Overlap

Chapter 10: That Crush I Had

<02/02/2010 - 10:25 | Saffrin Middle School (Gym), Austell, GA, USA>

As the time passed further into the new year, none of my earlier problems went away much. Even when I stopped having dreams about all of that weirdness, I would too often start daydreaming about the Altiri involving details I didn't come up with by myself. To clarify, it would happen in the middle of daydreaming about something totally different. All of the sudden, everything I was imagining was instantly replaced by all of the scenes swimming around my head, without consent, without control, without conscious initiation whatsoever. I've never had my own daydreams invaded by other uncontrollable thoughts of other daydreams before, but it got to the point by now.

Altiri this, Altiri that, The Unity this, Legasso that! It was getting ridiculous. Just the very sight of ice and snow even in a show or video game amplified those images and memories of each daydream. More than that, I easily became obsessed with both the sensation of the cold and the thought of it too, loving the thought of winter and snow even though I never cared that much about it until now. It wasn't Christmas or the time of year that mattered; just the cold, just the snow. I envisioned cold dark blizzards populated with powerful igloos, blizzards that were so intense and dark they could only exist on Karnak of all places. The more I thought about it, the more it fascinated me. Also, the more I thought about it, the more annoying it became overall.

I knew damn well these thoughts were not my own. They couldn't be my own! They're far too distracting for me to care so much about something so randomly. They've been making my schoolwork a living hell, dropping my grades due to the loss of attention to detail. They've also been distracting me from spending any good amount of time paying attention to the new circle of friends I have made over the months, but they are so hard to stop, impossible to control once they start up again. I had no choice but to try not to think about it, which never did me any good in the long run.

I thought back to the very beginning of my sixth grade school year, concerned for myself as I realized that this trance has been going on for some time now, and has gradually been getting worse. I don't care what it is, I just want it to stop. So I pondered the same mystery again and again in my gym class during another long walking session of the free-day. But just when I thought nobody would bother talking to or distracting me from my concerning thoughts, I was given the gift of an excuse to stop thinking about the messy maze in my head.

"Hey Reed? Got a minute? There is something I'd like to ask you."

It was Laura of course. Though with the weight of her words and her serious expression, I came back to reality a lot quicker than normal sensing that something was bothering her. I hoped it wasn't something about me. "Go ahead..." I didn't express anything particular to her question, since it could have been anything. I prepared myself for the possible scenarios even knowing it was too late to do so.

"Do you have a crush on Kaitlyn?"

"What?!" Unable to control my knee-jerk reaction to the surprise, I also found myself unable to say anything else for the moment, my face turning red against my control.

"Haha! I knew it! You do have a crush on her!" Laura was practically making a scene with her volume, but luckily for me, she always spoke this loudly, so nobody paid direct attention to the two of us yet.

"No!" I desperately intervened to correct her. "You got the wrong idea! I..." Struggling to say anymore, her direct approach to my innermost feelings about Kaitlyn was too much to bare all at once. Even though I was about to lie to Laura just now, saying something that was the opposite of a truth wasn't something that came easy for me. "I don't have a crush on Kaitlyn. Are you crazy?!"

"Oooooh," she said with an unconvinced frown, though giggling inside that she had this new opportunity to mess with me. "Then why do I always see you staring at her? Not just in Gym but in Spanish too. Looks hella suspicious!"