We Awaken (7 page)

Ashlinn would help. Why wasn’t there a way to speak to her like a normal teenager? My cell phone could have redeemed itself a bit if it worked as a way of communicating with her, but apparently there were no mobile phones in dreams. She was the only person who could offer any comfort, and she wasn’t around. Fine. I could seek it in a more medicinal way, one that might end up getting me to her in the process. It was nearing the evening, and there was no time like the present.

Sleep would help. The thoughts in my head were as shattered as my dreams, but I knew that much. Images of my comatose brother and Dad’s grave rolled through my head like a sick slideshow between thoughts of a future without pointe shoes. In that haze of despair, I found my way to the upstairs bathroom and its drug cabinet. White bottles beckoned and I shook them like morbid maracas, looking for one that was full enough that no one would notice if a few went missing. Codeine fit the bill, and its label revealed the contents could cause dizziness, shortness of breath, and light-headedness.

Like I didn’t already have those.

I swallowed several down dry, ignoring the faucet in front of me.

I REMEMBER
feeling ashamed of the fact I wasn’t ashamed of the act itself. I stumbled into my room, closed the shades against the fading twilight, and burrowed under my sheets to build a cocoon of darkness. Soon sleep would envelop me in a cloud of drug-induced serenity and I was finally calm.

This calmness extended into the dream. I was back at the start, where Ashlinn had first visited me, with sand beneath my feet and the ocean meeting the shore to my left. This time the fog was cleared away, and everything was placid and serene. Instead of having a gray atmosphere, lavender and pink skies spread out over the expansive blue ocean, and I almost forgot to be upset.

Almost.

Ashlinn’s melodious voice came from behind me.

“Hello, Lovergirl.”

“Hi,” I responded, hoping this being a dream would prevent my voice from being too croaky. Something about my demeanor must have given my emotions away, though, because she grabbed my hands, worried.

“What’s wrong? You can’t be sad.”

And I fell apart. There went the calm.

“I have nothing left. My family is gone and so is my future. You know the audition I have tomorrow? Mother can’t drive me anymore. That school was my only way to escape from this town. I always hoped I could be something more than those other dancers, all the ones who thought they were gonna make it but gave up. It isn’t freaking fair.”

Ashlinn looked stonelike.

“Find another way to the audition.” She sounded completely sure of herself.

“There isn’t another way. What am I going to do, hijack a car I’d be too scared to drive? Ask Ellie? Or do you recommend I hitchhike and end up filleted in a ditch somewhere?”

“Personally I was hoping for something less violent. This isn’t like you; stop giving up. Don’t make me come out there and drag you to New York myself.”

I lifted an eyebrow at her and scoffed.

“Now you’re just being cruel. Losing everything I had ever hoped for is one thing. Having you dangle something impossible in front of me really sweetens the cake.” I felt cruel but not wrong.

The water lapping onto the shore was discontinuous, and the waves kept pausing for irregular lengths of time, frozen in the air. Ashlinn had begun walking toward them and away from me, but that didn’t stop me from hearing her when she said, “Reeves will be ever so disappointed.”

“Don’t you dare bring him into this!” I shouted. “I will not be manipulated. He does not need to know.”

So much for her helping me. I was better off awake and miserable than asleep and patronized.

“Like how he doesn’t need to know your mother is completely vacant now? I’m keeping that secret because you wanted me to, and I care about you. A lot. But he’s my friend and deserves honesty.”

“Says the girl who leaves me in the dark. I know practically nothing about you, but I want to know everything. There is no reason for you to be so mysterious.” It didn’t feel like a confession at the time.

She stopped her journey to where the water met the sand and, with her back still toward me, murmured, “You know nothing,” in a tone so low it hardly met my ears.

“I know that you can hurt. That cape isn’t body armor. When I heard all the work I put into this audition was pointless, the first thing I thought about was how you would know what to say to make it better.”

“Sorry to ruin your illusions. I’ll go now.”

“This was so not worth taking all that codeine for.”

I hadn’t intended for her to hear my last statement. It was whispered under my breath, but her body noticeably seized up, and her head snapped back around.

“What did you just say?” she asked thunderously, stalking back to where I stood.

As if I was trying to prove some grand point, I proudly announced, “I was so damn pissed and eager to see you that I took some pills. Now look at what I get.”

I held out my arms and tried to sound sure of myself, but the facade was slipping and she could definitely tell.

Ashlinn was face-to-face with me. Her furious eyes might as well have been burning holes in my flesh.

“Right, I’m ending this,” she rumbled, and suddenly the landscape melted away into a dismal off-white.

The world around me flickered like a scene from a horror film, yet there was nothing to see in the moments of light. Thankfully, this hell lasted only moments, and the next thing I knew I was awake in bed, gasping.

My heaves quickly transitioned into screams when I registered another presence in bed with me. I scooted up against the wall and started flinging my hand wildly toward the bedside table to find a weapon, shrieking the entire time. When I finally had a flashlight in hand, I realized the intruder on the other side of my mattress wasn’t a stranger at all.

It was Ashlinn.

“Holy crap!” I exclaimed, throwing myself even closer to the wall. It was a wonder I even recognized her, considering she didn’t appear to have any clothing on, not that I could see any detail in the darkness. It was the first time I had ever seen her hair, a fact I wish I had been more ready to appreciate at the time. She looked at me with eyes that could have melted titanium.

“How many pills did you take?” she shouted as a hello, uncaring of her nakedness.

I wanted to answer, but the whole situation was so shocking I could do little more than stutter and stare as my brain attempted to come back online. Her voice hit me like lightening. I never realized how hazy dreams were until the crispness of her tone met my ears in reality. The revelation could be likened to the discovery of Mozart.

“Answer me. How many pills did you take?” Her distress was getting through, and I was finally able to stammer out an answer.

“Not too many. I’m not about to OD or anything.”

“You better be right. Would you mind getting me some clothes?”

She was gazing down at my green sheets as if they held an explanation for her nudity. My mouth was complying in about the same fashion as my arms. Both were just hanging there unable to address the situation. She turned her eyes up toward me and stared heatedly until my brain began to work again.

“Yeah… um, I’ll just grab you a robe.”

I tumbled off the bed and toward my closet, feeling my way in the dark. This couldn’t be real; there was no way. A creator of dreams was sitting in my bed, with skin and hair and an angry demeanor. Trying not to dwell on the insanity of the situation, I focused on the task at hand and began pushing aside the parade of sundresses behind my closet doors until I saw a pink terrycloth robe, which I presented to her from the side of the bed. Tears were starting to build up in my eyes.

She didn’t thank me, and I made a show of turning around as she got dressed. After putting on my robe—
the color’s all wrong; she doesn’t wear pink, she wears midnights
—she inched over to where I stood and grabbed my arm to pull me back onto the bed. The contact was far too solid, and I convulsed a bit. She was warm and real, and I was hungry for more proof of her existence but was too scared to seek it. Our legs were dangling over the edge like when we sat together on the stage.

There was very little holding me together at that point. When she looked over at me with her still expression and said “Hello” so gently the words were hardly more than air, I began sobbing instantly. Thankfully, there was no hyperventilation as was my normal routine. This situation overwhelmed me, and my life was getting to be too much. She squeaked worriedly when the tears started falling and shimmied closer, grabbing my head and leaning it onto her shoulder.

I was chanting “you’re real” over and over, which earned me a mouthful of bathrobe. It smelled of my detergent, but beneath that was the scent of rainy summer evenings. Her shoulder moved slightly with every breath, and I counted each one.

When I finished this well-earned emotional breakdown and gazed up at her, I must have looked like an absolute crime scene, but there was a sort of suppressed wonder in her eyes.

“Sorry about that.”

“I had no idea my appearance would affect you like that. Not that you don’t deserve it. I am absolutely furious with you.”

“Understood. Stay pissed at me, but stay real. I can’t believe I can actually touch you. Can I please touch you?” I reached out to stroke her arm but waited until I felt her give an almost imperceptible nod before laying my hand on her.

“How is any of this possible?”

“You should know by now that things from the world of my creation can easily enter yours. Look at the carnation drying up over there.”

There was no need to lift my head and look at Reeves’s flower to know it still sat on my bedside table.

“I hadn’t ever allowed myself to exit before, but it wasn’t difficult. Although I must admit I hadn’t been expecting my clothes to vanish, not that you gave me enough time to expect anything.”

“Why didn’t your clothes come along?”

“They were created from whispers of creativity and illusions. Such fabric isn’t exactly compatible with the waking world, or at least that’s what I’m assuming.”

“Great. Making clothes out of ideas. I may need a bit of time to process that on top of everything else. If you’ve always had the power to turn real, why didn’t you do it sooner? I can’t believe you’re here. It’s the most wonderful thing that could’ve happened.”

A furious spark returned to her eyes, and she nudged me off her shoulder so we were level with each other. She moved farther back onto the bed and crossed her legs, so I mirrored her position and prepared myself for what was coming. It didn’t seem like it would be pretty. Ashlinn took a breath.

“This isn’t a reward, so please don’t treat it like one. It’s absolutely morbid. It’s sick. You’re throwing your life away, and it just isn’t worth it. Are you insane? You could die. Then we’d never see one another again. How idiotic could you possibly be? Pills?” Her tone gradually got louder and darker as she progressed through this speech, and by the end she was seething. I reached over to her again, but she batted my hand away.

“I changed my mind. Don’t touch me. This isn’t an accolade, me being here. This is just me getting rid of ways you can hurt yourself and making sure you don’t do it again.”

I heard her words but wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have. Sitting across from her offered me a fabulous view of her hair even in the dark. It was remarkably short and black with curls that stood out straight from her head. She noticed my distraction.

“You aren’t even paying attention. Do you want to end up dead? Or like your brother?”

There was no reason for Reeves to be brought into this. Instead of going off on that, though, I decided just to tell the truth.

“I’m so happy you’re here. You’re real, and I’m looking at you and your hair with actual eyes.”

She jumped off the bed.

“No, no, no. You can’t be happy right now. I need you to regret your stupid decisions. Which way is your bathroom? I’m assuming that’s where the drugs are.”

I just stared down at the bed instead of answering.

“Fine. I’ll find them myself. It shouldn’t be too difficult.”

Ashlinn walked out the door and I was alone again. No way that would last for long.

I leapt off the bed and began pursuing her before my brain could catch up. She was in the small bathroom across the hall, her face illuminated by strips of moonlight coming through the window’s blinds. She had my small garbage bin in one hand and was calmly chucking everything that came in a bottle and wasn’t toothpaste or hair product into it. Disdain was evident on her face.

“Please stop,” I said meekly, wrapping my arms around myself. She just glared and tossed a bottle of liquid Tylenol. “I promise not to do it again. Now that you’re actually here, I won’t need to.” My voice was hopeful, but at this comment she dropped the portable pharmacy she was assembling and turned to me angrily.

“No. Self-destruction isn’t cute. It isn’t romantic.”

“Oh, like you know anything about romance,” I blurted, throwing my hands into the air. “You’re freaking asexual; you probably know as much about romance as I do. I wasn’t even sure you were real up until today and now you’re teaching me about love. That’s just brilliant.”

The second those snarky words left my lips, I instantly regretted them. Defensiveness had gotten the best of me. It was unfair to use her sexuality against her, especially considering I might share it. Still, there was no retracting my statement, and I let it hang between us.

I’m almost tempted to say her expression was hurt, but there was too much fury to be sure.

“Have I ever said that I can’t fall in love? That I am incapable of romance?”

“No,” I stuttered back, ashamed.

“You didn’t research it, did you?”

“Actually I did, and figuring out that I’m probably asexual too really didn’t help matters. I don’t want to be alone forever. I want to be loved.”

God, please don’t let me cry again.

Her expression was indescribable. She was enraged to begin with, so that emotion was expounded upon, but many others were at play as well. Now there were even more mistakes on my repertoire of regret. Her eyes were going glassy, but I would almost be tempted to say she seemed… proud.