Shadows of the World

Before I went to bed that night, I closed my eyes, interlocked my fingers and pulled on the strings that were connecting me and made a wish. I know that I am trying to forget him. I know that I am trying to forget that dream, but please, please, could I just have another beautiful dream like that again? Could I please have another dream where I feel like I'm on fire? Could I have another dream where I am so perfect that I want to cry? Could I just have another dream that makes me never want to wake up? I know this may be a stretch, but I just want to feel, once more, just for tonight. I promise I won't ask you again. Please, just for tonight let me have a good dream. It was a silly wish, I knew, but I couldn't help myself. Sometimes, I never know how I will act.

"You all right, Clio?" came my dad's voice. I snapped apart quickly and looked at my father, who was watching me with concern.

I smiled brilliantly. "Yes. Yes, I'm fine. Just thinking." My words came out breathless and my dad wandered into my white room. I crawled into my bed, hoping he'd get the message that I wanted to go to sleep. I didn't think he did. He just looked around and then sat down on my bed. I looked at him carefully, wondering what I should do to give him more of a hint. But he didn't look like he'd be dissuaded. He regarded me closely.

With a deep inhale of breath, he opened his mouth to speak. "Clio, your mother and I have been, well, worried about you." I braced myself against this attack, only nodding slowly with understanding. "Ever since your brother went away to college, it seems like you've become a different person enitrely." This all sounded so well rehearsed. As if he'd praticed this for hours, in front of his mirror. I just watched him, blinking. "Sometimes, it's like you're not even there, like you've gone off into some dream world," he told me. "I just wanted to make sure that you're all right," he finally said.

I shrugged and smiled. "I'm fine, dad," I said. It wasn't a lie, I was fine. So what if sometimes I just thought about other things? It wasn't like I needed to worry about boys and makeup and clothes and grades all the time. Sometimes, I just wanted to exist in a world where it all didn't matter. And so what if that world was my mind? For a brief second, I felt the sensation of fingers on my skin. I swallowed and looked at my father, who sat, looking concerned. "Honestly, dad." He sighed and stood up.

"Goodnight," he said to me.

"Goodnight," I answered. My dad gave me one last long, strange look before he turned off the light. I exhaled a deep breath I didn't even know I was holding in and laid down on my pillow. I didn't understand why he thought it was so wrong for me to want to go somewhere else sometimes. I didn't have to be here, on Earth, every waking second. Sometimes I could just float away and leave reality. Sometimes I could just dissapear, if only for a few moments to a place where life was not such a push, not such a pull and more an ebb and flow. I closed my eyes and put my hands over my head. My window was open, just a crack.

My mind filled with last night's dream. In the darkness, alone, I reveled in it. I smiled when I thought of his hands on me, his kiss. I hated thinking like this, but I couldn't help it. All day I'd been trying to deny the inevitable. It all was so good. It all was so wonderful. If I could choose one dream to dream the rest of my life, that would be it. Again, I felt the sensation of his fingers on me skin, but I knew I was just trying to conjure up feelings and images. I was trying so hard to make this real that I almost believed that it was. That was the most dissapointing thing of all. The fact that it wasn't real. The fact that Carson Knight would never touch me the way he did in my dream, never kiss me like that, never smile at me, never love me the way he did. In an instant, I hated the dream and I hated Carson...a feeling that died just as quickly as it had come. I was left with the wishing that it was real, and imaging that it really had happened.

The cold night air blew on me like a kiss. I tried to push out every other thought besides sleeping, and found that it was harder than it seemed. When I concentrated on nothing but sleeping, I felt like I was doing everything but sleeping. I just wanted one more happy dream. Just one more dream...just one. I still stayed awake. I rolled over onto my right side and twirled a finger through my hair, opening my eyes. In the dark, an eerie shadow seemed cast over everything. The chair with my jacket on it looked like a goblin's head. My piggy bank on my book case made the entire thing look like a fearsome monster with a huge head. I closed my eyes and closed out the fear. I hadn't been afraid of the dark since I was seven. Why should I be now?

A whisper seemed to come through my window, carried along by the cold air. My toes turned icy cold, but I listened without hesitation. Sleep... it said. Sleep now. I didn't know where it had come from, or even that it was real, but I did my best to obey. My muscles relaxed and soon, the warm, deep current of dreaming washed over me, caressing me carefully.

A young man stood with his back against me and I watched him. A dark room. A tall monster and a sneering gobling, along with a young girl who looked like she was the shape of a lamp. Everything kept arranging and rearranging. The young man turned to me, black hair, blue eyes, thin frame. Smiling at me with such brilliance and innocence that when he gave me his hand, I took it immediatley. He held onto me. A racking cough filled his body. Fear surged through my veins, it was more than he seemed, more than he seemed.

"Are you all right?" My words like water, gargling out. He nodded and held tighter to my hand. Then somehow we were in grass and billions of stars shone overhead and I knew we had to get somewhere. Pulling on his hand, leading him forward, to somewhere that we had to get to. His cough clutching at his chest. "Come! Come!" My words were so slow and and thick, it was taffy in my mouth. He looked up with blue eyes at the sky and I looked up to. Again in the dark room. The sneering goblin that didn't move, the young girl the shape of a lamp, the large monster. There was no one there besides us. He turned me around and I saw a bed. A bed where a girl was sleeping. I leaned down at the girl. She wore my face.

Hands tightening around my fingers. Letting go, falling free onto myself. Trying to grab hold of anyone, anything. Then...a hand. A light. Light in the darkness. A hand. Green eyes. A smile, a touch. Hope.

Morning.

I woke with a start and sat right up, my breathing heavy. I recognized instantly Carson Knight pulling me from the darkness, but who was the other man? Who was the other boy, who was the one with the black hair and blue eyes. My dream was a mess of confusion. It was so dark that entire dream. No, it had changed. It had changed when Carson had offered me his hand and I'd felt hope flood through me, as if this darkness had been weighing me down but then there he was. I closed my eyes, trying to sort out what I felt. Scared for the boy. Scared of the darkness. Happiness. I looked around my room. My chair was just a chair, my book shelf, just a book shelf. My lamp, just a lamp. There was nothing out of the ordinary, but I could still see it clearly if I blinked. It was strange. Almost as if the dream was supposed to be a nightmare, but then, but then Carson had saved me.

I laughed to myself. I'm crazy, I joked in my head, but I still felt doubt claw at my stomach. Something, whatever it was, was not right with my dreams. They were too real. Way too real.

The strangest part was that I dressed and brushed and washed with the weirdest clarity. It was like all my life I'd been sleeping and I'd just woken up. I didn't know how long this feeling would last, but oddly, I really liked it. A smile worked its way on my lips and calm calamity kind of rushed about me. For all that I'd been scared, nothing was the matter this morning. I practically skipped downstairs. My mom and especially my dad were shocked at my personality. They were silent but awestruck as I hummed a tune I'd heard on the radio the day before while I waited for my toast to pop up. I had more time this morning, too. It was like everything was going right and it was like I was looking through a diamond, everything sparkled. Apparantley, Murphy's Law did not apply to me.

No movement went unnoticed as I drove. My eyes were focused on everything around me, my eyes darted from side to side, up and down, watching for cars, making sure I wasn't going to hit anything. I'd never been scared of my reckless driving before, but now I realized that there was much I usually missed in my distraction.

I even parked closer to school, and I ended up doing a fine job parking. I actually got out of my car and marveled. Marveled at my actually dandy parking job. I even mustered up a triumphant "Ha!" as I closed my door and walked with a bounce in my step to the school.

Helena ran up to me quickly. Helena in her tight jeans, Nordic sweater and flip flops. Her face was one of pure awe and amusement. "Come on, come on!" she shouted to me and I picked up the pace a little to meet her halfway. Her hand grappled my wrist tightly and pulled me along.

"What?" I asked sharply and she shook her head, just running into the school. I saw a group of people standing in a group, a circle, around something. "What?" I repeated again, losing all my sense of clarity and letting dread seep through me. What if it was a dead body? Or someone just had a seizure! Were there any epileptics at my school? I had no idea. Helena pushed her way through the various kids to where I could finally see what was going on.

It was a fight.

Two boys stood locked in battle, and I recognized one of them. It was Carson Knight, with an expression that made me shiver. If looks could kill, we'd all be dead. There were no words, no shouts of glory, nothing. Everyone was silently dumb, watching the two boys fight. Carson threw a punch, the other boy returned it. We all watched as they started beating each other to a bloody pulp. I swallowed bile and looked away. Where were the teachers, the principal? Finally, I saw someone dragging our principal behind him. I felt relief. "All right, all right, break it up!" he shouted, setting people to disperse quickly. Carson and the other boy were still there, hurting each other, but finally the principal dragged them apart. "That's quite enough!" he shouted and they stopped aprubtly, looking hurt.

The vice-principal started running to where the fight had taken place and where I still stood. I was one of only a few other people who were still watching this whole scene, but I couldn't look away. Carson's green eyes in the darkness. Light. His hand. Hope. A smile. A light. What had happened from the boy from my dream? There was no way he couldn't not exist.

"Honestly, Mr. Knight! This is Mr. Blanchard's first day, and yet you insist on starting a fight with him? What's gotten into you, you were never the violent type!" The vice principal's words made Carson look down. But then he looked back up and his gaze met mine. I swallowed again and looked to my side where Helena had been. She'd already left. I groaned and when I looked back, the two men were leading the two boys away, in seperate directions.

Carson was led far away by the vice principal while Mr. Blanchard was turned toward us. I felt a chill run through me as I saw the new boy's face. He was the one from my dream. I knew his face like I knew my own. It was him. And as if right on cue, he started coughing, hacking. He and the principal stopped walking so the boy could catch his breath. I caught eyes with the principal. "Come on Miss Pattinson. Nothing to see here. Get to your class." With a nod, I left quickly.

But it was him, I knew it was him. I ran a hand through my hair. What did it mean? Was I going crazy? How could I have a dream about someone I didn't know existed and then see the next day? And why was he fighting with Carson, who was also in my dream? Taking a deep breath, I tried to push back the thought that my dreams were some kind of message. But of what? And why was it happening to me?