Some Quiet Place

say.
    Before I can ask him about what the rest of the article contained, Fear tucks the blank newspaper back into his coat and bends down to me. “You’re so distracting; I’ve lingered here too long. See you soon, Elizabeth,” he whispers. His lips touch my ear and his arctic breath fans my face. It smells distinctly of strawberries.
    The Emotion vanishes, and an instant later a man jumps from the shadows of the loft with a long knife, making as if to stab me in the stomach. He’s wearing all black and his face is swathed in a ski mask. When I only stare at him, making no sound of alarm, the attacker disappears right when the blade is about to go into me.
    “Fear?” I call.
    “Just checking,” he chuckles, his voice coming from the night sky.

FOUR
    “You did this.”
    A whisper in my ear. The words are a hiss, meaningless to my groggy mind. But the strong sense of someone watching drives me completely awake. Fear? My eyes open to darkness and take a moment to adjust. The black becomes solid shapes. Dresser, mirror, chair. I’m alone; there’s nothing but the furniture and the night. Yet there’s a hint of power in the air. I sit up, frowning. It’s raining outside, a light smattering against the glass of the window. It casts quivering shadows over everything. Something isn’t right.
    “You did this.”
    I turn. The voice comes from my left. Young, soft. I make out a human shape, standing in the dim corner, that wasn’t there before. Slender. Not an Emotion, my senses tell me. Something else. “Who are you?” I ask. Thunder rumbles.
    The strange visitor doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. For what seems like hours we both remain frozen. Questions linger on the tip of my tongue. The storm intensifies, and a flash of lightning illuminates the room. And I’m able to make out his features.
    It’s impossible.
    It’s wrong.
    When he continues to stare back at me with accusation in those familiar eyes, there are no plausible explanations. Because it’s him. The boy who stars in all my paintings. The boy who never moves, never changes, never speaks. The one who the beautiful girl screams over with such anguish.
    “You’re dead,” I tell him, clutching my blankets. Can’t be, instinct keeps insisting. This is another one of Fear’s games. Another illusion. My wall of nothingness stirs. I imagine a brick cracking, pieces of rubble showering down.
    The boy doesn’t acknowledge this. Now that the lightning has subsided, he’s shrouded in oblivion again. For an instant I wonder if he’s gone—disappeared back to the recesses of my mind—but then his voice emerges, drifts to me again: “You killed me,” he whispers.
    The storm bursts one more time, and I see that a stream of blood has slipped out from beneath his hairline to run down one side of his face.
    My eyes fly open and I jerk upright, twisting instantly toward the corner where I know the boy won’t be.
    Because it was just a dream.
    No whispers, no blood, nothing but the realities of this world.
    How strange.
    The rain is gentle outside, not as portentous as it was moments ago. Oblivious to my plight, the millions of drops fall to the earth with a symphony of wet sounds. I shove my blankets to the floor. Hot, too hot in here . I lie back again and invite sleep to return.
    I’ve known Joshua Hayes since we were small children, placed in the same kindergarten class. We’ve never been friends, exactly, but we’re always aware of each other. Once in the fifth grade, when a group of boys gathered together and tried to make me cry by pinching my arms over and over, Joshua defended me, landing in detention with even more bruises than I had.
    It wasn’t until the beginning of high school that his feelings began to change. He watches me as if he sees more than what there is. He probably takes my silence as deep contemplation, takes my endurance of Sophia’s vicious treatment as patience, sees my solitary state as a choice to stand apart from the others. Though he’s right in his belief that I’m different from everyone else, he’s wrong about the reason for this. I’m not special or an independent thinker. Yet I’ve never bothered to correct him in his beliefs because he’s never approached me.
    But he wants to. I see his desire growing each day, notice how the Emotions’ visits to him at school are becoming more frequent. I watch and wait, knowing I’ll have to put this fire out someday soon.
    “I’m going to let you choose your