No, no, no! I had fallen asleep at some point the night before. It was Saturday. My birthday. I was sixteen now. I squeezed my eyes shut. I did not want to open them. Maybe it was all a crazy nightmare. I felt normal. All the aches and pains were gone. Nothing hurt, nothing felt different. I let out a long breath. Just a nightmare. I would get up like normal and look in the mirror and everything would be fine. Keeping my eyes closed, I rolled onto my side. Okay. One. Two. Three. Slowly, I opened my eyes. My vision was hazy, like a film had been pulled down over my eyes. I rubbed them over and over, but the haze wouldn’t go away. What was wrong with my eyes? Why couldn’t I see clearly? I started breathing fast as panic rose in my chest. Scanning the room, I realized there was something on my nightstand that wasn’t normally there. I reached for it—a notebook. Skeptically, I opened it and found words on the first page. They were blurry and hard to read. I stared at them for a long time before I was finally able to focus: “I had to leave you a note to tell you what to expect this morning since you don’t want me with you.
