WAKE- dont close your eyes

SIX MINUTES

DECEMBER 9, 2005, 12:55 P.M
Janie Hannagan's math book slips from her fingers. She grips the edge of the table in the school library. Everything goes black and silent. She sighs and tests her head on the table. Tries to pull herself out of it, but fails miserably. She's too tired today. Too hungry. She really doesn't have time for this.
And then...

She's sitting in the bleachers in the football stadium, blinking under the lights, silent among the roars of the crowd.
She glanced at the people sitting in the bleachers around her- fellow classmates, parents- trying to spot the dreamer. She can tell this dreamer is afraid, but where is he? Then she looks to the football field. Finds him. Rolls her eyes.
It's Luke Drake. No question about it. He is, after all, the only naked player on the field for the homecoming game.
Nobody seems to notice or care. Except him. The ball is snapped amd the lines collide, but is covering himself with his hands, hopping from one foot to the other. She can feel his panic increasing. Jamie's fingers tingle and go numb.
Luke looks over at Janie, eyes pleading, as the football moves toward him , a bullet in slow motion. "Help," he says.
She thinks about helping him. Wonders what it would take to change the course of Luke's dream. She even considers a boost of confidence to the star reciever the day before the big game could put Fieldridge High in the running for the Regional Class A Championship.
But Luke's really a jerk. He wont appreciate it. So she resigns herself to eatching the debacle. She wonders if he'll choose pride or glory.

He's not as big as he thinks he is.
That's for damn sure.

The football nearly reaches Luke when the dream starts over again. Oh, get ON with it already, Janie thinks. She concentrates in her seat on the bleachers and slowly manages to stand. She tried to walk back under the bleachers for the rest of the dream sonshe doesn't have to watch, and suprisingly, ths time, she is able.

That's a bonus.

1:01 P.M
Janie's mind catapults back inside her body, still sitting at her usual remote corner table in the library. She flexed her fingers painfully, lifts her head and, when her sight returns, she scours the library.
She spies the culprit at a table about fifteen feet away. He's awake now. Rubbing his eyes and grinning sheepishly at the two other football players who stand around him, laughing. Shoving him. Whapping him on the head.
Janie shakes he head to clear it and she lips up her at the math book, which sits open and facedown on the table where she dropped it. Under it, she finds a fun-size Snickers bar. She smiles to herself and peers to the left, between rows of bookshelves.
But no one is there for her to thank.