In Shado

II

Sometimes I regret my decision to do online school. I'm alone all day, and by the time Beth gets out of school, she just wants to finish her homework and watch her shows. Five days a week, I only have my grandparents to talk to, and their conversation usually consists of my grandmother's book-club drama or Pop's college football games on TV. I cling to Saturdays.

Beth and I are in my room. I'm twirling in the desk chair, wearing what I usually wear to "class": sweatpants, zip-up hoodie over a tank top, and finger-brushed hair. My half-finished essay glares at me from my open laptop screen beside the bowl of pretzels that I got as an excuse to avoid typing.

Beth sits cross-legged on my bed, flipping through her trigonometry textbook. She has a test Monday, and I have to submit my assignment the same day. She's tiny, swallowed up by her sweater, which looks a size too big and developed a new fray with every wash. She has brown hair like mine, but lighter and much shorter, wisping around her neck, not touching her shoulders.

"Guess what?" She looks up from her book. "You are not going to believe what happened."

We grew up together. Even when I didn't live with my grandparents across the street from her, we used to play when I visited. She tried to get me to finish out high school with her, but I chickened out. After it happened, everyone whispered and stared when they thought I wasn't looking. Old ladies pitied me, and parents steered their children away from me. I was either the poor girl who lost her mother or the spawn of the criminal father. Add on top of it that I'm a loon, and you have the perfect town taboo.

Apparently, it's not normal to see the same dreams every night. To have emotional attachments to people who live in your mind. What I think up...it's disturbing. A dark forest with monsters. I hate it there. It's like an elongated nightmare. Every hour I sleep, I wait in that forest, sometimes alone, mostly with the brothers. It's not normal to feel time in dreams, is it? I don't think it was like that before, but it's hard to remember anymore.

My grandparents sent me to a shrink after the first month it started happening. I was eleven. They blame it on what happened to my parents, but I can tell even they don't know what to think sometimes.

Going to regular school wouldn't work. I'm never awake enough to focus on class anyway. Along with the dreams, sleep hardly sticks. I float through my days in a muddled haze, waiting for Beth to come home from school and break the monotony.

"What?" I stop the twirling chair with my feet.

"Yesterday these guys from the high school got in a car accident. Two brothers. The younger one is in my psych class."

"You know him?"

She flips the page of the textbook. "I never talked to him, but it's weird anyway, you know? One day he's sitting in the desk in front of you, the next he's in a coma. I never met his brother, but I heard of him. He graduated a few years back, but I remember Kat used swoon over him." She looks up from the book. "It's weird to think they're dying."

"It's that bad?"

She nods. "The news said they were in critical condition."

"Jeeze." Stuff like this rarely happens here.

I reach to pluck a few pretzels from the bowl on my desk, and a sharp sting spikes my arm. I push my jacket down and twist my bicep to see a thin cut, now open and agitated. My heart skips a beat, and I relax the arm, thinking of Rune's hand lashing out, the leaf cutting me. I pull my sleeve back up and pretend it's not there, but I still feel jittery.

"I know, right?" She holds the end of a page. "Makes you realize how lucky you are."