"Alright, if you want to," I commented casually.

She looked up at me incredulously.

"You mean, you don't care if I do or not?" she demanded.

"Not really. I just don't want to wake up at three in the morning with two billion bugs lining my throat."

She gave me a sideways glance and looked towards the wall.

"It was my dad."

I eased off and let her lie there. What could she mean, it was her dad? What could he have to do with anything?

"Your dad?"

"Mm-hmm." Here, she sniffled. I could tell tears were coming. "I came home one day…and he was mad. Really mad. I couldn't find Mommy anywhere. He was yelling on the phone; I heard him say the word 'divorce' a lot and whenever he said it he was screaming.

"Finally he said a really bad word and hung up. Then he saw me…"

Briana shuddered. I didn't think it would be this bad.

"Briana, you don't have to say anymore…you can stop-…"

"No! I gotta tell someone! You gotta listen!" She looked up at me with a few tears flowing down her cheeks.

"He smelled really funny, too, like when fruit goes bad in the sun. It was making me lightheaded. Then he hit me, really hard. I crashed into the table and cried. He told me to shut up or he'd hit me again, but I couldn't stop crying. So I tried to crawl away but he grabbed me and…and…"

After this, I couldn't get any more out of her because she started sobbing so profusely that she couldn't get a word out. I decided to do something rather gentle and patted her on the back a bit.

But after two pats, she wiggled out of the blanket and collapsed onto me, clutching my shirt and wailing into my stomach. Thrown off balance, I slammed into the headboard and sat there while she let the Hoover Dam break in my lap.

We sat there for a good ten minutes while she finished. When she did, she looked at me through red, puffy eyes and dropped her little bad ass act for a second.

"I'm gonna go to bed now…but can I sleep in here? It's scary out there…with all the shadows and noises…"

I thought on the irony of this for a moment. A ghost scared of the dark…when it was usually her that made the dark scary. Finally I nodded.

She scooted under the covers with me and I became drowsy to the rhythmic sound of her "breathing". I realized she hadn't gotten out of the habit of breathing yet like I had noticed Chris and Andrew had.

I can't remember how long it took me to fall asleep, but I know that it was when the sun was beginning to peek through the window.