Potentially You and Me (Two Truths and a Lie)

CHAPTER EIGHT: MIDTERMS AND NIGHTMARES

     I force my eyelids open, blinking and blinking as I roll on my back and will myself to breathe. My lungs feel like they shrunk down two sizes, while my heart grew times three, beating and beating me from the inside out.

     I push back my comforter and reach for my phone charging on the window ledge. It's only four thirty-four in the morning. I sit up and spot all the things that are ordinary in daylight, but shadowy configurations at night. While my mind lulls to go back to sleep, I can't shake the cold sweat.

     I get up and pick up the lid of my trunk and dig around, feeling at my clothes for the scratchy waterproof fabric of my athletic shorts. I replace my polka dotted pajama bottoms with them, keep my oversized t-shirt on, and grab the nearest sweatshirt I can find. It almost still feels like I'm dreaming as I stuff my feet into my sneakers and grab my phone. Especially once I'm blinking against the flickering yellow hallway lights and start jogging out of the building.

     I throw open the dorm building door, and it clatters back against the bricks. The frigid morning air feels like a fresh slap in the face, but I greedily breathe it in. It should be enough to shake me out of the haze, but I still feel a shake in my knees that propels me forward onto the cement pathway. My sneakers scrap and pound along, finally coming in sync with the pounding inside my chest. I don't know where I'm going. I just know that as long as I keep moving the easier it is to forget.

     The sky starts as a dark blue because the colder weather always postpones the sunrise but soon starts fading into lighter shades. The frosty haze coating the buildings starts to peel away, leaving behind the dewy grass and tree bark.

     An hour passes before I'm walking back towards the dorm buildings, taking in all the oxygen I momentarily forgot I needed as the adrenaline fades and leaves just endorphins in its wake.

     "I don't know how you do it," my mom used to joke when I'd come home drenched in buckets of sweat.

     "It's the morphine." I'd jokingly stick my tongue out.

     My heart pings a little at the thought of my mom. Bad dreams can follow you anywhere, but somehow, sometimes this whole campus still feels like a bad dream, only on the really bad days, when I'm texting my sister and yearning for my lilac room and movie nights on the couch snuggled up next to my mom.

     I step around some geese poop before noticing something red walking the opposite way across the grass. It feels like a movie. Out of all the people on this campus, the night and shining armor in a bright red windbreaker jacket is trudging through the misty early morning haze. Only there's geese poop and wet sneakers that sink into the ground a little bit, making your slow motion walk more like begrudging clomps. He also seems to be wrestling with his zipper that looks caught in the silver spiral bindings of his notebook.

     Trent looks up and freezes. The perfect action shot. If only his face didn't scrunch up. "Lacie?"

     "Trent?"

     He lifts a hand up and cups it around his mouth. "Lacie-e-e." He mocks an echo.

     My lips curl up, but I still send him a now redundant wave before he starts clomping his way over to me.

     He waves his arm like a showman. "What light through yonder window breaks?" He pauses and stands straight again. "And that's all I got."

     I let out a laugh. "Zack would be very disappointed."

     "I know. You know he's played Romeo four times actually?"

     "Really?"

     "Yeah, fifth grade talent show, seventh grade drama club, and then two back to back summer Shakespeare festivals the year before and after we graduated high school."