With Fear or Without

5- Confession of Insanity

Most of that morning was another blur. Cleo was restless and fidgety. Memory of her most recent dream flashed through her mind every few seconds like a persistent reminder. Every so often, someone would shake her back into the present.

"Earth to Cleo? You there?" Charlie waved their hand in front of Cleo's eyes, grinning.

"Fine," Cleo mumbled, swatting away Charlie's hand.

"Hmm. For some reason, I'm not convinced."

"I just didn't sleep well... I'm thinking, that's all." Seeing the concern creep into Charlie's eyes made Cleo want to tell them about her dream immediately. Dreams- plural. Because one crazy hyper realistic dream wasn't enough. She had to wait, it probably wasn't the greatest time to whisper, hey, I'm having weird dreams, one of them came true and in the other a strange boy asked for help and gave me an address. Not the sort of thing you whisper about when you're supposed to be learning to balance chemical equations. Not that either of them were paying much attention anyways.

Cleo had been watching the clock all day, watching the time tick by on her watch and wishing it was lunch already. But as the time went on, she found herself getting nervous. Suddenly, telling her friends about the dreams didn't sound like a compelling idea. For one thing, they would probably think she was going insane. Sure, Cleo, someone real definitely spoke to you in a dream. We totally believe you but let's go to a hospital to get your head looked at, okay?

Cleo rolled her eyes at the thought, but she knew she couldn't blame her friends if they did come to that conclusion. Some dramatic and overactive part of her was flashing the warning lights and a siren, yelling brain function is going haywire! She doubted she would believe the story if it came from someone else. But she was there. She saw Cassian, she spoke to him, she knew she did. She knew he was real.

Another reason she was having second thoughts about confessing to her friends was that she thought they might convince her not to go. Not to help this mysterious boy from her weird dream. And they would probably be right. But from Cleo's perspective, this was not something she could forget about, nor was it something she could ignore. She had to find him, if only to prove to herself that he was real. 

As they sat around their usual classroom table at lunch, Cleo stared at the table while conversation happened around her.

"C'mon Andy! It'll be fun, I promise. You know you've wanted to see this movie forever. We'll walk around, get food, whatever. You have to come," Charlie was demanding, pointing at Andy menacingly.

"I can't. I already got caught trying to sneak out this week, I have to wait until they calm down a bit before I try anything," Andy said bitterly.

"Where'd you go when you snuck out before?" Charlie asked in a curious tone, but forcibly nonchalant, as if they were trying to pretend they didn't care.

"Well, I said I got caught, didn't I?" Andy said dismissively.

"Uh huh..."

Rowana sat chuckling at the back and forth between Andy and Charlie, rolling her eyes at the same time. She looked to Cleo with a these two, am I right? sort of look, which quickly morphed into confusion.

"Okay, Cleo, seriously. What's up with you? And what's that?" Rowana leaned over to glance at the scrap of paper Cleo had in her hand.

She glanced down. Sure enough, the crumpled and folded piece of paper was clutched in her hand. She unfolded it and smoothed it out over the table. Brushing her hair out of her face, she took a deep breath and looked at her friends. Now or never.