Camila

I can't sleep.

The dream that night was worse than it ever was before. Every time I was dreaming I saw it knowing it was just a dream, a memory, but for some reason that night I didn't see it that way. But, I mean, the dream was also different.

It started as always, our day together from school to the ice cream shop. Usually that part was fast forwarded, but this time it wasn't. Instead, I had to see her face the entire time, smile and laugh at her jokes, roll my eyes at her stupidness.

Then when the bad part came everything became slower. For some reason I was no longer seeing the dream as myself, but instead I was in some kind of movie theater watching the scene go by in a huge screen.

I could see both of us crossing the street together. I could hear the song we were singing and I sang along in my sleep. Then a car came out of nowhere, but it didn't hurt her.

Emily was okay. I felt relieved because she was fine, but then her face transformed. The camera angle changed and I realized what was happening.

In the dream I was the one hit by the car. I felt the hit in my ribs. I felt them crack under the pressure; I felt the pain go through my whole body.

Then suddenly I felt heavier. My mind was slower and my eyelids became heavy. The thoughts in my head became slower, and slower until they were almost gone.

I felt my body fall to the ground and Emily ran up to me. "I'm sorry," she said. "but this is what you get for letting me die."

My eyelids were almost closing, a last gasp coming out of my mouth. Before my eyes were fully closed, before I really died, I woke up with a start with a pain in my ribs.

Tears started streaming down my face and my breathing became faster. I felt my body fill with adrenaline and I felt the sudden surge of fear. A panic attack, just my luck.

Please help. Panic attack.

I walked into the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror. I tried to concentrate on the little things in my reflection, anything to keep my mind off of the dream.

For the first time I noticed the small freckles near the bridge of my nose. My eyes weren't just plain brown; they had tiny flecks of lighter brown around it.

I checked my phone and was surprised to see that Chase was awake.

Any way you can come out? I'll be there in five minutes.

Suddenly my racing heartbeat had nothing to do with anxiety or my nightmare. What it did have to do with was the fact that what I was about to do was 100% against the rules, and I didn't give a damn.

Kathy, Karla, Annie and I had made the perfect escape plan on our first night together. There was a window near the vending machine down the hall from our room. The window was really hard to open, but as soon as it opened there was a ladder.

Most people didn't go out there because the window is hard to open, and it is said that dogs wander through campus at night to keep intruders and rebellious teenagers on the line.

But the four if us didn't believe in the crazy legend. We knew for a fact that there weren't any dogs out there. One weekend, Kathy spent the whole night out with her boyfriend and she was alive and okay. It was safe to say that there were no trained animals on the loose, unless you count students as trained animals.

I texted Chase I'd be right down and to meet me at the back of the main building. It was mostly empty at night since teachers either slept in their houses or on campus. Nobody was outside at night.

I managed to get out of the building with no problem. I almost slipped a few times, but regained balance. A few death scares later I was down the ladder safe and sound. Sorta.

I breathed in the night air. It smelled like freedom and home, the only thing I needed at the moment.

I walked to the back of Building A and saw him already waiting for me. He was sitting down, his newly gained crutches by his side.

I sat by him and smiled nervously. Once again I had trouble identifying if my nerves came from being outside of my room after curfew, or being outside after curfew with him, though the annoying (and now full grown) butterflies told me it was the second option.

"So, how are you? Sorry, that's a stupid question."

I closed my eyes and breathed in. It reminded me of the air back home in Texas, where every night I would climb out the window to the roof and look at the stars.

"You know, when I was younger I used to think I could count the stars. In summer, I would stay awake for hours trying to count them all. When I thought I was almost done, the sun came up and I could no longer look at them. I remember crying because "the stupid sun won't let me count the stars.""

I laughed at the faint memory. It was a few of the things my mind had decided not to shut out after Emily's death. After the accident my thoughts no longer worked were the same. They were divided into pre- and post-accident.

Most of the things that happened post-accident were somewhere lost in the big world of my head in places that I did not want to visit.

"What are you thinking?" I was dragged out my thoughts by the warmth on my hand that wasn't coming from me. I looked down and saw Chase's hand on mine. Subconsciously I jumped, not being used to being like this.

"Sorry, I-I didn't mean to make you startle you."

I shook my head and took the hand that used to be so comfortably placed on mine. I gave it a slight squeeze, having no idea where this sudden urge of holding hands with my best friend was coming from.

"Can I tell you about it? The dream, I mean."

Chase shifted his weight in direction to me. Now, we were face to face and even though I didn't feel exactly ready to talk about it, I knew it was now or never.

"When I was ten or eleven, I saw my best friend die. She was my first friend when we moved to the States, and was my only friend for a very long time."

He held my hand even tighter and it still hadn't dawned on me that we were still holding hands.

I told him the story of the dream and what happened. I described the dream exactly how it happened and I'm surprised he didn't run away.

When I finished telling him about that night's dream I expected Chase to leave me there and run as fast as he could on crutches. But he didn't.

Instead, he looked at me, not with pity, but with sadness in his eyes. He understood my pain. Our lives outside of school were very different. I came from a farm and he came from the city, but deep down we were both broken. We both knew what it felt like to lose someone you love and blame yourself.

The tears started to fall down without permission and I wondered what it was about being with a best friend that made crying so easily. He held me in his arms and whispered, "It's okay. I'm here. It's not your fault and it's not hers. It's all going to be okay."

Slowly, but surely I drifted to sleep. My eyelids started to become heaving and the sound of Chase's voice farther away with each breath.

Slowly, but surely I drifted off. Slowly, but surely Chase, too, drifted off to sleep. He promised he'd wake me, but his tiredness beat him.

Slowly, but surely each of Chase's fingers sliding up and down on my arm left chills on my whole body and butterflies in my stomach.

Slowly, but surely I realized I was falling for my best friend, and he was completely oblivious of it.  

Finally she admits it to herself!! Yay!