CHAPTER 22 – Andie
My eyes peel open to the sounds of my alarm clock. In a flash, I spring up from my bed and retreat to the other side of my bedroom. The beeping of my alarm growing. I take a deep breath and slowly cross the room to silence the alarm while still warily assessing my bed. I shuffle back to my desk and sit down as my emotions and thoughts try to come to some understanding. It's all real, isn't it? Devin's dream world isn't just something I made up in my mind. It's a real place.
Why else would I dream up an empty roof for a night? No, shut up. Stop trying to logic yourself out of this because you can't win. You've been going to the same dream for over a week. Even I have to concede that this is INSANE, but what else makes sense? Everything about dreaming has felt different since that moment when I was bumped to the sand, and it hasn't gone back since. And Devin, I've thought it before and now it seems even clearer. I don't think I could think him up. The pain that was so clearly masked on his face when he finally did show up... and his hand. There's so much he isn't telling me and I don't know how to help him. How do you fake that? How do you add that emotion to others? I don't know what this all means, or if I have really gone crazy, but I truly believe that this dream world is real and Devin is very much real too.
And if the world is real, that mean's everything Devin fears and is trying to protect me from with the Interpreters, that's real too.
The door to my bedroom swings open and I stifle a scream. Mom seems just as startled as she stares at me in my pajamas standing in the middle of my room.
"Andromeda, what are you doing? If this is your way of trying to—"
I interrupt her, "What?"
"Your dad's already in the car. Come on we have three plus hours of driving. Let's get going."
Oh... the campus tour. Crap.
I rush to my closet and throw on some clothes and meet my parents in the car, the reggae music already booming from the speakers. My dad pulls out of the driveway and my mom wastes no time turning in her seat to offer her advice, "Remember to fill out an information card when we get to the admissions office. You know they track how many times you come to see campus."
"Yep." I sigh.
"And make sure you have some questions prepared for the admissions counselor. Show you're interested."
I nod noncommittally and turn to look out the window. The sounds of Lee "Scratch" Perry and the sight of flashing palm trees out the window pulling my mind to thoughts of garden benches and fountains with colorful fish. It's real.
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The rest of the day passes without much excitement. My mind wanders on most of the drive to and from San Luis Obispo. Cal Poly's campus is gorgeous, of course, but college campus tours lose a little bit of their spark when you've seen the school twice before already. Mom somehow managed to talk them into showing us inside the engineering building, so that was something different I guess. Honestly, it was hard to focus much on the real world when my mind couldn't stop thinking about the dream one.
We stop at In-N-Out on the drive back for dinner. At home, the rest of my night is consumed with homework. Mostly involving starting a calculus problem, getting online to procrastinate, returning to the problem, finally figuring it out, moving to the next one, and repeating the cycle over. I don't finish my homework until well after dinner and the only thing that motivates me to hurry up and finish it is the prospect of seeing Devin again.
Finally, I finish my one-hour homework, which spanned nearly three and go through my nightly routine. It's amazing how fast time can fly when you are putting something off. I shake away my wayward thoughts as I put on my pajamas. I cross the room and turn on my fan before I turn around and then I stop. My eyes look at my bed, but for some reason I can't quite take a step forward toward it. I'm frozen with the new realization, or at least the new acceptance, that Devin and his dream world are real and waiting for me. I thought I'd come to terms with it this morning when it all finally clicked together that none of this was simply created in my own mind. But I guess I still haven't fully accepted it, because I can't make my foot move from my chilled floorboards.
YOU ARE READING
But A Dream
Teen Fiction"Last night, when we were ducking into doorways... we weren't both hiding from the Interpreters, were we?" Words fail me again, so I just nod slowly. She turns back to the fountain. "Why don't you want them to see me?" I hesitate, not sure how to r...
