by William Hill
Liam opened the front door to his house and Carol entered, giving him a smile and a quick wink, followed by Drew and Scott, who both had a concerned look on their faces when they looked at him.
"Carol told us about your accident. How are you feeling?" Drew asked solicitously.
"What happened?" Scott added.
"Nothing…well…something, but I'm fine, couldn't be better."
Carol let out a little giggle. Both boys glanced at her, then at Liam, who had a smile on his face, and then at each other, both wondering what was going on.
He simply said, "Follow me," and led them into the kitchen.
"Hello, boys, Carol," his grandmother said as the three entered. "Have a seat."
"Hi, Mrs. MacDonald," Carol replied.
“Liam, would you introduce me to these fine looking young men?" his grandmother asked.
"Gran, this is Drew and Scott Gill. Guys, my Grandmother."
"Ma’am," both said.
"It’s so nice to finally meet both of you. I knew your grandparents on your dad's side, and I last saw your father when he was but a little tyke," she informed the boys.
"You knew our granddad and grandma?" Drew asked.
"I knew your granddad quite well, only we rarely saw one another except at family reunions. You see, we were cousins. So, I guess I'll make some introductions now. Liam, meet your cousins. Brothers, meet your cousin!"
"Cousins!" Liam exclaimed. “Why didn't you ever tell me?"
"I don't know" she responded. "Subject never came up, I guess. You're the family historian, thought you'd have done your research by now."
He, Dew, and Scott sat stunned and just looked at each other. Drew broke the silence.
"Bitchin! This is way cool. Always wondered why we got along so well and liked each other so much!"
“Wow!" Scott added.
Carol, who suddenly felt like the proverbial fifth wheel, declared, "Enough of this love fest. You can kiss and hug later. That's not why you’re here."
Taken aback, "What’s going on?" Scott wanted to know.
Liam looked at his grandmother, who shrugged her shoulders and said, "It's your story."
So, he began, over the next half hour to tell them about his pirate adventure and today’s trip to England. He left out the explanations he got from his folks and Gran, and about the Circle and the identities of the Circle members (he didn't want to divulge any of that until a time when they may “need to know”, assuming that they choose to assist him and Carol). When he finished there was a moment of silence while the brothers looked at each other.
"That’s a great story, Liam. You should write it down and make it a book. Sure to be a best seller!" Drew announced.
"You musta really hit your head hard in your accident," noted Scott.
"There was no 'accident', I haven't “hit my head” on anything, and I'm not crazy," he said softly.
"Liam's told you the truth," his grandmother said.
"It’s true," Carol seconded.
Drew and Scott didn't know what to say. They knew nothing of Liam's grandmother, having just met her, but neither boy had ever known Carol to lie — she was an inveterate truth-teller, even if it hurt.
"Really?" Scott finally said.
"If I could prove it to you, would you believe me then?" Liam asked. "If you promise not to freak out on me, I'll take you both on a short trip."
"I'm game," announced Drew.
Scott told him, "If you can do it, go for it."
"Remember the gym's equipment room at middle school, where we'd hide when we ditched a class? Take us there," Drew challenged.
He smiled, knowing he’d have no problem focusing on the room. He hadn't cut many classes, but when he did that was where he went because no one went there for anything during school, except other guys skipping class like him; it held the equipment for the after-school sports teams. He went through the routine, closing his eyes, envisioning the equipment room with his newfound cousins, and he opened his eyes to find himself in darkness.
Next to his right ear, he heard Scott's disembodied voice ask, "What’s happened?"
"We should be in the equipment room. The light switch is next to the door," Liam told him.
"Sure, and in exactly which direction is that?" Drew said sarcastically.
"Everybody fan out, find a wall and follow it around," Scott suggested.
There were sounds of people tripping over stuff, and a couple oaths, but eventually the overhead light came on, revealing that they were, in fact, in the equipment room. The brothers looked around, then at each other, and started to laugh.
"What’s so funny?" Liam wanted to know. He was glad that they hadn't freaked on him, but laughter wasn't expected.
"Nothing! Really, Liam, nothing at all! We couldn't have done it any better," Drew told him.
"What?" Did I hear correctly? Did Drew say they could've done this too? "What do you mean by that?"
"Seriously, we couldn't have done this better, you've done something we've tried to do. That is, take each other along in a daydream. But we can only go somewhere by ourselves, and not nearly as fast or as easily as you obviously can," Drew told Liam.
Stunned by this revelation, Liam told them, "We've got to go back and tell Gran about this!"
"No!" Scott said, almost yelling. Then, quietly he added, "I don't want anyone to know. I don't want to be thought of as a freak, or crazy, or something."
"Trust me, Gran won't, and neither will Carol. They're into this too. Gran needs to know. Are you aware of the dangers in doing it?"
Both boys looked puzzled.
"I didn't think so" Liam mumbled. "Gran does and can explain them to you. And once she does, you can then decide if you want to help me and Carol on a mission we've been assigned."
"Mission?" Drew asked.
"Let's go back to my kitchen and you'll find out. Trust me". He ended the vision and in a blink, they all were back sitting at the table where they began. Immediately he related to his grandmother everything that happened and was said.
"Well, I never saw this coming" she admitted. "But remember, Liam, I told you I saw that the boys would be of help to you? Perhaps this is how."
"What do you mean, 'saw'?" said Drew.
"And what do you mean by 'helping' him?" added Scott.
She recapped most of what Liam had already told them about casting dreams, and then explained the dangers involved, adding one that Liam didn't know.
"Remember our little outing today in England, Liam? And how I insisted we return home immediately?"
"Yeah, you were sick or something."
"I wasn't sick at all. I felt someone nearby probing into your vision, someone who was trying to find out who we were and where we were from. I had to use a considerable amount of strength to repel his probe until I could get you to get us out of there. I don't know if he was a 'friendly' or an enemy, but with your inexperience, I didn't want to find out. And that's something you two boys should also know. There are people out there who can get into your 'daydream', uninvited by you, and change it into a 'nightmare' so horrendous it will drive you insane. Now, tell me when all this began with the two of you, and what you've done."
The brothers looked at one another, waiting to see who would talk first. Finally, Drew told Scott to tell her. He told them that he first noticed a couple of weeks ago that his daydreams, and he had always daydreamed a lot, had suddenly seemed to become much more vivid than usual. At first he hadn't thought much of it until last Saturday when he and Drew were home alone in the den watching TV.
"I looked over at Scott and he was, like, all spaced out. His eyes were half closed and his mouth was just hanging open. I reached over and gave him a push. Nothing, so I called out his name trying to bring him out of whatever was happening."
"I was dreaming about being my favorite Redskin player, Art Monk? I was in the middle of a game against Dallas, I’d just caught a pass from Theisman, whe
n I heard Drew calling my name, but I couldn't figure out how, because he wasn't there with me, and I got distracted. Well, I got tackled. I landed hard on the five-yard line when I woulda made a touchdown, just as I heard my name again and lost all concentration. I opened my eyes and saw Drew looking at me."
"I asked what planet he was on, or if he was on drugs, or something, because while I’d often seen him playing his pretend Redskin games in the backyard, or daydreaming inside, I'd never seen him look quite like that before," Drew said.
"I told him my dream, and how real it was, especially at the end when I got tackled. I’d landed awkwardly, on my wrist. It was then that I noticed a little pain. I looked and it was swelling up. Its still swollen a bit, right here, see?" he showed everybody. "I told Drew, 'This is amazing, I'm really hurt!'. Of course he said I'd probably just hurt it earlier in gym class, or something, but for some reason I didn't believe that and, as unbelievable as it seemed at the time, I told him that somehow my dream was true."
"Of course I told him he'd gone totally mental," Drew said with a sigh.
"That was the end of it. I knew I wasn't crazy, but there wasn't any way of convincing him. We didn't talk any more about it that night. Then, two days later..."
"I had a daydream", Drew picked up where Scott had stopped. "I rarely daydream, but when I do it's usually about my video game. Anyway, I was dreaming about being a Mage on a quest, when this horrendous beast attacked me. We fought, but before I could slay it with a magic spell, it swiped at me with his claws and nailed me on the arm. I forget why, but I sorta came back to reality and continued doing what I was doing before I'd drifted off. Later-on, my arm was a little achy, and when I looked at it, there was this ugly scratch! I found Scott and told him all about it."
"And that's when we knew something different was happening, something unlike ever before" Scott went on. "So we talked about it, and Drew asked me if I'd had another daydream. I told him I hadn't, because I'd been too afraid to. He suggested that maybe we should try one together. We agreed to dream of somewhere safe, like our room. We tried, but only wound up in our room without the other. We tried a couple of other times, trying to include one another, but it hasn't worked. And can you tell us exactly how this is happening?"
"The Buddha said, 'We create the world we see'," Gran told them, shrugging and adding, “if you believe what you see is real, then for you, it is. I didn't sense this coming, but I'm not too surprised considering the family connection. I'm glad you told me so that I'd have the chance to educate you about it and warn you of the dangers. So do you think you'll want to do it again?" Gran asked them.
"Oh yeah, this beats the Hell — sorry, the ‘heck’ — out of video gaming!" Drew told her.
"I suppose so," added Scott. "Maybe, after I learn more about it."
"Good," she said to Drew. "That's reasonable," she told Scott. To both she said, "I do have a request of both of you. You've heard us mention a couple of times about maybe you two helping Liam and Carol with a little something. I hate to do this, but I need a 'yes or no' before we tell you what it entails, and if you say yes, then I'll also need your most truthful promise not to talk to anyone about what we will tell you. Okay?"
“Anything for my Cuz. I'll promise," Drew told them.
"I can't promise without knowing what it is I'm promising to do, but I will promise to keep it a secret even if I don't think I can do whatever it is," said Scott.
"That's fair enough, isn't it Gran?" Liam insisted.
"They are the ones you've chosen, Liam. If that's okay by you, then it's okay by me. You're in charge of this mission."
Liam began, "I can't tell you who, for now, has asked Carl and me, and Gran, here, to find out what's going on at school. But 'they' think it might be something very important. I know what happened Friday, but what happened today?"
Carol told him that after Homeroom, where everyone turned in all their text and library books, as they had been instructed Friday, they were sent to the auditorium. There, they were told that the School Board had announced the formation of a new magnet school for business and government. Selected students would be notified by the end of the week and would be attending next Monday, and everyone else would be staying at their old school.
“And why selected?” Scott asked. “I thought magnet schools were by application, then selection. Seems like they skipped a step or two and just assigned. What if someone assigned doesn’t want to go there?”
"Sounds like somebody doesn’t want freedom of choice" Gran suggested.
"That's BULLSH—"
"Drew!" Carol said, stopping him.
"Sorry, got carried away. Don't like people telling me what I can and can't do with my life!" Drew said, apologizing.
"No need to apologize, Drew. I was thinking the exact same thing," Gran told him.
"So how are we going to go about finding out what's going on if we can't go to school until Monday?" Liam posed to his grandmother.
"For the rest of this week, just have fun. It's a free vacation. Just do whatever you would normally do. One request - nobody try any visions. I have an uneasy feeling. One thing I do know, and that is you're going to need to be cautious."
"About what?” Carol asked.
“I’ve no idea," Gran said.
"What if we can’t handle the subjects they assign us?" Carol asked.
"I'll see to it you will, even if I have to be your full-time tutor." Looking at the brothers, she asked them, "Will you be disappointed if you aren’t selected?"
"Nah, all I want to be is a cop, and I can get into Police Science at my school next semester.”
"All I want to do is play golf and someday be a club pro," said Scott.
"Okay, regardless of what, I'll see to it that you two go to your usual school."
"What about me?" Liam wanted to know. He really didn't want to be in a different school. He liked hanging with Drew and Scott, and now that he knew they were blood family he wanted to hang them even more. Boy, things had been so much easier when we all went to the same school! he thought.
"We need to do what’s best for the mission. I’ll see what can be done. We have the rest of the week so I suggest you gang-of-four get together at least once this week and map out an action plan about how we can find out what's behind this change."
Chapter Thirteen: New School
“If we limit our vision to the real world, we will forever be fighting on the minus side of things…