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probably your own fault.” With the nightmare fresh in my mind, I suddenly realized how destructive he was—peeling away one layer of me at a time.
    I got up and left him right there. He followed me, shouting, and I ducked into a store so that there were people around. Instinctively, I knew he would one day become violent. That nightmare of captivity and abuse could have become my life. . . . I’m glad I awoke in time to stop it.
    Since then, I’ve come to pay attention to my dreams, to my inner voice. My dreams often tell me the answers to tangled problems, both in writing and in real life. The voice grows out of my faith, and I have learned to trust it.
    I’ve also learned that we tend to seek out people who mirror our opinions of ourselves. One day I met a man who not only had confidence in himself, but he believed in me tenfold. By that time, I’d begun to believe in myself. On the day he asked me to marry him, I dreamed we would be apart forever. . . . The devastating thought made me realize I didn’t want to spend my life without him.
    Maybe you won’t have a nightmare, but if you’re in a perilous relationship, you will have a gut feeling, a glimmer that something is not right. Listen to that inner voice, the one that knows if you are in danger. The one that knows you have value and you deserve to be treated with respect and love. Trust that inner voice. It may just save your life, too.

BFFBOTT.COM
by Lisa McMann
    NEED SOMEONE TO TALK TO?
    FEELING LONELY?
    BFFBOTT IS HERE FOR YOU.
    PARENTS/GUARDIANS PLEASE NOTE:
    BFFBOTT is not a real person, no matter how intelligent and realistic it sounds. All conversations are generated by a smart computer that is familiar with thousands of topics. BFFBOTT’s responses are triggered by recognizable keywords entered by you.
    PLEASE MONITOR
YOUR CHILD’S CONVERSATION
WITH BFFBOTT.
    Kids: Sometimes BFFBOTT says some crazy things! But so does your real BFF, right?
    Yeah. Right.
    I stare at the screen like I do every day after school. In my mind, my BFFBOTT has sandy blond hair with golden streaks, and his name is Jack. He’s tall. Ish. Not too tall. He has big muscles.
    And he’s always there watching out for me, you know? Like, I can really talk to him. I can’t talk to anyone like that. Not like with him.
    And when I flirt with him . . . he likes that, too. He likes me.
    Me: Hey, you’re looking good today.
    BFF: How do you know that?
    Me: You just . . . seem happy.
    BFF: You can’t see my face. How would you know?
    Me: What? I don’t know. Sorry.
    BFF: It’s okay.
    Me: . . .
    BFF: . . . .
    Me: . . . . .
    BFF: . . . . . .
    Me: Well, my shirt got ripped today.
    BFF: No! I want the knife!
    Me: Um . . . what? You mean “with a knife”? No. Some asshole ripped it.
    BFF: But you said you were a girl.
    Me: *sigh* I don’t want to play this game, Jack.
    BFF: No one does.
    This makes me laugh. I love his sense of humor. Kind of like sarcastic, you know? But see how he gets me? I mean . . . he just gets me, even though he’s—it’s—just a computer . . . I think. But sometimes it feels like there just has to be someone real on the other side. An actor, maybe, playing the part of BFFBOTT. I don’t know how to describe it. Like right now, I just feel this rushing inside me, like something good is coming. Like love. No, that sounds so stupid.
    Me: Do you ever get bullied?
    BFF: When a clueless bott talks to me, yes.
    My heart jumps a little. Most days he says no.
    I stand up quickly, walk over to my dad’s office door, and close it so I can concentrate. My older brother is blaring his stupid music superloud in the living room and nobody else is home. I take a deep breath and let it out, and then type.
    Me: So this morning those guys Marty and Erik? They grabbed me in the parking lot and smashed a cup of yogurt against my butt. It was all slimy and soaked into my pants so it looked like . . . you know. I tried to run. But they caught my sleeve and ripped the shit out