Free Chris Wakes Up by Sean Platt, David Wright

classmates.
    She was on the floor, her back up against Evan Harrison’s chair, with every eye in the classroom glued to her.
    “Oh God,” she said, swallowing her ridicule as laughter erupted.
    Mr. Mahr rushed to her side and helped her up. 
    “Are you okay?”
    Becca and Vicky, who sat in the row behind her, were staring at her as if she’d stripped nude and ran through the classroom starting fires.
    Noella wanted to melt into the floor. Hide in the closet, climb in the sewer, anything. She hadn’t lost herself like that since the incident . She looked around in a panic, making sure she hadn’t hurt anyone.
    Everything seemed normal, except for herself, of course.
    “I’m fine,” she said, and then, feeling the scrutiny of the entire class, she decided that she had to get out of there. Now.
    “I need to see the nurse,” Noella said. She grabbed her bag and left the classroom before Mr. Mahr had a chance to write a permission slip.
    Noella bypassed the nurse’s office, and instead went to the girl’s room closest to her classroom, then into the farthest stall, and sat on the toilet and collapsed into tears.
    She’d thought these pills were working. She should’ve known something was wrong a few weeks ago when the nightmares started coming back. She tried to tell herself that they were just regular nightmares like everyone else had. It wasn’t like they were bleeding into her real life like they had done for so much of her childhood. Nor had she heard any of the voices that usually came with them. Other than the nightmares, things had been okay.
    Until now.
    Why did the pills stop working?  
    Dr. Foster spent months experimenting with different pills until they found one that both worked, and didn’t leave her feeling like a zombie. The pills had been a godsend, allowing her to live a somewhat normal life for the first time in years. But now, for some reason, they just stopped working.
    She’d have to go back to Dr. Foster. More tests, more scans, and more medication. 
    Another six months of being a guinea pig, hoping they’d find a way to make her feel normal again. She should’ve known better. 
    Normal died 10 years ago.
     
    **
     
     
    Somewhere on the way from the bathroom and to the nurse’s office, Noella had a change of heart. 
    She decided that so long as Mr. Mahr didn’t tell anyone, neither would she. And maybe she could avoid telling Josie and Randy, also. Because the last thing she wanted in her senior year, was to become a walking zombie again.
    So she’d just keep today’s episode to herself, and hope she didn’t have another incident that would get her locked up.
     
    **
     
    Though she might be able to keep the biology class freakout from her family, the school was another story.
    As she went from class to class, whispers grew louder and the pointing more obvious. People gave her a wide berth in the hallway, and she could practically hear them thinking, “Oh no, Noella’s gonna blow.”
     
    Gym was mercifully quiet, and as Noella was changing from her gym shorts to her jeans, she began to think that maybe people would just drop the matter. Then the unique cruelty of locker room laughter slapped her in the face.
    The echoing giggles came from a clustered circle at the end of her row of lockers, half the girls in the class gathered, staring at something Noella couldn’t see. The other half were looking up, staring at her as she approached the circle, some pointing and all of them laughing. 
    It was Vicky in the middle – Becca’s new B.F.F., a bleach blonde cheerleader who was as vicious as she was beautiful – passing her cell phone from girl to girl. Noella knew what was on the video, even before she heard herself screaming. Funny, she hadn’t even noticed Vicky recording her when she had her little episode during Biology.
    That bitch!
    Noella had no idea how long the video was, but one of the girls, Jenny, had it in her hands and was scrubbing the player back and forth