If I Should Dream Before I Wake(Sample)

Chapter 1

-Tessa-

"Tessa, wait up!" Jeremy yelled from across the courtyard. The sun drifted behind a cloud, casting a shadow over the square as he jogged to catch up to me, shifting the weight of his black bag high onto his shoulder to keep it from falling. He needed a haircut. His sandy brown hair flopped in his eyes as he ran.

"I can't be late again, Jer," I called anxiously over my shoulder. "I'll suffer the wrath of Ms. Templeton if I am." I kept walking, but slowed down just enough to let him catch up. When he did, Jeremy grabbed my hand like he always did and shuddered dramatically.

"No one wants to suffer like that," he smirked. The soft sleeve of his muted green sweater brushed my arm as we walked, sending a gentle shiver through me.

"Especially for something as lame as mythology," I grumbled, pushing a few stray curls from my eyes. I caught sight of a large chip in my ruby colored nail polish, and suddenly wished I had taken the time to repaint my nails last night. I was coming to find red didn't always agree with me.

"Well, come on then, Tess. Quit slowing us down," Jeremy teased. The corners of his smile strove to meet each ear, while the light danced around the edges of his puppy-dog eyes. If he weren't my oldest friend and practically my brother, I might think Jeremy was attractive. Actually he was attractive, I just didn't stop to dwell on that fact all that much. Maybe I should have. Plenty of other girls certainly did. But my only impulse was to reach out and tussle his hair the way I'd done since we were table buddies in our Kindergarten art class.

"Are we still on for movie night?" he asked, expertly navigating the packed hallway with ease.

Our school had recently become more crowded than usual, the result of rezoning last spring. Super human abilities were necessary simply to get to class. I hated the busyness of it. In fact, most days I resented it. I preferred plenty of personal space, or at least some room to breathe. On the plus side, the crowdedness made it easier for me to blend in. People didn't talk about me anymore, at least not to my face, although I did still hear rumors sometimes. I was mostly okay with it, as long as I didn't have to actually hear what the other kids were saying about me.

"Have I ever missed movie night?" Even as the words left my lips, I felt the bite in them. I looked out from underneath my thickly lined eyelashes at Jeremy, slowly gauging his reaction. Just like the clouds in the courtyard a few minutes earlier, his wince cast a shadow over his sun-kissed face.

Jeremy and I had started movie night sometime when we were around nine-years-old. On the first Friday of every month we watched a movie neither of us had never seen before. Jeremy's favorites were the ones with tons of screaming and lots of blood and guts. Mine tended to fit more in the fantasy genre. Horror was never my thing. The fear and death always felt way too real to me, even when the heroine broke her stiletto heel scrambling into the dark, creepy basement in her barely-there dress to the tune of the Blood Bath Symphony number 666. Even stupid people didn't deserve to be dismembered.

Jeremy usually just laughed and tried to show me how fake the blood was through my partially hidden eyes. But I preferred to avoid the gore altogether and hide inside a world that was balanced and beautiful, predictable but captivating, very special and somehow immune to harm. In fact, I longed for a world that was safe, untouched by the pain that reality eventually brings. One where my dreams actually had a chance of coming true.

Last month Jeremy called to cancel for movie night. It was the first time in seven years that we'd missed it. Seven years. Even when he'd had pneumonia in 8th Grade, he hid it from his parents long enough to make it over for Day of Dark Dread IV. I knew it was bound to happen eventually, especially considering how busy his social life was getting, but his canceling had stung worse than I'd imagined. And he had called at the very last minute to cancel, which made me feel like some sort of afterthought for him, a fill-in in case other plans didn't come through. A month later the wound was still a little sore around the edges.