In Your Dreams

Graduating with the Best

I didn't like that my mom and the school had a talk without me about setting up my own standards for graduation rather than giving me the normal diploma for everyone else who didn't have a messed up head. Essentially, I'd be getting the same piece of paper as Beth strapped to her chair, unable to do more than drool, smile, and point.

I felt bad for thinking that about Beth, since we were all in the same boat. To think I was less because I was in the same group as her couldn't be fair to Beth, but...

I could do more. I wasn't stupid. I just couldn't read or keep numbers from flipping places on the page. I could do math just fine, and I could remember science and history just fine enough to do oral tests. I could run, I could dance, I could fix a freaking totaled car with no problem!

But it didn't matter. Jeff had already made it pretty clear that I had the job at the car shop no matter what happened with high school and my degree, as long as I didn't make anymore oil screw ups. I had a job. I had a future. And it wasn't like I hated fixing cars.

Even so, as I hung my head off the side of my bed, my heels up the wall between a Porsche poster and a long picture of Benedict Cumberbatch, I drifted through the memories of my dreams with Basil. It was rare to have a reoccurring dream, right? With a reoccurring person who you somehow just knew. Mostly I daydreamed about the stories I told the computer in my lap as we drove, with few comments from Basil.

'Yeah, that's not cliché at all.'

There's no such thing as a completely original story, I had said to his puddy-thick sarcasm, only an original spin on said stories. He'd grunted and let me continue.

But in the time-warping, mind bending way that dreams flowed, hours could have passed as minutes, the stories came in clumps or by a word at a time, and often I would get a taste of what it was like to be in the shoes of those characters, even while half my attention was to my own body cradled in the seat Lamborghini.

Or my dream would branch into the story, replacing lovers with Basil and me.

I closed my eyes to see it clearer, desperate for the dream to ease the ache in my chest.

Basil appeared in my mind's eye. Tall, handsome, blue eye's shark-like beneath perfectly styled dark hair.

The corner of my mouth twitched as I thought how my subconscious had some powerful good taste in men. Especially unattainable men. The kinds of guys who wanted girls as stupid as me, after all, weren't that high up on the food chain of desirable mates.

After a while, my feet started falling asleep and my knees were aching from being straightened out like a plank for too long. So I rolled to my side and worm wiggled my way upright on my bed. I cracked my neck, rolled my shoulders, then flicked on my tiny tube TV, because homework for the stupid club was finished with people who could read.

The high whining gave way to a cartoon channel. I flicked through, not really paying attention.

Basil.

I clicked back, heart taut at my throat.

Dark hair. Sharp features. A straight, no nonsense smile.

And sitting back in a black chair as though he owned the place as a talk show host flashed his million dollar smile and prompted him to speak.

"—And that's all there is to it, isn't it?" the host was saying, still somehow being able to show his white teeth while speaking.

The dry look Basil gave him was the same one he had given me so many times.

"Business is as complicated as medicine," he said. "Not because of buying or selling or any trick routine you do in the morning. It deals with people. Lots of people. And you can never accurately predict what will sell when it will sell because of all those different people, and then there's the people who work for you and their individual tastes and work ethics. You even have to deal with ethics and the fallout of nonexistent integrity and greed." Basil sighed and leaned the line of his jaw against his knuckles. "Writing a book for a general audience on how to be successful in business is a waste of time. At least, for me it is. Only a few would even get help from it, if any at all."

I barely processed what he said. My body had gone hot and my breaths short. The aching in my chest started by the whole diploma issue of the day grew to an all out throb that reverberated into every organ and bone.

I let out a low, long whine.

I watched on, hardly hearing, always looking to Basil, hoping he was just a face that my subconscious had picked up from somewhere I couldn't remember. But the talk show host verified that his name was Basil—Basil A. Wright.

Basil's expressions, however, captured me. They were so familiar. So...so him.

An ad broke through my reverie and I slapped the television off.

"This can't be healthy," I said to myself.

I went downstairs to scrounge for food, putting as much distance between me and my TV as possible. Mom had yet to come home, and she wouldn't be until after dinner, so I figured I might as well get started on that.