DREAMING DANGEROUSLY (Children of the Psi 1.0)

Chapter 7: The Garden

In English, I'm relieved when Annie doesn't bug me about Will. Even on the ride to school, she didn't mention him. She's been trying to make me laugh and forget about everything. I wish her strategy worked, but it doesn't.

I find Will waiting for me in the hallway outside of my math class. I mumble a greeting and skirt around him, but he touches my arm gently.

Wait.

I shake my head. I don't think...

Will's hazel eyes plead with me. Please meet me for lunch. Somewhere private.

I shake my head. I can't...

Please. I really need to talk to you.

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Okay, where do you want to meet?

Southside of school. He gives me a shy smile, a small dimple peeking out from his cheek, before his mind shows me how to get there.

I nod my head and pull away from his arm, rushing into make math class before the tardy bell. I slither into my seat, wondering how many people saw us together in the hallway.

I don't look around at anyone. I keep my focus on the math I didn't finish last night, but Will keeps popping up in my head. Not his thoughts, but my thoughts about him, which are even worse. I miss the whole explanation about defining a plane with a point and a normal vector. I'll have to google it later.

In history, I keep checking the clock, anxious for class to be over with. Luckily, we have a quiz on Post-Civil War society. So, Ashley doesn't have a chance to make any snide comments, and there's no time to work together on our project, which is fine by me. It's about the only time I've ever been relieved to have a quiz.

After history, I find the school garden on the southern end of the school, exactly where Will had shown me. The smell of jasmine and lantana perfumes the air. I huddle into my sweater against the new chill of late October as I pass around a cement brick wall and beyond that I find an archway of fuchsia bougainvillea vines, which is the entrance to the garden. After walking through the archway, trellises of purple flowers form walls along the stone path into the garden. The flowers look like the same flowers from my last night's dream - purple clematis. ( I looked it up on the Internet before school this morning.)

My heart thumps madly. I take a deep breath. When I come to the end of the first wall of trellises, I'm relieved to find a large open space.

There's no maze. It was just some screwed up dream. But the flowers are the same, and there is a fountain with a statue of a panther in the center of the garden.

Why are my dreams suddenly coming true? Am I having psychic dreams now, too? That's all I need!

"Over here, Cassie!" Will stands up and waves.

Well, at least he's not hiding from me, playing games like in my dreams.

A few other students hang out underneath the canopy of a giant oak tree, but they ignore us. Maybe the worst of the gossip is behind me, but I seriously doubt it.

"I'm glad you're here." He gives me a shy smile before his eyes drop away to his feet. He isn't acting like a cocky jock this afternoon.

Good thing, too, because I'd smack him.

Dropping my backpack on the ground next to me, I plop down on the edge of a bench, and he sits next to me. When I look over at him, his eyes plead with me, but I glance away at the panther fountain, which empties into a small pond. I'm still pissed at him.