Project D

Chapter 1- Waking up

Waking up

I snap my eyes open waiting to see the darkness, and am met once again by the light of my lamp. Just the dream again. Ok.

I place my fingers on my lips feeling a faint tingle where the boy kissed me, even though I know it was just a dream. That’s all, it’s just a dream.

A dream that I have been having since I was found in the sewers, one year ago. A dream that feels so real even though I know it can’t be.

I try to ignore the feelings and questions and thankfully get my distraction.

    “Hey Dawn; are you ok?” I look and see Francis. All six foot seven of him. When will he stop growing? He is staring at me waiting for an answer. His brown eyes boring into me as he sighs and answers his own question, “The dream again” It wasn’t a question; he already knew.

    “Yeah. Why do I keep having this dream? I know you found me, but how did you find me? Like something other than me stumbling out of the sewers. Please tell me Francis. I need to know. I have a feeling it connects with the dreams”, but I knew I lost him. He will never tell me how he found me just a year ago. The same way I can never tell him about what I have been doing over the last year. I can never tell him or he will get hurt.

    The boy who saved me. The one who found me. The one who became my brother, but when I think that I feel guilty. Guilty for some unknown reason; like I abandoned someone when Francis accepted me into his life.

    Francis is a nineteen year old who lives on his own in a small apartment in the middle of Oregon. He has kind brown eyes, and brown hair falling into his eyes. He wears black wire rimmed glasses and loves to play games on the computer.

    Don’t get me wrong; he takes great care of me. So do his parents; they send a support check for me every month now. I live with Francis, and he takes care of me. The support checks pay for my education at the local high school. Speaking of which I start sophomore year today. I shiver at the thought, and pull the covers over my face, so I don’t have to think about the torture of high school.

    “Hey, wake up! Dawn, you gotta go to school!” I can feel him pushing the bed and picture in my mind the smile spreading on his face.

“I don’t wanna. It will be the same as last year. Same nondigestible lunch, same mean teachers, same boring lessons, same freaking bullies, and the only different thing is how they will embarrass me this year!” I say from under the covers.

    I know without looking that a kind smile is on his face, and that he is remembering the time I came home with my hands duct taped together. The sports were supposed to do a project for art and decided to use me as their test subject. Francis still doesn’t know how I walked the mile from the bus stop, and I can never tell him.

    “Oh come on. I’m sure it’s not going to be that bad this year. Maybe you’ll actually meet a boy that I can scare shitless; maybe that one Riley kid” he mimics cocking a shotgun while I give a tiny smile. ‘I like Riley, but I don’t think I’ll ever meet any other boy besides Project C, so I don’t think you have anything to worry about’

I hear him give a small cough, and look down to see his eyes laced with worry, “Are you ok? Dawn you know you can tell me anything,”. I get a tear in my eye as I think to myself, ‘Not everything. I still have to tell you who and what I am; as soon as I figure out myself’

    I have to get off that track of mind. I can’t change the past; especially if I can’t even remember my past. The only thing I can remember is that memory, some sense that I shouldn’t be here, and Project C’s face.