She felt a little bad about upsetting Lia, because she had grown to like her over the past few days. She was great about the accidents she had witnessed as well, but Washington State was important in her quest to get the terrorist guy and keep him from hurting other people.
She took out a science fiction book she had gotten at the school library and read it.
Tonight, she realized what was going on earlier in the nightmare. She even managed to get the semi-truck stopped before it rammed the middle school. She steered hard to the left and the truck rolled to its side. It lost a lot of momentum as the metal screeched and groaned across the ground toward the school. It stopped right in front of the entrance to the school.
She had tumbled to the driver’s side window, her arm pinned between the ground and the overturned truck. The terrorist had fallen on top of her. The fuel tanks had rupture and she could smell fuel, but at least the students were safe. She felt the ground where her arm was pinned. It was wet from the spilled fuel. She tried to get up, but her arm was pinned.
The terrorist was still masked, but she could do something about that. She grabbed at the mask with her free hand and tried to expose the terrorist. He only laughed and reached into his jacket. Whatever he touched made a beeping sound. “Beep, beep, beep.” She grabbed at his hands, but he shook her off of him, but she revealed what he had exposed. A ticking time bomb strapped to his chest said, “0:02” seconds, then “0:01” second, then she woke up screaming.
When Deborah sat up she realized three things: first, she slept in her clothes, she saturated her pull-up, and she wet her jeans and her bed.” Her hand brushed something hard. It was the book she had been reading the night before. She had fallen asleep reading. At least the book didn’t get wet or pee stained. She hoped the rest of her day would be much better.
Deborah climbed onto the bus and looked for Lia. As she walked down the aisle to claim her usual spot beside her, Lia didn’t pick up her bag off the seat to let Deborah sit down.
“Still mad at me about my college pick?” she asked.
Lia nodded.
“I got you a gift for your birthday.” She held up the gift bag with the Vandals t-shirt.
Lia moved her bag so Deborah could sit down. She opened the package and pulled out her gift. “Oh, a Vandals t-shirt. Thank you.” She folded up the shirt and put in her backpack. “I’m sorry I was mad at you. Still, why did you choose Washington State over University of Idaho?”
Deborah looked at Lia. “It’s complicated.” What was she supposed to tell her: that she possessed her best friend and was actually Deborah Addison? That would get her nowhere. If Lia repeated that to someone else it might get her locked up in a mental hospital.
“Tell me,” Lia said.
“I don’t know,” Deborah said. She stalled a bit. “I guess it is just where I feel I belong. Besides, most everyone else in our class is going to Idaho State or University of Idaho. I don’t really want my toilet problems to follow me to college.”
Lia looked down. “Oh, I never thought of that.”
The bus pulled up to the school and Deborah and Lia got out and walked to Physics class. The class assignment was to build a circuit by copying the schematic from the whiteboard. She couldn’t believe they actually had to build a real circuit on a breadboard and everything. It took the entire class period to finish it and then have it checked by the Ben Stein lookalike teacher.
Finally class ended and they went to pre-calculus. “Ready for the test?” asked Lia.
“I think so.” Deborah sat down and waited while the teacher passed out tests. Deborah looked it over. She was glad she had brushed done her Calculus homework the past couple of days. She sat down and begin answering the questions. By the time the test was over, she really had to pee. She turned in her test and asked the teacher, “May I run to the restroom.”
He nodded and Deborah left the classroom to go pee. She had to go so bad, she didn’t know what she would have done if he refused. No, she knew what she would have done. She would have been changing a wet pull-up in the busy bathroom between classes: that is if it didn’t leak.