Reality

The taste of sun sweet berries-his skin soft, warm, ripened perfectly.  Everything beneath our veranda of forest, summer leaves setting shade to our opening in the woods.  His hand, soft, sets itself in mine�"his fingers wrapping up to my wrist, tickling the thin skin and veins.  A gentle giggle leaves my lips, but no words.  Turning onto my side, I see him there, his blonde hair curling backwards into the grass, blue eyes fading into the blackness of his pupils eternally.

            And then I wake up.

            Between feeling sad for losing him again, and confused because I don’t know him, my mornings are always more of a daze than anything else when I have the dream.

            “Lyn, are you okay?” Janette mechanically asked, looking up and down my sleep deprived frame.

            “I’m awake.”

            “Yeah,” a gentle laugh escapes her lips like freshly cracked wheat, “if that’s what you call it.”  She left, and a cloud floated in front of the sun.  I pulled myself out of bed, into the sudden fading light of the room.  Uniform, shower, food, and I’m gone again, just like him.

            “You know, those dreams, you could probably take medicine or something.  Maybe see the school counselor today,” Janette offered over the humbling rumble of her hummingbird motor, the car lurching in and out of morning traffic.

            “I don’t mind them that much.”

            “You don’t sleep Lyn, and that’s the point of going to bed.”  Wide lips, the sun catching every hint of her harmony with the world.  “Really.”

            “Sometimes I feel like I know him, I mean, I created him technically, I think.  Besides, the counselor will tell me some s****y story.  She always does.”

            “Try,” Janette said solemnly, “for me?”

            “Fine.  First thing.”

            That same smile graced her lips, the sun wafting in through the clear windshield.  Janette pulled through the parking spot farthest away from the building�"I calculated my walk.  The counselor’s office would be at the other side of the building, which meant I could grab breakfast food from the cafeteria, drop my stuff at my locker, tell my physics teacher where I was going, and get in and out before the bell.

            I snaked through the hallways, sly and thin, my dark eyes searching through crowds.  A bagel, bag dropped off at my locker, and teacher warned, I headed through the double doors-the word ‘GUIDANCE’ etched in the glass like some beacon of understanding.

            “Oh hello Lyn, how can we help you today?  Do you need to schedule classes for next semester?” the secretary behind the desk began, his cheeks warm and happy to have some customer.  Squat and enthusiastic, like some gnome that should be sitting on the front lawn of some elderly couple's lawn out in Florida, he glowed with excitement.

            “No, I scheduled, I need to see Mrs. Frank.”

            “Well, Mr. Rondy is in Mrs. Frank's office right now, I don’t know what, but any moment she should be free.”

            “Thanks,” I said, forcing a smile and letting my bag fall heavily next to the first free chair. 

            Inside the office, Mrs. Frank’s door was wide open, and a discussion of golfing spewed out: Mr. Rondy, the just as useless co-guidance counselor, made flirtatious jokes about how she’d have to take him to see the course near her house, maybe they could go this weekend.  I filtered through my bag, finding any book, knowing that my quick one-stop-shop for all counseling services would not exist.

            In the book, I pictured him as the hero, the boy from my dream.  His golden hair flowing as he offered me into the carriage.  His demeanor perfect though his eyes depthless.

            “A new student?”

            I looked up, my concentration shattered like a bottle christening a ship.

            “Yes, a Thomas Elderny.  Transferring with his mother after a divorce.  She wants us to welcome him in, and maybe get him set up for this semester somewhat if possible.”

            “Well, we can see who has more space to take him.”

            “Poor kid,” I muttered, shutting my book.  Mr. Rondy’s head popped out of the office, hearing the swish of my book cover.

            “Oh, are you here for Mrs. Frank?”

            “Yep,” I muttered in return.  All around us, a sudden clanging of the first bell took hold of the room.  “Gah!” I moaned, looking from the clock to Mrs. Frank now stepping out of her office.

            “Oh, Lyn, do you need to schedule?”

            “No, we scheduled last week.”

            “Right, right!  Well, than what else can I do for you?”

            “I have class,” I said, slinging my bag quickly over my shoulder.

            “I can write a late pass, so you can do what you need first?”

            “No, it’s not worth it.  Maybe I’ll come by later.”

            Outside the hallway was teeming with life like an aquarium; kids hitting off of one another, some gulping up blobs of food, the circle of life in all its chaos unfolding in front of me.  I looked over the catastrophic crowd, trying to see a pair of new but familiar eyes, deep and dreamlike, maybe a Tom.  Instead I latched onto the blue of Janette’s.

            “Oh good!  You went! So what did they say?  Can you be helped?”

            “I’m fine, Janette, it’s just a dream.”

            “Are they going to give you something for it?”

            “No, it’s fine.”

            “You didn’t talk to anyone, did you?”

            “It is fine, calm the hell down, and go to class.”

            “Lyn,” she moaned, grabbing my shoulder in her treelike grasp.  “You are going to get sick if you don’t start sleeping.  I just want you to be okay.”

            “They would have just sat me down, asked me my problem, maybe, just maybe have commented on it, and then told me about some distant relative they had with a similar problem.”

            Janette stood silent for a second, her eyes quizzical, mulling over the description.

            “Yeah, you’re right actually.  It was a dream, alas!” she exclaimed, smiling with the same warmth from earlier.

            The second bell peeled through the cavernous hallway, and the once bustling crowd became dangerously hectic.  “Class, go,” I echoed over the huff, and Janette left with a slight tug on my shoulder.

            In physics I stared out the window, the sun going behind clouds, coming back, leaving again.  Leaves starting to fall on the chilled earth.  Every so often I looked at the clock, the board, but I couldn’t think clearly.  I could picture it, him lying in the grass, what was his name?  Maybe Tom, Tom Eldernly.  I giggled, the teacher looking up from her desk quizzically at my rumbling form, everyone around me working attentively on some problem about a pig on a raft.  I smiled, and set my face down to the paper, but nothing of any mathematical substance came out of my pencil tip.

            “Lyn, did you hear about the new kid?” Janette came running up when she saw me leave the science wing.

            “Holy hell, where do you come from?”

            “I come from over there, now have you seen him yet?”

            “No,” I said, shakily.

            “He’s in class with me, oh my, ugh!  You need to see him, he’s just, well,” she stopped, choking on her words in giddy excitement.

            “Fine, take me to him.”

            “I’m not that much of a creep, heck?” Janette laughed, moving quickly away.  Mildly disappointed, I trotted away with a quick wave.  It seemed the farther I got from my dream, and the longer I didn’t see Thomas Elderny, they became more of the same person, until I couldn’t even separate my dream from reality.  I went back to the guidance office during lunch.

            “Hello, again Lyn!  You came just in time to see Mrs. Frank!” the secretary jollily announced from behind his munchkin desk.  I looked towards her office, where I could see Mrs. Frank typing at the computer, Mr. Rondy finally in his own office, talking to some small kid about requirements.  Another boy was waiting in the chairs outside the offices, reading what looked like 1984, which meant he was a senior.

            “Lyn?” Mrs. Frank echoed, looking up from her computer.  I jumped out of my skin, blushed at having stared, and walked into the office with a slight skip.  “Can I help you with something, wait.  Do you still need to schedule?”

            “No, I scheduled last week.  Can I close the door?”

            “Of course,” she smiled, her eyes peeking over her clear framed glasses, short blonde hair fluttering about her face like frolicking flies.  “Now what is it that you wanted to see me about?”

            “This is going to sound silly, but, I keep having this dream.”

            “By keep having it, do you mean recently, or how long?”

            “Since I was about ten.  I mean, after I was in the accident with my mom.”

            “Oh, right.  Is it a nightmare then, any memory flashbacks of her from that night?  It isn’t uncommon for kids to repress memories of loved ones dying and then have them resurface like this later.”

            “No, I mean, it isn’t a nightmare, and it isn’t a memory.”

            “Okay, so what is it?”  I smiled, thinking back to it.

            “I fall asleep, and for most of the night there is nothing particularly memorable, in fact, most nights there is nothing.  But every so often I have this dream where I open my eyes and I’m lying in this shaded wood.  The grass beneath me is soft, softer than anything I’ve ever lied on.  The sun warmer.  I look up, and everything is bright and wonderful.”

            “This sounds like a wonderful dream, so what’s the problem?”

            Cut off, I collected my thoughts and coughed into my sleeve.

            “I don’t sleep well, because I’m having it more and more often.”

            “Okay then, I bet it’s something you’re eating before you go to sleep.  How about don’t eat for three hours before bed, and if you do have the dream, at least it’s nice.”

            “Isn’t there anything else, some kind of medicine or something?”

            “See, I had a cousin who had dreams all the time, well nightmares, and he didn’t sleep well for months and he went to his doctor.  He asked for some medicine, and he got some sleeping pills, but then he got addicted to those and was still having nightmares, in fact so much that they became hallucinations.  Medicine isn’t always the cure.”

            “Okay,” I muttered, picking up my bag to leave.

            “Lyn, just remember to fall asleep with an empty mind and stomach, that should do the trick.”

            “Thanks,” I spoke, walking out the door.  The kid was still sitting outside, reading attentively. 

            “Tom?” Mr. Rondy scanned outside his office door, looking from me to the boy leaving his office, and finally to the kid reading.  He didn’t look up from his book, his eyes tracing the lines of the pages like a machine only programmed for that singular function.  “Tom Elderny?”  The boy popped up, slipping his id card into the book and standing.  No blonde hair like golden wheat, no dark blue eyes, mysterious.  Plain old Tom Elderny, tall and lanky, mousy brown hair, and a book under his arm.  I laughed as I walked out of the office, waving to the secretary as he smiled gleefully back.

            When I got to the car later, Janette was already waiting in the driver’s seat.

            “I saw that new kid, he was really dorky looking.  Though on the other hand he was reading, which shows he’s literate?”

            “How can you say he is dorky looking?”

            “He’s a tree, his barky colored hair.  I’m sorry, but not for me.”

            “Well sometimes we take what we’re given and we like it more than we should.”  We both smiled, Janette picturing herself with Tom Elderny presumably.  I sat back in the warmth of the sun through the windshield like a shower of comfort, dozing into a dreamless nap.