Chapters On A Page

I was back in the backyard, but it wasn't at the house we had left behind this time. I was sitting in the lush grass of the wide yard I loved behind the house we had been living in for over two months. Again, I was faced with a chain link fence that surrounded the entire yard, but both sides extended into the thin woods. I didn't have to wait for Emma to show up this time. She was already sitting there on the other side of the fence, the dimples in her cheeks prominent as she grinned at me. I knew right away that I had had this version of the dream before, that it had been replaying in my sleep until I could remember every detail. I was thankful that it had and I was swelling with nostalgia. I had thought the dreams were over and I hadn't realized until now, sitting under the bright, hot sun and staring at the child's face of my sister, how much I had wanted to have another.

We weren't continuing the conversation from the last dream, if that could even be considered a conversation. Just like being able to sound and act like an adult, this young Emma had all of the memories of the real Emma. I couldn't think of any reason we should stop reminiscing. In my sleep, I had my sister back and I wanted nothing more than to relive the tales of some stupidly fun adventures we had had together. After a short bout of laughter, I put my hand up to the chain link, hooking my fingers into it. It was gritty with dirt but was cool to the touch. It also didn't yield to me pushing on it. It resisted every attempt to make it bend both away and towards me. I couldn't say why it unnerved me.

There was a shuffling coming from somewhere near the side of the house, but I ignored it. "I miss you, Em," I finally relayed to her having wanted to since the dream had begun. I dropped my hand and listened to the fence rattle as if it was reacting to me abruptly moving, though I knew it wasn't. I gave a sigh that took the place of the question I wanted to ask about the stupid metal.

Emma's smile turned melancholy and she titled her head to the side, her straight, golden blonde hair falling to the side with it. "I know," she responded in that voice that didn't at all go with her age. "And you know I miss you, too. I'm sorry I had to leave," she apologized. I was angry at her for feeling the need to do so. It wasn't like she had had a choice. She hadn't wished for the aneurysm that was going to kill her. But I calmed myself down, knowing that she wasn't here for me to point this out. She was here for me to talk to because it was something I truly missed. "You've got to be careful if you're going to keep coming here though," she warned me, having not even noticed my inner turmoil. Taking note of the questioning look that automatically took over my face, she lifted her tiny hand with her index finger extended.

My eyes followed to where she was pointing, to the side of the house bordered by the pine tree. The shuffling I had heard just a moment ago had continued through our short subject change, but it had strangely multiplied. And as I looked, I finally saw what had been causing it. A scream was trying to work its way up my throat at the sight of all the people pouring into the backyard. People wasn't even the right term. They were ragged and their clothes were torn and splattered with blood from the wounds that decorated their bodies. They were dead. Zombies. Everyone I knew. My best friends, my cousins, Alex, my mother. And at the head of the pack, wearing the exact outfit she had been the night she died, was a full grown Emma.

I awoke with a start, my body jumping like it does when you enter that half asleep state some nights. My hair was in a wild mess and sticking to my forehead and neck with sweat. The air in my room was sweltering and sticky with humidity. Murph was next to me, lying on the other side of my bed, still sound asleep and snoring louder than a motorcycle charging down a street. I only had to hear it to confirm for myself that it was him, but I still rolled my head on the pillow beneath it and found myself face-to-sleeping-face with him. It was easy to see that he was sweating as much as I was, so it hadn't been caused by my bad dream. With a sigh, I heaved myself out of the bed and tiptoed my way around Nic and Gwen on the floor to get to the air conditioner. It had died sometime in the morning, which was something that had grown to be a common occurrence. But with a heavy smack to the side of it that left my palm stinging, it sputtered back to life.

"What… the hell are you doing?" Murph demanded, rolling over, his eyes squinted against the sun fighting through the blinds and still filled with sleep. I hadn't realized that his snoring had faltered and then stopped altogether when I'd hit the air conditioner. He scrubbed his hand up and down his face, trying to wake himself up but not bothering to sit up.

"I just figured you wouldn't want to be swimming in your own sweat when you woke up," I told him, shrugging as if to say I'd done him a favor. Really, the favor had been for myself. But I also didn't want any of my best friends dying in my room from being virtually cooked at the age of seventeen. "Plus, you know, it's already one in the afternoon on your birthday. It's time for us to get up and continue the celebrating," I reminded him. My lips stretched into a smile at the sight of his eyes popping wide open once he remembered the date.

Before I could walk back around to the other side of the bed, Gwen's eyes appeared over the edge of it. "Your voices couldn't get any louder," she claimed, propping her chin on the sheet covering the mattress. "Of course, unless you were yelling… I guess," she amended, cocking her head to the side in a thoughtful manner.

"It's time to get up anyway!" Nic exclaimed, pushing herself up just as I climbed back onto my bed from the bottom. Not really wanting to face the day just yet, I let myself fall onto the mattress with a bounce. Nic sat back against the window seat, taking a deep breath to adjust to the still stifling air as she pushed her red hair away from her face. "What time are we going to the tree house?" she inquired, dropping her hands back down to her lap. She looked to me expectantly and I could feel two other pairs of eyes on me as well.

I felt the pressure to answer even though I didn't have a clue as to what it may be. We were going to wing it but we were used to the planning being done by whoever's house we had stayed at. "Uh, whenever you guys want to, I guess," I replied a bit hesitantly. Both of my arms were planted under my pillow and pressing it into the side of my face, so my words came out slightly muffled. They heard me though because their reactions were instantaneous.

All three of them scrambled to pop up from where they had slept. I was confused, left in the dust of what exactly was going on through what seemed to be their collective mind. From my spot on the bed, I watched them bump around each other to get to the clothes they had packed away in their backpacks. Nic and Gwen raced off to the bathroom and Murph simply pulled on shorts and a new shirt over the undershirt he had worn to sleep in. I was much slower than they were, taking my time to stretch out my limbs before slipping out of bed again. I crossed to the dresser and pulled a bathing suit from one of the drawers and a pair of shorts from the other, and then made my way across the hall to use my mother's bathroom. When I returned fully changed and looking for a shirt to pull over my bathing suit top, my friends were ready to go.

"You guys are pretty eager to go party." Once again, I added to myself. Dominic's party had been fun, being with him and around all of my friends as well as people I still didn't know. It was even easy to forget whatever had passed between Alex and I when I was kissing Dominic because he had been his normal self when I talked to him later in the night. But I was honestly sick of parties. Even this one at the tree house for my best friend's birthday wasn't something I was really looking forward to, and it couldn't exactly be called a party. But I was going to suck it up because it was Murph and because he deserved way more than this small gathering. "I guess I should text Alex and the others to let them know we're going already," I mumbled absentmindedly as I pulled an old t-shirt cut into a tank top over my head. No one paid me much attention though; they only nodded with a bobbing motion to their head in a manner that told me they didn't particularly care and then dragged me from my room.

We only stopped downstairs long enough to gather everything we had planned to bring along, but we were in the car and headed to our old sanctuary only a half hour after waking up. Driving down the lane that led us to the fort we had claimed as our own, I saw that the trees were even greener and fuller than they had been at the start of summer. The sun shown through each leaf, creating a jade world beneath the lowest branches. I hardly wanted to help unload whatever we had brought, my eyes drawn to the stream flowing slowly down to the swimming hole. The water was surely cool and I couldn't wait to sit by it with my feet touching the muddy bottom.

We stored most of our things inside the fort, pushing a cooler up the ladder last and onto the floor. Before he could even get down from the rungs, Murph flipped the lid open on the cooler and extracted a can from the ice within. He popped it open as he climbed down, yelling an enthusiastic "Happy birthday to me!" He then chugged the contents of the can in twenty seconds flat.

I laughed at him as I slipped off my Converse without bothering with the laces and threw them into the fort. They weren't as beat up as my Vans, but still had at least two holes in each of them and looked as if I had been wearing them since eighth grade -which I had been. They were decorated with words and pictures drawn by my friends in Sharpie though and it would kill me if anything happened to them. With all of our other things was the safest place for them while I went barefoot. "Alex is on his way," I announced to the others, meandering toward the water while I stared down at my phone.

The others were sitting alongside the small river, each of them already holding a drink. They nodded, preoccupied, as I joined them, dipping my feet into the steady stream. The air was already filled with conversation and laughter, joining the birdsong throughout the forest and the trickling of the water over rocks. I couldn't say that I was paying attention to whatever was being said though. My stomach felt weird, hollow yet queasy and filled with knots, and I somehow knew it had to do with seeing Alex. I hadn't seen him since Dominic's birthday, though we had talked. Nearly two weeks without spending time with him was weirding me out and I was starting to think that there was more to it than me just being used to him being around. What it really was, I couldn't say, but I tried to focus more on it though than the nightmare I'd had this morning.

Quicker than I thought, the sound of another car crunching down the lane broke my reverie. One small glance told me it was Alex and I jumped up instantly to greet him. Behind him, two other cars followed, and my best friends joined me to say hello to everyone else coming. I waved to Jack, Rian, Kara, Zack, and his girlfriend as they got out of the other cars, but I stayed where I was when I noticed Alex barely even said hello. He waved and gave a meager smile before pacing directly to the cooler partially hanging over the top of the ladder. Our group was already talking and hugging and mingling by them time he came back over. I was still all unexplained nerves, so I stayed away from him and managed to not even have to fake my smile as I talked with everyone else as we sat on the old fallen trees around the pseudo fire pit.

I was naturally the only one of us not drinking, but I didn't feel out of place for once. It was impossible for me to hate time spent in this place, even if it currently held insignificant elements that I didn't care for. Though I knew he could have had something much more elaborate and fitting for him, I could tell Murph was enjoying his birthday, with Gwen, Nic, and I sharing a seat with him and all the friends we had grown closer to in our favorite hideout. I didn't want to leave his side, my arm wrapped around his waist and my head on his shoulder as the afternoon went on.

After a couple hours though, Alex got up from his own seat under the pretense of getting another drink. On his way back, he crouched down beside my end of the fallen tree. "Can we talk?" he asked me, not finding the need to whisper it to me. The way he had said it was enough to imply he wanted it to be a private conversation. He didn't sound somber or grim though, so a smile formed on my lips and I nodded without hesitation. He set his can down in the dirt by my feet and then led me away from our friends, down the trail that led to the swimming hole that I was hoping to get to today. As soon as we were out of sight of the others, some impulse drove me to take his hand. He didn't recoil, but simply laced our fingers. He stopped after we had walked for a few silent minutes and faced me, our hands still clasped. "Lisa's coming home tomorrow," he announced without preamble.

It took me a moment to process his words. Lisa? Who was Lisa? I knew I had heard the name before, but it felt like a lifetime since I had last heard it. But it had only been a couple months without mention of her. Lisa was Alex's girlfriend. The one he sometimes cheated on when they broke up after petty fights. The one that he had cheated on with me because he had willingly kissed me. I ripped my hand out of his, suddenly furious with him for turning me into the other woman. "Alright. So… what?" I responded, my tone sarcastic and clipped as I crossed my arms tightly over my chest.

"So we should probably stop whatever we're doing," he suggested like it was obvious. He sounded pained though, as if it hurt him to say the words. I couldn't understand why, and even if I did, I wasn't going to feel sorry for him.

"What are we doing?" I threw back at him, not even caring how loud it was or if it carried back to the others. "I kissed you in a moment of weakness, when everything else was a mess in my mind. But you kissed me back, Alex. You didn't stop me. And on my roof, you kissed me first. I don't even know what it is that's going on," I spat. "We're friends. Are you saying we should stop that? Or just this thing where we going around holding hands behind everyone's backs? Because that thing still needs defined for me."

He shook his head, opening his mouth to tell me what exactly he meant. There was a rustling behind me on the stomped down path though. My heart stopped a second, the images of zombies from my dream flashing before my eyes as I whipped around. But the loud talking and more laughing assured me that it was just our friends. Gwen's voice was the loudest and she spoke in the wondering voice she sometimes took on. "Shooting stars," she stated as if it was a good enough opening line, and then paused until Jack urged her to go on. "Well, I always think about them. Like, who shot them? To make them go across the sky, you know? There's not some major giant up there shooting stars out of a gun, is there?" she went on, looking for confirmation.

Briefly, I could hear them all laugh and then Nic start to gently explain it to her. But her words were drowned out by Alex. "Is she always so stupid?" he wondered aloud, a nervous chuckle escaping his lips as he shook his head once more.

My head snapped back so I could face him. "She is not stupid," I corrected him between clenched teeth, so boldly I thought it might actually knock him to the ground. "You know what, Alex? Fine. We're done doing 'whatever we're doing.' It's no problem to me," I promised him, and stepped into the high grass that lined the trail to let him go back to the fort. Mostly, I just didn't want him to see the tears shining in my eyes. I couldn't explain them to myself; I didn't want to have to try to do so for him.

He heaved a deep sigh but didn't wait any longer than that to head back down the path. As he made his way toward his car, he ran into our friends and gave them a short and fabricated explanation as to why he had to leave. I took the extra time to wipe my eyes clean and make sure none of my tears were shed. There were groans of disappointment from the others but they let him go and continued toward where I stood.

Nic was in the lead, and she held her hand out for me to take when she got to me. "What were you two talking about?" she questioned, raising her eyebrow as I joined them on the walk to the swimming hole.

"Nothing important," I answered with a shake of my head. "He uh… just wanted to see how things were going with Dominic since he was the one that practically forced us together by inviting Dominic to my party," I lied, hardly even having to search my thoughts for it. She didn't seem at all suspicious. She just nodded and probed me about the relationship herself as she continued to drag me forward so we could all go swimming to continue the celebration of Murph's birthday.