Neither of the girls said a word, though, as their gazes stopped on Declan’s face. It was as if he was telling them to stay away, silently, and they agreed without an argument.
I smiled awkwardly at him. Maybe I was still at home, in bed, tangled in my faded Tinkerbell bed sheets. A holdover from elementary school, something about the once-bright pattern and the fairy’s assured smirk was comforting, and no matter what my mother said, I wouldn’t part with them.
After everything I had been through, she didn’t hassle me about such a small part of my life.
To her, what happened as I slept was no longer an issue, but to me, everything that occurred while my eyes were closed and my brain shifted into a place no one could follow was so much more real than the everyday life I lived awake with my parents and classmates.
Was I dreaming now? A dream within a dream? That wouldn’t be unheard of, for me, at least.
“Thank you for your patience,” he said smoothly to the girls, who continued to stare at him blankly. Was he a hypnotist, or just exceptionally charming, I wondered, feeling my forehead crease as I frowned, looking from the girls to him. Declan smiled at me and sighed softly, jolting me from my thoughts.
What in the world was going on?
“Shall we go in? I’m afraid we’re holding up the rest of the class,” he suggested gently, as if he didn’t want to be pushy or upset me.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” I managed to say, sounding like a complete idiot. Declan didn’t seem to mind, and when I stepped in front of him, he dropped his arms and a crowd formed behind us to go into the room.
“Alphabetical order, kids! You all know each other and how that goes. Don’t make me waste time teaching you your ABCs yet again.”
A tall, thin woman most of us knew from freshman World History class, Mrs. Hough, paced at the front of the room, poking a piece of chalk in the air towards us. She was the kind of teacher who read from the textbook and wrote phrases from it on the chalkboard, and if she heard any sound from us, would give us extra homework or a pop quiz.
It wasn’t a class anyone wanted to share with Delilah and Robbie, that was for sure.
I looked around and saw the students with last names close to mine, the Ks and Ls and Ms, sorting themselves out and pointing at desks towards the second to the last row by the windows. Declan’s presence behind me was impossible to ignore or forget, especially since I was still wondering how he had known my name.
Maybe I should have been more concerned than I was about it. After all, he wasn’t exactly a stranger, but the boy of my dreams. Literally.
“What’s your last name?” I asked him, remembering that Mr. Coles had only introduced Declan by his first name.
I turned before walking down the row of desks where I expected to find a seat, planning to explain to him where the other kids with last names starting with the same letter as his would be sitting. He just shook his head and nodded in the direction I was headed.
“I’ll sit behind you.”
Glancing back at Mrs. Hough, I bit my lip. Everyone else was, if not already sitting down, at least close to where they needed to be to get their materials out and start taking notes as soon as she wanted us to.
Declan was so incredibly polite and sweet, and whatever was going on between us, would have to wait for further explanation to avoid getting him in trouble on his first day here.
“But you have to sit according to your last name, or the teacher will be upset.”
Backing up towards the only two empty desks left in the row, I dropped my messenger bag on one of the seats. No one else was standing around, even with the open desk behind mine.
Was this another case of a kid like Cheeto Face attempting to harass me, this time by refusing to sit close to me because I might freak out if he or she accidentally touched me?
“Is there a problem, Miss Lampers? Mr. . . .?”
I froze in place, my eyes on Declan’s face. He smiled at me and lifted his arm, as if he wanted to touch mine, but stopped just before he made contact. With a small, reassuring nod meant only for me, he turned his face towards the teacher.
“Foster, Declan. I’ll be sitting behind Hope over here. It is, as you can see, the only available desk left.”
I stared at him, shifting my bag from my seat to the desktop in front of me as I watched him tilt his head slightly when he spoke to Mrs. Hough.
His words weren’t requests, but statements, and yet his tone and manner were more respectful than the teacher would get from any other student in the whole school.
She blinked as her head shifted back, making her double chin, obviously a result of age and not weight, more prominent. I glanced around the quiet room and saw, predictably, every eye on Declan. Most of the girls had their mouths open in surprise, and a couple of the boys did as well.
“I see, Mr. Foster. You make a good point. Both of you please sit, then, and we’ll begin this school year with a discussion about the history of the democratic process in the United States.”
No one in the room was vaguely interested in the democratic process right then, I knew, but no one less so more than I.
Declan stepped behind me and sat down quietly. I noticed, then, that he had no papers, notebooks, or textbooks with him. Why was he so unprepared? Hadn’t anyone in the office told him what he needed when his parents came to register him for school?
After I pulled a notebook from my bag, I tore a couple of sheets from the back of it and with a quick look at Mrs. Hough, who was holding an open book in one hand and writing quickly on the chalkboard with the other as she droned on, I turned my head and offered the pages to Declan. His eyes met mine, as if he had been staring at the back of my head instead of paying attention to the teacher, and he took the papers, setting them down on his desk.
I held up a pencil and waved it a little in front of him, raising my eyebrows. I didn’t dare talk, not in the silence of the room that was punctuated only by the teacher’s flat-toned voice. He leaned forward and took the pencil, too. Somehow I felt accomplished, as if after his chivalric gestures of walking me to class and now, choosing to sit by me needed some sort of reciprocation.
Some reciprocation. A couple of pieces of notebook paper and a pencil. What was I thinking?
After taking another pencil from my bag, I attempted to pay attention to the chalkboard and write down everything Mrs. Hough wrote, even if her voice was far off from my focus. I didn’t even realize the meaning behind the words I was writing as I copied them directly from her scribbles, but figured I would make sense of them later when I studied for the first test.
Behind me, Declan was silent, and I didn’t even hear the movement of pencil to paper. Was he bothering to take notes? Maybe he had a photographic memory, or some way to memorize what she was saying.
It wasn’t completely necessary to take notes in her classes, though, since she copied from the textbook, but he didn’t know that yet. Wasn’t he worried that he wouldn’t have the material to study from for her tests?
When the teacher stepped away from the board and over to her desk, shuffling some things around on it as if she was looking for something, I glanced down at my paper and dropped my pencil, which rolled off my desk and onto the floor near Declan’s foot.
I automatically leaned to the side to pick it up, but the words written on the paper in front of me stopped me, and I remained suspended with my body tilted, my long hair hanging alongside my arm. My face was so close to the pencil marks I had made that there was no mistaking what they were.
Instead of the notes Mrs. Hough had been chalking up on the board, there were only two words on the pale blue lines, written over and over in a long litany of appeal.
dreamseer, return
Chapter Four
I shoved the paper away, looking up with the hope that no one had seen me freak out. Just because everyone was used to me acting weird didn’t mean I wouldn’t draw unwanted attention, especially since I was also pretty sure that I was going to unl
oad what little content was in my stomach.
“It’s okay, Hope.”
Declan’s smooth, soft voice rose behind my head, and I shot a glance at Mrs. Hough. Her hand was once again rushing back and forth across the board, letters and punctuation marks appearing in rough patterns from the chalk pressed between her fingers. Hadn’t she heard him speak?
I turned my head, frowning as I sucked in a breath, thinking of a psychiatrist who saw me several times when I was in elementary school. Deep breaths, he had explained, helped with nausea. Afraid to ask what he was talking about, I figured it out years later after learning what the word nausea meant. While this small but usually effective coping mechanism had been helpful in the past, right now I couldn’t take in enough air for a deep breath.
Everyone else in the room might have been strangely unaware of my actions and Declan’s soothing voice, but if I did vomit, there was no way it would go unnoticed. I imagined phones appearing before my eyes as I pulled my hair from my face, and videos going up on social media within seconds of splattering the floor with orange juice and gluten-free waffles, the waffles something I had hardly choked down to begin with.
“I’m here to help you. That’s the only reason I’m here.”
Without looking back at Declan, I let the warmth and meaning of his words sink in, feeling as if we were in a sort of bubble all of our own. Had I fallen asleep, after such a long night wrestling with terrifying and confusing dreams that just so happened to include the gorgeous boy who was now sitting only inches behind me?
The rest of the kids stared at Mrs. Hough, oblivious to each other and me as I gaped at them. There were so many movies with this scene, with the main character disconnected from reality shown in just this exact way. Would I wake up to laughter, and drool all over my notebook, which would contain words from the chalkboard instead of . . .
“I’m here to take you home, Hope.”
Yeah, I thought. That’s a great idea, I almost said, but then realized that what he said didn’t make any sense.
None of what had happened since I stepped foot in homeroom this morning made any sense.
“Lean back in your chair, or I’m afraid you’ll fall over.”
I tucked my chin into my chest and peeked at Declan, allowing my body to fall backwards so it came to rest against the wooden frame of the desk. His crystal blue eyes were sharply focused on my every move, and while in theory such attention from a boy who could model for Calvin Klein underwear ads would be the stuff of dreams, it was more than a little creepy.
Besides, my dreams had nothing to do with expensive underwear and the hot bodies that wore them.
Why was I listening to him?
“Have lunch with me, and I’ll explain everything. I promise.”
His smile was a little crooked, as if he was, for the first time since we’d met all of an hour and a half ago, unsure of himself. It was that expression, as if he wasn’t quite as perfect as he had seemed, that made me nod in agreement.
If he had something to tell me, who was I to say no? Corrie had been my usual lunchtime buddy, but she sure wouldn’t mind sharing breathing space with a gorgeous boy like Declan.
“Alone. What I have to tell you is for your ears alone, Hope. For now,” he continued, as I wondered at what he could possibly have to tell me that was such a secret, “this must go on.”
When he sat back abruptly in his own chair, I snapped my gaze forward and sat up straight, keeping myself as still as I could. My hands rested on top of my note paper, but I glanced around, shifting my eyes but not my head as I surveyed the tone of the room.
Jackie Stevens was scrolling leisurely on her phone, which rested on her lap, as she pretended to scribble in a notebook, and Dave Banner was picking his nose. I watched him dig for a few seconds before he pulled his thumb out and stared at whatever was wedged under his nail.
“And so, I believe this information will arm you with the facts you need to read the first chapter in your textbooks with a greater understanding. Our first test will be next Wednesday . . .”
Mrs. Hough droned on as folders and books were slapped together in stacks or shoved into backpacks and bags. I was surprised to see that the clock on the wall read a solid forty-five minutes later from when Declan had escorted me into the room in rather dramatic fashion. Sighing, I shook my head and reached back to grab my messenger bag when a pencil appeared before my eyes.
“I believe this is yours.”
Declan held the pencil I had dropped earlier, which I had forgotten so easily after the shock of discovering that what I had been writing down with it all that time were not the words I clearly remember copying from the chalkboard.
“Uh, yeah. Thanks.”
Clever response, I thought, holding back a sigh. Strange, now that I could breathe more deeply, my upchuck reflex had disappeared, and I was back on track to continue making an idiot out of myself minus the barfing.
Would Declan still want to sit with me in our less than impressive cafeteria if he had to go home and change out of his cool kid outfit because I had redecorated it with my unappetizing breakfast?
Above all else, the weird factor this morning had hit the jackpot with the bizarre duo of words I had put to paper earlier.
dreamseer, return
I had to look at the notebook again to pick it up and put it in my folder, for no other reason than to not leave it behind to fall into anyone else’s hands. Who knew what kind of torment I’d be put through for the rest of the year with those words on the first page added to the arsenal I’d already freely given to my classmates?
Declan hadn’t moved, but from the way the other kids were shuffling around and muttering to each other, the bell would ring any second now. I grabbed the notebook and stuffed it into my bag, not bothering to slide it into a folder. Later I could pull it out and take a closer look, when I was at home and didn’t have to worry about prying eyes or my own reaction as I tried to figure out what those words meant.
My dreams had always been a torment for one reason or another, mostly because they were true. Past, present, future . . . it didn’t matter. Was this dreamseer a reference to this curse? Some sort of subconscious effort on my part to deal with its refusal to let me live a normal life?
Not entirely normal, I knew. Even without the dreams my life was anything but usual.
I resisted the urge to scratch at one of the dry patches on my face, just under my right ear, curling my fingers into a loose fist instead, resting my knuckles along my cheekbone.
“I’ll explain everything. It’s why I’m here,” Declan assured me, and the tension that had built up inside me eased a tiny bit. It didn’t hurt to let a sweet boy with captivating eyes reassure me, did it?
My reality was either horrific or bland, with nothing in between, so why shouldn’t I let a measure of fantasy in the door when it came knocking, wearing adorably fashionable clothes and shoes that screamed cool.
The bell rang and I didn’t move for a moment, waiting to see what Declan would do. Usually I had to hustle between classes, since I was sluggish by physical nature but not by choice, and it just took me longer to move around than pretty much anyone else.
He stood up and took one step to my side. When I looked up at him, meeting that ice blue gaze with my own muddy irises, his smile was waiting for me.
“I would offer you my arm, Hope, but we both know that it wouldn’t end well.”
My mouth fell open and I didn’t bother to close it. How he knew my name was a mystery, but perhaps he had heard someone else use it in homeroom, although it was doubtful. It was highly unlikely, since no one had called me by name after he came into the room, but there could be some other believable explanation.
This, however, was impossible. No one knew my exact emotional and mental experience when I made physical contact with someone, no one saw the flashes of color and light, tears and screams, unpredictable and uncontrollable reels of the future and past blurred into one inescapable vision.
“It will end, though. I promise you that.”
Chapter Five
Declan’s words repeated in my head as we navigated the school hallways for the rest of the morning. After sharing homeroom and our first class, I was not as surprised as I should have been that he was in every single other class with me.
What was not a shock at all was the usual ten a.m. headache that started to creep up the side of my neck and behind my ear, curling around the front of my head like a poisonous stream of smoke in my brain.
Technically, I was supposed to go to the nurse’s office to get any sort of medication, but if I did that, I would be late for class, and since this had been a predictable obstacle every single day for years, the school sort of looked the other way on my account when it came to following the rules.
Some of the prescription medication I had been given over the years had worked to one extent or another, but many of them not at all. The latest was somewhat effective for a few hours, but put me on edge as a side effect. There wasn’t any other alternative, because letting this headache go would leave me screaming in pain, as if my head was in a vise turned slowly by a malicious being who wished to see my skull crushed over a long period of time.
When Declan had told me that it would end, what did he mean, I wondered, fishing my bottle of sumatriptan from my purse with some trouble. My hand was shoved in my messenger bag and I was groping around as I kept my head up, because if I didn’t, I was sure to trip or stumble or otherwise end up falling into someone or worse, on the floor.
If I broke another bone this year, my parents would probably roll me up in bubble wrap before allowing me to come back to school.
“Do you need some help?”
Declan was half a step behind me, like some sort of bodyguard, and every girl who walked by us glanced at him. Every single girl, and several boys.
The Shadow of a Dream Page 2