I lay there in the dark. Watching as the hands, those terrible hands reached out and tried to grab me. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my warped brain I knew they were fake but at the moment those hands, with their peeling skin and bleeding gruesome sores, were real and wanted to drag me into the unending black. I didn't dare cry out. What was wrong with me? Why did I see these things I knew weren't real? I knew my mother looked at me with worried eyes that made me feel weak. I hated to feel weak. Nothing hurt me more than those degrading eyes, staring at me, like spears thrusting into my very soul. I knew I would fall asleep eventually and wake up with deep circles under my eyes, that I would plaster makeup over and head to school pretending I didn't hear my name called out in the silence of the halls or street. I would be my perky little self that didn't hear things, see things, feel things, that weren't even there. The funny thing was my friends couldn't have told. If you saw perky little Skyler walking down the halls talking to everyone smiling and pretending she didn't see a knife in someone's hand behind her that wasn't there, or someone following her in an empty hallway. No you wouldn't have seen because she didn't let you see. But the Skyler that sat in her bed shaking but refusing to turn on the light like a little girl, did. So I closed my eyes to the groping hands and fell into the peaceful darkness of dreams.