Emily laid in bed in their hotel room in New York City, listening to her Ipod and willing herself to stay awake.

She refused to sleep.

She was tired of sleeping. Tired of the nightmares. Nick was completely zonked out in the bed next to hers, snoring softly every now and then. She didn't mind the snores though... they were a subtle reminder that she wasn't alone. They were comforting. And besides, she knew Nick had to be exhausted. Hell, she was exhausted. She had the television on mute though, Saturday Night Live. The light from the tv helped keep her awake.

Try though she may to keep focused on the show, her thoughts kept wandering to the conversation she'd overheard on the tour bus earlier that same day. For the first time in over two years, she'd finally felt like maybe the people around her were beginning to understand. Even if they didn't know exactly what was making her act the way she did... feel the way she did... they seemed to be getting the idea that this was beyond depression. That she was not just crazy. She'd told Nick a million times since that day he'd found her in the kitchen with that knife in her hand that she wasn't depressed... but until now she'd never thought he'd ever believed her.

Looking back on her own behavior, she couldn't blame him.

The truth was, everything she'd felt over the past two years had been fueled by the nightmares. The constant memories of a life she thought she'd be able to leave behind... but couldn't. A life that for so long after her mother had died she had tried to put out of her mind... only to have it show up again and again in her dreams.

The nightmares had started that summer in LA when she'd stayed with AJ and Howie, and they'd never stopped. Now they haunted her every single time she closed her eyes to sleep, and sometimes even when she closed them with every intention of staying awake. The voices that constantly told her to kill herself... she knew the voices belonged to him. He used to tell her that all the time. That the world would be better off without children like her. That she should go ahead and get it over with and make everyone happy. He'd told her that she could swallow a bottle of pills... or jump out a high enough window... and he'd told her it would make everyone happy. She'd blocked out those memories for a long time... but she knew it now... that it was him... she learned it in her dreams.

And yet, despite knowing all of this, and despite knowing he couldn't hurt her anymore, there were still times when it became too much for her to handle. Times when she felt like he was right. Like she would be better off dead... and the world would be better off without her.

She was lucky to have Nick, Brian, Aj and Howie. She knew she was lucky. But sometimes knowing you're lucky is not enough.

Emily still could not remember the accident that cost her mother her life, despite being in the accident herself. She only remembered waking up in the a hospital room days later. Nick was there... and Bob too. She remembered them telling her that her mother had died and she remembered the sinking feeling of desperation when she realized that she was 12 years old and the only person she'd ever really had in the world was gone. They'd asked her over and over about the accident, but the only thing she'd remembered was standing in the hallway at school with her friends before she even got in the car.

She only knew that they had found her in the grass alongside the wreckage. She was badly bruised and bleeding and her head had taken a pretty nasty bump which the doctors attributed to her loss of memory. She'd been in bad shape... but she was alive.

"Lucky to be alive"... is what the doctors had told her father.

"If she hadn't been thrown from the car," she'd remembered the doctor telling them as they stood beside her hospital bed, holding her hands and speaking in hushed voices, "she would have died instantly."

Like her mom.

And like him.

The only comfort she'd found in all of this was that everytime she woke up from the nightmares she could remind herself that he had gotten what he deserved.

Emily stared up at the ceiling and flipped her Ipod to a new song. She'd never been able to talk to anyone about any of this...

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath of air.

It was probably time get it off her chest.

Tomorrow was a fresh start.