The Lights In the Sky

Chapter 7

For a while, it was just bright lights. At night, I mean. Instead of dreams.

I would be standing there in a black void, nothingness around me.Usually in my underwear. There was no noise. No air in my nostrils or moisture in my mouth. Just the complete lack of anything. And then the light. So completely white that it would be misleading to say it was blinding. It just became everything. I wouldn't move.Just hang there in suspension, eyes shut tight. The skin and vessels in my eyelids turned the world red in the white light. After a bit of time, I would start to get hot. Not inside, not like I was cooking.Just on my skin. It felt like hours passed every time. Little by little, I would get hotter and hotter. Have you ever sat out in the sun too long without moving? Like, if you're tanning or something?And you don't really notice it until you go to move and your skin is tight, a shell over your flesh? I began to feel that. It would get stronger until my arms began to shake with the low, dull pain.

When I woke up after these dreams, I would feel cool in my bed. Covered in sweat, which seemed to evaporate almost instantly. I hate that feeling: dry sweat over every inch of skin. It's almost the same as the feeling of wet socks.

I was sitting in English class one day when I began to hear the noise again. Our teacher was this fat, middle-aged woman who was probably once very beautiful. She was nice and she was passionate, so I did what I could to pay attention. I think I had a B in the class, which I was happy with. Frank was in the class, too, and whenever she wanted to use an example of the relationship between King Arthur and Sir Lancelot, she would choose us. I think that was mostly because of how we were on the football field, but in all honesty, some weird stuff happens between those two guys in the stories and I wasn't completely comfortable with it.

One day she dug up some educational play about King Arthur and his knights around the Round Table. Seriously, I hate those educational plays. They're written in a really condescending way and I understand why, but they get a little ridiculous. There's always one really stupid character in them and King Arthur's lines were written so badly that I don't even think somebody like Ian McKellan could make them enjoyable. Of course, she chose five of us to go up to the front of the classroom to read the play and of course she chose Frank to be King Arthur and me to be Lancelot. So we stood next to each other and this kid named Jimmy was on the other side of me. He's tall and scrawny and has thick glasses and patches of facial hair that look pretty bad. But he's nice enough.

We started reading the play out loud. Frank had the most lines, but I was probably second to him in the amount I had to read. He was going on about how brave Sir Gawain was against the Green Knight and right in the middle of his paragraph, I heard the sound that woke me up a couple weeks before. One of those short screams. It wasn't as loud this time; if it was, I probably would have dropped to the floor or gasped or something embarrassing. It was quick and seemed to come from Frank, who was next to me. I looked at him funny and he looked back at me, still trying to read his lines. His eyes kept moving from me back to the page and then up to me again. Then Gawain started talking and Frank nudged me with his elbow.

"What?" he asked. I said the same thing back to him.

He told me to stop looking at him funny. He tried to say it under his breath, but our teacher cleared her throat and he shut up. I read one of my lines and it was supposed to start this disagreement between me and King Arthur. As soon as my last word was out, that sound came again, this time from the classroom door. I jerked my head up to look at the door; there was nothing but a few pale blue lockers out there. I listened intently before realizing that the entire classroom was silent. It was my turn to speak. Quickly, I looked back at the paper,but I was so flustered that I had no idea what part of the page we were on. Frank pointed at my line. I read it, distracted. As soon as it was over, I looked back at the door.