He Loved Me First ✓

He Loved Me First (8)

Chapter 8

I was walking through a field, but it wasn't an empty one. I saw a young woman kneeling in the grass, sobbing. As I got closer, I could see that she looked much like my mom, except she had dark, curly hair, as opposed to my mom's straight blonde. I saw that she was crying over a slab of rock on the ground. I suspected it was a makeshift tombstone. I didn't want to disturb her, or the two girls trying to comfort her, but I had to see what the tomb said. I crept carefully, but soon a twig snapped under my feet. The three of them didn't move. I shouted at them, and they still didn't move. I could see that it was like I wasn't there at all.

I walked faster, trying to get to the grave as fast as I could, needing to know what it said. I froze when I read the name: Oliver James Watts. There were no years, or anything other than my name, which was engraved rather sloppily. I wondered why my grave was out in the middle of nowhere, and why only these three were here to care about me. I also wondered who these people were.

Suddenly, the three people that were feet in front of me just seconds ago disappeared. I was left alone in the field, which burst into flames. I tried to run, but the flames were catching up to me. I couldn't outrun them. I knew they would soon engulf me.

***

I sat up straight, trying to brush the nightmare away. This was the fourth time in the past two weeks that I've had this dream. I didn't know what it meant, and I didn't know what to do about it. It was just a dream after all. Right? It couldn't mean anything much. It was just my subconscious playing on my fears. That's what I tried to tell myself. I decided to tell Felicity about it, because she seemed to have a lot of insights others missed.

I told her about the whole thing, then said, "What do you think it means?"

She paused for a second, then said, "I think you need to talk to someone about it."

"I am talking to someone about it."

"No, not me. I meant someone more experienced with this kind of thing, someone who knows your background a bit better than I do."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Come on," she grinned. "I'm kidnapping you for a few hours." She dragged me to her car, and she drove us away from the school.

"Where are we going, exactly?"

"Back to your roots, hopefully."

"Felicity, I don't think-" I started.

"Don't go telling me this isn't a good idea, Oliver! It is! I'm taking you to see Father Pius."

"But don't you think this will make things worse?" I tried.

"How will this make things worse? He knew you since you were little, and he knows your family extremely well. This will help, I'm sure of it."

She was so confident, like usual. I couldn't fight that. I didn't have a choice but to sit back and let her drive me the three hours back to my hometown, unless I wanted to jump out of the car while in the middle of the interstate, of course.

"How do you know where you're going?" I asked her.

She smiled. "I've been down here a few times, mostly for retreats. I've met Father Pius myself a time or two."

"You have?" I asked. I was genuinely surprised.

She laughed, "There are a lot of things you still don't know about me."

"What's your middle name? It's only fair that I know yours. You know mine, after all."

"Therese," she said.

"Felicity Therese Jones," I said. "I like it. It has a certain ring to it."

We talked about her childhood on the way up, which turned out to be "all joys, and seldom any sorrows," as she put it, which I suppose was much like how Saint Therese described her childhood.

"Well, here we are!" Felicity announced, as we pulled into the church parking lot.

"Do you think anyone is here?" I asked, hopeful that no one was.

"Yes, Oliver," she said. "The Saturday vigil Mass ends in five minutes or so."

"Oh," I said, feeling like a puppy who had just been scolded. "Why am I being punished for having a dream?"

"You're not being punished. This will help you. And you had this dream four times, right? This isn't something that can be ignored."

I wasn't quite so sure, but I knew I would lose even a small argument with this girl. She was not one to give up easily.

"Okay, let's go," she said, after people started piling out the front doors. She got out of the car, and I reluctantly did the same.

Father Pius was out on the front steps greeting people as they left. Felicity dragged me up to him after all the people were gone. "Mass was a 6," he said, not really looking at us. "Masses tomorrow are at 7am, 9am, and 12pm."

"We're not here for Mass," Felicity said.

He looked up at her. "Oh!" Then he looked at me. "Oliver! Your family is worried about you, you should know."

"That's sort of why we're here," she said. "Oliver needs to talk to you, if you have some time."

"Of course. How is it that you two know each other?"

"He's my boyfriend." I loved hearing her say that, and I'm not even certain why that was.

"I see. Yes, I have time. Come inside."

"Oh, I can't," Felicity said. "But don't let him leave until he actually talks to you. He doesn't want to, but he needs to."

"She's worse than my mother a lot of the time," I explained to him.

"Oh, but you need that, don't you?" he asked me. I wasn't quite sure what he meant. He led me inside, and we were soon sitting in the youth retreat room on couches opposite each other. "Do you want anything?" he asked, getting himself some coffee.

"No, I'm okay," I said, then added, "Thanks."

"So tell me why Felicity brought you all this way."

"She thinks I need to talk to someone who knows my family and background better than she does."

"I see. Why would she think this?"

I sighed, knowing that I couldn't drag this out much further. "I had this dream. It's been coming back a total of four times in the past two weeks." I told him exactly what I'd told Felicity about it.

"What does it mean to you?" he asked.

"It didn't mean much at all to me."

"What did you feel when you noticed only three people, and people you didn't know, at that, were crying for you?"

"I guess I felt kind of unloved. Where were my parents? My sister? Felicity? And why was my grave in a field?"

"Do you think that maybe the path you're on now is what led to that outcome?" he asked.

"You're saying that no one wanted anything to do with me because I pushed them all away, and didn't accept their help?"

"What do you think?"

"I think yes," I said quietly.

"Why are you pushing people away?"

"They're trying to change me, when they're supposed to love me unconditionally."

"They do. But do you think that maybe they're only trying to help, because they know that you're choosing to condemn yourself to hell?"

"You think that's what the flames meant in my dream?"

"Oliver, you know this better than anyone else. It's just what you choose to do with what you know."