It's a Shame I'm a Dream.

I walk with Jack to class. I kiss him on the cheek. I tell him goodbye, tell him I love him. People stare. They're just jealous. 

I sit on my bedroom floor. Jack sits across from me, elbows on knees. Leaned toward me. We share secrets. We laugh. We sing. We hug. We kiss.

I write songs for him. He plays me a melody, fingers plucking at his finely tuned guitar strings. He tells me I'm his everything. 

We lay in the grass. Staring at the stars. I tell him I love him. He falls asleep in my arms. I kiss his hair. Life is perfect.

My mother asks who Jack is. I am confused. He's been over plenty of times. I shrug.

I laugh. I tell him what my mother had said and we burst into hysterics. We get stitches in our sides and collapse on the floor. 

He yells. We fight. I scream. He tells me I am nothing. I tell him I hate him.

Tears slide down my cheeks. He is gone. He has disappeared into the night, the darkness enveloping him like a blanket.

He doesn't come back. I cry for days. People at school ask me what's wrong. I tell them. They ask who Jack is. I wonder why nobody knows.

My parents take me to a therapist. I tell the woman about Jack. I tell her how no one seems to see him. How he is unknown. Her eyes widen. She calls my parents in.

I am crying. After the therapist had a talk with my mother, I was taken to a special doctor. 

He told my parents I have a disease. He called it Schizophrenia.

He told me that Jack wasn't real. He told me that I had been imagining him all along. A hallucination. 

I refuse to believe. I felt him there. I heard his voice. I saw his face. He has to exist. He just has to. 

They give me pills. They say I will be better. They say that I won't imagine as long as I take them.

I flush the pills down the toilet. All but one. I fall asleep. When I wake, Jack is there. Sitting at my bedside.

He says he missed me, says he can't live without me. I pull him into my arms and close my eyes. Just feeling him there, solid, pressed against me. Reassuring.

I know he's real. I want to prove it. I need to show everyone that he's not just a dream. I take the last pill. 

Jack is gone. He leaves no trace. No evidence that he was ever in this room. No evidence that he was ever on this earth.

I am broken.