Chapter 20

August 5th, 2015 1:25 p.m.

Two weeks have gone by since that awful night. Instead of joining Jamie and his friends as they played on the playground, something she had always enjoyed doing, Maddie sat on a nearby swing set and watched, having no energy or desire to play with the kids. It causes her great pain to see other people be happy as the world keeps spinning around the sun while she's sitting here with a great hole of agony that had been punched through her soul, caused by an event that had scared her for life.

There were many nights where she didn't sleep a wink for she knew that whenever she did, a horrifying nightmare that the Boogeyman himself weaved togeather just for her would haunt her in her sleep. Most of the nightmares would be about that awful night, and they would feel so real that Maddie would begin to believe she was being violated all over again. Sometimes a few details would be added to the nightmare to make it even worse such as an audience laughing and cheering as they watch her get defiled, or the frat boys the attempted to attack her after her shift that one night would appear and take turns after the Nightmare King was finished with her.

These nightmares had become so unbearable that it made Maddie desperate to avoid sleeping, using techniques such as dunking her head in cold water filled with ice, drinking energy drinks and caffeinated beverages, and even taking the kind of pills that help people stay awake for longer periods of time. Sometimes she even thought of cutting or burning herself in order to stay awake or even going as far as cutting off her own eyelids. She decided not to do that kind of stuff however, for she knew that the burns and cuts would make people suspicious and the tought of being blinded by her own blood if she went through with the idea of cutting off her own eyelids made her cringe and shudder just.

Having trouble with sleep was not the only thing. Maddie was also not eating and when she did she would only eat a small proportion of what's on her plate and then secretly feed the rest to either Abby or Ike. Additionally, there were times where she would ramdomly zone out and forget to concentrate on what she was doing. This was shown during her shift at Cafe 56 when she would either get a customer's order wrong, forget something they asked for or bring an order to the wrong table. Whenever it was her turn to go on stage and sing, Maddie's performance wouldn't go so well as she would either mumble, stutter or hesitate during the song, sing off key or sing the wrong lyrics, causing the customers to boo and hiss, demanding her to get off the stage, which would make the girl feel even worse. It didn't take long for Wade to notice her distracted behavior and therefore become concern for her. Maddie was one of the resturant's best employees, so it was odd for her to suddenly start performing her job so poorly. He couldn't quite figure out why though and whenever he asked, Maddie would always deny that anything was wrong and would become offensive if Wade asked if she was sure that nothing was wrong. He would then remind her that the tone of voice she using was not considered acceptable at work, which would make the girl feel guilty and thereby apologize to him.

"Hey Maddie." Jack's voice suddenly said to her in a friendly greeting. Maddie had been so distracted however that she didn't notice him flying over towards her and suddenly hearing him right next to her startled her so much that she screamed really loud, causing the children and the parents visiting the playground to stop what they were doing and stare at her with a confusion. Realizing that it was only Jack that was saying hello to her and noticing the scene she had made caused Maddie to become so overwhelmed with embarrasment that it made her want to hide until the people staring have forgotten her face.

"Are you alright?" A red haired woman in her late twenties asked in a concern manner. Maddie looked at the woman, recognizing her right away. She couldn't remeber the woman's name for they had only met once but she owned the home daycare center that Karen would drop Sophie off at before work during the times Maddie wasn't in town. The woman was visiting the park with kids she was looking after.

"I... I'm alrigt, I'm fine, I just saw a bee, I'm deathly afraid of those things ." Maddie lied to her. She wasn't being truthful on two thing. The first thing was that she was obiviously not ok, not after what had been done to her not too long ago while the second was having a great fear of bees. In truth she was actually quite fascinated with bees, knowing that they only sting you if you provoke or scare them and how important they are to the flowers since these insects pollinate them to help them grow so beautiful. Everyone at the park bought what they heard Maddie say however and continued on with their activities. Maddie turned to Jack and greeted him in return, keeping her tone of voice as normal as possible so as not to give him any impression that something was wrong.

The Guardian of Fun wasn't buying her fake normal appearance however. Out of all the times they have crossed each other's paths, never before had Maddie jumped with fright at the sound of his voice. The girl didn't look well either. There were dark circles around her eyes, not to mention the bags underneath and the red veins extended over the whites, making it obivious to tell that she hadn't been sleeping lately. Her voluminous wavy black hair looked dull, lifeless and disheveled and her flawless rosy fair skin was now ghost white and malnourished. The girl looked just awful and Jack realized that she seems to look a little shakened up, almost as though she'd just had a demon exorcised out of her body. Something was wrong, the frost boy just knew it. He knew he had to help Maddie out in some way but first he must know what is troubleing his friend.

"Are you sure you're okay Maddie? You look a little shakened up." Jack asked her.

"I'm just feeling a bit jumpy today, that's all." Maddie answered him, once again trying to sound like nothing is wrong.

"I can see that, but why are you feeling jumpy?" The Frost Boy asked, his eyebrows raised in concern and confusion " And you don't look so good. Maddie if something is wrong please tell me! You're my friend and I want to help but I can't if you don't tell me what is wron-"

"Look I already told you I'm fine! I'm just tired all right! Now quite bugging me!" Maddie snapped at him. The girl's sudden outburst caused Jack to stop talking and stumble back a bit with a nonplussed hurt look on his face. Seeing the look on Jack's face made Maddie realize what she had just done, causing her to gasp in shock and her eyes to widen with horror. She has never snapped at the boy before and she never ever wanted to, but her weariness and distress had managed to get the best of her. Maddie felt ashamed of herself, wanting to take back what she had just done to the one guardian who was her closest friend. If Jack wanted to avoid her for a while because of that, she wouldn't blame him, knowing that it was the way she had just treated him that would cause him to feel that way.

"I... I'm sorry Jack! I'm so sorry I... I didn't mean to snap at you! I'm sorry!" She told him as her voice began to crack. If that wasn't bad enough, Maddie suddenly notice tears welling up in her eyes, threatening to spill out and run down her face. Not wanting Jack or anyone else seeing her cry, Maddie quickly got up and sprinted away from the frost boy, running over to the restroom before any of tears could fall from her eyes. Jack looked on at her, feeling helpless and confused.

"What was that all about?" Claude wondered as he and his friends walked up to Jack while looking at Maddie as she ran towards the restroom in tears.

"I... I have no idea." Jack quietly answered still looking over towards the restroom, long after seeing Maddie dissapear inside. This was the first time he had ever seen the girl become frusterated and the way she had just snapped at him still stung the guardian of fun.

"Jack, I think there's wrong with Maddie." Jamie said to him with a worried expression.

"Yea, she never wants to play with us anymore." Cupcake agreed, sharing Jamie's feelings about the whole situation.

Jack looked at the kids, the worried feeling now spreading to him. Something was definitely wrong and he had a feeling that Maddie wants to tell him but is too afraid to do so. He was now determined to find out what happened to his friend and to help her, yet in order to do so, he was going to need help from the other guardians.

I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, again sorry for the delay.

Evie, a woman who I roleplay with on Tumblr makes an appeareance in this chapter. She is the daycare center owner who asked Maddie if she was all right after she screamed. Evie is such an amazing woman. She is a pre-school teacher, a follower of Jesus and like me is a fan of Rise of the Guardians and The Guardians of Childhood. Her main blog contains sketches of the characters of the fandom she had drawn herself. Her drawings are seriously amazing, they are filled with so much details and expressions. If you have a Tumblr account and are a fan of the series you should totally follow her. Her Tumblr page is called Evie's Sketchies. She also has two other blog pages. One is a roleplay blog of Tsarina Lunanoff (The Man in the Moon's mother), and the other is a roleplay blog of Katherine (aka Mother Goose).

Follow Evie on Tumblr. Next chapter coming soon.