Our family was sitting in the sixth pew from the front in the church, minus Joyce. She wasn't here because she was on a date with some guy named Jimmy. There had been a big fight between my mom and Joyce last night. My mom wanted her to come to my grandparents' house with us, and Joyce wanted to do her own thing. She'd argued that she was twenty years old and could take care of herself; she didn't think Mom had the power to decide what she did when. So she went out with Jimmy, a guy she didn't even like anymore, just to show Mom that she could do whatever she wanted.

       Jimmy had been the guy who had cancelled his date with Joyce a while back. She was mad at him for that, but she still needed to go out with someone. I had never met Jimmy but I hoped I'd never have to. From Joyce's view of him, he seemed like a jerk.

       I was startled out of my daydream by a little stab of surprise mixed with pain coming from Alex, who had been kicked rather hard in the ankle by Dominic for no apparent reason. Alex and I frowned at Dominic together. Alex kicked him back. Dominic stepped on Alex's toe with his heel. Zoe frowned at all of us.

       "Can't you guys sit still for five minutes without acting like babies?" she admonished us in a hushed voice.

       "I didn't do anything wrong," protested Alex, "I was just sitting here and Nicky kicked me for no reason!"

       "Well, why did you kick him back?" she asked matter-of-factly.

       "'Cause he deserved it," he explained, shrugging. "You don't want me to just sit here and let him kick me, do you?"

       "If you would have just ignored him it would have ended right there," she said self-righteously.

       "No, it wouldn't have," Alex told her. "He would have kicked me again."

       "Oh, shut up," said Zoe, not able to think of a smart reply. Dominic rolled his eyes.

       "You can shut up," retorted Alex, kicking her in the leg. Not hard, just enough to make a point. It was hard to see if her face reddened under her sunburn, but I couldn't miss the surge of heat that came from behind her masklike expression. She was really pissed off, and she kicked Alex back so hard I felt like I was going to have a bruise.

       "Hey, Zoe," I whispered in her direction as Alex rubbed his leg, "if you're so mature why didn't you end it right there?"

       Her eyes shot daggers at me. I hate it when she's mad because then my life becomes a living hell.

       Zoe wouldn't speak to me. She stayed silent through the rest of church and all the way to my grandparents' house.

       After we had arrived, while we were getting out of the car, Zoe shot me a dirty look. I wondered how come she was mad at me for such a little thing. If she didn't want me to tell her off, she shouldn't have kicked Alex. She knows we stick up for each other.

       We knocked on my grandparents' door. We heard the locks coming undone on the other side of the door, and then it was thrown open. My grandmother stood there, smiling.

       "Come in, come in," she bubbled, hugging each of us as we came in. "You look great, Cheryl!" she told my mother when she got around to hugging her.

       "You look good too, Mother," she said. Grandma invited us in and sat us on her couches. There was food in little dishes on tables all over the place.

       "Where's Dad?" asked my mom. Grandma pointed toward the bathroom, looking embarrassed. She's one of those people who never says dirty words and always gets embarrassed when she hears "potty" references. I smiled. It hurt my face, because of my sunburn. I stopped smiling.

       My grandfather came out of the bathroom and sat down next to Dominic on the shorter couch.

       "Go ahead and help yourselves to the hors d'ourves," said Grandpa. "There's plenty!"

       "Thanks, don't mind if I do," said Mom politely. She reached for the crackers and cheese and made a little sandwich. Grandpa started talking to Dominic about how football was going, and he answered all of Grandpa's questions, trying to sound interested but really bored out of his mind already. Grandma started talking to Zoe, and Mom sat there stuffing her face with cheese. She offered me some, and I refused.

       "It's really good, try some," insisted Mom.

       "I'm not hungry," I replied. She made her "be polite and do what I say in front of the people I want to impress" look.

       "Come on, try it," she said again.

       "No, really, I'm not hungry," I repeated. I could have told her I felt like I would puke if I ate anything right then, but I decided that would really embarrass her. I noticed that everyone was looking at me and Mom.

       "Don't force her, Cheryl," suggested Grandma. "If she doesn't want to eat, I say you shouldn't make her."

       Mother looked taken aback, and she stared at Grandma in surprise, annoyed that her mother would correct her behavior.

       Grandma continued. "If I'm guessing right, Skyler's been in the sun a lot recently, isn't that right, Lucky?" she asked me, using her pet name for me. She's always called me Lucky because I was the fifth kid and five has always been her lucky number.

       "Yeah, we went to the fair yesterday and I forgot my sunblock," I replied.

       "What's your point, Mother?" asked Mom, not seeing what the sun had to do with my appetite.

       "Well," said Grandma, "sometimes when someone gets sunburn they'll feel ill the next day." She looked at my mother as though she had just explained something very complex.

       "Yeah," I agreed, "I do feel kind of sick."

       "Well," said Zoe loudly, "I feel just fine, and I'm just as burned." She punctuated her sentence by inserting a potato chip with onion dip on it into her mouth. "Skyler's just weird, I guess."

       "Zoe, don't talk with your mouth full," Mother admonished her.

       "Sorry," she mumbled around the potato chip. I laughed, because she'd just done it again. Zoe stared at me. I felt sick to my stomach. I leaned back on the couch and crossed my hands over my stomach. I felt very tired and I wanted to lay down.

       "Are you all right, Skye?" asked Alex. "I mean, I'm sunburned too, and I feel fine. Maybe you're sick from something else."

       "Maybe," I replied.

       "Would you like to lay down, honey?" asked Grandma. "You can rest on that little couch in the den if you need to."

       "Yes, please," I replied, getting up. Grandma stood up, too, and put her arm around me while looking at me with a concerned expression on her face. Zoe was frowning at us, assuming I just wanted attention. I turned around and made a mean face at her, and she interpreted it as a smug, bratty "I got my way" face. She takes almost everything I do the wrong way.

       When Grandma and I reached the den, I laid down on the couch, and she offered to bring me a blanket.

       "No, thanks," I told her and began to take off my fancy buckled shoes. My stockings were tight, and I wanted to take them off, too, but I figured it would be rude to start stripping in my grandma's house.

       My grandma came in about a minute later to give me a blanket, even though I had refused her offer earlier.

       "Grandma, you didn't have to do that," I protested.

       "It's nothing, dear, the blanket will be right here if you want it." She put it on the arm of the couch. Then she felt my forehead.

       "You feel hot," she said.

       "I am," I replied. "That's why I didn't want a blanket."

       "All right, but just remember, it's here if you get cold later," she assured me. "Love you, Lucky, I hope you feel better when you wake up."

       "Thanks, Grandma."

       "Goodnight," she said, and giggled in a girlish way. I closed my eyes as she left the room. Then I fell asleep and started to dream.

       In my dream, I was on the front steps of a large house made of white brick. It had a garage which was open, but no cars were in it. There was a motorcycle parked inside, though.

       I was afraid of the house; it had a bad feeling about it. I turned around to walk away from it, and then I heard a voice from within calling, "Skyler! Help! I'm in trouble!" It sounded like my sister Joyce. I turned back around and looked in the upstairs window.

       Inside, I saw Joyce. She was wearing a short, floral-printed skirt and a bodysuit. The bottom of the skirt was torn, and there was grease all over the bottom part of the material. Her short, blonde hair was all tangled and messy, and her mascara was running down her face because she was crying.

       In the room with her was a man. He looked about twenty-five years old, and he was removing his jacket to reveal his dirt-smeared white tee shirt. He had greasy hair which was also messy, and he wore his hair long in the back, but cut short on the sides. I could see his eyes were glassy, and as he walked toward my sister it seemed like he had been drinking.

       Joyce shook her head at the man, and I could hear through the window enough to tell that she was saying, "Jimmy, please don't, Jimmy, please!" She held up her hands and backed up.

       "Don't worry, honey, I won't hurt you," said Jimmy in a slurred voice. "I'm just going to turn on some music, that's all." He reached over to an ancient-looking record player and it took him two tries before he was able to flip the switch. "I won't hurt you as long as you cooperate."

       Jimmy took Joyce's hands and began to try to dance to the music with her. Joyce was extremely scared of him, because he was so unpredictable. She wondered how she was going to get out of this mess.

       Please help me, someone, my sister whispered in her mind, looking up at the ceiling as though she were trying to get her message to God.

       "Hey, honey, what are you looking at? The show's right here!" Jimmy spread his arms and looked down at his chest.

       "Sorry about this dirty shirt," he said. "Let me just get this out of our way. . . . " Jimmy began to remove his shirt, and Joyce began to cry again.

       "And look, there's motorcycle grease all over your skirt!" said Jimmy. "Why don't you get rid of it?"

       Joyce called for help louder in her mind, imploring some invisible hero to come and save her from her own mistake.

       Jimmy reached for her clothes, trying to assist her in removing them.

       "No, Jimmy, please," said Joyce through her tears, her voice shaking. "I really don't want to do this, Jimmy, please, don't."

       "If you didn't want to take your clothes off, how come you wore next to nothing?" asked Jimmy, his voice going up like a little kid begging for a cookie. "Besides, you owe me that much, honey, I paid for dinner!"

       He paid for his beer, thought Joyce angrily.

       "Besides, don't you love me?" asked Jimmy.

       "No, Jimmy, I—" Joyce stopped, scared out of her mind, then took a breath and continued. "I—I don't love you. I . . . like you a lot, you show me a really good time, it's just . . . it's just I don't feel ready." She lied, just trying to bull her way out of her predicament.

       "Well, I'm ready. And I'll never forgive myself if I let you go now. Come on, I want to show you that I love you." Jimmy reached for her skirt's fastenings, and she started to cry but clenched her teeth together. Crying wasn't going to help, she told herself.

       Silently hoping for rescue by the police, Jimmy's parents, anyone, Joyce stood there with her lip bitten, looking out the window without seeing me. She needed help. And here I was, sitting outside the window, watching an abusive, drunk man remove my sister's skirt. I wondered why she didn't do something about it herself, like pushing him away and socking him, but I realized, drunk or not, he was still stronger than she was and could easily overpower her. Why was I just sitting there, watching? Why didn't I help her? It was my duty as her sister, wasn't it?

       Then again, I was just a twelve-year-old girl, alone at an unfamiliar house, observing something way out of my league to help with. I couldn't do this by myself!

       I turned away from the window and looked out into the night.

       "Jason?" I called. "Brad?" Nobody answered. I called them again, wondering what I would do if they didn't come. How was I going to help my sister, who was now being forced to the floor by a man almost twice her weight? I had to help her somehow, didn't I? I turned back to the window, promptly losing my balance and falling backwards off of the split-level house's lower roof.

       I woke up then, just like I always do whenever I fall in a dream. I was shaking all over. My mom came in the room, telling me it was time for dinner. I told her I wasn't hungry, but she eyed me coldly and told me to at least come and sit at the table with everyone, to be polite.

       "Well, there's our sleeping beauty," said my grandpa. "Feeling better?"

       "Yes," I replied, lying. I sat down next to Alex, across from Dominic. Zoe stared meanly at me. I had the feeling she was about to growl at me or something.

       I stared at my plate and thought about my dream. I thought some of it didn't make much sense, because, for one, I didn't recognize the house, and for another thing, I'd been standing on the doorstep in the beginning of the dream but somehow I had gotten to the roof to look in the window. What would I be doing on the roof? And how come I had heard Joyce's voice at the beginning addressing me personally, but later she hadn't known I was there? Dreams were just weird, I decided.

       I wondered if my dream meant anything. I had had dreams before that came true, which I guess is a little strange, but they were always little, insignificant things, like which episode of a series was going to come on TV, or some dumb thing that was going to happen in school. I'd never had dreams about disasters or anything major. I decided that I would have to tell Joyce the next time I saw her that I was worried about her and that I thought she should stop going out with Jimmy before what I dreamed would happen happened.

       After dinner I was starting to feel better. So I played tiddly winks with Alex while my mom, my grandparents, and Zoe bored Dominic with their opinions of things in the newspaper. I would have sworn that Dominic was asleep with his eyes open if I didn't know better.

       We left my grandparents' house at about six. My grandmother said, "Feel better, Lucky!" and we went out to the car. Zoe, as usual, claimed the front seat. Dominic and Alex sat in the middle, and I got the back to myself to lay down again.

       When we pulled out on the highway, Zoe turned around in her seat and stared backwards at me.

       "Nice stunt you pulled at Grandma's," she declared.

       "It wasn't a stunt," I protested sleepily from the back.

       "Yes it was, and you know it," she insisted. "It's always 'I'm sick' this or 'I have a headache' that or 'Where's the Advil' or whatever. Why do you always seem to have something wrong with you?"

       "Maybe it's because you're there," I suggested, wishing I had a pillow to put over my head. It wasn't a very nice thing to say and I knew it, but she really deserved it.

       "Oh, bull," retorted Zoe. "You just want attention."

       "Why do you care?" inquired Alex. "Why are you so interested in Skyler?"

       "Keep out of this, you little nerd," she answered. "I wasn't talking to you, anyway."

       "Come on, Zoe," I protested. "Why do you have such a problem with me lately?"

       "Because you are seriously annoying me!" she whined unreasonably. "Why do you always have to make trouble for everyone?"

       "Oh, leave me alone! I'm sleepy!" I complained.

       "See, there you go again!"

       "Look who's making problems now, Zoe!" said Alex.

       "Bite me, brat," she said under her breath.

       "What?" he asked.

       "Never mind," she sang.

       My mother switched on the radio, interrupting our argument. She was pressing her lips together like she was trying to hold ugly words back.

       Alex leaned over the seat backwards and spoke to me.

       "You know Zoe always gets this way before she gets on the rag," he joked.

       I laughed louder than I meant to and then rolled over, still giggling. Alex grinned.

       I started to feel bad again right before I fell asleep for the second time that day.

       My dream was very much the same, except that this time I didn't go up on any roof and Jason and Brad were with me, but they didn't look like themselves. I just figured they were supposed to be Jason and Brad because in the dream I had somehow warned them and they were coming to help. But I still had the problem of what I was going to do.

       After my dream was over, I think I went on sleeping. I believe this because when I woke up it seemed like everything had happened a while ago instead of me waking up immediately upon the ending of the dream. I opened my eyes and saw Dominic and Alex looking at me.

       Nicky looked at Alex and said, "Hey, that was good entertainment."

       "Yeah," agreed Alex. "Maybe we should watch her sleep more often."

       "Hey," I protested, rubbing my eyes. They were dry. I tried to yawn, because sometimes that makes your eyes water.

       "Sorry, Skye," Alex apologized, "but you sure are an active sleeper. And we had nothing better to do."

       "Turn around, idiot," I prodded him with a smile. I felt bad but I could tell it was fading fast. We turned into our subdivision, and by the time we got to our house, I felt pretty good.

       Joyce was in the den, eating potato chips and watching TV, getting the remote all greasy in the process. She had had a thoroughly awful time with Jimmy, but she felt strangely independent from Mom, and that was more important.

       Mom looked at Joyce with her eyebrows coolly raised and questioned, "How was your date, dear?"

       "Fine, Mother," she answered, somehow managing not to move her lips.

       I went into the den and tried to get Joyce's attention.

       "What do you want?" she asked impatiently, flipping channels.

       "Um . . . " I said hesitantly, "well, how was your date with Jimmy?"

       "I don't feel like talking now. Go bother someone else." She punctuated her sentence by placing her hand gruffly on my chest and pushing me away. I felt like telling her to stop treating me like dirt, I was trying to help her, but I restrained myself because I knew that what I had to say was of questionable believability.

       "No, listen, Joyce," I insisted. "Um. . . . " I figured the best way to say it was just to say it.

       "I don't think you should go out with Jimmy anymore," I said quickly.

       Finally, that got her attention.

       "Why?" she asked simply.

       "Because, I think he's dangerous," I explained, shrugging to try to seem somewhat casual.

       "You've never even met the guy. Who are you to make snap judgments?"

       "Well, he drinks too much."

       "Yeah, maybe. I probably smell like I've been using beer as a perfume, huh? Maybe I should take a shower before Mom smells it," she said, sniffing her clothes. "But a lot of people drink," she explained.

       "But after he drinks, wouldn't he be dangerous on a motorcycle? And you don't even wear a helmet!" I spluttered, trying to justify my accusations against Jimmy. I couldn't just say, well, I dreamed Jimmy raped you. Twice. That's all, no big deal, I'll go mind my business now and let Jimmy take away your whole basis of security and all your privacy.

       "Hey," said Joyce. "What I do is my business, and I don't think you have the right to be so nosy. Jeez, you must really be interested in this Jimmy thing." She paused. "You must have listened to me talking on the phone with him. That's just plain rude, invading my privacy like that."

       I started to get another headache/stomachache.

       "Why are you still here?" asked Joyce.

       "Never mind," I replied. "I'm leaving anyway, I feel sick." I left, went up to my room, and promptly slept through dinner.

       This time, I dreamed that I wasn't even at the house but Joyce was calling me anyway. Brad and Jason were there. That was a short dream. I was just somewhere else, with my friends, hearing Joyce. I woke up and it was 9:00. I got up off my bed, took off my shoes and put my pajamas on, brushed my teeth, and fell back into bed without even starting to feel better.

       I remember waking up in the middle of the night from that dream, but I only remember that the only thing that was different that time was that I was talking to Brad and Jason about what I was going to do. I don't remember any of what we said, or even, in fact, if we said anything at all. I might have just dreamed that we spoke and taken it as a given without it actually occupying time in the dream. The only clue it gave me was that I had allies against Jimmy.

       I got up for a drink of water, drank it all, got more, drank half of that, and went back to sleep. I realized that, even though I was sleeping, I was not getting any rest. Every time I woke up, I felt more drained. I didn't actually feel physically worse, I just got more and more tired and wanted to sleep longer and longer each time I woke up. But every time I slept, I went through some weird, very trying dream-escapade that left me worse than before! It was a vicious circle. I wanted to scream, "Okay, whoever you are, I got the point already! Shut up!" I don't know if I got any sleep at all that night.

[Notes on this: 1. It's kinda cool that I had the family going to church even though our family didn't do that. 2. It ticks me off how much Skyler talks to the reader in this excerpt. 3. I wrote "lay down" and "laid down" and I really should have used "lie" and "lay down." 4. Hehehe . . . he's got a record player. I know plenty of people have them, but somehow here it seems dated. 5. When she calls for Jason and Brad, that's her boyfriend and his cousin. I don't know what she thinks they can do, but then again, she is dreaming. 6. "'Sorry, Skye,' Alex apologized." Oh god! Why??? This is just like "'Sorry,' apologized Brom" from Eragon! Ewww!]