Questions Answered

The fourth chapter in A Day Dream.

They looked at Dakota with a puzzled look on their faces but soon turned and left the room. “Come on.” Jake told Dakota. He followed after them, and I walked slowly from the room, my eyes on the ground. After taking a few steps I hit something and staggered backwards. When I looked up I saw what I hit, Dakota. He was laughing, and my face almost immediately turned red. I laughed, trying to cover up how much I was embarrassed by my act of stupidity. He had been waiting just outside the door for me; the others had gone on ahead. As I looked down the hall at them I could have sworn that I saw their lips form my name.

 

“Idiots.” I muttered under my breath. “What?” Dakota asked, looking at me. “Oh I’m sorry; I just really . . . dislike a few of your friends. Nothing against you of course, I just . . . yeah.” He stared at me for a moment longer, a confused look in his eyes. I had blown it, or I thought I had. He just laughed. It didn’t make sense to me. “You laugh at the most confusing times,” I told him, “right now, for example.” I had decided to tell him the truth; there wasn’t really anything else I could tell him. “Oh, well,” He paused, “a few of them aren’t really fond of you.” At that point I laughed too. “I figured that much.”

 

We continued to walk down the hall, silent for a minute or two. “This is really random,” I began, if he knew me he would have know almost everything I said was random, “but where did you go?” “When?” he asked. “In Political Science.  I actually . . . this sounds so stupid, but I thought you were a dream. I fell asleep and when I opened my eyes you weren’t there, so yeah.” Each word came out quickly; I always spoke quickly when I was nervous about something, and admitting that made me nervous. Expecting him to laugh again I was almost amazed when he simply began to speak, as if what I said was completely normal. “So you were sleeping.” At this point he smiled, and he still didn’t seem at all weirded out by the fact that I thought he might have been a dream. “I was going to wave goodbye, as stupid as that might seem, but I would have gotten in trouble for disrupting the class, and I didn’t want you to get in trouble for sleeping.”

 

This conversation was becoming more and more confusing. “You were going to wave goodbye?” It just seemed odd. “Yeah, you were the first person I actually talked to, but like I said it would have been stupid.” I stayed quiet; in my mind, I kept saying the wrong thing. “Anyway,” He continued, “I had to go down to the counselor’s office, to get my schedule changed.” Darn. “Oh,” was all I said, aloud. He smiled again and pulled his new schedule from his pocket, handing it to me. We continued to walk, as I looked it over. “It isn’t that different.” He told me. “I still have Lit. with you first period, homeroom and lunch with you right now, then nutrition at the end of the day.” “Alright, so your other classes got switched around?” He nodded, and looking past his head I noticed we were in the main hall. There was no way he could have missed the cafeteria, so I figured he was simply going to go through the other entrance. I didn’t care though, if we had gone through the main entrance, I would have already said goodbye to him.

 

We were quiet once again as we approached the alternate entrance to the lunch room, and we both turned toward the door. He pulled it opened, letting me walk through first. I almost stopped breathing but somehow managed to make it under the arch of the door. After I was through, he walked in behind me, our two pairs of eyes made their way over to Will, standing up, motioning for Dakota to come over. As Dakota turned from me and made his was to the table I did stop breathing as I continued walking to the other side of the room, to sit with Brittney and two of the idiots, Ethan and Jake.