The room is buzzing with light chatter when Ms. Garrison announces her arrival. "Find your partner. Today we discuss our dreams, so I hope you remembered to record them in a journal or computer, or however you kids do it these days."

She sets her stuff down on her desk and gives us a few minutes to get situated. I'm biting my nails because today is the day that I have to tell Trevor my dreams, and I'm dreading it because one of them happens to be about him. Kissing dreams are the ones you never confess to anyone because a dream is where all your wildest fantasies come to life; the fantasies you claim you know nothing about when awake.

I grab three yellow M&M's from the bag in my hand and stuff them in my mouth.

"Now, I'm not going to make you dissect each dream because we'd be here until Christmas," she goes on to explain and my lungs instantly suck in a relieving breath of air. "Just choose two."

And a lung has collapsed. Deflated. My hope has died, because I only had two dreams that I was able to recall, and the star of one of them is sitting right next to me.

"Okay, M&M, you go first." The nickname triggers something deep inside me, like someone picking at a scab.

I suck in a breath to cover up just how painful it was to hear and focus on our projects. I know Trevor senses something, but I speak before he gets the chance to question my reaction.

"Fine," I huff as I flip open my notebook to review what I wrote. I honestly don't need to because I can recall every detail of the dream to perfection, but in order to get my thoughts in order, I need the extra few seconds.

"So," I begin. "I had a dream that I was in a creepy, dark room. Kind of like a cellar or an old castle room. Not sure. Anyway, I'm sitting at a table and I'm surrounded by this black fog. Then this old man appears with shackles around his ankles, and he's yelling about regret and how he wishes it was me. It's strange though because I can't actually hear him, and yet I know exactly what he's saying. As he's screaming at me, he's suddenly pulled back into the darkness and there's a shift in scene. I'm still at the table, but now the man is forgotten and instead I'm surrounded by loads of food. It's basically Thanksgiving with the amount of food laid out for me, but as I reach over to start eating, all these bugs start falling out of my hair. I wake up when I start screaming."

"Uh, creepy?" Trevor's eyeing me with a mix of disgust and concern on his face. "Any idea what it means?"

"I don't know." I lie with a shrug.

He taps his pencil against the edge of his desk while he thinks. After a minute he perks up and turns to me.

"Okay, so maybe it's saying that you're too absorbed in yourself." He sounds excited, and I'm wondering if I should be insulted that he's labeling me as selfish on his first attempt at interpreting my dream. "So the old man represents the people in your life, and they're screaming at you for attention, but you're only interested in satisfying your own needs, hence the food."

He's rattling on as I sit with my arms crossed over my chest. "You think I'm selfish?" I ask. I'm more curious than offended. Is that actually how people see me?

"No," he responds as if in deep thought. "I think that's how you view yourself. Maybe you feel like you're not giving other people enough of your time."

I pretend to think for a moment, but I'm pretty sure I already know the real meaning behind my dream, and I'm not yet ready to reveal something that I've had buried for so long.

"Either that or you were just really hungry."

"Maybe." I laugh as I flip backward in my notebook to my first dream. "Okay, your turn, and then I'll tell you my other dream."

"Okay, well, I was in this huge room," he begins. "Like, the feeling I got was that I was in some kind of stadium or maybe a circus. That's about the size of the room. It was dimly lit. Basically, the only light in the room was on me, but somehow I knew that the room was big, even though I couldn't actually see it." Trevor's relaxed in his chair, twirling his pencil between his fingers as he recalls his dream. "I'm running from something, but I don't know what it is. The running part lasts for most of the dream, and it'd be boring to go into detail, so I'm going to skip over that part.

"Anyway, then the dream just kind of switches on me, and suddenly I'm in this empty field. It's night and the moon is freaking ginormous, and I'm surrounded by a crapload of these creepy rocking horses. What makes it worse is that they're all just scattered around me, rocking on their own." He stops to look over at me where I'm sitting with elbows on the table and the backs of my hands propping my head up. I'm completely enthralled by his story. "Sorry, my dreams tend to be pretty wacky."

"No way, I'm totally intrigued." I offer him a smile and wave him on. "Continue, please."

"Alright." He takes a deep breath before beginning again. "So, as I'm standing there, I suddenly get this strange feeling that I'm being watched, so I'm looking out across the field but I see nothing. That's when I realize that one of the rocking horses has started to transform. As I'm watching, I realize that I'm surprisingly not concerned at all, more curious I guess. And then it steps into the moonlight and it's no longer a wooden horse but a live cougar, beautiful and sleek.

"I watch as it comes closer to me, and when it gets about three meters in front of me, it stops and stands on its hind legs. And this is where it gets really strange," he warns with an apologetic smile. "Suddenly, its bones start to shift. Kind of like you would imagine a human shifting into a werewolf. Like all those chick movies, Twilight and that werewolf show, whatever. So, this cougar starts popping and groaning, and I can see that it's slowly shifting into a human, and I somehow know it's a woman. The woman starts walking towards me, and," He pauses to rub the back of his neck and then laughs with a hint of embarrassment, "the dream kind of takes on this like strange, somewhat seductive vibe; I don't know, but before I can get a clear view of her, she's gone. She just disappears and then I'm awake. The end."

"Hmmm?" I sit straight up from my relaxed position so that I can think better. "Are you secretly crushing on an older woman?"

His eyes snap to me, widening with horror. "What?" he hisses.

I wish I had a camera to capture the look on his face. You'd think that I'd just announced that I had a hundred dollar bill hiding in my underwear. I laugh at his reaction while he sits there looking uncomfortable.

"Well, don't they call older women who seek out younger men, cougars?" I'm obviously joking because if Trevor really did have a thing for an older woman, I would first be forced to vomit up my morning granola bar, and then have to tape back the broken pieces of my delicate heart. To have him choose an older woman over me would be humiliating.

"Ha. Ha." He laughs, but it lacks any hint of humor. "Never. That will never happen."

"So... " I inquire sneakily while giving him a playful smirk. "Who you crushin' on?" 

Trevor just laughs at my attempt to pry.

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"Oh, so there is someone?" I wiggle a bit closer to the edge of my seat and focus all my attention on reading Trevor's facial expressions. I'm doing my best at acting excited and giddy when, in reality, I'm dying because he didn't deny having a crush on someone and that someone is most likely not me.

"I believe it's your turn," he says, while completely ignoring my question and the pout on my lips.

"Alright, alright." I'm wondering if maybe I should have just gone with the other dream first so I could have gotten it out of the way, but it's too late now. I scoot back in my chair and turn my attention to my poor mutilated fingers. I really needed to work on not picking the life out of my cuticles.

"It starts off where I'm running through the forest in a red robe, and the only feeling that I have is desperation. I finally make it to the edge of a lake. The waters are calm as I stand there waiting for something. Suddenly, a man appears from the water," I've decided to leave out the details about the man actually being Trevor, and I'm praying my heart out that he doesn't ask. "He comes towards me, and I don't know why, but for some reason, I have this uncharacteristic courage that takes over me. I guess we're not always ourselves in our dreams, right?" I pause briefly to pull in a lungful of air.

"I think we're who we want to be in our dreams," Trevor answers, even though I wasn't really looking for an answer.

I consider his words and realize that it makes perfect sense. I wish that I could be brave around Trevor and just make a move, but the possibility of rejection is too real, and I'm too fragile for the disappointment and pain of being denied again.

"That's true," I agree after a couple seconds. "Anyway, we walk towards each other until we're really close and then..."I peek up at Trevor to see him watching me closely. "And then I kiss him," I tell him quickly, and then hurry on before he can make any comments. "Then suddenly there's like a tornado around us and he's pulled back into the lake and then it's over. Everything is calm again."

There. Done. I survived.

I take another glance at Trevor to find that he doesn't seem at all concerned about my humiliation. Instead, he actually appears to be thinking about the dream. What, no jokes about having a passion-filled dream? I'm so relieved that he doesn't seem to care.

"So, I'm going to ask you the same question you asked me." I eye him warily because I'm pretty sure I know what he's thinking. Dreams are the one place that your mind can release all of its desires, right? So much for him not making a joke out of it.

"Emma?"

"Yes?"

"Who you crushin' on?" And there's that smirk. 

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