“That’s a little hard to answer,” he responded. “How did you—”
Before he could finish, a loud concussion rocked the dream world, and before Lucy could stop herself, she was swallowed in darkness.
Lucy sat up in bed and saw that her phone was in pieces on the floor, the back having popped off and the battery having spilled out. It took a minute to get it back on. There was a missed call from Kat. Lucy dialed her number, feeling disappointed at having been pulled away from her dream. After one ring, Kat answered.
“Oh my gosh, what happened?” Kat sounded frantic.
“What do you mean?”
“I just got a call from Maddi and she said you were in the parking lot with Benjamin Raven. What happened?”
“Nothing. He sad hi, I said hi, that was it.”
“Stop it, Luce. Don’t lie to me. What happened? And I don’t mean, ‘what did you say?’”
“Nothing … really.”
There was silence on the other end.
Lucy continued, “Okay, okay, I like him a little; so what?”
“So what? This is huge. You’ve been all about Mark Thompson for six years. Now, all of a sudden, you like the new guy?”
“It’s circumstantial. I’m still all about Mark.”
“Okay,” Kat said. She didn’t sound convinced. “You want me to come over?”
“No, you have your date with Dave. Trust me, there’s nothing going on. I just hope you’re right about Mark.”
“I’m right, Luce. Just don’t get distracted, okay?”
“Yeah, I won’t.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”
Lucy smiled. “Yeah, tomorrow.”
She was beginning to feel better already. Benjamin was the new kid. Mark was solid and she knew him. She was practically in love with him. Benjamin was a flash in the pan compared to Mark. The only problem was that Lucy knew for near certain if she gave Benjamin one more thought, she would fall madly in love with him.
Chapter 5
In spite of the catastrophe of the previous day, Benjamin Raven was all Lucy could think about as she pulled onto campus; he was all she had thought about for months. The parking lot was nearly full as she drove around looking for a black motorcycle. It would be difficult to spot, and she was forced to slam on her brakes more than once to avoid hitting someone. It was ridiculous to try and find him with everyone milling around. She needed to get to higher ground.
From the top of the stairs, she scrutinized every space in the lot. With her hand raised to her forehead, she looked for Benjamin’s dark hair towering over the other kids, but it wasn’t his hair that located him. It was Samantha Morris’ voice from somewhere behind her that pinpointed Benjamin’s location.
Turning around, she saw immediately that not only did Benjamin seem to be having a grand time with Samantha and her minions in pleated skirts, but Samantha was draped all over him under Lucy’s oak tree and on Lucy’s bench. Dejection and disappointment welled up inside her and she wished she had the nerve to just walk over and slap Samantha across the face. Lucy balled her fist and from deep down, she felt like she could actually do it. She felt she could for once and for all walk over to Samantha Morris and teach her a lesson.
“Lucy, over here!” Kat’s voice sounded from a grassy area to her right.
Looking over, she saw Kat sitting with Dave in front of one of the nearby buildings. She looked back to Benjamin and Samantha. “Ah, screw it!” she exclaimed under her breath and walked over to where Kat and Dave sat. She forced herself to appear composed and approached them.
“Hey,” Lucy said, smiling with such fake enthusiasm that Kat was instantly suspicious.
“Hey, Luce, you okay?”
“Yeah, great, why?”
“You look sort of tense.”
“No, fine.” Lucy’s smile was tight and forced. “You ready to go?”
Kat furrowed her forehead at Lucy. “Yeah, I’m coming.” She jumped up, grabbed her bag, and turned to Dave. “So I’ll see you later, then?”
Dave stood and Kat hugged him around the middle. “Yeah, I’ll see you at lunch,” he said.
Kat smiled and winked at him. Dave smiled back and walked toward a group of football players by the office building.
“Okay, what’s the matter?” Kat locked elbows firmly with Lucy as they walked past the oak tree and the reek of Samantha’s perfume.
“I hate her,” Lucy growled under her breath.
“I thought you only liked him ‘a little’,” Kat said sarcastically, holding up quotation fingers.
“That’s not the point. It’s not him, it’s her.”
Kat shot a skeptical glance that went unnoticed.
“It’s like she’s deliberately trying to get in the way of me even trying to get to know a guy. It’s been years. You’d think she’d get bored.”
“I know, she sucks, but who cares? Mark is showing serious interest. Don’t forget him because you think you might, maybe, sort of, like another guy ‘a little’.”
Lucy heaved a frustrated sigh and shook her head. “If I have to smell that rose scented crap she wears any more, I’m going to seriously hurt someone.”
“Okay, I have to head this way,” Kat pointed across the quad. “Remember, Mark likes you now. And if you’re going to hurt her, do it where I can see.” Kat smiled and hugged her friend. “Be good; we’ll talk at lunch. Love you.”
Lucy nodded and slunk off toward class. She didn’t go directly because she needed to cool off. She detoured around the gym as the first bell sounded. She had five minutes to bring her heart rate down.
The hallway was clogged with high school students racing to get to their classes as she neared Mrs. Roth’s room. She didn’t want to go in. For a moment, she paused outside the door to take a breath, when she felt something very strange. It was a warm feeling, like a blanket being wrapped around her. It felt a lot like someone had come up behind her and wrapped their arms around her, and she liked it. Her heart rate sped up a little as the sensation brought to mind the image and presence of one single person in a way that she knew she couldn’t resist.
Lucy cautiously walked to Mrs. Roth’s room and looked through the door. Her peers were scattered all over; they were standing in small clusters, sitting alone, walking from one side of the room to the other, but Lucy was looking for one person. The sensation from the hallway was almost guiding her to her target. It had every characteristic of Benjamin Raven, and her heart sank when she found him sitting next to Samantha.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Lucy whispered to the cosmos. She shook her head. It’s not fair. Why does he have to feel so great?
Lucy dropped her bag from off of her shoulders and walked to her seat. Throwing herself in the desk she thought about Mark and it made her smile inside, even if just a little smile. But all she could feel in that room was Benjamin’s presence and the disgusting aroma of rose perfume. She tried to clear her mind and just forget about Benjamin.
She closed her eyes and thought about Mark again, but that only made her think about Benjamin. What she needed to do was clear them both out of her head. She needed a new distraction. Trying hard to think of someone or something powerful enough to drive Benjamin away, she thought of Kenny.
Perfect, she thought.
With a little bit of concentration, she washed out everything to do with Benjamin and Mark and replaced them with Kenny. Images of him stealing glances at her in the library raced through her mind. She thought about how creepy he made her feel at times because he would try to talk to her about her personal life. He was just so weird and didn’t really seem to have any social skills or even any interpersonal relationships. As she allowed Kenny to dominate her thoughts, she unconsciously started closing off the classroom around her and was a little surprised when she found herself suddenly back in the rainforest.
For a moment she thought about trying to get out. She looked around for a way to do that, but she knew deep down that she didn�
��t really want to leave. She wanted to see him again. She wanted to see Benjamin. Emerging from the forest, she was back near the precipice she knew so well.
“Benjamin!” she yelled. “Benjamin, are you here?”
She looked over to where he had been the last two times and she watched as he stepped from behind a tree to face her. He had a curious look on his face. She opened her mouth to speak but he held up his hand. They were twenty or thirty yards apart and Lucy froze.
His worried expression mixed with confusion. His hand moved abruptly and quickly to his waist, flinging aside the corner of his jacket where he grabbed the hilt of his sword.
As she squinted to comprehend better the details of his face, she suddenly felt both of her arms restrained from behind. She tried to look around to see what had taken hold of her, but she couldn’t see it. She thrashed around trying to break free, when all of a sudden she was dragged backward and terror spread throughout her entire body.
The force that held her felt cold through her shirt and she looked to Benjamin to help her, but he was fading into the distance. Her heart began to race and she felt tears of terror squeeze out from the corners of her eyes. When she noticed she was slowing down, Lucy did the only thing she could think to do.
“Help me, Benjamin! Get it off of me!” she screamed.
Benjamin didn’t move. He stared, seemingly bewildered by what he saw.
“Help me, please!” Lucy screamed again as the distance between them grew wider.
Benjamin still didn’t move.
Lucy tried to break free, but the grip was too tight. Around her torso, she finally saw what had her: it looked like black smoke wrapped around her like a thick snake, but it flowed more like water or the gas from dry ice. It scared her even more and she looked up to see that Benjamin was some fifty yards away. What is he doing? she thought.
She wrenched her shoulders around again but the grip tightened. There was nothing she could do; she felt helpless and terrified, so she tried again the only thing she could manage.
“BENJAMIN!”
The scream resonated off of anything that would sing it back and Benjamin snapped out of his trance. With a lightning fast flick of his wrist he drew his sword and broke into an instant sprint right toward her, running with breakneck speed and determination.
It took no time for him to start closing the distance between them. As he got closer, Lucy could see that the look on his face had changed from bewilderment to what could only be described as anger: his eyes were narrowed, and his jaw was visibly clenched so that his gleaming teeth showed as he breathed heavily through them.
Suddenly, and without any warning, she stopped. Benjamin was only a few yards away, still sprinting, not stopping, ferocity evident on his face. She waited anxiously for freedom, but he wasn’t slowing down. Lucy’s eyes widened and she watched as he raised his sword, charging right at her. Without warning, and before Lucy could say anything, he drew back, and as swiftly as he had drawn it from its scabbard, he plunged the sword straight through her chest, causing a piercing bolt of pain to splice her sternum in half. In her mind she heard a sickly screeching howl.
Lucy’s violent gasp was just enough to cause most of the room to turn instantly and look in her direction. Her heart raced and she breathed heavily through her mouth. Her body was gripped with shock and terror as she looked around the room. All she could see were the faces of her classmates glaring in her direction; some mockingly sniggering, and others acting thoroughly disgusted. Lucy ignored them all as she turned to find Benjamin. When she found him, a shuddering chill shot up her spine and her hand went immediately to her chest, as she could still feel the pain of the sword piercing her. Benjamin’s eyes were somewhat wide like so many others in the room, but his expression was stone.
From the front of the room, Lucy heard the sound of Mrs. Roth’s voice. “Sleep is a home activity, Ms. Higgins,” she called out, obviously annoyed.
Lucy didn’t say anything as she tried to arrest her heart rate.
“Ms. Higgins, do you understand?”
Lucy looked up again. She barely understood that she was the center of the classroom’s attention and she had to respond.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry,” she managed in a weak voice.
The class returned to its lesson. Lucy wrestled with the difference between her dream and reality. Despite her own will, she could still feel Benjamin’s presence in the room. She had to get away from him. She grabbed her things and examined her exit route. It was all the way across the room. The clock read 8:20 AM, five minutes left in class. She would have to wait.
***
Fighting the concourses of students in the halls, Lucy finally found Kat, and there was no hiding her frantic behavior.
“Lucy, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“I need to talk to you,” Lucy replied, quietly taking Kat’s arm.
“Okay. Let’s go.”
The two girls walked downstairs and out of the building.
“What’s going on? You look terrible.”
“Will you skip the rest of the day? I need to tell you something.”
“Yeah,” Kat answered instantaneously. “Where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere but here.”
***
Safely in the confines of her car, Lucy sat back in the driver’s seat and took a deep breath. It was the longest breath she had taken in fifteen minutes. Kat situated herself in the passenger seat and just waited. She was so good at giving Lucy space when she needed it. Kat gently turned to look at Lucy, whose head rested heavily on the back of her seat. Color was starting to return to Lucy’s face. With her eyes still closed, she began breathing normally again.
***
The drive was spent in silence. It didn’t take them long to get to Bandon and Lucy pulled into the parking lot adjacent to the pier. She sat for a moment and stared out the windshield at the ocean.
“Do you ever feel like your whole life has changed overnight? It feels like everything I was, everything I knew, is changing.” She turned to Kat, who was nodding her head to confirm that she understood what Lucy was saying. “Have you ever felt that way?”
“What’s going on, Lucy? This can’t just be about Mark.”
Lucy shook her head as she watched the ocean roll in and out. “I can’t think with him around.”
“Who?”
“Benjamin. Ever since I met him …” Lucy stopped.
Kat’s eyes opened wide, waiting for her to finish her sentence, but she didn’t.
Lucy could feel the tears of the last two days finally begin their exodus down her face. Kat reached over and grabbed her friend around the shoulders and hugged her. The two girls sat for a moment as Lucy let out all of the emotion that had been dammed up inside her. Everything about the strangeness of her life hit her all at once. Kat just held her as she cried.
After a few moments, she pulled away and reached in the glove box for a handful of fast food napkins to wipe her eyes.
“Thank you. That’s so embarrassing to get this crazy over stupid guys.”
“No it isn’t. You’re going through a lot right now. Believe it or not, this is sort of normal.”
“No it’s not. He’s everywhere, Kat. I can’t get rid of him. He’s in my dreams, my daydreams. He’s everywhere.”
“Yes, it is. It’s totally normal.”
“No, I’m telling you, this isn’t normal. I’ve had those dreams before, about guys, and this is way different.” Frustration was starting to make its way into Lucy’s voice.
“Okay, apparently I’m not understanding something,” Kat said, brushing the hair out of her eyes.
Lucy cleared her throat. “I don’t just dream about him. It’s like we’re sharing a reality. When I dream, I’m in a place I’ve never seen before, not in real life. It’s a forest—a rainforest. I’ve never been to a rainforest in my life, but I can dream one in perfect detail. How is that possible?”
“I don’t know.” Ka
t offered. “But if you’ve never seen a rainforest, how do you know what it looks like; how do you know you didn’t just make up what you think is a rainforest?”
Lucy reached into the backseat of the car. Buried under a pile of sweaters and coats she pulled out a book called South American Rainforests. She flipped open to a full page color photograph and showed it to Kat.
“Because it looks exactly like this.”
Kat took the book and examined it. “Well how do you know you haven’t just seen a picture like this one before?”
“Because the dream has way more detail than a picture. It’s weird. I can feel it and smell it. It’s like I’m there.”
Kat looked at her as if she’d left out the most important part. “I don’t get it.”
Lucy sighed heavily. “It doesn’t matter; this is all beside the point. In my dream it’s always the same place and the same time of day. The first time I was there he ran from me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Lucy answered emphatically. “He just ran, and the weirdest part was that when I caught up to him he had a sword.” A chill shot up her spine and she reached for her sternum again.
“A sword?” Kat responded with a twisted look of confusion on her face.
“I don’t know that either, but the last time I had the dream he …” Lucy looked down at the steering wheel.
“He …” Kat prompted.
“He stabbed me with it.”
Kat’s eyes shot wide. “He stabbed you?”
“Yeah, I even felt it. It was awful.”
“What did it feel like?”
“Like someone ran a giant knife right through my chest, what else would it feel like?” Lucy was trying not to get frustrated telling her story.
Kat sat quietly for a moment and Lucy was sure that this was so foreign to Kat that she had no advice to offer and was simply being nice to not answer with anything.
“I know how weird this is, you don’t have to say anything I just—”
Immortal Light: Wide Awake Page 7