Reality Check

Stranger Danger

Bite My Tongue (by the Academic)

"I wanna drink lemonade, and never rain on your parade. My dear, what have we become?"

___

Owen prided himself on being such a heavy sleeper.

Growing up, he'd slept through alarm clocks and his mom's voice, calling him to get ready for school. And in the time security agency, he'd slept through the alarms that were also meant to wake everyone up, when the dinosaurs had attacked. Even some math classes weren't enough to keep him awake (though he'd never actually fallen fully asleep, not to Bethany's extent).

But last night he'd woken up from everything. The jolting of the bus. The roaring wind outside. The loud engine, which seemed to vibrate much louder than a bus was supposed to. Even Bethany, who he swored might be snoring. It all kept shaking him awake.

And then, he'd glance at the pure possibility just outside the window, which followed them like a shadow. He'd remember what it'd done to his friends, and it'd cause uneasiness to settle around him. It made sleep a little more difficult each time he tried falling asleep.

During the times he could sleep, it'd lasted anywhere from a few minutes to an hour before he woke up abruptly again. His dreams didn't make sleeping that much better, either. His friends were always there, in his dreams. His dreams could be considered nightmares at this point, but oddly it was better to see them there than to not see them at all.

In a way, the waking-up part was the nightmare. That was ironic. The real world was usually better than nightmares, especially when you got to wake up in the fictional world, instead of the boring nonfictional world. In his case, the fictional world was just as scary as a nightmare.

No more fun, exciting adventures. Just adventures with much higher stakes, if they could even still be called that. Adventures were usually meant to describe a fun quest, like when he and six of his friends had teamed up a few days ago, back when things had been better.

He'd been drifting off to sleep again when a loud noise jolted him awake. Owen's eyes flew open, and the first thing he noticed was that everything hurt. Although he'd done everything he could to make his sleeping position comfortable, his neck, back, and even his legs felt stiff. He'd forgotten what sleeping on a bus was like.

Feeling groggy and exhausted, he slowly sat up. That was when he noticed the second thing. Shouting. Bethany was already out of her seat, her wavy hair disheveled. She was standing in front of Owen, Kiel's wand-knives in her hand and a strange glow in her eyes.

That woke him up. Owen sprung out of his seat. The lights on the bus had been turned on, but it was still dark outside — maybe it was just early in the morning. Under normal circumstances Owen would've seen the darkness outside and fallen right back asleep.

But this was so far from normal.

"Bethany!" Owen gasped. "What are you doing?!"

He reached for her arm, but the bus jolted at that moment, sending him sprawling back into a seat. He quickly pushed himself up again, staring in shock at his best friend. What was she doing? What spell was she casting? Didn't she know she couldn't just cast spells whenever she felt like it?

Just like always, she was doing things without even telling him. Like hiring Doyle behind his and Kiel's backs, or befriending Gwen, or trying to jump into Jupiter City to defeat Nobody, all without telling him anything about it. Even after everything that'd happened, she still couldn't talk to him first before casting a dangerous-looking spell that made your eyes glow?