Maybe we should have kept him anyways...

I woke with a start, the words resounding in my head. I tried to remember what it was that I had dreamed. An old man, an insistent little girl, or was it a boy? The harder I tried to remember, the more it seemed to slip away, like water through cupped hands. 

I pounded the pillow in frustration. It wasn't the first time I had had a dream like this, one I knew was important, for whatever reason, but also couldn't ever seem to hold on to.

Every time, I would stay up all night, wracking my brains, struggling to remember, but everything was always too vague.  A flash of green, a sudden noise, the feeling of being held.

I felt like someone digging through a pit of marbles, trying to find something, and always sinking deeper and deeper.

I tried to struggle, but my arms and legs wouldn't move. It was up to my chin now, I tried to reach out for something, anything. It passed over my mouth, I couldn't breath. I tried to inhale but all I got was a spoonful of heavy, cold orbs. But that was just an illusion.

Then why did it feel so real?

I sunk beneath my eyes and fell into a sea of darkness. I sank deeper and deeper into the water. 

Don't move, now. 

I felt a searing pain in my right arm and, when I awoke, it was still throbbing. 

***

"Do you guys believe in prophetic dreams?" I asked.

Vin looked up from his game as it blinked and signaled he had died for the seventy-eighth time. "You can always wish. Did you dream you were getting up and personal with Blake Braun?"

"The one who wears unbelievably short shorts?" That would be nice, actually. "No, if I did, I wouldn't ask, because you'd crush my hopes."

"Fair enough." He nodded and picked up an apple that he tossed in the trash. "What is it then?"

"You shouldn't waste food like that." Tommy remarked. 

I told them about the sea of dark marbles and the pain in my arm. 

They both stared at me blankly, as if wondering if I'd taken a dip in crazy lake lately. 

"Well, I can only hope, for your sake, that it isn't." Vin sighed, flopping down and popping open his tube of Pringles. "What would it mean, anyway?"

"Maybe you're going to lose yourself to drugs." Tommy looked worried. "Want to talk about it?"

I smiled. The big guy was less of a friend and more of a meek cousin. Always there if you needed him, always open to some teasing. "It's okay, man. It was just dream."

"If you say so." He got up, grabbed a ball from the rack and tried spinning it on his finger. It went bouncing across the roof and we scrambled to catch it. I tripped over Vin's foot and he stumbled trying to step over me, I rolled to a stop right at the edge and he landed on me with the basketball hugged to his chest. Tommy watched all this, horrified. 

"Man, next time you want to play HORSE," Vin said, shooting the ball from a lying position, "refrain from any spinning."

It swished in the net flawlessly.

He nodded  and caught the ball as if in a trance. Thus began the deadly game of roof HORSE.

Right as my ball bounced off the rim to spell the final "E", the familiar ring of the lunch bell spread across the schoolyard. 

"See you guys in math!" I called as we split up, bouncing the ball to the rack. It bounced off and went bounding to the roofside again. Someone will get that. I thought.

I dragged myself into history class, ready to drool on the textbooks again, when a sharp pain shot through my temples and the words THERE crashed into my mind with gale force power.

I stumbled and slammed into a desk, a scream rose from the class somewhere and I was aware of every eye being on me.

The pain throbbed with fiery intensity and I felt a hand touch my back tentatively. "Are you okay?"

I looked up to see a girl I'd never seen before. She had a pale face that emphasized her splash of freckles. Her red hair was tangled on her chest in a wild manner and she wore a concerned and frightened look. 

"Hey," I mumbled, "you're beautiful." 

I passed out, without realizing exactly what I'd said.

***

I dreamed of voices. Thousands and thousands of voices overlapping, whispering, yelling, mumbling. Some of them echoed, some of them were clearer. Some I could hear like they were right next to me, others swirling around me like a funnel cloud. The voices grew in intensity, reverberating off invisible walls, spiking at my head. I covered my ears, but I may as well have been covering my mouth, for all the good it did. 

The funny thing was, these dreams weren't strange to me. I had them very, very often, and so did many people I knew.

I awoke with a start, the hush of the nurse's office after the din of voices in my dreams made my surroundings seem eerie. I got up from the bed and immediately felt a spike of pain through my temples. I sat down hard and groaned, the pain reduced to a dull throbbing. The world spinning around me.

I waited for a bit and tried getting up again. The pain increased, but I could move. My eyes flashed around trying to get my bearings. I was in the nurse's office with my head splitting in two, after passing out in front of the whole class and telling a girl I loved her. I hope I won't have to explain myself, tomorrow.

A pair of high heels clacked on the floor and the school nurse, a gum chewing, early thirties,  Angelina-Jolie-style woman walked in. 

She looked at me silently and held up her sticky note, on which was written "Are you feeling better?". 

I nodded, despite the wreckage in my head. She smiled and held up a bottle of aspirin, raising one eyebrow in question. I nodded again and accepted the pill with a glass of water gratefully. 

Most people assessed Mrs. Prefect as a kind of karen-in-training, with the gum chewing and her imperious eyes, but she was a real sweet woman with a degree and a girlfriend. The gum chewing was her way to alleviate stress from her hearing condition. Everyone who knew her, loved her, and she considered all of us her kids, despite not having one herself.

"Thanks, Sophie." I said. "You want me to clean up around here before I leave?" 

She shook her head, making the sign for "thank you".

I took the pill and waited for some of the throbbing to go away. As Sophie clacked around the room, throwing the occasional concerned glance back at me. It was hot in the nurse's office, it was making me dizzy. I asked her if she could turn down the heat, and she did, but it didn't help much. Eventually, I couldn't take sitting still anymore. I convinced her I was feeling better, grabbed my bag and stumbled out. I must have looked horrible leaving, because she pressed the entire bottle of aspirin into my hand with an accusing "you lied" look.

It was 4:30 in the afternoon, school was over. I ran for the orphanage, planning to stay there until I died or my headache went away. Whichever came first.