The nightmares are back with a vengeance. I toss and turn all night, recalling the feel of that knife against my skin as I scream for them to stop. I wake up sitting in a pool of my own sweat, my lungs trying to claw for more breath.

For a minute, I just sit here, trying to steady my breathing. Anger rises up through my stomach, catching in my throat, the same way it always does after a nightmare. Not just anger at them, but at myself. I keep thinking I should have done more. I could have done more. Maybe if I'd screamed more loudly, or if I'd hit back much harder, then it wouldn't have lasted as long. Maybe I wouldn't feel like this.

Feeling shaky, I get to my feet and pull out my sketchbook, focusing on the images of Dad. His face is so warm that whenever I see it, the anger disperses a little. I imagine him here, imagine what I'd give just to hug him one last time. Everything – I'd give everything.

Mom spends the rest of the weekend asking me what's wrong. I don't know how to tell her that I'm tutoring the devil while going through withdrawal, so I don't say anything.

The symptoms are getting worse. If it's not my headaches, then it's the shaking, and if it's not the shaking, it's the yearning. I think that's the worst part–not the physical signs, but the cravings. The mentality. Every thought is consumed by the urge to drink coffee, every dream plagued by memories of that night. When will it stop?

On Sunday, when Mom leaves for her book club session, I collapse on the sofa and watch old movies, trying not to think about my headache. I used to pray for brothers and sisters growing up. I hated being an only child, but on days like this when the house is kind of peaceful, I thank my lucky stars.

Priya calls me right before I try to nap and tells me she hates her mother. Mrs. Selvaran has found out about the whole eyebrow fiasco, and she's confiscated the tweezers. I don't tell Priya this, but I think it's a good thing.

I listen to her rant about how unfair her family is. She starts with her eyebrows and ends up with how her sisters are always taking her stuff—yet another reason I am grateful I'm an only child.

"It could be worse," I say.

"How?" she asks.

I think about telling her she could be craving coffee while battling a headache, but that would be selfish. This is Priya's turn to rant. So instead, I tell her she's right and that her life is unfair, and if it were me, I'd steal my sister's clothes right back.

Priya laughs and tells me I'm evil before resuming her story. I um and ah at the appropriate times, counting down the minutes until school tomorrow. I'm not usually a fan of institutionalized education, but at least I'll have plenty of distractions. Here, sitting eight feet away from coffee-making facilities, is proving too hard.

When Priya hangs up, I stand in the living room. A small voice in my brain whispers, He'll never know. And my god, I want to give in. Before I know it, I'm scrambling into the kitchen and opening up the coffee pot, staring into its contents.

I hate instant coffee, which is why I go to The Coffee Pod. It is somehow the perfect mix of too strong and too weak, too sweet and too bitter. But I am desperate.

My phone vibrates. The sound makes me jump and the pot slips, crashing to the floor. The ceramic smashes into tiny little fragments, hidden among the coffee grounds.

Great.

I pull my phone out of my pocket and see Jake's name pop up. Double great.

"Hello?" he says.

For a second, I think maybe it's a prank or something, so I don't answer. It's happened to me before: the guys on the football team got a hold of loads of people's numbers and thought it would be funny to say crude things down the line. I don't think Jake was one of the guys who took part, but I wouldn't put it past him.

"Are you there, Hope? You do know how phones work, don't you?"

I clear my throat. "Yes?"

He's silent for a second too long. "Good. What are you doing?"

I have to stop myself from looking at my phone like they do in the movies. "Nothing." The word comes out in a rush, like I'm lying or something. "I mean, I was just watching some old movies. And making myself a drink." The trick to lying is to always tell as much of the truth as possible.

"Really," he says, sounding intrigued. "And what drink would that be?"

I wrack my brain for something simple, but all I can think of is coffee, coffee, coffee. "Orange juice."

"Bad choice," he says.

"Why?"

"Orange juice is full of sugar. You don't want to add yet another thing to your list of addictions."

I narrow my eyes. "Thanks for your concern. Did you want something? I'm kind of busy."

He laughs a little, and I can just imagine his face right now: smug. Arrogant. "It sounds like it. Look, I have some bad news."

I don't know why, but hearing that causes my stomach to drop. "What is it?"

"Miss Duncan asked me on Friday how my essay was going, and I said I'd made a great start. Now she wants to see what I've written so far to make sure I'm on track. So, I kinda need to start it today."

My mouth falls open. "When does she want to see it?"

I hear him shift a little. "Tomorrow." He must be able to predict my reaction, because he quickly adds, "Just the first few paragraphs. It will be easy."

I can't believe this. "It's Sunday," I say. "I don't want to spend my last day off rushing to write an English paper. It's why I wrote my own in advance."

"Oh, come on," Jake says. "It will be fun. We'll go to the coffee house, get some snacks, spend all night talking about what the handmaid is going to do about her tail. I'll even buy you a coff–hot chocolate to keep you awake."

I sigh and rub my temples. This is the problem with guys like Jake. They're used to everything falling into place, everybody scrambling to meet their needs; they don't care if their needs impose on anyone else. But at least I'm getting paid to be miserable.

"Fine, I'll meet you tonight, 9:00 p.m," I say, "and you better buy me a muffin."

When I hang up, I slump back on the sofa and stare at the ceiling, wondering how I got myself into this. When Mom comes home and sees me still in the same position, she asks if I'm dead.

"No, still alive," I say. Unfortunately.

She carries her grocery bags into the kitchen and starts to unpack them. "What shall we have for dinner?" she asks. "I'm thinking steak and steamed vegetables."

The thought of food right now makes my headache feel worse. "I'm thinking I'm vegetarian."

Mom scoffs. "Since when?"

I roll on my side and bury my head. "Since now."

She doesn't reply, but her footsteps get closer until I feel her kneel in front of me, pushing my hair from my face. "Are you okay, Mia? You don't seem like your usual self. You haven't for a while."

I lift my head, and we just stare at each other. She's right, of course. I haven't been myself, not since the end of last summer. "I'm fine," I say, smiling weakly. "I just haven't been feeling too good. I keep getting headaches."

Mom uses her hand to feel for a temperature. "You feel okay. Maybe we should book you a doctor's appointment to get everything checked out."

"Yeah," I say, "maybe," but inside, I know it's not going to do much good. The reason for my headache is down to caffeine withdrawal, and the reason I started drinking in the first place is to stop myself from falling asleep.

No doctor will be able to fix that.

***

When Jake turns up to the coffee house, he slaps The Handmaid's Tale on the table and flashes a smile. "Woman named Offred is used as a baby-maker in a post-apocalyptic society." He sits down and leans forward, his pale eyes alight. "And you thought I couldn't read."

"Congratulations," I say, "you read your first book. What are the book's themes?"

He thinks about this, and for a second he looks so cute. His eyebrows seem to furrow whenever he's deep in concentration, forcing his long, dark lashes to curl into his brow bone.

"Themes?" he repeats.

"Yes," I say. I don't mean to sound impatient, but at this rate, I'll be tutoring him forever. "That pesky thing your whole essay is going to be about. You need to pick a theme from the book and write about it. What are you going to pick?"

His phone pings, and instead of answering me, he pulls it from his pocket and starts texting away. I fold my arms and wait for him to finish, but it seems whoever he's texting is far more important than him staying on the football team.

"Seriously?" I say.

He finally looks up. "Sorry." He almost looks sincere. "Give me one second."

"Who are you even texting?" I ask. "Who is more important than you passing English and staying on the team?"

I expect him to say no one, given how much he cares about throwing around a ball, but instead, his eyes gleam wildly and he says, "Alice Greenwood."

Of course. Alice Greenwood is the kind of girl who unintentionally makes you hate yourself. She's sexy yet sweet, popular yet nice. Not only is she smart and funny, but she also won the genetic lottery: auburn hair, big doe eyes–it's not hard to see why she's pined over.

"We kind of had a thing going over the summer," Jake explains. "When Lydia and I broke up. Then out of nowhere, bam, she says I'm not her type and she just wants to be friends."

This surprises me. "I thought you were everyone's type."

"Thank you," he says, shaking his head. "That's what I thought, but now she's talking about how she's into deep thinkers, like I can't be deep or something. Can you believe that?"

I almost laugh. Jake Carpenter doesn't have a deep bone in his body. Still, it's nice to know that even the populars have to deal with rejection; maybe there's hope for me yet.

"Look," I say. "As fascinating as all of this is, can we focus now?"

He puts his phone away and gives me his full attention. It always feels weird having those eyes on me. They're so bright and intense; I feel like I'm under a spotlight.

"So?" I say.

"So what?" he says back.

I tap my nails impatiently. The painkillers I'd taken earlier have eased my pounding head, but it's still near impossible keeping still. "What did you think of the book, Jake?"

He shrugs a little and leans back in his chair. "I think there's a whole lot of Offred describing pointless things like the furniture."

Sometimes, I wish I could just pick up this book and whack him over the head with it. "That's the point," I say passionately. "She's a prisoner with nothing to do but reproduce. The only thing she has is her surroundings."

"Sure," he says, "but if she spent less time staring at the wardrobe and more time plotting an escape, maybe she'd have been out of that place quicker."

I lean forward in horror. "Are you insane? She lives in a dictatorship. A place where people get their eyes gouged out and are hanged for breaking the rules. You really think ordinary people are going to stand up and fight that?"

Without me realizing, my arm has somehow ended up against his. He leans forward, too, his eyes searching mine with a strange intensity. I can tell from his smirk that he's playing devil's advocate. He doesn't really care either way–he just likes annoying me.

It's working.

"I would," he says. "If that were me, I'd fight for something better, even if it meant losing everything I had. Otherwise, nothing would change. I mean, wouldn't you?"

I clench my jaw. It's easy to say what I would or would not do when I have never experienced oppression. But to be in that situation for real? To know what horrors were waiting for me if I ever spoke out? I'm not sure I would.

"Speaking out has consequences," I say, and Jake doesn't know this, but I don't think I'm talking about the book anymore.

For a second, he looks at me, and I notice the corner of his lip start to lift. It's the kind of coy smile one might give to someone who is intriguing or compelling: someone who is not me.

"Sometimes the consequences are worth it," he says. "Especially if it's for justice."

I feel hot all of a sudden, like my skin is on fire. I take off my sweater and fold it over the back of my chair, grateful to have an excuse to break eye contact.

"Look," I say when I turn back to face him. "In order to help you, and to generally just speed things up, I'll give you a few themes to start with. Tell me which one you want to pick."

He nods and I open my notebook, listing off the themes I'd written down for my own essay. "Complacency of a totalitarian state." I notice his eyebrows start to furrow again. "Basically, how easy it is for evil to prosper and how easily people are willing to give up freedom for security. Or you could focus on gender roles or love."

Jake thinks for a moment. I can practically see the cogs in his mind turning. "The first one sounds complex," he says. "I'll go for the last one."

"Love?"

He grins at my tone. "Why do you sound so surprised, Hope? You think I don't know anything about love?"

"I think you love yourself," I say. "That's about it."

He grabs the notebook from my hands, flicking through the pages. He stops on the page entitled 'love', which only has three bullet points.

"You've written pages and pages for all of the other themes," he says, "but you've hardly written anything for love. Why?"

I shrug slightly, feeling embarrassed. The truth is, love is not exactly my area of expertise. "I didn't think it was a particularly strong theme in the book."

He puts the notebook down again. "Of course it is. The whole book is driven by it."

I raise my eyebrows, acutely aware of his arm touching mine. It's hard and muscled from playing so much football, but also soft. I want to pull mine away, but I'm frozen. "How exactly?"

"You mentioned in your totalitarian theme how easily people are willing to give up their freedom for security," Jake says. "Offred might not be physically free for most of the book, but the reason she's able to stay sane is that she's holding onto love. It's kept her mentally free. Made a tragic situation more bearable. I mean, it gave her hope. Isn't that essentially the essence of the book? The world can go to hell, but as long as you still have hope, you don't have to go to hell with it."

For a second, I genuinely look at Jake like he's been replaced by a martian. Where did that come from? How did the boy in front of me go from a pretty face with questionable morals to this?

"I never thought about it like that," I admit. "I mean, to me, it kind of felt like the romance was just thrown in for the sake of it, to give her a way out at the end."

Jake shrugs like I'm the simple one. "I think it's deeper than that. Humans, whether we like it or not, were designed to need love. We see it in the way the commander seeks Offred's company, despite the risks. It's one of our basic, primal needs, and the book shows us that no matter what happens, that desire will always be there."

I'm so fascinated by the way he is talking that I find myself leaning forward, devouring every word. His eyes grow bright and stormy when he talks, like strikes of lightning in a storm.

"In the end," he says, his voice low, "love is the only way to get around Gilead's rules. The only thing that makes people brave enough to fight back." He leans back again, and my heart does this little summersault thing that it's never done before.

"Okay," I say slowly, "and you need a tutor because?"

He shrugs and looks away, embarrassed. "I guess I have ideas, I just don't know how to put them on paper, you know?"

I take a slight breath and pull out my laptop, needing a distraction. When I've opened a word document, Jake gets up and orders me a hot chocolate and blueberry muffin before sitting back down. He pushes the plate toward me, letting his hand linger.

"How did you know I like blueberry?" I ask.

He gets out his phone and starts tapping away. "You've had a half-eaten one on your table every time I've seen you in here."

I just look at him for a moment as he stares at his phone: how much attention exactly has Jake been paying?

We spend the next thirty minutes on his essay. I nibble on my muffin as his fingers tap away on my laptop, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration. Every so often he'll turn the laptop around and hold his breath while I read what he's written before editing it.

Eventually, when it's gotten late, we pack away our things. "Come on," he says, getting to his feet. "I'll walk you home."

I nod and let him lead me out. It's quiet as we walk, but I have to admit, it feels nice to have someone walk me home. Safe. We get to my house, and he looks up at the house, taking in the wooden porch swing as though he's impressed. My dad was a lawyer, but his true passion was carpentry. Anything he could build with his own two hands, he would, including the swing.

"Guess I'll see you tomorrow," Jake says.

"Yeah," I say. "See you tomorrow."

I head up to my room and close the door behind me. My chest feels all fluttery, the same way I'd felt after my first kiss at camp, which is ridiculous. I ignore the feeling and sketch for a while before climbing into bed.

My night is plagued by nightmares. I'm jerked awake at three a.m, where I pat myself down, searching for bruises or signs of trauma, proof of what happened. But as I look down, there is nothing. Nothing but the thump of my heart as it threatens to break through my chest.

With sleep off the table, I grab my laptop and do the one thing I haven't done in weeks: type in every variation of Attack on Girl, Artwood, into Youtube. Just like before, nothing comes up. Maybe they deleted the video, or never uploaded it in the first place. Maybe they only pretended to record.

Maybe I'm crazy.

A/N

What's a good ship name for Mia and Jake??