The Dream Walker

By the time I got to my 7th period class with Kryslyn and Ari, I was strangely calm. All during 6th period Trig, all I could think of was Adrian. I wondered when I would see him again, what kinds of things he did for fun, and probably most of all, why had I dreamt about him, but surely that wasn’t his doing, was it? I suddenly felt terribly crazy for letting a silly dream eat away at me like that and consume my every thought. It was just a crazy, meaningless dream. It had to be. There was no other explanation for my dream. At least not one that I could see at this point.

When I walked over to Kryslyn and Ari, they were talking about a test they took last period that they both believed was unfairly hard. I slid into my usual seat beside Kryslyn. Ari sat on her other side. These had been our usual seats for the whole year.

“You will never guess,” I began, gaining the attention of both of them. I was about to continue when Mrs. Carrington, our soft spoken English teacher, called the class to attention so that she could take the attendance. After she took attendance and finally got everyone to be quiet, she put Pride and Prejudice in the VCR below the ancient TV in the room, then sat down at her desk to watch it. I felt sorry for her, she wasn’t very good at keeping the attention of her student, because she was always so quiet. She is a middle aged woman with slightly graying hair and she was rail thin. I pulled out a piece of notebook paper from my binder and quickly wrote a message to Ari and Kryslyn.

“I went back to the cafeteria to get my Chemistry book, just like I said I would, but it wasn’t there. I gave up and went on to class and guess who was sitting in Leslie’s old seat? You know Leslie? She moved a few weeks ago.” I handed the note to Kryslyn and she wrote something, then handed it to Ari who also wrote something. When I got it back, I read what they wrote. I could clearly tell who wrote what, because I had come so used to their hand writing. Ari’s handwriting was thicker and larger than Kryslyn’s. Kryslyn tended to write not small, but smaller than Ari wrote.

“No way,” Kryslyn wrote.

“The new guy?” Ari asked.

“Yeah,” I replied. “He smiled at me and said ‘Guess we are lab partners now, huh, Brynley?’” I handed it back.

“He knows your name?!” Kryslyn wrote.

“Wow, stalkerish, huh?” Ari said.

“I don’t know,” I wrote. “He said Mr. Burg told him, that sounds likely. Most shocking of all though, was he had my Chemistry book. He returned it to me.”

“Well that was nice of him,” Kryslyn pointed out with a smiley face.

“Yeah,” Ari agreed. “So did you find out what his name was?”

“Yes,” I wrote, smiling to myself. “Its Adrian.” I passed the paper back to them.

“Did you happen to ask him if he can somehow interfere you dreams?” Ari asked, joking.

“You mean like a sixth sense?” Kryslyn wondered.

“No, of course not. I don’t want him thinking I'm crazy or anything, but hey at this point, maybe I am crazy. Or maybe these really are meaningless dreams.” I said, confining in them.

“Maybe its just a coincidence?” Kryslyn wondered.

“Yeah, it could be,” Ari agreed. “But just let us know if you keep having these dreams.” When Ari passed the note back to Kryslyn, she wrote that she agreed. They were both concerned, but I could tell that they were determined to help me any way they could. I nodded at my friends, happy I had them for help.

The rest of the class, we just watched the movie.

I recognized Keira Knightly from Pirates of the Caribbean and commented to my friends about how mysterious Mr. Darcy was, always appearing out of nowhere. Kryslyn called him a vampire and Ari called him a stalker, causing us all to giggle. Mrs. Carrington gave us a look, but we ignored her. We were so unaware of what was going on around us when we were together, lost in our own world. Pride and Prejudice didn’t turn out to be quite as bad as I thought it would be, much to my surprise. I didn’t care much for literature, so it was strange to see I really liked the movie. Only one other work of literature did I ever like and that was Romeo and Juliet, but that wasn’t saying much, everyone loves Romeo and Juliet. It is a timeless classic.

When class ended, we walked to our lockers together and gathered our things. We parted ways when we got outside, and I told them I would see them tomorrow. I walked over to my red mustang and took one last look around me, before I pulled away from the school. I hoped, that by some off chance, I would see Adrian. I saw many people hurrying around the parking lot and onto the large school buses I hated so much. I didn't see Adrian.

That night was the second night I dreamt of Adrian, but this time there wasn’t the quiet nothingness there had been the first time. This time, I was laying on the beach, enjoying the warm, tingling sensation of the sun on my skin, when I saw him.

He came to sit beside me. He was wearing a pair of red swim trunks and he carried a pair of flip flops in one hand. Before now, I had never seen him in anything other than our school’s plain, basic uniforms. Our uniforms were maroon and grey with our school’s mascot on it. If I had been the designer of our school uniforms, I would’ve chosen something quite different. I studied him further, and I noticed he had nice biceps and a six pack. His hair was slightly damp and curled slightly on the ends. I found myself blushing and looked away. That’s when I noticed what I was wearing. I was laying on a beach towel, but I was shocked to see I was wearing a lavender colored bikini and I was tan! I knew that wasn’t right. It was only December and I was extremely pale, but somehow, right now, I was very tan. I looked up when Adrian spoke to me.

“Hello…Brynley…” He was smiling at me and his hands were digging into the sand, bringing it up and letting it fall back down.

“Adrian?” I asked, stupidly. Of course it was Adrian. “Is this a dream? It has to be a dream.”

“Yes,” he said. “You are asleep and this is a dream.” He looked at the waves, crashing on the beach and rushing up to just barely touch where we were sitting.

I knew this had to be a dream. How else could I be on the beach with Adrian, a guy I barely knew, in winter and it be this warm? It felt too real to be a dream though.

“Are you sure?” I asked him. “I swear this feels too real to be a dream.”

“This can be whatever you think it is then…” I had no idea what he meant by that. I reached down to feel the fabric of the beach towel and the white gritty sand, I had never been to a beach with white sand before. I looked up at the sky and I could feel the warmth from the sun, yet it all didn’t feel real at the same time somehow. Adrian laid back on the sand and closed his eyes. He seemed so calm and peaceful, that I laid back with him and sighed. I wasn’t sure how long we laid like that. I just stayed there, listening to his steady breathing and the crashing of the waves. I was so relaxed, I wouldn’t have minded if we stayed like that forever.

Adrian rolled over onto his side and looked at me. “…Are you…okay with me being here?” It seemed like such a weird thing for him to ask me and I felt as thought the answer was obvious, but I could tell by the way he was searching my eyes he was looking desperately for an answer.

“Of course I’m okay, Adrian. Why wouldn’t I be?” I barely knew him, but I felt so calm and peaceful with him beside me. Like nothing could be upsetting at all with him so near to me. I closed my eyes.

“Then just sleep,” he said. “Just sleep.” I felt myself begin to fade again. Fade away from the beach and away from Adrian. I opened my eyes. I didn’t want to leave this place, I didn’t want to leave Adrian. There was no other place I would rather be than there on this calming beach, so near to Adrian.

I awoke, just as my alarm clock was going off. I turned it off and rolled over on my side. “What a strange dream,” I muttered to myself. At least I knew it was a dream now. How was it possible that I would dream about Adrian two nights in a row? But this dream was so much better than my last dream. I actually had a conversation with him in this one. It was such a wonderful dream that I didn’t want to wake up.

I yawned and pulled the covers off of me and walked groggily to the bathroom attached to my room. My room was small, my walls were covered in various posters, and I had stacks of books everywhere. Not many people, other than Ari and Kryslyn, knew that I was secretly a nerd. I was always with a book in my free time. My jumbled thoughts of Adrian were immediately gone once the hot water of the shower flowed over me.