Imaginary Friend - Stephen Chbosky Page 0,122

now I think I am having the whole town’s nightmares at the same time. The things people dream are terrifying. Everyone is so unhappy. The woman with the burnt feet keeps finding me. I am afraid to go to sleep tonight.

May 3rd

The deer are looking at me again. They are working for the woman with the burnt feet. I know it. I want to tell Ambrose the truth, so he can help me. But I know I sound crazy. And I know she is listening. I want to run away, but I can’t leave Ambrose.

May 9th

I don’t want to sleep anymore. The nightmares have been so bad that I see them when I’m awake. I don’t remember how many I’ve had by this point. Several a night because they keep waking me up. They are always different, but the ending is always the same. Somebody tries to kill me. Usually it’s the woman with the burnt feet. But sometimes, she has other people do it. Last night was the worst. I was on the street because she can’t walk on it without burning her feet. So, she pretended to be my mom to bring me over to the lawn. And when I wouldn’t come to the lawn for her, she sent Ambrose out to the street with a knife. I couldn’t get up. The hissing woman made Ambrose stab me. It was so real that when I woke up, I had to get the baseball glove Ambrose bought me for Christmas to remember that he still liked me. I slept with the glove all night, and this morning, I asked Ambrose if he wanted to play catch. He said yes! We played catch for 5 whole minutes! He said he was too busy with finals to play longer, but we’ll catch more in the summer. That would be so great. It’s important to have things to look forward to.

Ambrose closed the diary. He wanted to keep reading, but his cataracts couldn’t take another word. He closed his eyes to get the sting out and the moisture back. In the darkness, he could hear the world around him. The wind rustled the tree branches. The lady across the hallway coughed. The radiator hummed. Otherwise, Shady Pines was covered in an eerie silence. It reminded Ambrose of sitting in a foxhole. The quiet was never really quiet. It was just the coming attraction for the storm.

Ambrose opened his eyes and looked at David’s old baseball glove resting on the nightstand. He suddenly felt very frightened and didn’t want to be alone. He stood up on his arthritic knees and left his bedroom with his brother’s diary in hand.

When he reached the parlor, Ambrose took his normal spot near the fireplace. He sat in the big easy chair and looked around the room at all the old faces. Mr. Wilcox and Mr. Russell played chess. Mrs. Haggerty knitted a new stocking for her granddaughter’s first Christmas. A few spinsters watched a trashy reality show.

Ambrose took out a magnifying glass and opened the diary. His eyes were burning, but he had to force another page into them. He squinted through his cataracts and focused to decipher his brother’s haunted handwriting.

May 20th

I don’t know if I am asleep or awake right now. My head hurts so much. My family thinks I am eating cereal in the morning, but it’s really a bowl of aspirin that I’ve put in milk so they can’t tell the difference when I chew them. But it does no good. I am in constant pain. I am so ashamed. Yesterday, I got so sad that I wanted to die. So, I went into the tree house, walked out to the middle of the clearing, and waited for night to come. I knew the woman with the burnt feet would be able to see me at night, and she could kill me once and for all. But right before sunset, a man came out of hiding and saved me. He threw me back into my tree house right before the woman with the burnt feet attacked me. She ripped him apart instead.

May 21st

I went back into the tree house and looked for the man who saved me. I found him near the creek washing the cuts from his hands. He looked like he had been whipped a thousand times. I was so relieved to see someone who would talk to me. He said that he understood why I got sad yesterday, but