ACoN Chapter One

Chapter One: These Fragile Things

“Goodnight, sweet heart,” mother tucked me in.  I smiled at her drowsily.  It had been a long day of visiting my cousins.  They lived in Hawaii, but for the summer had decided to stay on the continental United States and see their family.

            “Goodnight, mommy.”  Mother turned off the lights and blew me one last kiss as she closed the door with a quiet click.

            Immediately I closed my eyes.  At this point I was adept at calling up sleep and it was no trouble to plunge right into it.  My own dream swam around me, a weak patch of memories from the day that would slowly morph into the more extreme.  Normally I blew past my own dreams and fled into the neighboring ones, but this time I slowed down to look around me.  Everything was larger than life and I felt like a mosquito walking around in a room of faces.  The dream flickered at the edges and the colors in it were faded, like a receipt left in the sun.  It worried me to think that possibly, I should spend more time in my own dreams, in case they spoiled in my head and my imagination got stuck.

            But I couldn’t spend too much time, here.  I had to meet Michael.  Leaving a dream was easier all the time.  Just find the edge, or a weak spot in the middle, where reality doesn’t hold up in the least, and push with your mind.  Make it into something that can let you out- a door, a window, a hole.  I, personally, preferred a slide.  I slid down it, focusing on landing in whatever dream Michael would be romping around in.  The more time we spent with each other, the better we were at finding each other.

            Happily, I landed on my feet and did a little twirl.  That’s another thing.  In the dream worlds you wear whatever you want, and I was wearing my favorite dress.  It was pink and white, with puffy sleeves, and made me feel like a princess.

            Michael clapped and laughed.  I laughed, too.  The world around us was filled with clouds that soared up in the sky and down next to the earth.  They were solid things, not the cold, white, water vapor they were meant to be.  I reached out and touched one, feeling the smooth edges of it.  The texture reminded me of my kitchen sink at home.

            “Come on, you’ll never believe what I found!”  Michael grabbed my hand and pulled me along.  “It’s the greatest thing.”

            “What?” I ran alongside him, dodging the clouds every once in a while.  “What!” I grew more excited with every passing moment.

            We came to the spot where he had pushed through into this dream to look for me.  It was an old wooden door, with cracks in it, and some ivy growing through.  Something out of a fantasy story or castle or madman’s laboratory.  “It’s through here,” he assured me, and we went through the door together.

            Wherever we ended up was different than what he had been planning.  A look of disappointment spread through his face.  “It changed, already.  It was the coolest thing.  The dream was in space, and there were these aliens, who were actually rather nice, and were hiding the Hero who was only wearing their underwear, and then there was this rain that was coming to destroy everyone and only the Hero could stop it by finding this dog that could speak with its mind,” he took a breath and I gave him a light punch on the arm.

            “It’s fine.  Let’s look around this one.”

            Every dream is different just as every person is different.  Sometimes they tell stories, and sometimes they are just a moment frozen, and sometimes they are just feelings and colors and flashes of images.  There are no two dreams the same, even the recurring ones.  Very rarely do they make any sort of sense upon waking up, but during the dream, for a dream-walker, they do make a sort of sense that perhaps only we can grasp.

            There is the belief that there are hidden messages in dreams.  Symbols that can predict the future or define the past.  I wouldn’t say that was incorrect, I’m sure there’s a reason behind everything, but I don’t know how accurate they actually are.  I’ve never paid much attention to them at all.

            Michael and I wandered through the dream that was a rather boring seeming one.  Everything was pretty much in shades of grey.  Washed out and watery.  Like a painting that has turned moldy.  Everything was cookie cutter.  Large, rectangular sky scrapers with windows reflecting an invisible sun.  Blocks of houses with the gabled roof, two-car garage, manicured lawn, and brown siding.  There was no one.

            “It was so much better, before,” he mumbled under his breath.

            “Yeah,” I sighed.  “Now I sort of wish I had seen it.”

            “Should we go find another dream?”

            I nodded and we turned the way we had come, but the landscape had changed.  Creating a doorway is harder when it’s not your dream, so we preferred to use the same ones if we could.  Now we had no way to find it.

            “That’s a bit creepy, now, isn’t it?”  We moved closer together, our shoulders touching.  The heat between us felt like static electricity and we jerked apart as if a ghost had flown between us.  It was then that we realized what we had stumbled into.  A nightmare.

“Kaya!” my aunt yelled from down below.  “You’re going to be late if you sleep any longer!”  But she was wrong- I hadn’t been asleep.

            I shuffled through my backpack.  Nerves bit into my stomach.  For my junior year of high school I was transferring to a better one.  An art school, for the rich and prodigious.  I was of the latter.  I wasn’t really that big into doing art, honestly, but my Aunt had had me submit a few pieces for a scholarship competition and I ended up winning.  Painting was a way to get rid of all the pent-up energy I had.  Once upon a time I had used up my creative juices with pure imagination.

            In my backpack was everything a normal student would carry around- books, pencils, papers- but alongside those things were my two pill bottles and an emergency inhaler I might need.  The doctors insisted and I was ready to take anything to keep myself sane.

            Leaving my room I saw myself in the mirror.  Long sleeves and pants.  Dark eyeliner, raccoon-ed eyes, and a heavy amount of concealer.  My naturally brown hair had been died darker over the summer for personal reasons.  My normally blue eyes looked hooded and almost gray.  Like unshed tears, I supposed.  Angry at the thought I slammed the door on my way out of the room.

            “I’m walking to school,” I tossed over my shoulder.  “Grab something to eat there.”

            Aunt Sissy sighed.  “Make good decisions,” and grabbed me for a hug as I tried to run out of the room.

            “See you later,” I almost made it out the door without running into Kevin, my cousin, but no such luck.

            “Bye, brat,” he called after me as I squeezed past him to the front yard.  Growing up we’d had a lot in common, but him being three years older than me and a college dropout changed that.  We weren’t “mean” to each other, but he knew which buttons to push to get a reaction and so did I.

“Kaylor Strain,” Angie leaned up against my locker, effectively closing the door and forcing me to actually face her.  “Ready for the first day?” her smile was bright and her eyes gleamed wickedly.

            Angela Heart was another new student here at Academy, but for a different reason.  She’d just moved in with her dad, permanently, and so was in need of a new school.  I was here on scholarship.  You’d think that would set us worlds apart, but Angie had always been the black sheep in her family as well, preferring abstract art to stocks.

            True to my word I had walked to school, listening to my regular soundtrack.  The cafeteria opened early and coffee was free.  Then I’d hunkered in the corner to people watch and sketch while waiting for the day to get started.

            “Not really,” I sighed, moving to lean next to her.  “What’s our first class?”  It was such a small school that they tried to keep people together from freshman year.  Us coming in the middle pretty much gave us the same exact schedule with the exceptions of math- where she was a prodigy- and newspaper- which, for whatever reason, counted as my gym credit, for which I was eternally grateful.

            “American history,” I could hear the eye-roll.  “Don’t you just love that subject?”

            I laughed.  We both knew I had taken it last year already, the public schools around here let you choose when you wanted it.

            “I’ll help you through your homework.”

            “Counting on it,” she winked and sprang away from the wall as the warning bell rang.  “Let’s go.  Best to get seats now before all the good ones are taken.”  She was, of course, referring to the boys.

            Angie and I had met over the summer.  I’d been working at the local theater and she’d come waltzing in, bored out of her mind.  We hung out and became fast friends, which was nice for a change.  I’d had “friends” at my last school, but none of them had ever really gotten me like Angie did.  Through our summer adventures we learned that the rich boys from Academy really were everything they were said to be and then some.

            Our history class was taught by an older guy who’d assigned a bunch summer reading neither of us had done.  I didn’t have the patience for books and Angie just didn’t care for history at all.  I’d set the guy up to be old and stodgy, but in truth, he actually had plenty of energy and sense of humor.  He asked us, as we were coming in (being some of the first to arrive) whether we had done the work.  Before we could answer with a lie he chuckled and shooed us along.  He knew no-one had done it.

            Angie slid next to a pair of twin guys.  Green eyes and blondish-brown hair and really tall.  One wore a green sweater and the other glasses.  Adorable.  I’m not as guy crazy as Angie, but I can appreciate a work of art when I see one.

            Slowly people trickled in.  I busied myself with getting out a notebook and hiding a sketchpad behind it.  That’s why I didn’t notice the pair of dark eyes that had started watching me until Angie nudged me and whispered “six o’clock”.  I would have turned around then and there but the bell rang and the teacher- Mr. Rabble- began talking immediately.

            I tried to pay attention but now it was like I could feel the weight of those eyes drilling into the back of my neck.  I squirmed in my seat and finally, when Mr. Rabble wasn’t looking, I turned to see who was staring at me.  I tried to make it look like I was just glancing at the clock on the back wall but I was frozen when I saw who it was.

            Because.

            Because he shouldn’t have been here.

            Because he shouldn’t have even been real.  He was a figment of my imagination.

            Because the boy looking at me was… Michael.