TEETH

Chapter One: I'm Not Good & That's Not Bad

AN
Song up-top is like: wooooah.
WARNING: this is boring.

"Schuyler! Schuy, baby, wake up," the desperate shouting of a father could be heard from two houses down. But his shouts were being tested against his daughter's.

Schuyler Bradshaw was thrashing in her bed, her voice raw from the name she repeated in her sleep until she began to scream it, letting out all of the air and frustration out of her lungs as her subconscious demanded her to shout.

"Schuyler, sweetheart- Spencer, Spencer, get your ass in here!" Ben screamed, his voice a thunderous kind of scared as he heard the sound of his husband's heavy footfalls.

He half-expected him to come into their daughter's bedroom with a loaded gun, but that had stopped after her second week straight of nightmares.

The men surrounded their daughter; shaking her, hoping to untangle her from her haunting dreams back to the land of the living.

She did; Schuyler's blue eyes flew open. Her scream died on the tip of her tongue, becoming a strangled whisper instead of a cry that echoed calamitous fears.

"I did it again," she whispered. The nineteen year old couldn't have stopped herself, she either had to sleep or suffer from insomnia. Some nights were good, some nights she'd only wake up her fathers thrice, sometimes she wouldn't be scratching at her arms or out of breath; sometimes her pillow wouldn't have a stain from tears and her sheets wouldn't be clotted with sweat even if it was sixty degrees in her room.

Some nights were bad. Some nights she'd lay awake, staring up at the ceiling before standing up and tearing at her walls. Sometimes she'd rip down her posters, break her statue of the wolf her Grandma Leila gave her. Sometimes she'd cry in the mess, most of the time she'd just be angry again, once she even painted away the paw prints that Ben and her had painted in her third grade summer. Each night she'd slowly erase any whisper of a wolf out of her room. And then she'd go to sleep, still and scared, because she knew she'd awake frozen with with fear, paralyzed from the things she saw in her dreams.

Some nights were good, but this night wasn't.

*

The small town of Bishop was slowly coming back to life at the end of May. College students that hadn't been home for weeks were unloading suitcases and being hired by the diner or Giovanni's Garden for a summer job; high school students were leaving empty beer bottles and bonfire pits on the pebbled bay of Blue Creek. Parents were pulling out their hair as they drove their children back and forth from T-ball games to the public swimming pool to cool off from the hundred degree weather.

Schuyler sat in the backseat of Mrs. Chauncey's mini-van; two kids, a snot-nosed bratty boy who was the ugliest crier, and a female version of the said snot-nosed brat that might cry even uglier, surrounded her. Behind her, Zaineb and Tessa were arguing about how to pronounce 'milk'.

"Uh, Mrs. Chauncey- d'you mind turning up the radio?" She asked from her squished-in seat, and once the words came out, Trisha and Misha- the snotty, little shits- were agreeing with her.

"I got it," Tessa's older brother smiled easily at Schuyler from the passenger seat.

"Thanks Xavier," Schuyler didn't pay much attention to him. Never really did, until this summer... after she realized he was the exact replica of a younger version of Lennox Armstrong, alias: the man who sorta made and ruined her freshman year, and ultimately, probably changed her path in life.

"Mom, how much longer?!" Tessa called back over the music, her swimsuit was being tied by Zaineb, who was practically buzzing in excitement. Blue Creek was always fun, and they hadn't been back since the end of senior summer.