FRIENDS DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING

BY: KRISTEN WHEATLEY

Chapter 1-A Dream

I'm breathing hard, trying to catch my breath. My heart beats hard. I can't stop running from the darkness behind me. Then, I see a family. They laugh with Joy, happiness. Something I haven't experienced in a while. They go into a circus. Laughs and thrills fill the room. I follow behind, I see acrobats, lion tamers, gorillas, everything. I smile and scream with joy.

I look down and see I'm in the air. My hand is on a trapeze. I look up and my father encourages me to swing. I do, I swing the trapeze with me on it and let go. But, I fall, my parent's smirk and laugh.

"He deserves it doesn't he!" my father says. He laughs the whole time with my mother by his side. I look down and see the one family that I had seen. The boy looks at me and cries. That boy is me. Myself when I was young. I look at myself, my shirt. I wear a shirt that is black. The word Failure is written all over it. I land on the ground. Like a feather lands on water. Blood splatters on my shirt. I look down and my mother, my father, they lay dead. Cover with blood.

My mothers' head turns, she laughs and fades away in the blood. My father the same. The blood has that same word in it. Failure. I reach toward the puddle, wanting to feel for my parents, their presence, nothing. Police grab me and pull me away. I scream let me go, let me go! I look up and they're headless. I get away and run. Heads follow me, their faces red. Blood red. I cannot run from them. They surround me. I hear laughter, evil laughter. My parents' souls appear.

"You let us die, you let us die!" they scream. I hear it echo. I yell no. I keep saying it. One of the heads bite me and I scream. They surround me. All biting me. My parents' laughter echoes still. I try to get away. They are too strong. I can't move. Blood gulps up my body. I am bloody, hurting in so many different ways. I can't escape the horror. The heads lift me up and I see myself in the mirror. My slade self. They all laugh. Still biting, still bleeding. I keep yelling let me go. But they won't. I still yell, for someone to hear me. I yell, I yell.

"LET ME GO, LET ME GO!"

"Robin, Robin! Wake up man!" I hear Cyborgs voice.

"What? Huh? It was a dream?" I say.

"yeah, whatever you were dreaming."

"We heard you screaming from the kitchen." Raven said.

"Yeah, and your room is farthest from the Kitchen." Beast boy says. I see Starfire and I feel better. Ever sense Tokyo, I've felt much better when I saw her.

"Are you undamaged?" She asks.

"Yeah, I'm fine. What're we having for Breakfast?" They all look at me.

"Robin, it's lunch time." Beast boy says.

"What! Aw man. Not again!" That was my fifth time in a row.

"Man, maybe you need to see a doctor about that." Cyborg announces.

"No, I'm fine." I know I'm not. But I don't want them to worry. I sit up in my bed. My room is filled with worried friends and newspaper articles of Slade, Cinderblock, Plasmas, and Killer Moth. All the enemies the Titans had have in the past years. Being a year older changes everything. It seems just yesterday that we were fighting for the world's sake to destroy the Brotherhood of evil. Monsure Mallah was one of the hardest. Well, he was a giant gorilla. But now I'm 17. I need to start getting more mature. We're not kids. I had said that before. In Tokyo, it upsetted Starfire, I won't say it, but I'll think it.

I stand up in my room. My friends look down at me. Well, except beast boy, he's the same height as me.

"Robin, we are worried. For the last 5 days you've been screaming like this. And missing Breakfast." Starfire says that.

"Star, I'm ok really I am. It's just bad dreams. Nothing to it, ok?" I can tell she is not ok with it.

"But, there is something to it, isn't there Robin?" Raven always had to be the right one didn't she.

"No, there's not." There is. But I just can't admit it. Raven looks at me sternly. I can tell she's trying to get into my mind. The last time she had done that was when I had imagined Slade was here but he wasn't. She already knew too much about me now. If anyone knew most about me, it would be her. "Don't even try to get into my mind! It's nothing to worry about ok!" By that out burst, they probably figured something was wrong. But they would just have to get over it. The Alarm had gone off.