I wake up crying.

The image of Mia with a bloody rose blooming from her lips makes my stomach turn, and I realize I'm about to hurl.

I make it to the bathroom in the nick of time, and I throw-up up until I taste bile.

Afterwards, I take a hot shower, scrubbing away the night's memories and terrors.

If only I could forget it all.

Forget the nightmare. Forget the accident. Forget Evan and Mia.

Once I'm done in the shower, I change into skinny jeans, a white cami, and my red hoodie.

The same hoodie that the Alastaire's Angels tore to shreds the night of the concert. I never did ask Felix how he mended it so quickly. Although it's not like he would have mended it personally. Maybe someone at the hotel did it.

I run my fingers over the seams, looking for some stitch out of place, a clue, but it's as perfect and whole as it was the day I bought it.

I check the time on my phone. It's 8.16am – at least an hour earlier than mom and dad usually get up during the week. With the restaurant open until late every night, weekdays mean long lazy sleep-ins for them until 9 or even 10am.

Just in case, I tiptoe down the staircase, wondering if it would be too risky for me to make a cup of coffee.

No, safer to buy coffee on the walk there. I can't risk waking them up. After what happened yesterday, who knows how they'll feel about me going out today.

I'll text mom once I'm far away from the house, so at least they'll know I'm safe and I'll be back before dark – and then I'm turning off my phone.

No way am I letting anything or anyone keep me from seeing the boys today.

The fragments of the dream are all jumbled up inside my head, but there's one thing I'm sure of. 

It's connected.

All of it.

Everything happening to me, and everything that has happened to me, is somehow connected to these five boys and their music.

If jumping headfirst into the mystery is what I need to do to get some answers, then I'm doing it.

I reach the end of the stairs, peer into the empty living room.

The coast is clear, and I let down my guard and walk into the entrance hall towards the front door.

Big mistake.

"Where do you think you're going?"

My mom sounds tired. She's sitting at the kitchen table, still in her dressing gown and slippers. My dad's in front of the stove, stirring something in a pot.

"Sit down Ashling," he says. "We need to talk."

"About what?" I say, lingering in the doorway.

"Just come over here," my mom says. "Sit down, have some breakfast. We made french toast."

The thought of food reminds me of my earlier puke-a-thon, and I fight back my nausea as I take a seat at the kitchen table.

"I'm not hungry," I say. "And I'm running sort of late. Felix asked me to meet them there at nine."

"Meet them where, exactly?" My dad asks, placing a cup of hot peppermint tea in front of me.

Peppermint tea – great for digestion, nausea and soothing an upset stomach.

They heard me.

"Where are they staying, Ashling?" My dad asks gently.

"I can't... I promised the guys I wouldn't tell anyone," I say.

Although it probably wouldn't hurt to just tell my parents. Surely they don't count? It's not like they'll go off to TMZ with it.

"You need to see things from our perspective, hon," my mom says. "This whole weekend, you spent both days with a group of older boys who we don't even know, with no way of us contacting you. We know it's an amazing opportunity you got handed, and we're not trying to crush your dreams. We'd never do that. But we're still worried."

"Don't you trust me?" I ask, looking from my mom's to my dad's faces.

"Yes, we trust you–" my mom begins.

"–but that doesn't mean we trust them," my dad says, finishing her sentence. "Heck, we haven't even met them."

"But you have!" I say. "You met Felix. And Alastaire."

"That's not enough," my mom says. "If you're going to be spending time with them, then we have to meet them. All of them. We want them to come over. We'll cook a nice dinner, and we can all get to know each other."

That sounds like the worst idea ever.

"Try understand Ashling," my dad says. "We don't know anything about these boys."

"Well then Google them!" I say. "Seriously. Their whole lives are online! You can find out Ben's favorite breakfast cereal. See baby photos of Elliott. Go stalk them. Just don't ask me to do this. Please."

"We're not backing down hon," my mom says. "Trust me, you're lucky we even agreed to you helping them with this 'album' in the first place. How many parents do you think would let their teenaged daughter hang around a bunch of strange older unsupervised boys?"

"But... what about Wild Blue Yonder?" I say. "I'm at band practice with Alix and Micah all the time. They're boys. They're older than me. You've never complained about them."

"We know them. We know their parents," my mom says. "And Zee's there with you."

"Yeah well, this is the same. It's not like I'm alone out there with only guys," I say. "Felix has an older sister. She's staying with them. And she's super mature and responsible."

And prone to threatening me and strangling me in the forest, but that's better left unsaid.

"Great, bring her along too," my dad says.

"We'll make it fun," my mom says. "We'll cook something delicious, have a good chat, maybe a game of Star Wars Monopoly after."

"Kill me now," I say, lowering my head onto the table.

"C'mon honey, work with us," my dad says. "We thought Thursday was a good night. See if that suits them."

I know my parents well enough to know that they've made up their mind, and there's no changing it. So I nod, and get up to leave.

My mom insists on kissing me on the cheek and my dad wants to hug me before I can get out of the house.

They take clingy to a new level. Seriously.

As I head up my road towards the forest, my head is buzzing with worries.

The nightmares. The memories. The strange Irish myth that feels closer to home than I'd like. The shadows in the forest.

And now, the dinner.

FML.