Dream Girl

It was the same dream.

Frustrated, Camila turned over in her bed, pounding the pillow a time or two to fluff it up again before she tried to get back to sleep. A minute or so later, she rolled over on her back, drumming her fingers against her stomach and staring at the ceiling. She rolled to her side and, with a glance at her alarm clock, quickly pulled the pillow down over her ears and across her eyes, as if it was the noise or the light in the room around her that was preventing her from getting back to sleep; that locking them out with the pillow would unlock the door back to sleep.

It wouldn't work. It never did. Camila had a good three hours to go before her alarm was set to go off, but she knew that she would spend most of that time awake and frustrated, troubled by the dream.

It was the same dream.

Camila had dreamed it a half-dozen times or more. Not that she had been counting. She never had any reason to expect that it was more than just a dream, or that it would recur enough times to keep track of. There was nothing in it to set it apart from any other dreams: A woman with piercing eyes and a sad smile, staring at her from the shadows. The eyes were unflinching, and Camila herself was unable to look away from them. They stared at each other as if in a state of mutual hypnosis, neither of them moving, neither of them changing her expression – until the woman gasped, suddenly. That was the point where Camila woke up.

It was never more than that. It was never less than that.

It was the same dream.

The first time she awoke from the dream, Camila was giddy, still slightly high on the scenario that her subconscious had created for her. There was something exciting about having someone stare at her like that; something unique in the initial exhilaration of a newly budding crush, making eye contact with an alluring stranger who returned your gaze.

When she awoke after the second time, she was frustrated that something which seemed so real was only a dream; that her subconscious mind was teasing her so cruelly; dangling a tantalizing fantasy right in front of her, but just out of reach. But when the dream came back the third time - and kept on coming back - Camila awoke confused, wondering who the woman could be, and why it was that she had become a recurring feature of Camila's dreams; what her subconscious mind was trying to tell her, and why it was being so persistent about it. Was it a warning? A premonition? It couldn't be just a coincidence.

The more times she dreamed the strange woman, the more angry and bitter Camila became. Without knowing the reason for the recurring dreams, she had no way of controlling them or making them stop.

There was no pattern to when the dreams would come; none, at least, that Camila could discern. They didn't come once a week - or in synch with her monthly cycles - and there was no apparent relationship with what she ate or how tired she was when she had the dream. Or how lonely she felt. Or how needy.

Camila spent one solid morning scouring the internet – all of her friends' posts, all of the news sites and blogs that she followed, all of the friends of her friends - thinking that she must have seen the woman's picture somewhere before.

She came up empty.

Her mom had connections at the Miami Police Department, and Camila briefly considered setting up a meeting with a sketch artist, or looking through the missing persons files, or even the mugshots. But she didn't want to get her mother involved. Sinu Cabello worried enough about her daughter, single and living alone in Miami. Camila didn't want her to worry that her daughter was losing her mind, too.

Finally, in desperation, she reached out to her friend from high school, Ally Brooke. Ally was an artist, and, even though portraits weren't her specialty, she was competent enough to sketch a reasonable likeness. That was the theory, at least. It wasn't until Camila tried to describe the woman that she realized how little she knew about what she actually looked like. "Haunting eyes" and "a world-weary smile" might have been useful descriptions for someone who wanted to write a poem about Dreamgirl, but they weren't really helpful in explaining to Ally what the woman looked like. Ally painted her best interpretation of the woman Camila described, coming up with a beautiful picture of a woman - who looked nothing like the woman in the dream.