The Program [Book Two of The Test]

Chapter One

The Program

Chapter One

I've grown to hate the night time. Mainly because that's when I dream. The dreams from the test had always consisted of the same things, memories that were taken from me. But now, well, they're very different. Every night, I go to bed. Every night, it's the same horrible dream. But it's more like a nightmare. 

It always starts off with me sitting in a white room, it seeming to have no walls but still frames are hanging there. There are exactly three pictures on the nonexistent walls. The first is of my family that also hangs in our living room, taken before the divorce, smiling and laughing until the image slowly fades and i'm the only one left in the picture, a frown on my face. Next, the frame drops to the floor and shatters, glass flying everywhere and hitting my ankle causing little drops of blood to flow.

The next picture is Jack. It was from the picture I drew the day I first met Riley. The dirt with the little picture of the tree house and me and Marcus standing there. And there's Jack's drawing on it, of him beside me. It makes me remember his promise of us still being friends outside and then the picture changes to the last picture I drew, the one where my disrupting was involved and it went from lines in the dirt to an actual picture. His green eyes always stare at me, seeming to be searching my mind for something but that frame too ends up falling and causing just a crack to form, running over his features and his eyes changing to Reid's. 

And finally, the part I fear most, a single phrase. The last frame has it, sometimes fear becomes a reality, the final words I heard in the dream before I woke up. Reid's evil tone filling the room and making my skin crawl. The words are written neatly in black ink on a white background. My body always forces me to move, reaching for it even if I have resisted, which i've tried. My hands burn at its touch and then flames appear where the words were, making me lose my grip as the fire takes over the whole thing. It hits the floor and they go toward the other frames, catching them on fire too and soon the whole place is covered in flames. All I ever do is sit down and let them burn me and the blood on my leg continues to flow, suddenly growing larger and pouring faster, until I pass out.

"Natalie says that it will get better, Lexi." John said to me. I had woken up, breathing heavy and needing to talk to someone. This time was worse than others, I could still feel the burns on my skin but when I went to look I knew they wouldn't be there. I couldn't call Jack, he still didn't remember the test. I didn't know where my other friends lived yet, all I know is they live in this state, maybe mere hours away or even minutes. John and Natalie, or Elody as she told me to call her when there were nosy ears around, were the only two people I could talk to. Mainly because we all were having dreams, but both of them agreed mine sounded much worse than theirs.

"I know. It's just the way the fire felt....." I trailed off, instead running my fingers through the grass in my front yard. I called John and he came. I went outside as quietly as possible and we just sat there and he listened to me. It wasn't like Jack but then again, I knew it wouldn't be. "It doesn't really matter anyway. But thanks for coming, John. I know you probably didn't want to."

"You got that right. I could think of better things to be doing at three o'clock in the morning." He replied. But the thing was he was here, beside me. I know Jack would be too, if he remembered everything we went through, but it was just nice to have a friend. Okay, maybe not a friend, we didn't really see each other as friends yet, but John, it was nice to have John even if he called me a freak in the test and we both still don't like each other.