KY CHAPTER 1: DREAMS

I LOOKED AROUND ME, ONLY TO find that there was nothing and no one there. I was alone, wounded, and scared as hell. I screamed for her, but she was nowhere to be found. I felt like my entire body was on fire, especially my head, but I looked down at myself and saw that there were no flames anywhere. I screamed for my girl again, my voice filled with agony.
Finally, someone heard me. The girl I had been screaming for walked through the darkness around me and crouched down next to me. Her ice blue eyes were perfectly calm, even as I screamed in pain. A tear rolled down her cheek. She tried to smile, but it came out as only a grimace.
“I guess there’s no forever for me,” she said vaguely, her voice cracking in odd places. “I’m so sorry that I brought this on you. This is my fault.” She reached up to her face to wipe the tear away with the back of her hand.
I wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but another wave of pain crashed over me and the only thing that I could do was scream out again. “Make … it … stop!” I yelled, amazed that I could actually form words.
“I can’t,” she replied, sadness creeping into her calm mask. “No one can. What’s done is done and I’m so sorry that this had to happen to you.” She leaned down and kissed my forehead. I didn’t feel the coolness that I usually felt with her lips; instead, I felt intense pain in my head where her lips touched my skin, as if she was burning me. It was unbearable and I sent a silent prayer that this would all be over soon.
“What’s … happening … to me?” I asked. I balled my hands in pain, not enjoying the way that the motion only made it hurt more. I was truly on fire and it hurt like hell.
The tears flowed freely from her eyes when I screamed the words out. She swept a strand of her snow-white hair behind her ear before she said anything. “I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry. You’re dying and it’s my fault. I’m so sorry.” She continued to cry for me until I felt myself fade.

I woke up soon after. I sat up on the black leather couth that replaced a bed in my room and looked over at the clock on my desk. It was only two-thirty in the morning. I groaned and dropped myself back on the couch.
It had been a week since I had started dreaming about the silver-haired girl and I was losing a lot of sleep over it. And the kicker was: I didn’t even know the damn girl! She wasn’t an actress on TV or a girl who went to my school, yet I dreamed of her every single night.
And the dreams all ended the same exact way: she cried over me while I died.
How creepy was that?
I closed my eyes and tried to force myself into a dreamless sleep, but it didn’t work. I could still see the girl behind my closed eyelids. I opened my eyes and reached down to the floor and grabbed my IPod. Putting the headphones in my ears, I turned the IPod on and selected “In the End” by Linkin Park. The opening melody of the piano helped me find the sleep that eluded me for a while. Yawning, I happily fell into blissful, dreamless sleep.

+ + + + + +

I woke up again hours later with a major headache, which was usual for me, since I always played my music at the top volume. I stood up from the couch and walked over to my desk and popped a pain killer that I hid from my grandmother into my mouth. It took a few minutes to start to take any effect, but I was happy once it did.
My cell phone rang in my pocket seconds later, reminding me that I left it in there last night. I pulled it out and immediately checked caller I.D. Really, I thought. He’d call me this early in the morning?
“Hey, Grey,” he greeted me when I picked up.
“Shaun, you do know what time it is, right?” I asked him, yawning.
Shaun laughed. “Dude, it’s two in the afternoon,” he answered. “What’s going on, man? You’re sounding eager this morning.”
I laughed once in response. Shaun Michaels had been my best friend since we accidently glued our hair together in kindergarten. He was an evil little bastard, and I, unfortunately, was his little guinea pig. Hmm. Oh, life’s little quirks.
“Oh nothing special,” I answered him. “I’m just losing sleep, since I keep having those strange-as-f*** dreams ‘bout a girl that I don’t know but is too damn hot for words.”
Shaun laughed again. “Oh, dude, you got it bad,” he teased. “And for a fantasy girl, might I add.”
“Either tell me why you called or f*** off, dude,” I nearly growled at him. I was tired as hell, and therefore not in the mood for his jokes. Well, I thought to myself, that’s what you get for confiding in him.
“All right, all right,” he surrendered. “Tessa wanted me to let you know about the Halloween party at Adrian’s place tonight. You are going, right?”
Oh, hell, no, I wanted to scream at him. I hated parties – I was about as anti-social as they came – and I swore that the Halloween party of 2010 was the last of Adrian Peter’s parties that I’d ever go to.
“You are aware that the last Halloween party that I went to, I lost my virginity to a girl dressed as a nurse, right?” I asked just to make sure.
“She just wanted to play Doctor,” he joked. “Plus, you can only lose your virginity once.” I rolled my eyes at his joke and threatened to hang up. Shaun chuckled at me and told me to calm down. “Dude, you have to come or Tessa will ki…” he paused for several minutes. I started to wonder if the call had been dropped, when I finally heard something on the other end of the line.
“Ky, you are going to listen to what I have to say,” Tessa Wiles’ voice came through the phone. Tessa was Shaun’s current fling and one of my best friends since the third grade. She was also as deviant as Shaun was, but she was the only one of the two that never got caught.
“Tessa, make it quick,” I demanded. “I’m tired and hungry as hell so hurry it up.”
“Ky, you are going to that party even if I have to drag you there myself. Adrian’s cousins are coming here from Europe and he wants you to meet them tonight. And so help me, Ky, if you don’t go, you’ll never hear the end of it,” she threatened.
“And if I don’t want to meet them?” I questioned, my voice sounding rude, even though it wasn’t of my intensions.
“Then you’ll just go to the party and drink or something,” she answered. “I don’t really care what you do there, but you are going. Understood?”
“You really are a bitch, aren’t you?” I joked, still tasting the acid in my voice.
Tessa laughed. “Don’t you forget it,” she replied. “See you, Ky.”
“Bye.” I hung up. Putting the phone back in my pocket, I started muttering unintelligently. Tessa always knew how to make others see her way, which is why she never got in any trouble with teachers at school for how she acted.
My stomach growled, breaking the momentary silence. I groaned and rolled my eyes. Of course my stomach had to choose now to be hungry. It could have woken me up a few hours earlier like it usually did. I opened my bedroom door and basically ran down the stairs to the kitchen. I was so hungry that I could actually eat a herd of cows. And I didn’t care if they were cooked or not.
When I reached the end of the stairs, I accidentally bound into my grandmother, who was going out for her daily smoke.
I steadied her when it looked like she was about to fall over, mumbling a string of apologies while doing so. She waved me off with a wave of hand and straightened herself up. That was one thing that I’ve always admired about my grandma: she was as tough as a brick.
“I hope you have a good reason for almost knocking over your poor, defenseless grandmother to the ground,” she joked.
I laughed in response and rolled my eyes. “Aw, come on, Moms,” I said. “You know I’d never tackle you on purpose.” Then, in my darkest, movie-villain voice, I sarcastically said, “Unless you force me to.” She hit me on the shoulder and laughed.
Moms had been taking care of me since I was four – the year my parents and cousin died in a car accident. She preferred the name “Moms” instead of calling “Grandma” or “Nana.” It didn’t really matter to me what I called her, but since she was only forty-five years old with a seventeen-year-old grandson, it mattered to her.
Moms cleared her throat. “Well, I’m going for a smoke. And don’t you dare tell me that I should quit because of my age because that would be a bunch of bulls*** since you smoke yourself,” she added when I opened my mouth to say something. I smiled at her; she knew me too well.
“I was only going to ask if I can have one,” I replied innocently, laughing on the inside when an expression of embarrassment took her face. She was so easy to fool, which sometimes caused me to pity her … or to wonder whether she knew exactly what I was up to. It was hard to tell with her.
“Well, you can’t,” she told me. “I might be old and wrinkly” – I laughed as she said those words as if they were cuss words – “but you still have a life to live. If one of us has to quit smoking, it should be you.”
“Okay, first, you’re only forty-five,” I pointed out. “How is that old and wrinkly?”
Moms laughed at me. “Oh, honey, when you’re my age, you’ll understand.” She hugged me before walking out the door. I rolled my eyes and chuckled at my grandma. She always had a problem with her age, even when she was only twenty-eight. My mother, Georgia, had always said that Moms had always wanted to say eighteen for the rest of her life, because that was the year that my grandfather proposed to Moms, therefor it was the happiest year of her life. I always thought that it was really disgusting and mushy when I was younger, but now – in a way – it didn’t seem so bad.
I went into the kitchen and tried to find something to eat for breakfast/lunch. After a few minutes of looking for bacon or eggs, I finally gave up and made a bowl of cereal. While doing so, I found myself thinking about the white-haired girl again (I couldn’t help it, really.) I thought about how beautiful she was, even when she was spilling tears. I thought about how she seemed so strong in every dream. I admired her for that and immediately laughed at myself for that thought. This girl didn’t exist, yet I was attracted to her! What the hell was wrong with me?
Shaking my head, I dispelled the thought. There isn’t anything wrong with me, I told myself. Whatever these dreams are, you’ll figure it out. Now stop acting like a chick and eat already.
I ate my Cheerios quickly, faster than I ever thought possible. I put my bowl in the sink and walked back up the stairs to my room. I knew that I spent much more time in there than was necessary, but I didn’t exactly know what else to do or where else to go. I barely had any friends that I could stand for more than ten minutes, besides Shaun and Tessa. Plus, I really didn’t believe in the bulls*** that was Facebook or MySpace, so I wasn’t on either of those.
I turned my IPod back on once I got back to my room and turned on Muse’s “Uprising,” connecting it to the amplifiers. I lied back on my couch, closed my eyes, and focused on the lyrics and guitar. I seemed to forget about the dreams, which was I was trying to accomplish. I made a mental note to keep this exercise in mind; it could be of use to me later.
I fell asleep when the song switched over to an old Evanescence song, the melody of the opening piano lulling me to the land of Nod. Thankfully, this sleep was also dreamless.