The Time of Change

Late

 Eleven Years Later

I awake with a start. My whole body is violently shaking and I can't control it. Hugging my arms around myself, I sit up and push my glasses up my nose, dimly recognizing that I am not in my bed. The way the surface beneath me gives off a leathery moan tells me that I must have dozed off on the couch. I don't really remember what I was doing before that... What had I been doing? I suppose, in retrospect, it doesn't matter. It would be nice to actually remember something correctly, though.

The dream I just came out of, however, is still very fresh in my mind. It was so strange. Why was I dreaming about that box? That blue box and the sound it made, they filled the dream-me with such ecstasy. And that makes no sense whatsoever. A noise and a police box are two of the most totally normal and uninteresting things to the rest of the world. Well, the box is a bit abnormal nowadays but that's beside my point. No one in their right mind would become so incredibly happy at the sight or sound of that. Nobody sane would find those things in any way worth attention.

And yet here I am dreaming about it. I guess that says a lot about me.

I let myself sigh, and I put my elbows on my knees, resting my chin on my hands. The more I think about that dream, the more it starts dissipating from my brain. I grasp at the inner reaches of my head but it's just not there, not tangible enough for me to hold onto for more than a few milliseconds. Unfortunately, this happens all the time to me, with a variety of subjects. Thoughts run together deep inside, making them a bit dark and indecipherable even to myself. Not even a doctor would be able to understand those random strings of emotion and ideas that just become big blobs of incoherent idiocy. No doctor from this world, at least.

I'm distracted by a thin strip of sunlight making an effort to blind me through the refraction of my glasses. I start to sit in a different position to get out of the light when I realize that I only fell asleep for a few minutes. The sun can't possibly be out yet. Frantically I scramble to pick up my iPhone, which is lying next to me on the cheap loveseat. I click the screen on.

7:55 AM, it tells me.

School starts at eight.

I jump to my feet and fly into my bedroom, throwing my clothes from last night on the bed and randomly choosing something out of my closet. I don't even look at it as I wriggle into the top and way-too-skinny skinny jeans. I don't have time to regret not looking, even though I can already feel the breath being squeezed out of me. I automatically grab my favorite pair of black spiky boots and run down the hall to my doll-house-sized kitchen. I don't stop to eat breakfast or even to put my shoes on; I simply sprint out the back door, snatching my car keys off the hanger by it, and run in my socks across the freezing concrete to my car. As soon as I jam the key in the ignition, my foot is on the gas pedal, my hand flipping it into reverse, and I'm on the road driving like a madwoman toward the high school. It registers in the back of my mind that I forgot to lock the door to my house, but I don't even consider turning back. The early morning traffic, amazingly, seems to yield for me and I make it to the parking lot in a shocking three minutes. It usually takes me ten to get here.

I shove the boots on my feet and zip them up over the jeans to where they stop right below my shin and remove the key and its chain from my car, locking it over my shoulder as I dash up the front steps to the school. Running down the empty hallway, I debate stopping by my locker for my Advanced European Literature book, since we never use it in class anyway and I bring it every day. What's one day without it? But my anxious inner self counters, What if today is the day you need it? What if Ms. Jacobson gives an open-book test?