Young Forever

Chapter 20

The past few days after that were hectic for Angela.

According to the nurses, her friends were worried after she didn't turn up for college for days after her birthday as that was quite uncharacteristic of her. So they went to her apartment to check if everything was okay. They had found her almost fallen off the bed. They had tried to wake her up but to no avail. One of them checked her pulse and was alarmed to find it was low. So they called the emergency number. An ambulance had picked her up and she had been in the hospital ever since. According to the doctors, she had been in a coma all this time and they don't know what caused it.

Angela's family were so relieved to find that she was okay. Her friends were relieved too. They asked if it was because of the party, to which she laughed it off. She tried to tell her family and friends about Rosalia and all her adventures with Aaliyah, and later Valentina and Hanh, but they all shrugged it off as a dream she had been having when she was in a coma.

"You know, they say you can live your own lives while you're in a coma" said Priya, one of her friends. "It has happened before. Maybe this is one of them. Fascinating."

Everyone was convinced that what Angela had experienced was a dream. But Angela was convinced that it actually happened. That Rosalia was real and she had actually been thirteen again and got to be friends with Aaliyah, Valentina, and Hanh, and that she and Aaliyah had been girlfriends.

Eventually, since she had no proof that had happened, she, too, began to think it was just a dream. But she still had no idea how she had gotten into a coma. That was a mystery.

She had to catch up with all of her lectures in college. She had even missed a test, which she managed to retake.

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get Aaliyah Taylor out of her head. Even if all of this was a dream, there must be a reason as to why she dreamed about Aaliyah in particular.

She went to Facebook and searched up her name.

Aaliyah Taylor

Immediately a few results came up. The first result showed a black woman in front of a college. Her hair was tied in braids and she seemed to be beaming. Yep, this was the same Aaliyah. Angela clicked on the result.

According to her Facebook page, Aaliyah had gone to the University of Southern California to pursue a literature degree. From her posts, she seemed to be having the time of her life. She'd made friends and seemed to have built up a good rapport in college.

Then a post caught her eye. It was a picture of Aaliyah in school - the Aaliyah she had seen in her dream. The picture had a long caption.

Sometimes, real life is certainly stranger than fiction. I did not understand that until I experienced it myself.

For the last two months, I had been in a coma. I don't know how it happened, but my friends said one day they came to get me as I would be late for our lectures and I just didn't wake up. And get this, when I was in the coma, I had this whole dream. I was 13 again and back in school. I had the chance to redo everything I refretted when I was a teenager. Not standing up for myself. Not cutting out the toxic friends in my life. And that's what I did.

But it gets better. I made friends with a wonderful person who really opened my heart. She was truly supportive of my dreams to become an author. And it gets better, she soon became my girlfriend! How cool is that?

We had also made two other friends together. But then I woke up. I was back in real life, all my friends and my family were worried sick for me.

And I forgot to mention how this dream started. I met a damn talking butterfly who said something about taking me back to my youth to help undo my regrets. I think she called herself Rosalina? I forgot.