Roar of Dragons

[Luke – 13 years]

"What I don't understand is why it keeps shaking," a woman says from out of sight. "We've run tests and analyses and nothing is telling us anything."

"That's a concern," a man responds as I hear what sounds like papers on a clipboard flipping. "If we can't get the shaking to stop, then it won't be stable enough as a generator. The vibrations can cause parts of it to shake look or break and that could shut down the generator. Considering it's meant to be a backup supply, that's something which needs fixing before we can finalize it."

"The shaking was caused by a fault in one of the power matrices," I say. "As raw magical energy converts into electrical energy, it undergoes a process that creates vibrations. The power matrices aren't supposed to be affected by that which is probably why no one looked there. As it turns out, the power matrices themselves were deciding to vibrate as well. I've replaced them with a different alloy in this one to see if that will work. The redzalius metal costs about thirteen percent more than the ezvredinine but it should fix the vibrations issue. Haven't tested on the bigger design yet, let me get these last couple of bolts into place."

"Uh… who is that?" The woman asks. "And why does it sound like a kid?"

"That would be Lucas Gates," the man responds. "Son of the owners of the company. Lucas, it's a Saturday. Go enjoy it while you're still a kid."

"I'm having fun with this," I respond. "And the reason you can't see me, ma'am, is because I'm under the generator at the moment."

It's an industrial-sized generator that's being developed to power large factories during power outages. The machine is ten feet in height, eight in width, and twenty in length. An absolute beast of a machine that's bigger than any backup generator we've made yet… and theoretically, more efficient as well.

Like most magitech generators, it uses mana crystals as fuel. They're in abundance from the crystal mines due to the fact that they regrow and anyplace wealthy enough to afford one of these things can afford to buy enough crystals to power it. The purpose of the generators is to convert the mana within the crystals into the electrical energy needed to power the building. If filled to capacity with mana crystals, it can power a large-scale factory for twenty-four hours.

Normally, a beast of this size wouldn't work as well as several smaller ones due to loss of energy in the conversion process. However, I came up with a formula that works for this and we've been testing it out.

This is different from the power cores that the Lumaria King kid keeps stealing/buying from us by teleporting in and taking one while leaving cash behind. Those are cores with actual electrical mana in them, but those aren't too viable for large-scale projects. Lightning magic crystals are rare enough even with replenishing mines and it's not like I'm going to milk myself dry of mana all the time to fuel things.

That's why most places want mana generators that can handle the job. Mana crystals are cheaper to purchase and the company would likely have storage to keep two of these filled for a week if needed and the ability to buy more quickly if the power outage is longer than that. A place like that would also buy two of them, to have one as a backup for the other.

Though one of the things about this generator is that it has backups contained within it. Rather than just one power matrix it has eight. Those are unlikely to fail at all and they have the highest chance of something failing out of all parts of it. One of the benefits to this new generator is the reduced chance of needing a backup in case it fails.

"Nnnn-haa!" I get the last bolt tightened. "That one was a bit resistant for some reason. Alright!"

I roll out from under the generator using the skateboard I was lying on and stand up. The two workers who were talking have walked over to this side of the generator by this point and take me in as I take them in. Both of them are wearing white lab coats – not mechanics but brains. The man I recognize as he's sort of in charge of the project, but I don't recognize the woman.

I probably look a bit odd to her. A thirteen-year-old boy with platinum-blond hair and electric-blue eyes, dressed in sneakers, shorts, and a sleeveless shirt, with streaks of grease and other things on me, my face flushed and body a little sweaty due to the exertion I've been doing for the last hour as I changed out the power matrices.

"Hello," I wave. "I'm Luke. Elias?"

"This is Paula," Elias gestures to her. "She was brought into the project early this week, though I don't think you've been here at the same time as her yet. Paula, this is Luke. He's the one who developed part of the design for the generator, including the improved power matrix."

"You did?" Paula's eyes are wide. "You look pretty young."

"Only thirteen," I grin at her. "It's based off my power matrix design for the new generator that's coming out next month. I adapted it to a larger scale for this big boy."

"That's impressive," she says. "How many grades did you skip?"

"None," I tell her. "I mean, they actually wanted me to back when doing the screening for kindergarten but my parents nixed that because they wanted me to be around kids my age so I could have a healthy social life. Didn't really work too well as I tend to babble a lot when I'm not drained of mana so making friends has been really hard. But I do have one! He's pretty cool and doesn't mind zoning out when I start rambling, especially about stuff he doesn't understand like magitech stuff. Do you want a demonstration of the new setup? Oh, Elias – I did alter the power matrix formula a little bit again to account for the properties of redzalius metal. Made a smaller-scale version to test it out with and there weren't any vibrations."

"Sure," Elias says. "Is it that guy right there?"

"Yup," I walk over to the smaller generator he pointed to. "Has a couple of crystals still in it, so let's fire 'im up!"

I adjust a few of its dials, twist a knob, then grab the pull cord and yank it back a few times. Even if it's magitech, it's currently off and so needs something to tell it to work. After the third yank of the cord, a few small strips of light along its edges turn on, faintly glowing green. A small hum sounds out for a few moments, then quiets down once the manual power portion shuts off, the generator now online.

"As you can see," I point at the monitors. "It's registering a readout of twenty-five kilowatts produced. If we adjust the settings like this, you can adjust it down to fifteen kilowatts, or up like this to thirty kilowatts. It was on twenty-five because that's what I'd left it at after my prior tests. As you can see on this monitor here…"

We talk for a few minutes as I demonstrate the lowered vibration values between the upgrade and the previous version, even as we crank the generator all the way up to full and leave it running. Unlike a traditional gas-powered generator that people who can't afford magitech use, this one doesn't produce dangerous fumes and doesn't run loudly.

To normal people, anyway. I can hear crackling as the raw magical energy is converted into electric magical energy. However, that doesn't count as me hearing it comes from my ability to sense electricity.

Once the demonstration ends, Elias runs a few more checks on the bigger generator, then we turn it on to see how it runs. For the next hour, we examine it and measure readings and determine that the issue with the vibrations has been fixed.

"Alright," Elias says after we turn off the generator. "Now that that's been taken care of, all we need to do know is… turn it from a hatchet job of adjustments into a proper machine."

With the machine constantly being tweaked in some way or another, this is far from the final version. It now runs as intended so they're going to clean up the design and rebuild it so that it's entirely new parts, then test that to make sure everything still works right.

"Cool," I say. "I think I'm going to get cleaned up, then go binge on junk food for lunch."

"Enjoy," Elias laughs.

I bid goodbye to Paula as well, then head to my office and take a shower in its attached bathroom. Once that's done and I'm cleaned up, smelling nice, and in a fresh outfit, I leave and meet my driver, asking him to take me home. Dad went shopping the other day and we have plenty of food for me to binge on. Parker's hanging out with his other friends and Xander doesn't like me so I don't have anyone to hang out with right now.

That's okay, though. I can play video games or something.

As I'm on the way home, the phone I grabbed this morning rings and I realize that it's Dad's phone and not mine. Whoops? I guess Dad didn't notice, though, since he didn't have Mom call me to let me know and he didn't come by the workshop to swap phones.

"Hi, Trey!" I greet him after answering the call. "I apparently accidentally grabbed Dad's phone when I left, so if you call mine he'll probably realize. That's one downside of having identical phones, huh? Well, it's been hours and he hasn't noticed so it'd be funny if you called it and he realized. I'm on the way home now though and will probably be there in about fifteen minutes. I was working on something at the workshop and-"

"Luke," Trey interrupts. "While I'd prefer one of your parents, you can probably answer the question, too."

"Oh, cool!" I say. "What is it? Dad's favorite color? It's chartreuse. Just kidding! It's actually fuchsia, the weirdo."

"I don't know much about magic," Trey says. "But is it possible to subconsciously use magic?"

"Yeah," I answer. "Xander does it all the time."

"What do you mean?" Trey asks.

"He enhances his strength and possibly how resistant he is to harm," I tell him. "I realized it on Tuesday. I asked him about learning magic and he kind of reacted negatively to it, like there was something related to trauma with it. Like, he really didn't want to and even commented about how 'it's magic' was reason enough to not. I figured it's probably linked to why he doesn't want to learn magic."

"Is this going somewhere?" Trey asks.

"Yeah!" I answer. "The answer to your question! So anyway, I got home and started thinking about what sorts of magic might interest Xander! Because everyone needs to at least know how to defend themselves, right? So I was thinking, he could learn self-enhancement magics! That's one every mage learns at some point because it's useful if you get mugged or something. Anyway, as I was thinking about it I remembered that when I helped Xander into the pool, he was insanely strong for someone as scrawny as him. Not, like, super strength or anything but definitely stronger than he should be at his size and lack of muscle.

"That's when it hit me," I tell Trey. "The reason why Xander ate as much as he did at lunch! It's because he's got a self-enhancement spell running to boost his strength and probably his resistance to harm. He's not aware of it, but he's casting it subconsciously because he's scared of getting hurt. I don't know if he's got it running all the time or just when he's scared or uncomfortable, but he was definitely enhancing his strength in the pool on Monday. Since Xander's not aware of it and seems to be averse to learning magic, I figured I'd wait a few weeks, long enough for him to get used to me at classes if he lasts that long before saying he doesn't want me around anymore, then have Parker demonstrate using a knife to cut something like an apple and then have him stab me with it and ask Xander if he wants to learn how to be able to take on a knife. With as much as he's probably been enhancing himself out of fear of getting hurt, he's probably built up a sizable pool of mana, which would definitely let him eventually take a knife without getting hurt. Since it'd help protect him, I'm sure he'd say yes… as long as we don't actually stab him with a knife. Then I'd go 'Congratulations! You actually already know the spell!' and then teach him how to cast it properly. Since he's already doing it, he'd learn super easy! Oh, and I could tell that he was starting to cast some sort of spell in his throat on Monday, but I'm not sure what it was and it never did anything even after it was completed. I didn't realize it until I was thinking about everything on Tuesday or I'd have told you Monday."

Trey is quiet for several long moments and I realize that I dumped a bunch of stuff on him and he's trying to process it.

"Short version," I say. "Xander's subconsciously using a self-enhancement spell to boost his strength and possibly toughness. I was going to wait a bit before offering to teach him it so that he can use it to defend himself when attacked. If he said 'yes', then I'd let him know he actually already knows it and is casting it subconsciously. I guess he learned it at some point in the past and doesn't know that he's casting it."

"He tried learning it a few years ago," Trey tells me. "He told me this earlier, though he said he failed to learn it."

"It's possible he failed to cast it but not learn it," I say. "It's possible to do that, since it takes practice to cast a spell. He's probably casting it really inefficiently, which is resulting in wasted mana. The subconscious casting probably started up as a reaction to fear and a desire to not get hurt. And no, you don't need a magical bloodline to do that. Anyone can subconsciously cast a spell they learned regardless of heritage. Just imagine how much mana he's built up. Probably at least three to four times an ordinary person's. Maybe even five times as much."

"Thank you, Luke."

"Oops, sorry, started babbling again."

"You did," Trey says.

"And by the way?" I ask. "When I start sparking in the hair, that's a subconscious casting of magic, too. Oh, and in case you missed it, I did realize that Xander had cast a spell in his throat on Monday. I don't know what it was as nothing happened, but it was probably subconscious casting as well since he doesn't want to learn magic. Since it's Xander, I like to think that he was going to breathe fire like a dragon."

"I've hit my quota for the day, so I'm going to hang up now," Trey tells me. "Thanks for the information, Luke, and have a good one."

"Bye!"

I set the phone down on the seat and wait the rest of the ride to the house in bouncy silence. I guess I talked a bit too much for Trey, but oh, well! He probably would have preferred to ask my mom or dad but accepted me so that's who he got to answer his questions. I hope I was of help for whatever he was trying to do!

[Xander – 12 years]

One good thing that's happened this afternoon is that I learned that S.G. wasn't mad at me or annoyed with me or anything like that. The reason he wasn't sending me texts and pictures a lot today was because his phone's battery died while he was sleeping and he discovered that after he woke up this morning. He put it to charge, ate breakfast… and then forgot about his phone while hanging out with Connor and their friend from school, a girl named Ann.

One bad thing that's happened this afternoon is that I realized I was being extremely selfish and bad by thinking S.G. wasn't mad at me. He didn't need to keep texting me about his trip and sending me pictures of the stuff they were doing, he's got his own life and friends. I'm just a nobody to him. Just because he was sending me a bunch, that doesn't mean he can't suddenly stop for no reason.

One uncertain thing that's happened to me this afternoon is Mr. Trey texted me and asked me to come to his office with lightning headphones. That's not their real name but I can't remember what is. They're headphones he bought me to dampen or even block out sound and there are sets of them all over the house. It's in case there's a thunderstorm, so that I can put them on and not get scared by the booms.

I don't know why Mr. Trey wants to talk with me and why he wanted me to have one of the headphones with me, but I can't think of anything good. I can't really think of anything bad that would explain the headphones, but I definitely can't think of anything good.

He's also not responded when I knocked on the office door to let him know that I'm here and that's only making me more anxious. Especially because it's almost time for me to go to the pet store to pet the dogs, if I'm allowed to. I think I am, since Mr. Trey hasn't said I'm in trouble for anything, but this may be that moment.

"Enter," Mr. Trey finally calls, so I enter his office. "Sorry about that, Xander. I called Tristan – Luke's dad – to ask him something and got Luke instead. He apparently grabbed his father's phone by mistake when he left home earlier. It was something Luke could answer and I made the mistake of asking him… so I had to call his mom after to see if I could get more information. That took a little bit of time, then I did a little bit of research."

Good. He didn't tell me to come in closer, away from the door, or that I needed to close the door. I'm really scared right now and want to try and run if needed even though my body is still really sore from all the exercise I've gotten this week.

"When you were trying to learn how to amplify your voice," Mr. Trey says. "So that you could scream very loudly if someone tried to hurt you… was it a spell for simple sound amplification or a voice-specific one?"

He wants to know about the magics that I tried to learn on my own? But I already told him that I don't want to learn magic! I guess it really isn't a choice and he was lying to me earlier… I knew I should've looked in his eyes. Better to tell him everything.

"Voice-specific," I answer, doing my best to speak clearly and not stutter, in case that will upset him more. This only makes me more scared, though, and it's hard. "The dork said that it's easier than simple sound amplification because I'm not altering the sound outside but as it's made. It's done in the throat."

"The dork?" Mr. Trey asks and I feel my face heat up. "In case you weren't aware, Xander, you mumble a lot. I've heard you mention 'the dork' before."

"I-I don't remember his real name," my face heats up even more. I really want to curl up and hide somewhere. "And he won't tell it to me again after I accidentally called him that once. He says it's okay even though it's mean but he's kind of… I know it's not right to call people a dork but that's the best thing I can think of to describe him, I'm sorry!"

"Xander," Mr. Trey holds up a hand. "Deep breaths. You're not in trouble. Is he another kid?"

"Y-yeah," I answer. "Um… I think he's the one who reported a-a-about-t-"

"About what your previously family did?" Mr. Trey asks and I nod. "Good for him. So you two are friends?"

Now I need to come clean with Mr. Trey about the dork.

"N-no," I answer. "H-he… just sometimes lets me h-hang out at his w-workshop when I g-get s-scared. A-and asks me to h-help him with s-stuff. H-he likes playing with t-tech and m-magic a-and… h-he's probably even s-smarter than L-Luke."

Which is a huge thing, I've learned. Luke is apparently insanely smart when it comes to tech. The rest of him needs work, though.

Bad, Xander! No mean thoughts!

"H-he also knows h-how to e-explain things in w-ways I-I can u-understand," I add. "B-but I don't l-like to a-ask him t-too often b-because I d-don't w-want t-to b-bother h-him."

Mr. Trey stares at me for a few seconds and I just know I'm in trouble for hiding this stuff from him.

"I can see this topic is making you uncomfortable," Mr. Trey says. "And I can make a guess as to why it is, too. Before we switch back over to what I brought you here for, Xander, I do want to say something. If someone tries to pressure you into breaking the law, firmly and repeatedly tell them 'no'. You can text me, Quinn, Franklin, Roderick, or whoever to come get you."

He figured out that the dork breaks the law but isn't asking me questions about it? That's so weird…

"O-okay."

"Alright," Mr. Trey says. "Now, back to what I wanted to talk with you about. So this other kid tried to teach you how to amplify your voice by casting the spell in your throat?"

"In this part of me," I touch where my voice box is. "He said it's easiest to influence your voice from there and can even amplify whispers, or make it so that the sound you're making with it is more stable so that it travels further before getting quiet."

"Something you said earlier got me curious," Mr. Trey says. "That's what I wanted to talk with Tristan about and what I talked with Luke and Melody about. Are you aware that it's possible to subconsciously cast magic?"

"Um…"

"Where you do it without knowing you're doing it," he explains.

"That's possible?"

"Yes," Mr. Trey gestures to me. "I think you do it already. Can you put on your headphones and scream as loud as you can?"

"Screaming is really bad," I look down at the headphones. "I'm sorry for waking you up so much, Mr. Trey."

"It's okay to scream this time," Mr. Trey tells me. "Set the headphones to whatever setting you want so that it's quieter or you can't hear it, then try and scream as loud as you can for me, okay? I want to check something."

This makes me scared but I do as Mr. Trey orders and pull on the headphones, turn them to full noise cancellation, and scream as loud as I can for as long as I can. Mr. Trey gestures for me to do it again, and I do. This repeats until I've screamed five times, then he gestures for me to take off the headphones. I'm really scared and now my throat is really sore.

"Xander," Mr. Trey says. "That scream just now isn't as loud as the scream I'm hearing in my room from your nightmares."

"Sorry," I try not to cry or sniffle but it's hard.

"Xander," Mr. Trey says. "You're not in trouble. There's nothing to apologize about here. The point is that if your screams from a few feet away from me are quieter than what I hear in my room at night, and that's as loud as you can make it, then you're using magic."

"Huh?" I ask. "But that doesn't make sense, s-sir."

"Subconscious casting," he says. "Luke mentioned it while we were talking, but he noticed you did it on Monday. When you were trying to break free from him, you started casting a spell in your throat. Since you're averse to learning magic, that suggests subconscious casting. The dolt says he thinks you were trying to breathe fire."

Mr. Trey called him a dolt… I have to force myself not to laugh at that but it also confuses me because that's a mean thing to say.

"However," he continues. "It's possible to subconsciously cast magic you've learned in the past. What I think you're doing, Xander, is casting the voice-amplification spell when you're scared, but without realizing you're doing it. Your instincts and desire for someone to come rescue you causes you to do that. It's an instinctive, subconscious attempt at getting help. Though you didn't manage to cast the spell when you tried, you did learn the spell and your body and brain are using that. The spell is probably incomplete and so wastes a lot of mana."

This scares me for a lot of reasons I can't put into words and that scares me even more. I'm not sure what's really going on here now other than the fact that I apparently do cast magic and Mr. Trey probably wants me to use it for him.

"It's very effective, however," he tells me. "Based on what I was able to find out, any number of things can cause subconscious casting. I had a suspicion for your reason and… you know I'm talking with a therapist regarding how to handle your situation, right?"

"Y-yeah," I answer. "Y-you said that he's the one who told you to suggest saying three bad things and three good things that I did or about me or that happened each morning."

"What?" Mr. Trey looks confused for a moment. "Well, I guess that's one way of doing it. The actual activity was saying no more than three bad things about yourself, then countering them with three to five good things about yourself.

Stupid fucking worthless piece of shit brain. That's so far off from what I was doing. No wonder it doesn't do anything for me, it's completely wrong! Though it probably wouldn't do anything for me anyway due to how worthless I am, anyway, so it's not like it matters too much.

"I called him after I finished with Luke and Melody and after talking with Tiffany for a few minutes," Mr. Trey says. "And asked him about your use of it in your nightmares. He said that it's possible that you're wanting someone to come rescue you but are scared no one will hear you and come. That triggered a subconscious desire to be louder so that you could be heard by someone who would come.

"I talked with Tiffany," he continues. "And your screams from nightmares here are definitely louder than back at the boys' home. They were loud, but not ear-breaking at close range. At the orphanage, you also had a roommate there who could wake you up or get help."

"I'm not-I'm not sure I know what you're saying. S-sorry for being stupid, Mr. Trey."

"In short," Mr. Trey says. "Your very loud screams at night might be you casting the voice-amplification spell without realizing it or trying to because you're scared and want help, but are afraid no one will hear you and come. That your subconscious is doing it from your sleep to try and protect you from the nightmares. You don't like them, do you?"

"I-I don't, sir."

"And you wish that something would stop them, right?"

"Y-yes, sir."

"Then I think that's what is happening," he tells me. "I want to try something with you tonight, if that's okay?"

Now I'm really scared. There's only one thing that someone would want to try with me at night and it's not something good.

"If you agree to it," he says. "We can set up a radio monitor in your room and another in my room. The one for your room transmits sound to the one in my room, which plays it. This is a live feed rather than something you have to intentionally do.

"Before you reach the screaming stage," he says. "You probably do get a bit noisy as you try to fight the dream. When it doesn't stop, you start screaming out of fear and your subconscious mind starts amplifying that sound to try and get help.

"What the monitor might do," Mr. Trey continues. "Is let me hear that earlier stage first. I'm not a heavy sleeper so it would wake me up. Then, I could come and wake you up from the nightmare before you start screaming. If you don't reach that stage, it might be easier for you to fall back asleep."

Really, it would probably be so that I don't wake everyone up and so that Mr. Trey can fall back asleep more easily. However, I don't want a monitor. Mr. Trey also hasn't presented this as a choice so I know I don't get to decide that. Now he gets to monitor me in the room because I can't stop screaming in my sleep.

"And I know you're probably worried about having a monitor in your room," Mr. Trey says. "This one would be sound-only. It would not be able to take pictures or videos, and it would lack the ability to record anything. All it would do is transmit sound from your room to mine. And you can turn it off and on as you wish.

"The choice is yours," he tells me. "This is something I thought might be a good idea to try, but I know you might not want to have something monitoring you in your sleep even if it's just sound. If you don't want to, then we can keep doing things as we currently are, okay?"

"O-okay."

"So," Mr. Trey says. "Do you want to give this a try?"

[Xander – 12 years] → later that night

"Xander!" One of the chocolate bars says as it continues to sear my side. "Xander, wake up! Ow! Xander! Xander, wake up! Ack! Xander!"

I wake with a start and find Mr. Trey in here, a scratch on his left cheek and a bruise under his right eye.

"It's okay, Xander," Mr. Trey tells me. "You're okay, the nightmare is over."

"It was awful!" I cry. "A bunch of grapes tied me up using licorice and then melting chocolate bars were pushing into me and burning me and they were going to start shoving pineapples into all of my holes like my noses and ears and mouth and my-my-my other holes and they were going to do that after the chocolates burned me enough but then I woke up and why are you hurt I'm sorry for waking up you when you need to sleep after you get hurt I didn't mean it!"

"Deep breaths, Xander," Mr. Trey tells me. "Remember… in… out… in… out… in… out… good. Keep going. Let me get you a glass of water real quick."

Mr. Trey grabs the empty cup off the nightstand and enters my bathroom. I can hear the sink running as I continue to do the deep breaths, then it stops and he returns with the cup half-filled with water.

"Here," Mr. Trey hands it to me. "Take small sips and remember to breathe between them. Good… good… do you remember what your nightmare was about?"

"Um… no? I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Mr. Trey tells me.

"H-how did you get hurt?" I ask. "D-did someone attack you?"

"Did someone attack me?" Mr. Trey reaches up and touches his cheek. "Well… it seems that before you switch to the screaming stage, you flail around a lot."

"Huh?"

"You hit me while I was trying to wake you and-"

"I'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorry-"

"You're not in trouble, Xander," Mr. Trey says. "You were asleep and it's partly my fault. I got in close to try and stop you from flailing around. It seemed like you were trying to fight off someone and I was worried you'd hurt yourself."

"S-sorry."

"Deep breaths," Mr. Trey tells me. "And remember to sip."

While I do as he says, Mr. Trey grabs the monitor off of one of the nightstands and looks at it. After I agreed to give this a try, he took me to the store to let pick out the one I saw and liked. It's really a baby monitor, which I don't like, but at least it looks like a wolf. They had a huge variety of them in that section.

While this one can transmit sound and can be turned on and off, Mr. Trey can apparently use his to talk to this one as well. If he presses a button on his (a button the back of the neck for it), it'll transmit whatever is being said by that one to this one. I guess that's kind of cool.

Another thing that I think is cool about this one is that it just looks like a wolf figure made out of plastic. Biodegradable plastic made in a sustainable way, too, so it's good for the environment. That store only sells products made out of materials good for the environment, which is really nice.

That's also not what I was thinking about, but I guess that's a good thing, too. There are no visible buttons or speaker meshes on the wolf, so if someone else saw it, they would probably think it's just a table decoration. In other words, if Luke looks in my room again, he won't have further reason to think I'm a baby. I like that.

"It seems like this worked," Mr. Trey tells me. "I woke up not to you screaming but you begging for them to stop and saying 'no' over and over. You did start to get louder toward the end there, so I think you were starting to switch over to screaming."

"S-sorry."

"Don't apologize," Mr. Trey says. "There's no reason for you to."

"But I hurt you."

"In your sleep," Mr. Trey tells me. "If anyone has blame here, then it's me. Now. Do you want to try to go back to sleep, or do you want to play some Go Fish until you've calmed down a bit more?"

Mr. Trey probably wants me to say the first one so that he can get back to bed. At least Ms. Katie and the security guys weren't woken up by my screams. I'm still scared a lot because of the nightmare, but I'm also really tired as well. That's new for here. Every other night I've been here, it's taken me a lot longer for my heart to stop beating fast and for me to feel tired again.

"I-I think I'm able to go back to sleep," I tell him.

"Alright," Mr. Trey says. "Why don't you lie back down and I'll tuck you back in? And if you get scared and don't want to be alone, remember that you can come to my room and we can play Go Fish or something until you fall back asleep, okay?"

"O-okay."

Mr. Trey pulls back the blanket and I lie back down, then he covers me back up and makes sure I'm tucked back in.

"Good night, Xander."

"Night, Mr. Trey."