1.5

     I wasn’t even five seconds out the door when I heard the dreaded calling of my name. I spun around to face him, trying to think of a neutral reply to whatever Robbie was about to say. As always, he had a shit-eating grin on his face and fiddling with a loose string from his orange toboggan.

     “So? What’d you write about, eh?”

     I shook my head. “Nothing, Robbie. Don’t worry ‘bout it.”

     Robbie’s grin widened. “Bet you dream about Jamie, yeah?” When I blushed, he took that as a yes and started hooting. “I’ll hook you up, don’t worry,” he promised. Before I could stop him, Robbie had already pressed on ahead. I looked around me to make sure nobody had witnessed that little exchange. A group of people to my left started to laugh and my heart skipped a beat as I thought they must have heard what Robbie had said and found it just so hilarious, but they continued to walk down the hallway without casting a glance in my direction.

     I kept my eyes on the ground as I walked forward. My mind started to trail off as I thought about my recurring dream. I’d gone to the school’s library and checked out a few books about interpreting dreams, but nothing substantial could be gained from them. I’d also gone to the local library, but the books there used a lot of words I didn’t understand and most of the authors couldn’t even agree on what a dream was. Some would say that it was just the mind trying to make sense of the day’s activities, while others would say how it was relative to the mind’s current state and that more alarming ones were the cause of stress and damage to the mind. Then there were the oddballs who thought dreams came from alternate dimensions, or magic, or were prophecies from God – stuff I had never really believed in, anyway.

     After finding nothing solid on the subject, I just arrived at the conclusion that nobody could really understand dreams and left it at that. That didn’t solve my dilemma of why I kept dying under the ice, though.

     I was pulled from my thoughts when I noticed Robbie standing next to Jamie, a pretty blond girl with a pink ribbon holding her hair back in a ponytail. They both turned in my direction and Robbie waved. My cheeks felt like they were on fire as I dipped into another hallway. Going this way would make me late for the buses, but fortunately I lived only a few blocks from here. I’d rather be late than have to face those two on the bus.

     At least it was Friday.