ACoN Chapter Three

Chapter Three: They Don’t Understand

Dinner that night was pretty normal, I suppose.  It hadn’t been my favorite dish of Aunt Sissy’s but I was polite enough to at least pick through it on a normal night, so the fact that I was picking through it tonight wasn’t something to notice.  Uncle Ben was still out of town on a business trip (California, the lucky) but the table felt filled with Kevin’s constant stream of telling us about his interaction with an old friend earlier.

            “I’ve actually been considering going back to school,” he said around a bite of chicken, “maybe a whole different subject, though.”

            “It sounds like a good idea,” Sissy said.  I tuned them out, not on purpose, but because my head was all cluttered with thoughts of Michael.

            A piece of my heart clenched when I thought of him.  I had let him down.  But that’s not real.

            But that’s not a real argument now, is it?

            He’s real.  He goes to my school.  No, I go to his school.

            And I let him down.

            Not that he knew the whole story.  Not at all.  If he thought that I had just stopped he was wrong.  There had been a very good reason for that, and I should have told him the truth.  After storming out like that I wasn’t sure I trusted him to handle it, though, and sharing felt wrong.  Like he was a complete stranger.

            Which he is.

            But I used to know him so well.

            I pushed away my plate and got up.  Sissy looked at it and sighed.  I never complained, but I was a rather picky eater, and I knew that got to her.

            “I’m not feeling well,” I excused myself.  “I’m sorry.  Maybe I can make dinner Saturday?” I knew Kevin wouldn’t be here that night and Ben got home Sunday morning.

            “Yes, alright.  I didn’t get to ask, did you have a good day?”

            “It was fine.”

            She smiled a tired smile.  The wrinkles under her eyes- mostly from laughter- seemed to appear deeper than before.  “Do you want to see your mom this weekend?”

            The question startled me and reflexively I said “no” but a part of me said “yes”.  Out loud I compromised, “Maybe next weekend.”

            Sissy nodded and I pretty much ran upstairs to my room to finish my homework, take a shower, swallow my pills, and crash into oblivion.

A nightmare can appear as anything, obviously, if someone is afraid of it, or if the dream twists it around.  Nightmares are caused by stress, and unless you’re a dream walker you can’t really combat them.  Sometimes symptoms appear around a dream right before they’re about to happen, like all the colors being washed out to grayscale, or a smell rising out of everything, or, my personal favorite, the people start to melt.  It’s actually very cool.

            This time there was no warning.

In history I took my seat and waited for Michael to show up.  He was one of the last to arrive and when he did he didn’t look at me right away.  Mr. Rabble started talking, going over the homework he had assigned last night, because, you know, teachers.

            I listened intently to the lesson just to distract myself.  Christopher Columbus today.

            “He seems like a nightmare,” Angie whispered into my ear and I jumped.

            “What?” I asked sharply.

            She looked at me sideways.  “Columbus sounds like a nightmare.  An asshole.  You know, for what he did to all the native people.”

            “Right,” I blinked away a bead of sweat.  “An ass.”

            At the end of class we got another homework assignment and some time to work on it.  Which, guess what, no one did.  That was when Michael finally looked at me.  Then, he got up and came over.

            Angie gave me a look that seemed to capture both excitement and anger.

            “Hello, I don’t think we’ve met.” He stuck out his hand.  I didn’t know what he was doing.  Was he making fun of me?

            “Yesterday I was a bit of a jerk but I’d really like to get to know you,” he nodded at his hand.  I reached out and shook it.  “I’m Michael.”

            “Kaylor.”

            “I didn’t know that,” he said, a smile at the corner of his lips.

            “Well,” I blushed, “I prefer to go by my nickname.”

            “Kaya.”

            I nodded at the same time Angie said, “Wow, no one ever guesses that’s her nick name.  I’m Angela, by the way.” They shook hands.

            The bell rang and Michael got up.  “I’ll see you later, Kaya.”

            I nodded.  I was hit by déjà vu as he walked out the door.