Paradise

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

Saturday night found me sitting on the floor of my room, playing with my new cell-phone. It was a basic model, just for calling, but I loved it nonetheless. It was pretty and green and had all my contacts in it. I'd deliberately taken my time putting everyone's number into it after my father had activated it and given me a huge lecture on not overcharging the battery and not using up all my monthly minutes in one go. He'd also shown me how to set up my voice-mail.

I was so bursting with excitement, I couldn't refrain from trying it out, so I called Kendall's house to give her my number. Once again, her mother answered the phone. She told me that Kendall was still feeling under the weather, so I gave her my number to give to Kendall then we hung up.

"Well, that's pretty much it," I sighed, looking at the cell-phone in my hand. There were some other numbers I had, but none I really called. They were more people I had small-talk with at school, not people I actually hung out with. I set the cell-phone on my nightstand, and crawled into bed with the remote. There was nothing on TV. I could have went into the living room and logged on the family computer, but I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do online, so I just ended up playing a video game until my mother called me to dinner.

* * *

Monday came as a bright, blue-skied morning with the chill of Fall in the air. I boarded the bus with sleep still in my eyes and waited to see if Kendall would get on, but, of course, she didn't. Sunday had been lazy with me sleeping most of the day and attending church in the evening. Usually my father would have awakened me by loudly pounding on the door, but neither of my parents had felt like going to morning services, so they'd just let me sleep, which I'd happily accepted.

The walls of the school were decorated in red, brown and gold paper leaves-- reminiscent of the ones in my dream. I felt a little queasy looking at them for that reason. I caught snippets of conversation as students passed by, excited by the prospect of the Autumn Formal, which would be this Friday night. A small ticket-booth had already been set up in the corner of the cafeteria. Lines of students would be there during lunch, trying to get tickets for their dates and themselves.

A part of me felt sad that I wouldn't be going. Usually I didn't care so much about school dances, but that dream-- at least before the scary parts-- had been nice. It had showed me what students liked about school dances, that they could be romantic and magical and everything they wanted them to be. Kendall would be going, of course. Robert had already asked her to it. They'd go and dance and have a great time and probably even kiss, maybe even make-out. My face flamed at the thought.

Whatever they did, it was certain to be a magical evening, one they'd probably never forget.

I hated myself for daring to picture it, Kendall and Robert dancing, looking so happy and in love. Kendall would look beautiful in a long gown of some sort, probably pale pink or ivory white with flowing layers of fabric that would dance along the floor when she moved. Her hair would be done up flawlessly. She'd have it professionally done at a salon, and it'd look glorious. Robert's jaw would drop when he saw her, because she'd look like a dream, too beautiful to be real.

But would Kendall look at Robert the same way? Because, already, I felt he was too beautiful to be real. And he'd look so handsome in his tux. He certainly had in my dream.

The way he'd smiled at me when we'd danced. I'd cherish that moment forever, though it had never really happened. His sweet laughter, like lovely music, when he'd told me I was beautiful and I had stammered it back-- how it had caused a massive swarm of butterflies in my stomach!

Kendall probably didn't even realize just how lucky she was....

Something inside my stomach sank, like a stone in water, going lower to tangle into my guts. I needed to stop thinking about this. It was only going to make me sad, and I didn't want to be sad. I still wanted to ride Saturday's excitement, when I'd finally gotten my cell-phone. If only I had more people to give the number to--