The Awakening

 

I awoke just before the image of sharp, vicious razors dug themselves into my flesh, just as they had many, many times before in my childhood.

            Frozen in bed I hid under layer after layer of bed sheets which I psychologically thought kept me “safe,” despite my profuse sweating. I couldn’t bear to lift my head and angle it to the left, facing the bare corner of my room, and I wasn’t even able to bring myself to close my eye lids, fearing it would make too much noise.

            I couldn’t recall exactly when I first began having these nightmares. I couldn’t even recall how this phobia ever began either; it was never like I had any terrible experiences with the creatures before, except in my most vivid dreams.

            If I were to guess, I would say I was around the age of three. Probably just after my third birthday, I’m assuming. I can recall the exact mental images and the exact fast paced rhythm of my beating heart as if it just happened yesterday, and not fourteen years ago.

            I had awoken to a dream much like this one, probably in the same circumstances (fast pace ragged breathing, sweating, terrified to move more than a single eyelash…etc). I was laying there frozen in my brand new “big girl bed” staring at pink wall in front of me where my nightlight was positioned. 

That’s when it caught my eye, and dawned on me like a rock falling from the sky and hitting me on the thick of my skull…something was in the room with me… something had followed me out of my dreams and was hiding in the room with me.

A series of chills ran along my spinal cord and I scanned my room nervously.

It didn’t take me long to see.

            Standing boldly on its hind legs in the left, bare corner of my room, was the exact wolf from my dream. The elongated body stretched from the floor of my dark green carpet to the ceiling of my room, its teeth barred and hungry, and its wild gold eyes set firmly on the likes of my own, small, less intimidating hazel ones.

            With a shrill shriek, I ripped the covers off my thirty pound body and raced out the open bedroom door in my little nighty, across the small hallway, and into my parents’ bedroom. I pounced myself smack in between the two warm, sleeping bodies, screaming all the way.

            I can still hear the startled gasp as I jolted my mother awake, followed by “Baby, what’s wrong?” My dad was not as patient as my mother, and he tried to play my panic down with the old, “There is nothing in your room. It was only your imagination, go back to bed.” But I wasn’t having it. I was almost positive at the time a wolf had really been in my room, and really truly wanted me as a midnight snack.   Fortunately for me, my mom pulled me under the covers in between her and my father, and pushing my brown bangs away from my face with a kiss, she said “It’s okay sweetie, you’re safe. No worries. Sleep tight princess.”

            And although I can quite clearly recall having many more nightmares about wolves in my youth (probably up until I was about twelve years old, to be honest), that was one of the last memories I can recall with my parents. Because not long after that tormenting night, I would be without my parents for the rest of my life.

To put it simply, my parents passed away when I was just three years old. I was told my mother was sick with cancer and knew she was dying, and my father died not long after, I think from a broken heart.  Being the only child they ever had, I couldn’t even be taken in by my grandparents or relatives because I had none still living.  Everyone on both sides of my family had passed.  Knowing this, my mother made known before her death, if anything ever happened to my father, I was to be given to my Godmother and my mother’s very best friend since childhood, Katherine Rae Moore, who I call “Aunt Kat.”

And of course, I’ve been very thankful—very, very thankful to have Aunt Kat. I mean, she does everything for me, always. And since we’ve been moving all over the east coast of the country, since I was about seven, she became my best friend.   But sometimes I wonder if maybe we could stay in one place for more than a half a year, maybe I would have some best friends of my own variety?

Because really, I had only lived at 643 Cumberland Avenue for less than a year, and had only attended Marberry High School for less than a year. I barely made enough friends to count on one hand, and had only lived in the small state of Maine for hardly any time at all of my seventeenth year of existence.

And that’s basically the same story for all the other schools I’ve attended and other states I’ve lived in during my lifetime.

This move was going to be different. She promised me it would be special, almost like a turning point in my life. And I believed her. In fact, as I sat in Aunt Kat’s Honda Accord traveling to the airport, I already knew everything was going to be a great deal different. First off, we were finally leaving the east coast of the country (having basically lived in every city and state imaginable, such as Washington D.C., New York City, Philadelphia, and even Hartford, Connecticut.) The reasoning for so many moves resulted in the fact that Aunt Kat was an aspiring artist, with little pay, and bounced around from job to job, receiving little pay at each one. She liked to travel, and she had already lived nearly everywhere in the country once in her fairly ripe age of late thirties.

But anyways, yes, she assured me this move would be different. We were heading clear across the country, literally into unknown waters. Our destination was none other than California, and just the thought of it made me imagine hot sandy beaches, blue skies, and perhaps maybe even a tan for my fair skin.   Unfortunately for me, we weren’t moving to any place like San Diego or San Francisco, we were to live in a town by the name of Kneeland, California. This too, was a plea by my parents in the final note written by my dying mother.

According to the letter, my Aunt Kat and I were to live in The Branchen Home, which was the home my mother’s family had lived in for many generations. It was a large ranch out in the middle of no where basically, with like a million acres of land.

This, needless to say, would be a huge change within itself from the usual city life Aunt Kat and I were used to.

            And having been living in The Branchen Home for about…oh say…seven hours…I wouldn’t exactly say I was off to a good start. I mean, I hadn’t experienced wolf nightmares since I was eleven or twelve… and my first night in this new home somehow managed to trigger another restless night involving those gold, liquid eyes.

I lay motionlessly in my new bed, staring at the wooden planks on my ceiling, and the bronze, stain glass ceiling fan hanging straight above me. The air was thick and warm and silent. Almost suspiciously so. The only thing I could hear was the pounding of my tortured heart, due to my recent nightmare. With a shaking arm, I reached out to my left white wood nightstand table, and pulled the switch on the frilly pink lamp, which illuminated my dark room instantly. I did a quick scan around my room, with a small fear in the back of my mind that a twelve foot tall wolf would be standing in some corner of the room, its hungry grin spread taunt across its narrow face.

Luckily, there was no such image. Just the number of furniture pieces that had been in the home from generations and generations ago, I would imagine. The floorboards were a dark, glossy wood, and the walls were all plain white, matching the white dresser, nightstands, chest of drawers, and bed frame filling the room. There was a very frilly, feminine air to the room as well. An example being the light pink shades on all the lamps, the puffy seat cushion on the rocking chair placed next to the dresser, and the little pink lace bows all over my white bedspread. Which was even accompanied by a mountain of matching lace trimmed pillows, which I had disposed of on to the rocking chair for the night, because who really needs fifteen pillows to sleep with? With my luck I would somehow smother myself with a few of them and die.

But anyways, all the frilly pinkness was not me at all. I definitely wouldn’t refer to myself as a pink type of girl. Not saying that makes me some extreme tomboy or a gothic chick dressed in all black—because I am not either of those. But pink wasn’t exactly my color of choice. It was another factor that made the room—and the house in general—feel very alien to me. It didn’t feel like home at all.

I stared directly in front of me on the opposite side of the room to where my built in closet was, and directly over head was the clock. 5:00 AM. I would be waking to get ready for school in about half an hour, being as Kneeland High begins classes at 7:30 AM, which is insanely early, compared to Mayberry which started at about 9:00 AM. 

Knowing that I could never go back to sleep, I decided on getting ready for the day early. This way, I had a chance to look back over my letter Principle Eldridge had sent me, as well as mentally prepare myself for yet another first day at a new school.

As I tore through my closet, searching for the outfit to wear that equipped the perfect “first day” elements, I thought about how I needed to make this year different. This year I was going to be more outgoing. This year I was going to try harder and make better grades. This year I wanted to have my own clique of friends, with whom I could go to the movies and go shopping with at the mall on weekends. And maybe, just maybe, if Aunt Kat and I stayed in Kneeland long enough…maybe I could have a boyfriend. I was so over the silly crush stage in my life, and perhaps if I was serious about being more outgoing, maybe I could make it work.

Before I knew it, time had flown past me, and as I was admiring my third or fourth outfit for the morning, Aunt Kat poked her freckled face in the door.

“Not to rush you or anything hun, but you should probably be leaving for school soon, it’s 7:00. I could drive you if you wanted—just for the first day,” She said in her usual quick-paced voice. Her light blue eyes assessed my ensemble once over, and she added quickly, “Cute outfit, by the way,” and then her face and messy black bun bounced out of sight.

After hearing Aunt Kat’s opinion, I decided to go with my current outfit of dark skinny jeans, my white tunic tank, and a gray short sleeved cardigan on top. I didn’t do much with my hair; my long brown locks are naturally wavy and I usually just straighten my bangs and let them fall where they please. I slipped into my black ballet flats, and as far as make up goes, I quickly just slapped a little on and was done. Emerging from my bedroom, I found my way across the high ceiling, vast hallway and down the pine wood stairs to where Aunt Kat was sitting in the living room.

“Still interested in giving me a ride?”

 

The drive over was a quiet one, but the silence was broken upon arriving to the campus. It wasn’t the biggest school I had ever attended, in fact it was sort of on the smaller size, but it still had some sort of intimidating factor about it. Maybe it was because probably every student who attended Kneeland High was standing around outside for some reason. And they were all thrown together in small groups on the lawn or stairs in front of the school. So already, I was faced with the never-ending pressure of cliques, right off the bat. Aunt Kat pulled up to the sidewalk to drop me off.

            “Have a good day Soph!” She said encouragingly, as my stomach tightened into a huge knot while I struggled to open the passenger side door. “Call me at the end of the day if you want a ride home!” She threw in just before I closed the door and turned to face my biggest challenge ever. 

            As I made my way up the cement stairs towards the cherry brick structure, my eyes couldn’t help but be distracted and drawn to all the different circles of people around me. Some were clearly cheerleaders, done up in their little red and yellow uniforms, with a big ‘K’ on the front of their midriff bearing tops. Some were clearly druggies, with their hair totally frizzed out and eyes visibly bloodshot from the prominent distance away I was standing from them. It was easy to see who the jocks were, who the nerds were, the preps—and so on and so on.

             I put a friendly smile on my face, and adjusted my black messenger bag snugly so I could briskly pass through the large glass doors.

            Once I was inside, I felt as though I had reached a safety zone, or a check point or something. It was much more calm and quiet, but it was dark and dreary almost. There were no windows besides the glass front doors, and the only lamination was coming from a few chandeliers hanging from the three-stories-worth-high ceilings. The walls were all the same dark brick that was on the outside, and the floor was a tile that would have normally looked like sand if it wasn’t for the gleam of light reflecting off its perfectly shined surface.

            To the left of the entrance doors appeared to be the main offices. The walls were completely made of glass windows, so that from the hallway you could see every desk and authority running around diligently inside it.

            Well, where else would I be able to get my schedule if not at the office? Just as I set off in quest of the glass complex, someone charged into me, throwing an elbow to my rib cage. I clumsily lost my footing for a second, peering up through my long brown locks to see who the bully was.

            The face was looking back at me sternly over her shoulder. The piercing gaze startled me for a moment, because I never had seen such a dirty look in all my life, and I didn’t even know this girl. Her long, sleek black hair was tied back into a low pony tail, and her skin was as white as the stack of notebook paper she was holding tightly in her arms, and her skin appeared as frail and delicate as the paper as well, like it may tear upon the slightest bit of contact. Her eyes appeared very laggard and hollow, like they had fallen into violet pits. But her actual irises were what startled me the greatest. They were a bright lilac color, almost entrancing in a way. I had never seen a set of eyes so frightening and hypnotizing at the same time, and I stood there gaping at the girl, who was a good foot or so taller than me and probably twenty pounds heavier despite her thin frame. She looked quite fit. And she looked quite angry that I didn’t get out of her way in time. As I unconsciously stood, still gaping, her nostrils flared out viciously, and then she spun her long black pony tail over her shoulder as she faced forward and continued walking gracefully down the hallway, like a runway model.

            Well, that was a beautiful first experience in my new school. Shrugging my messenger bag once again back into a sturdy position, I started off again towards the main offices.

            The smell of coffee and printer ink filled my nostrils as I stepped into the brightly lit office. I noticed a small, mousy secretary hiding behind some sort of green plant, typing quickly at her keyboard. “May I help you?” She squeaked, her little face appearing from around the side of the plant.

            “Uh yes,” I began trying not to laugh at the fact the leaves of the plant looked as though they were growing out of her ears. “My name is Sophia Lewis.  I’m a new student here. Do you have any papers for me?”

            “Oh yes dear, yes of course!” The woman stood up promptly when I said the words ‘new student’ and started walking around the edge of her desk. That’s when I realized this little middle-aged woman was even smaller than me, and I stand at about 5’2.

            She waddled over to a filing cabinet on the other side of her desk and fumbled around in one of the top drawers she could barely reach. “It’s in here dear, don’t you worry…” She mumbled in her tiny voice, then following that up with a few other mumbles I couldn’t make out. Finally she spun around with a small manila file folder. “Here we go sweetheart…right here.” She pulled out the first page within the folder and slid it across the counter towards me. “You can get acquainted with that schedule while I go get Principle Eldridge.”

            I scanned down the salmon colored sheet of paper, in which my classes were listed on, as well as my locker number and combo, and my homeroom number and teacher. It was divided into 8 periods and a lunch period:

 

KNEELAND SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL

LEWIS, SOPHIA ROSE

GRADE= 12

1 ADV BIOLOGY

2 STUDY HALL

3 HONORS BRITISH LIT

4 HEALTH

5 DRAWING

LUNCH

6 ADV ART FORMS

7 ECONOMICS

8 PRECALCALUS

 

          It had the list of teacher names and room numbers as well, and as my eyes scurried to look the paper over quickly, I could hear the squeaky voice of the little office worker speaking to a man of a much deeper voice.

            Before I even had the chance to lift my eyes off the salmon slip of paper, his voice boomed in my direction, greeting me by name. “Well hello Sophia Lewis, I’m Principle Eldridge. Welcome to Kneeland Senior High.”

            He had a round, shiny bald head and dark brown eyes. In a way, he resembled a slightly less attractive version of Vin Diesel, and he appeared to be just as bulky as him. I don’t know if he was quite as fit, but at least his dark suit made him look definitely as bulky. With a smirky smile, He stuck a hand about the size of a tennis racket out for me to shake, and I nervously took it in my own miniature sized one. 

            “Care for a tour?”

            “Yes, please.”

 

Principle Eldridge was friendly in an intimidating way, if that is at all possible. He was a good deal larger than me, and although he was smiling and being kind while he showed me around the school and explained the campus to me briefly, he spoke in the same booming, offensive tones, that he probably did not even notice he was using. Inside that manila folder were lots of forms for Aunt Kat to sign, as well as a map I knew I was going to need despite the quick orientation I was giving before my first period class began.

            He was even kind enough to escort me to my first period class, which was up on the third floor.  He even opened the door for me. As soon as my black ballet flats made their way into the biology room, the smell of cockatoos, iguanas and lizards and plants greeted my senses and instantly woke me up.

            I could see each pair of eyes following me, heating my face like they ejected hot steam as I crossed the room towards the teacher’s desk. I dared not look into the crowd of students until I was properly introduced. Mrs. Beahm, a stout woman with thick lenses that forced her eyes to look ten times the normal size, stood up to greet me.

            “Ooh! Just in time!” She said kindly. “Class, everyone, can I have your attention please?” The student body before me quieted and oh—I made the mistake of looking into the mass of bodies too soon, and I could already feel my cheeks start burning Barbie pink.  I could feel my heart quicken its beat as I took a harsh swallow and stared out at everyone. The feeling never got old, no matter how many new schools I attended. 

“This is our new student, Sophia. Please be nice in showing her around!” Mrs. Beahm insisted. 

I gave a little wave as she said my name, noticing a very unfriendly look—no, twin looks—coming from two girls sitting in the desks right in front of me.   Both of their hair was perfectly straight, one girl had platinum blonde hair and the other had chocolate brown hair that matched her Latino skin complexion. The blonde may as well have been Latino with the degree of her fake bake tan. They stared at me like I was some alien life form, and their perfectly done up smoky-eyes were drilling holes in me. 

And by looking at their designer clothes, Louis Vuitton and Coach Purses, perfectly manicured nails, diamond studded Chanel earrings, and Juicy Couture ‘Best Friends’ sterling silver necklaces, I knew who they were. The popular girls.

“Sophia, you may sit behind Brady, at the empty desk.” I followed where Mrs. Beahm’s stubby finger was pointing and saw the desk she was talking about, and I couldn’t help but notice who was sitting in front of the empty desk. 

At first I was drawn to the figure because I sensed the posture was still starring at me, even though everyone else had gone back to rummaging through papers and books. The next thing that caught my attention was the hair. It was blonde and tousled into spiky tips, just messy enough to look casual but attractive at the same time. The final thing that caught my attention was the intensity of his green eyes boring into mine like a drill. A smirk was worn on his soft, sun kissed face. His dark eyebrows were perfectly placed above his lids, and they were positioned so that it appeared he was directing this little smirk towards me.

Not wanting to seem floored by this small gesture, I quickly tucked a strand of my brown locks behind my ear, and started walking down the isle towards my seat behind the blonde haired boy.

As I was sitting down, I noticed the two girls in the front row were whispering back and forth to one another, swinging their silky smooth flowing hair over their shoulders to steal a peak at the new girl.

Feeling myself blush again in embarrassment, I dipped my head down to face my lap as Mrs. Beahm continued lecturing at the board like it was any other day.

“She’s not blind, you know,” I heard the boy in front of me say, his voice smooth and lofty. “She can guess what you two are so intently whispering about.”

My eyes unwillingly lifted from my dark skinny jeans to find the blonde boy was turned around sideways in his seat, and his face was drawn like a magnet towards mine as I looked up.

            “Don’t worry, they don’t mean to be rude, Sophia,” The boy said softly, fluidly, drawing his mouth so it hung as if he had more he wanted to say. “By the way, that’s a beautiful name, Sophia,” he added, causing my face to flush pink, yet again. “Just… beautiful,” he added, scanning my face intently as the words casually left his slightly separated lips.

            “Brady. Turn around and face forward,” Mrs. Beahm’s voice broke in, cutting off the compliment. The boy spun around in his seat quickly. 

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Beahm. Not the time for making new friends, I take it?”

“Don’t worry Mr. Palmer, I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to stare at Miss Lewis—I mean, talk to her—later today.”

The rest of the class hummed in a symphony of mild giggles, as my little friend turned over his shoulder once again to give me another little smirk, which tugged at the corners of his cheeks and formed small dark dimples, and a quick wink of his emerald eye.

Brady Palmer.

Reviews

[deeps]

I know all about the Cancer part and the feelings behind it
I watched my grandma and step dad died from cancer.
You are very talented. I hope you do get this published.
Thought I would come find you and read from the begining
instead from the ending up. Make smore sense this way.