Fomalhaut

1. I get attacked by a demon at Sonic.

Opelousas, LA

Look ... I didn't want to be at a Sonic at two in the morning. But, to be fair, I wasn't the one who made the decision. Let me set the scene.

It's a humid, spring night in the middle of devil's anus Louisiana and the only thing you can hear for miles is crickets and frogs. That is until a scream shatters the air. And somewhere, in a quaint little trailer park, a recently remarried woman and her husband jerk awake to the sound splitting the air.

The husband, a six foot Irish man with shockingly bright red hair, bursts into the bedroom of the only other occupant of the house, his twelve year old step-daughter (aka me).

Meanwhile, I am screaming in my sleep, a vivid nightmare of who-the-hell-knows-what scaring me to my bones. My step-dad, Finn, shakes me awake and holds me as I cry into his shirt. I was really thankful, in that moment, that he wasn't one of those people who slept naked.

That would've been awkward.

Anywho, after he calmed me down, he stepped into the hall to talk with my mom, Felicity, whom he and everyone else called Flissy. I didn't really hear what they said exactly, but I knew the gist. I mean, I've always been a vivid dreamer.

Though, let me preface, my dreams usually aren't all that bad. They're actually pretty boring, really.

But then they happen, in real life, not in freaking dreamland or whatever like they're supposed to. I dreamed of my pervy physical ed. teacher getting fired, I dreamed of my mom running into a guy on vacation and then eventually marrying him, I dreamed of people boycotting the zoo because of inhumane treatment of the monkeys.

But, recently, my dreams have been ... different.

They've been darker; I've watched countless people die or fight or experience levels of loss I cannot even imagine. Tonight was the worst so far.

I had watched a boy, maybe 16, standing on the Williamsburg Bridge in New York. Said bridge was falling into the East River, and the boy, spiked hair and a bow in his hand, fell with it. And when I looked up from the debris, my eyes had found the golden eyes of another boy. Then I awoke to the face of Finn, panicked, asking me if I was okay. I nodded, too scared to speak, and he'd sighed in relief, hugged me, and then stepped out to whisper worries with my mom. I'd said I was okay, but I wasn't. Because all of my dreams happen, it's just the way it is. And that meant that whatever I'd just witnessed was going to happen as well.

So ... that's not great.

Back to the present, here I am, sitting shotgun in Finn's pickup truck as he orders us two milkshakes. My mom had stayed home to sleep, but I don't blame her. She's got an important meeting tomorrow and needs her sleep. Finn only has to open the store in the morning, so here he was, handing me a chocolate milkshake and consoling me, letting me know that he used to have night terrors when he was a kid, so he understood.

I knew he didn't, not really, but I didn't say that. Finn is nice, and he tries, unlike my real dad, whom I've never even met. He left before I was even born, so in my book, Finn is my dad. And that's all that mattered.

"Here you go, sweetheart," he said softly, rolling up his window and turning the radio back up. I smile in thanks, sipping the straw as the music floods my ears. Finn didn't much like listening to the radio, so he would bluetooth his own music throughout the truck. He calls it "DJ-ing."

At the moment, "Hooked On A Feeling" by Blue Swede thrums to life under the sound of the engine running. I grin, recognizing the song.

I've always loved music. I've never been much of a poet but music is my life. Finn owns a music store in town called "Ianuaria," after the celtic goddess of music. Finn used to joke that he was a descendant of her, that he started the store after he moved to America to honor his roots.