Forever 21

2 | Awakening

"We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death." ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Gasping for air, I shot out of bed like a bullet. It took me a minute to realize where I was. My bedroom. I pressed my head against the cold glass of my window and laughed even as my hand automatically rose to touch my neck. A familiar, but pleasant tingle shot through my body every time my fingers glided over the sensitive skin, but otherwise it was in good repair. There was no blood, no gore and I clearly wasn’t dead.

I laughed at the absurdity of my panic, because there simply wasn’t much else I could do. Usually my version of off the wall dreams was buying shoes that were out of my meager student budget. To think that I had, even for a moment, believed that I’d died was enough to make me walk back to my bed and sit down. Indigestion, that had to be the reason. There were studies that linked indigestion and food with nightmares and odd dreams. If dreaming of cerulean eyed bloodsuckers didn’t classify as an odd dream, I was a monkey’s uncle. Bottom line? Alcohol and I did not mix well and I would think twice before I imbibed in the drink again.

A knock on my bedroom door had me spinning around in my bed to face the concerned red head that let herself in without waiting for me to give her permission.

“Hey Ivy!”

My voice was a tad on the groggy side, but that aside I feeling pretty good. I thanked my lucky stars that I wasn’t feeling hung over and crossed my legs to sit Indian style, scooting backward to give her some extra room to sit on my small twin sized bed. She looked at me oddly, her eyes void of the playful glimmer they always seemed to hold.

“Hey.”

Cocking my head to the side in question, I frowned. Apparently I was the only lucky one. “Hangover?”

“No,” she replied slowly, giving me a frown of her own. “Cam, what do you remember of the party?”

She came over and sat down on the spot I’d made for her, one leg beneath her and the other dangling over the side.

“I remember you ditching me,” I teased.

Ivy gave me a small half smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Yeah, about that…” She looked up at the ceiling and blinked rapidly. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought she was trying not to cry. “I am so sorry, Cam. If I’d known…”

She sniffed quietly and my mouth dropped open. She was trying not to cry. In the few years that I’d known Ivy, not once had I seen her close to tears. Ivy didn’t cry; it was plain and simple. She was strong, confident… invincible. Heck, I’d begun to think of her as my own personal superhero. To say that her almost-tears alarmed me would be an understatement. I shifted my legs beneath me so I could kneel toward her, hoping and praying that I could comfort her. If she was crying, something was extremely wrong.

“Ivy! Hey, hey… what’s the matter? Did some guy leave you high and dry?”

She shook her head and though she hadn’t shed one tear, she gave me a watery laugh. “No, no… It has nothing to do with me… What do you-” Ivy stopped and took a deep breath. I watched her emotions melt away until her face was passive and unreadable. She took another breath and tried again. “What do you remember from last night?”

Her face might have been impassive, but her voice was not. I could sense the urgency in her voice so confusedly I proceeded to tell her about everything I remembered, from the mammogram guy to the hamburger.

“And that’s the last thing you remember?” She eyed me speculatively, her tone saying that she was hesitant to believe me.

“Well,” I paused, recalling my dream, “I dreamt that I met a guy named Fate. He was too good looking to be more than a figment of my imagination, which is disappointing because I actually held a real conversation with him.”