*Special thanx to Dharke. I promise the day will come when I have more time again to beat u in the longest-review-contest ;o)*

Chapter 2

Billy woke up with a jolt. At first he didn't know where he was but then gradually recognized the outline of his room. It was dark, only a light from the outside lightened up parts of the room but he couldn't say whether the source was a streetlamp or the moon.

Cold sweat covered his body and he pulled a cover around his shoulders as he shivered in a cold breeze, coming through the open window. It was astonishing to realise that he was still wearing his streetwear instead of his pyjama. Which was unusual since a look at the watch told him that it already was 3.30 am. He must have fallen asleep after having sneaked back into the house so his parents wouldn't know that he had been out again. He could still remember the big quarrel they had about that last week and he wasn't keen on having it again.

Asleep.

The thought hit him with the power of a sledge hammer and he jumped out of his bed. The lamp nearly crashed onto the floor as he hit the switch. His room was just the way he had left it: his clothes lying on the ground, his desk a mess – a loud click made him jerk around and it took him a close-to-a-heart-attack-moment before he realised that it had just been his tape that had switched itself off automatically. The nervousness still didn't leave him though. His breath quickened and his heart started to beat painfully hard against his chest. For how long had he been asleep?

One hour?

A half?

More?

Or only for a few minutes? As hard as he tried he couldn't remember what time he had come home. Anything between two minutes and two hours was possible. He glanced across the room but anything seemed to be as it had always been.

Something tickling his arm made him start again. He looked down; expecting to see a spider crawling away but there was no spider on the floor. There was no animal at all save his cuddly toy – a plushly gorilla named Mr Palmer – which looked a bit different. Dirty. At first Billy thought that he had spilled his glass with grape juice across it while reaching for the lamp but examining it further he found that it didn't even smell like sweet juice – and the glass was still standing beside his bed where he had put it. The tickling at his arm came again, stronger this time and it even started to hurt. Billy took an unnerved look at it, rolling up his black Sweater's sleeve. It was wet and a second later he knew why. A long deep cut was there – when had that happened? The blood made him feel sick and he had to sit down on his bed. The wound was deep but though close to the artery, it hadn't cut it through. He reached for a shirt and started to wrap it around his arm, clenching his teeth as he realized that there were more cuts on the other wrist as well. The usual procedure would have consisted in checking his window – maybe he had injured himself while climbing through it – but he didn't even have to get up to take a look at it. A voice inside his head told him that that wasn't the reason. It would have been too easy.

Nothing was easy and usual in his life anymore since that day, half a year ago. Billy cursed the day. He should have stayed in bed though of course he knew that nothing would have been able to keep him from getting up and to the airport. And if he had had to walk there he would have done so. Who knew when there was another chance to get to France? Okay, maybe the next chance would have been at a time at which he wasn't forced to spend hours in the same plane with incredible assholes whose only joy seemed to be to take the piss out of him or beat him up. Or both. Fortunately for Billy there had been another boy who had attracted the worst jock's attention. Unfortunately the class trip hadn't even taken place. Sure, the plane had taken off. Without them. And right now Billy wasn't so sure that he had been lucky not having been on it. Strange things had happened since then. The sleeplessness had started sometime afterwards. At first he had just lain there in his bed, awake, not able to sleep for his mind wouldn't stop rotating. It didn't matter how exhausted he had been – the sleep just didn't come to him. Mister Sandman had done a lousy job at that time. After a while his parents had taken him to a doctor who had prescribed him some tranquillizers and sleeping pills. At first they had helped. Billy had disliked the side-effects like dizziness and the numb feeling that didn't even leave during the day but at least he had been able to sleep. Then they had declined to let him have them any longer. All just because of the simple fact that one day they had found him with what they had called an overdose while Billy couldn't even remember having taken more than one of it, which of course no one believed him. His brain might have worked a bit slow at that time but he was sure a hundred percent that he had never intended to commit suicide. Certainly, what he had gone through and still did was terrible, but he wasn't tired of life. Quite the opposite.

As the bleeding had stopped, Billy stood up and walked into the bathroom to wash off the blood and hide the towel before his parents could see it for he didn't want them to make a lot of ballyhoo about it again. He already had sufficient problems. On his way to the small room next to his he racked his brains to find out what could have happened though he already was aware of the fact that he probably wouldn't succeed. Actually he never did. There was a large number of bruises and wounds all over his body and for half of them he had never found out where they had come from. The other half he had caught while trying not to be run over by a black sports car, driven by an evil werejock – as one of his friends, named Rachel, had once titled him - . It had been a nearly daily activity, then suddenly he had disappeared. The last thing Billy had seen of him was his murderous vehicle that had become acquainted with a tree. Due to rumours the jock and his girlfriend who had been with him at that moment hadn't been severely injured. Afterwards Billy had never seen them again though. The same rumours had said that he had tried to kill him and his girlfriend, something Billy couldn't believe. In his eyes that guy was not the one who would go and kill himself. He wasn't the depressive type. Though he might be crazy enough to play some of them silly games. Not to prove his courage, more to stop the boredom. But after a while he had been even bored of parking his car on the rails and waiting for the train to come. On the other hand he'd never do anything that harmed Terry who had been his girlfriend for two years and probably the only person he loved. He'd rather die than letting anything happen to her.

Billy turned the water off, reached for a towel and the first-aid kit and returned to his room. He reached for the glass with juice and nearly emptied it entirely before he opened the box. Only taking out the scissors to cut the bandages seemed to exact all of his powers. It took three attempts until he finally managed to cut a separate piece from the roll. Things became a bit blurred so he closed his eyes for a moment. As he opened them again it became even worse. Instinctively he reached for the glass to give his organism more liquid but he missed it and it fell onto the floor in slow motion.

If he had been able to see more clearly he maybe would have noticed the white dregs that were left at the bottom. He let himself fall on the bed, unable to withstand the wish to lie down and close his eyes for just one second. The inner voice that urgently told him to fight against it was left unheard as he took a deep breath and drifted away.