I was with Draky. To my horror, I hear feet shuffling inside the room. Someone wants to get out.

I am frozen in place, like the time when I overheard my parents talking about me. My feet are numb; they are firmly planted on the ground. But I can’t let them see me. Using all the energy left in my body, I crawl inside my room painfully. It’s hard, when my own body doesn’t want to cooperate. I don’t want to fail so I continue, ignoring the protest of my limbs and muscles until I enter my room. How I lock the door behind me with shaking and uncontrollable fingers is beyond me.

There’s an arrow with a fire that pierces right through my chest, striking it so hard I stumble on the floor.

She’s not even my type. Make her fall in love with me. Tell her all about the bet.

My mind haunts me with those words again and again.

An eerie kind of sound is inside my room. My eyes are close so I can’t see where it’s coming from. My stomach is clenching in pain, it’s tightening so hard. I crawl into a ball, hugging it to numb the pain. I guess my lung is malfunctioning because I can’t breathe.

A hiccup escapes from my quivering lips and that’s when I realize what the eerie sound I heard earlier is. It’s my sob; a hysterical kind of sobbing. I didn’t even know it was me.

Tears flows through my eyes like rain from the sky.

He did all those things to make me fall in his trap. He’s a stupid guy, playing a girl, making her fall in love with him because of a bet. Why me? There are a lot of girls out there! Did they think I am shallow enough to fall for him?

What they are doing is absolutely wrong and immoral! Even if the victim isn’t me. They want to make my life miserable? I won’t let them! My life is already messed up as it is. They don’t have to add another burden in me!

Did they say today is the sixth day? My mind do the math and I realize that they started on the day Ma’am Coelho instructed me to tutor Draky. I guess he or both Andre and him planned it all along. Did they plan this too, me staying at this house?

Perhaps all his actions were all pretend to make me fall.

My heart is shattering into tiny pieces in my body. It’s not because I love him. How can I even love that stupid moron? It’s because of the thought that everything happened between us was all a lie.

Did they really think I will fall for their idiotic game? Those jerks even think low of me!

I shove all the pains aside, trying to think logically. My breathing is sharp and slow, I can feel the anger radiating off my body.

I shouldn’t be moping around like there’s no tomorrow. I should save all my energy to think of a plan to sabotage their deadly little game.

Drake Swift sure won in those first five days but I won’t let him score again. If he wants to play, I will give him a game he will never forget for the rest of his life.

*****

I hope you liked this <3

The song has nothing to do with the chapter but it makes me cry whenever I listen to it. It’s called Terrible Things by Mayday Parade.

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