(listen to: "Technicolour Beat" by Oh Wonder)
Chapter Six
Sleepwalking through dreams.
-Kylie-
"Hello? Dad! You home?" The garage door creaked shut behind me. I didn't bother waiting for a response as I dumped my things onto the couch. The house remained silent. Of course it was.
I kicked my shoes off and slid-walked along the wooden floorboards to the kitchen. It was only five and I was already exhausted. Looking into the nearly empty fridge, not only was I thankful for the few frozen T.V. dinners that were left, but also for the fact that tomorrow was Saturday—which meant no classes. I could finally do some grocery shopping and maybe even have time to get a run in after. Far too tired to even care, I went to the pantry and grabbed the box of cookies I had saved. I'd work it off tomorrow.
It was funny how exhaustion can erase that tiny voice in the back of my head that says I should do something responsible like practice violin, do my laundry, or start on my homework. However, right now, it was time for some epic binge-watching. Which I had Rhiannon to blame for, seeing as she was the one to get me hooked on at least three different shows. I flopped down onto the couch with a blanket wrapped up to my shoulders even though it was still almost eighty degrees outside—California seasons, we don't have any—and let myself be serenaded by the dramatic conflicts of others. The first episode was barely halfway through when my eyes began to droop and I let the noise of the T.V. lull me to sleep.
***
A cool breeze rustled through my hair as my eyes opened.
I was no longer on my couch at home. Glancing down, I found that I was wearing the same clothes I had worn to school so it had to be the same day. My shoes were no where to be found and I was standing in a peaceful meadow filled with tall, swaying grass. It was hard for me to tell if this was a dream or not because it all felt so real.
Not this again. This was the exact kind of thing that normal people did not have.
The world should not be messing with me. This was so not cool.
I took a few careful steps, turning in a slow semicircle. The ground was cool to touch and I could barely even feel the paved pebbles in the path. I had walked around barefoot once before when I was little. I remember clearly that I hadn't liked it. We had been on a family vacation in Arizona. The pool was nice and cool, but when I went inside through the house and out the front door, I quickly found that my feet could not handle crackling hot dirt and rocks.
Tall grass swayed in the light breeze and there were trees everywhere I looked. A meadow was placed a little way in front of me and to my right I could see more of the cobblestone pathway. Swinging wooden chairs hung from some of the sturdier looking trees. A slow, lazy fog seeped over everything and it looked as though I was standing on a cloud.
Please don't disappear, please don't disappear.
I jogged to the path, running down the little paved road, surprised that I wasn't waking up or transitioning to another dream that I would forget upon waking up. Most of my dreams, I forgot all of them, but this—this part of all my dreams I remembered distinctly. At the end of the road, I was greeted by a sparkling clear lake. Fish swam, jumping over one another. There were large boulders along the edges that looked great for climbing and a small thrill ran through me. I stuck my toe in the water and released a shocked yell from having felt the cold.
My dream the other night hadn't been this real. It had felt real, but I hadn't been able to actually feel things. I had to write this down when I woke up. Before I forgot. Please let me remember, please let me remember. Repeating phrases or words in my head always helped me have some sort of anchor to something. Hopefully it would work in a dream.
"What are you doing here? State your name!"
A startled, embarrassing noise—probably more accurately described as a squawk or a squeal, something animalistic in nature—escaped my lips and I stumbled, taking a full step into the water, feeling it seep into the bottoms of my jeans. Where did that voice come from? Clenching my teeth to keep from yelling again, I stared at the water before me in amazement. This dream was getting weirder and weirder. Had the lake just talked to me? I wonder if this is what Alice felt as she wandered through Wonderland. Although that was probably much more weird compared to a simple talking lake—
"Hey!" The same voice called, now closer. It was coming from behind me. I was almost disappointed. It would've been so cool if the lake had talked. Why couldn't my dreams be that cool? The voice continued, clearly confused and sounding very deep and manly. "You're not allowed to come into the Watcher's Center unless you're on duty. Are you new? A trainee?"
The plan had been to turn around without making a complete fool of myself. That had been the plan. Of course, I had to go and mess it all up by simply being.
When I tried to turn, I took a step back but my foot was stuck in the mud. Suddenly my balance was tilted and my arms pin-wheeled. I was about to fall face first into the lake.
Arms wrapped around my shoulders and jerked me backwards. I tripped over my own feet, causing the person to mutter something as they caught my weight.
"What are you doing?" I exclaimed—a sudden sense of blind anger and panic at almost falling hit me in the head—as I tried to twist out of their grasp. Panic made my breath come out in short gasps. "You can't just go around"—(I sucked in a breath here, my words automatically sounding sixty percent less stern in nature)—"Scaring people like that!" Wait, wasn't this my dream? Why was I being scared? "This is just a dream."
"Excuse me, but if you're a trainee, you need to stay with the others until you get your portal number," the voice said, uncertainly. "What's your name?"
"It's Kylie. Why is a dream asking me that? That doesn't..." I stopped, finally looking up at the voice. Dark, dark eyes met mine. The owner of those eyes was scowling down at me. He towered over me a good several inches and the muscles in his arm showed that he could probably hold his own against a small army—or, that he was the small army.
A burst of laughter escaped my lips, causing the guy's frown to deepen. Oops.
"Kylie, who?"
"Kylie...Zanders. I'm sorry, this is a mistake. This is just a dream," I said, but it felt like I was trying more to convince myself more than him. Catching his look, he didn't seem very convinced anyway.
Trying my best to casually glance around, I looked to the small road behind him. He was blocking my exit. It was that or the lake, but given how real this dream was feeling, the lake scared me even more than this hulking warrior-man.
"There is no such thing as 'just a dream'—" His eyes slowly widened as he came to some sort of realization—that I must have missed because I continued to stand there like a complete fool. "You don't belong here."
"What?" I said before laughing. "What do you mean? If this is my dream, why can't I be here?"
Under his breath, he muttered, "Zanders?" before staring at me. He asked, "You really don't know?"
"Know what?" I said.
He took a step towards me and I immediately took one back. He held out his hands, "Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you."
My eyes narrowed as I regarded him. "I don't know what?"
"What you are?" He continued to look at me, causing me to squirm and cross my arms. I had to wake up. I pinched the inside of my arm, right below my t-shirt sleeve. Nothing. Panic caused my heart to jump and I was thankful for it. At least that I hadn't somehow died in my sleep and gone to heaven to visit my guardian angel or whatever (and that Rhiannon's theory wasn't correct). I raked my fingernails into my arm and could feel the marks already rising against the assault.
"I'm dreaming," I murmured, glancing down. My arm was fine. No marks. "This is a dream. A dream..."
Suddenly, my arm felt as if it was on fire. Everything slowed. Somewhere in the distance, I heard the creak of an old door and footsteps. I was falling back, into the water. Before I could make contact, the guy grabbed my hand but he was too late. I could feel my body grasping for reality.
You're a Dreamwalker, Kylie Zanders. You cannot hide from your fate.
"Kylie?"
You're a Dreamwalker. The warrior's words rang in my head, echoing painfully.
"Kylie, are you home?" Footsteps grew closer, moving down the hallway. You cannot hide from your fate. You're a Dream—
"Kylie?" I felt hands gently shove my shoulder and I let out a groan. "Come on, let's get you to bed."
The tiredness slowly disappeared as I pushed myself up from the couch.
"What time is it?" I muttered. "I was going to heat up some dinner." I sighed, rubbing my eyes and stretching as he hung up his jacket in the closet. "Sorry, I must've fallen asleep, I didn't hear you come in."
"Don't worry about it, kiddo. It's late and I picked up something at work already. You hungry? I can bring you something." His glasses seemed to droop lower on his face and his shoulders slumped as he walked into the kitchen.
"Dad," I said, following him. "You promised."
"Huh?"
"You promised we'd have dinner tonight and...and, well, just...talk," I said, glancing at the time on the microwave. My eyes blurred with unshed tears and the aftereffects of my nap. "It's past midnight. What were you doing anyway? Work ends at seven."
He didn't answer.
"Dad!" I said. He turned too look at me and I saw that his eyes were bloodshot. His clothes were rumpled and he looked so thin that his skin sagged on his face.
I should've caught it sooner. There was a reeking trail behind him now that I noticed. The alcohol practically came out in puffs every time he breathed. Why hadn't I smelled that before? It was overpowering. In a very, very bad way. "Dad, you promised me that you would stop. The AA meetings—" He turned away from me, putting his hands in the sink and moving some of the dirty dishes around as he avoided eye contact. "You haven't been going to those, have you..."
"I can't, Kylie. I'm sorry. I truly am." He stopped, hunched over the kitchen sink, hands clutching the sides of the counter. "I'm not the man I used to be. Your mother...your mother's ...You don't understand."
"That was four years ago! Mom would never have wanted us to live this way." I stood, anger slowly rising to a boil in my veins. "She'd be ashamed to call us family if she saw us now."
"Don't talk to me about family, Kylie." His arms tightened. "Don't." I saw the muscles twitch in his neck, but I couldn't stop now. This was the first time he was responding instead of brushing me off, calling me 'kiddo' and treating me like I was a five-year-old annoying him with questions he didn't have the answers to.
"She's gone, Dad. I get it. The accident was horrible. I know nothing can ever be the same, but every single time I've tried to keep our home from falling apart, something gets in the way. Whether it be you, or me," I said. "I know I haven't been the perfect daughter, but I've been trying my best. You..." I closed my eyes tight, trying to hold back the tears. Breathing in quickly helped suppress the urge—I might have been close to hyperventilating, now that I think about it—and I continued, "You...you're not..." I paused, rubbing my head. It was getting too hard to think. "You're not even trying. It's like you've already given up."
"It's because I have, Kylie!" Dad snapped, turning to face me. My eyes widened as I took it in. The first real emotion on his face other than sadness that I could remember seeing. His eyes seemed to flash a lighter blue, but it was probably from the fluorescent light in the kitchen. A vein in his neck pulsed and I saw a small flash flicker up from his wrist, up his arm, and to the side of his neck. Maybe my dream was carrying over to my reality. I almost laughed at the absurdity before I realized that my life was already absurd. Anything was possible at this point.
"Why?" I whispered. He wasn't saying anything, only silently fuming. I couldn't read silence.
He shook his head. "I'm going to bed. Don't ask me about your mother again, please."
"You have to tell me what is wrong with you! I have a right to know. We can't communicate without words," I yelled after his retreating back. When he didn't stop, I ran forward and grabbed his arm.
Shut up! You left us for them! Why must you continue to torment me? My mind exploded with images of my mother and an overwhelming despair and self-doubt that nearly crushed me. I stumbled and fell into the wall.
My dad didn't seem to notice because he spun around and said, in a voice so soft I could barely hear him over the pounding of my heart. "Your mother left us. You want to know so badly? She left us because she doesn't love us. She never cared about this family and it was fated to end the moment I met her." His eyes showed the unshed tears that he refused to allow fall and I thought how silly this whole situation was. Both of us with tears. Refusing them. His hands clenched into fists at his side. "She didn't die, Kylie. She left."
Air wasn't going to my lungs. I couldn't breathe. Everything was going black. I tried clutching the wall to keep myself upright, but it wasn't working. My head hit my shoulder as I slid down the wall.
She left us. Kylie.
"Kylie!" His hands caught my shoulders. I don't think my dad expected me to react in such a dramatic way. Neither did I. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
She didn't die. She doesn't love us. She doesn't love...you.
"Kylie!" My dad caught me before I could hit my head on the floor. He shook my shoulders, calling my name. "Kylie? What happened to your arm? Kylie, please. Wake up!"
"I don't believe you." My voice sounded very far away. I couldn't place where it was even coming from. I felt my mouth open and close but didn't know I was speaking. "That doesn't sound like something mom would do."
My eyes blinked closed. I saw the same light flash again in my dad's eyes. This time there was no mistaking where it had come from. There was no justification that I could create.
She left us, Kylie.