"Okay, I'll see you after lunch!" Avril gives me a hyper little hug and skips off. I turn and spot Rhys at a table, eating all alone.

I walk over and sit down, "Hi."

"Hi." Rhys sits up a little straighter, "Look, about the tower. Can you please stay away?"

"I'll try but I can't promise you anything. I don't... I'm asleep when I go there. I still don't understand why you speak of the tower as if it's real..."

"If I explain, I'll be telling you the secret and I can't do that. Just continue to think of it as a dream." Rhys is almost pleading with me. I nod silently and pick at my lunch, my hair falling around me like a protective curtain. A shield.

After a few minutes of restless silence, Rhys suddenly blurts, "Do you think I'm familiar?"

"Huh?" I look up from my lunch sharply. Because his question raises something in me. A small part of me feels so natural around him, like it's know him for years, not a few weeks...

"Er, sometimes." I reply truthfully, "I feel like I've known you for longer than I actually do. I feel weirdly comfortable around you, like you're... like someone who I have known for a long time."

Rhys looks at me momentarily, "So, the tower. I want you to come tonight."

"What? You just said..." I stare at him in incredulity.

"I know what I said." Rhys snaps impatiently, "Listen to me. I need to know something. I want you to come to the tower tonight."

"Alright, I'll try but it's not easy. My sleep, it's... weird. Sometimes I go, sometimes I don't. There's another thing. When I try to go in --"

"I know." Rhys cuts in, "Dizziness and nausea. It won't happen. You just have to trust me."

"Why are you -- all of a sudden -- inviting me to the tower when you've spent the last few weeks practically trying to terrorise me out of going there?" I ask, picking at a bit of my salad.

"Haven't I said I can't tell you? Don't you listen, Donna?" Rhys shakes his head at me, as though he's disappointed.

I grin, "Er, well, I do. I'm just curious. It's not every day I get to go to a tower while I'm sleepwalking."

Rhys smiles at that, "Sorry. Yeah, you're right. It's logical that you're curious."

That Night...

"Dad, I'm off to bed. Getting an early night in." I scream as I stomp up the stairs and into my room. I can't wait to get to bed! Not because of the tower... well, because I can't wait to see Rhys again. Which doesn't make sense considering we were together a few hours ago. After lunch, we spent the whole day together and he even insisted on dropping me off home. I was so thrilled, yet so appalled at myself and my way too predictable feelings.

Every time he looks at me, my palms get all sweaty and my heart beats so fast and I can't think straight and my head spins but in a nice way and I feel something rising in me and I... this has never happened to me before and I have no idea how to deal with it.

I need my mom!

She knows all about this sort of stuff, because she had plenty of male attention when she was my age. Well, she had to, didn't she, considering what career choice she was set on. I change into my shorts and top and then clamber into bed -- a little too gleefully.

I close my eyes but sleep doesn't come. It seems to want to avoid me tonight. On this night, of all nights! Why is it when you don't want something, it happens and when you do want it, it doesn't happen?

Fate is strange...

The next thing I know, I'm stumbling my way through the mist. It doesn't feel nearly as suppressing as it normally does. I break my way through the last few sticky tendrils of haze and then scurry over to the gates. I feel like dancing when I realise I'm not dizzy! The gates are wide open, swinging a little on their rusty hinges. I walk through and look up. The same window is open -- wait for it -- but there's no dark-haired figure in it.

Disoriented and abandoned, I look around myself. Fear creeps around me, wrapping its icy cold fingers around me like a blanket, only it's more suffocating than comforting. Two great, huge double oak doors bang open and a silhouetted figure walks over to me. When he stops in front of me, I recognise him. And my stomach does that flipping-in-joy motion that is really beginning to tire me out already.

"You came." He sounds almost happy, "I thought you weren't going to come. I've been waiting."

"Yes, well, sleep isn't something I can control." I say but I don't say it spitefully. There's a hint of teasing in my voice.

"Okay. Why don't you come in?" He turns away and begins to lead the way back inside the illuminated tower. I hesitate. After all, this is the tower of my nightmares. And what did Rhys say? And it's worse than your scariest nightmare. It's a living hell.

That doesn't exactly lift me with confidence for some bizarre reason. Note the sarcasm.

Sensing I'm not following, Rhys turns to face me, "What's wrong? You're not scared of the tower, are you?"

I don't answer, just hop from foot to foot anxiously.

Rhys sighs and walks over to me, "Look, whatever I said before, it was just to keep you away. The tower isn't dangerous, not to the people invited into it anyway. And you have been invited. By me. So you don't need to be scared. Come on."

Taking a deep breath, I follow him this time. To me, my footsteps sound wimpy and cowardly, whereas Rhys' sound confident and manly. I hope he doesn't notice it. We walk through the doors and my eyes widen, my breath catching in my throat.

We are standing in a large room. It has damask wallpaper hugging the walls, pictures of the tower (in happier days of course), upholstered sofas and intricate pieces of furniture. A huge crystal chandelier looms over the middle of the room, reflecting shards of light sharply around the room. It looks divine, almost sacred and holy. It looks almost familiar, as if I have been here before. I know that's not true. This is the first time I have ever stepped into this room.

It's as if I have stepped into a fairytale.

But I know that it's almost the opposite in my case. I force myself to close my mouth and try to look unconcerned about my surroundings. Rhys tuns to me, "Take a seat."

I look at the sofas and perch on the edge of one, afraid to touch anything more in case I break something. I am known worldwide for my clumsiness. Rhys slumps into the armchair beside me and looks at me steadily, "I know you probably are feeling a little out of place. But there's something I want to show you here. I just want to test something."

"Okay." I say before I have even thought. What am I doing here? Rationality kicks in but I hastily sweep it away.

"Okay." Rhys looks a little flustered, "Erm, I want to show you a picture. Just tell me if it looks familiar." He leans back and hauls up a large, gold framed oil painting. It's of a girl. She's young, around seventeen. She has beautiful sun-kissed skin, sweeping black-brown hair, captivating dark eyes fringed with long lashes, high cheekbones, pale pink lips and a heart shaped face.

Recognition flashes through me.

I look up at Rhys, "Do I know her? She looks... She looks so similar. Like I've met her." I run my hands over the painting, electricity tingling through my fingers.

Rhys snatches the painting away, "No." He looks alarmed, almost... afraid. I look at him, puzzled, disconcerted.

He sees the expression on my face and he looks down at the painting and sighs, "She was a friend. A real close friend, my best friend. But she... she died. I just wanted to see if you knew her because you look like one of the friends she had told me about."

"What's her name?" I ask, pity burying my heart. His best friend died.

"Her name... Eliza Williams." He gazes down at the painting with so much love, so much passion that my heart aches with a strange longing I have never felt before. I prise the painting from his fingers and put it on the table.

Her name strikes something in me. I hear something; a gentle voice, a tinkly laugh that sounds like wind chimes clinking against each other. An image flashes across my eyes of dark brown hair flying in the wind, a historical dress sweeping the ground.

I blink and I'm back in the Tower with Rhys. He looks at me strangely. I don't want him to think I'm crazy so I quickly speak, to ensure he doesn't have the chance to ask me what happened.

"Rhys. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry you lost her. I know what loss feels like. I'm sorry. You must have loved her."

"I did." Rhys' eyes fill with tears, "I loved her a lot. We both loved each other. She just went, she left me."

"She didn't want to." As I say it, I know it's the honest truth, "She loved you too, Rhys. She loved you just as much as you loved her. Eliza loved you. She didn't have a choice; death took her." My own eyes fill with tears. My heart cracks. I have never seen Rhys look so vulnerable, so harmless. He's a boy, just a young boy who lost his love to death. I weave my fingers through his hair, "Wherever she is, she would be proud of you, Rhys."

The next thing I know, his lips are touching mine with a burning fire, his fingers tangled in my hair, our bodies inches apart. His kisses are soft yet relentless, full of passion yet with a sense of calmness. They stir a storm of longing in me. Despite never having felt something like this, never having experienced a boy's lips on mine, the feelings seem familiar. As though I've been exposed to them before.

When we pull away for air, he holds me close in his lap for a long time, his face buried in my long hair.

After what seems like years, Rhys raises his head and strokes my cheek gently, "You should get back."

I wince, "Well, I always fall unconscious before I realise how I get back, so I don't exactly know how."

Rhys smiles gently, "Then just go to sleep. I'll take care of the rest."

It's easier than I think...