The Dream Machine

One

I wake up. I am unaware of my surroundings. My body is pressed up against a cement wall in an alley. It looks to me as if I am in my hometown, but yet, an unknowing aura fills the air. Is this real?

I jolt out of bed. It was a dream. Another dream. Another fantasy that haunts my nightmares. Me, not knowing where I am. To me, that's scarier than being held over a pit of spiders. I roll the plaid covers off me and fold them into a makeshift triangle on the corner of my bed. My feet lift up into the air and fall towards the earth, light as a feather. I can feel it. Today, everything is gonna change. I can just sense it in the air. The way my door creaks back and forth by my open window. The swaying of my feet as I hang them over the edge of my bed. Something is gonna change. Something.

I climb out of bed and automatically walk into my bedroom. I grab my green toothbrush and my watermelon-flavored toothpaste. While I may be a very mature 14-year-old guy, my parents still think I'm a five-year-old girl when it comes to my cleaning fluids. I squeeze the tube and watch the pasty matter breeze onto the brush's bristles. The plastic container lands on the counter, facing the mirror. Bloody Mary, I think to myself. Creepy. I take the toothbrush to my mouth, starting the cycle of little circles around each tooth. It is an annoying habit, but I press on, knowing that if I don't, my teeth won't last 'til I'm thirty.

Yet, the sense hangs in the air. What is going to change? Am I gonna shrink down from six-foot-four to five-foot-seven? Gosh, that would be the life. No more "How tall are you?". "Oh, you're tall!" Everyone would just leave me alone, but things don't always go my way, do they.

My phone vibrates from my bedroom. I set the toothbrush down, spit, and stomp back to my room. The phone keeps beeping. It reads that I got a text from my best friend, Elizabeth Gallagher, or Lizzie, as I like to call her, making her laugh as we remember our favorite old Disney Channel show before it was all talking dogs and dumb blonde twins. The text reads that she wants to see me in the school library right before homeroom; she has to tell me something important. I quickly reply that I'll be there at eight o' five and she says okay. I quickly set the phone down. It is seven thirty. I have thirty-five minutes until she tells me all her secrets.

I grab a graphic tee that has an animated rock, paper, and scissors on the front, some jeans, and my green Converses from my closet. If Lizzie has news to shatter my world, I have to look my best. I run downstairs and grab the big pack of Goldfish. My hand reaches for a bowl in the cabinet and finds it. The bowl is a some-what recreation of Shamu from SeaWorld with black and white edges with a tail on the end. Oh, my childhood, I hope it never goes away.

I pour the Goldfish into the bowl and put the pack away. I grab the plastic gallon of milk from the fridge and the Hershey's Chocolate Syrup. You guessed it, I'm making chocolate milk. After creating my concoction, I put the ingredients away and sit down to my breakfast. I know it may not be healthy, but, hey, I have a high metabolism, I can last until twenty without turning into a fat narwhal.

My bowl and glass go into the sink when I finish. I grab my backpack from the living room chair. My high school sister is already at school and my parents are still asleep, again. They work night shifts to keep our family going. I love them with every fiber of my heart. I walk into their bedroom and pull their brown, woolen sheets up to their heads and smile. Sleep peacefully, I think and sprint out the door.

The school library is one of my favorite places on the whole planet Earth. It's a place where jocks and nerds can get along in my school, all connected together through the love of reading. Lizzie is sitting in the corner, near the James Patterson section. She looks nervous yet excited. I walk up in my dirty jeans and messy brown-blonde hair and say, "What's up?"

"Everything," she replies, a crazed look in her eye.

"Come on, Liz," I squeak, "I know they're cancelling Glee, but you don't have to go ballistic."

She breathes, "It's not that. It's that. Now...I have a boyfriend."

"That's great," I choked, "Nothing's better than an eight grade romance."

"My boyfriend is Lloyd."

"Wow," I speak, breathless. Lloyd was my best friend. He was the one that I kept telling the dreams about. My weird nightmares that made people label me as crazy. The one who always stood up for me. He was now dating Lizzie.

It all seems so stupid. Young love, but to me, it never was. Mostly because I, Sandler Jacobson, am in love with Elizabeth Gallagher.