Alesia Hayward violently rolls out of bed and lands with a squeak. Dog meows loudly when her pillow leaves from underneath him. The light streaming into the room from the window seemed like the whole world was on fire and reminded her of the house up in flames in the dream. Like every dream before though, she was already having trouble remembering the details.

There was a girl running somewhere and then a house was on fire and then she was caught by those creepy ass guys? she thought to herself. Dog came up to her while she was lost in dream land and rubbed up on her, looking for attention. She pet him absentmindedly while still racking her mind for what she was dreaming about.

She lets out a groan while rolling to her feet and starts to get ready for the day.

///

Sauntering downstairs, she sees her moms bustling about in a rush to get things together before the day officially begins. Her mothers are great, they adopted her when she was 2 years old from an orphanage in Ireland. They had been married for almost 20 years and were the best parents she could ask for.

"Hey sweetie", Erica, her tall Asian mom said, "how did you sleep?"

"Not too good, those weird night terrors are back again", she replied while getting her breakfast together. "I think I might have to talk to Dr. Ernby again since last time she told me to come back if the dreams continue."

She had night terrors when she was much younger and they went away for a few years, but they started up again in the past few weeks. Her dreams when she was a child though were never this vivid, she felt like she was almost the girl in the dream, running for her life from something unknown.

Her other ma, the shorter butch African-American one, came over and put her hands on Alesia's shoulders, snapping her out of her slight daydream. "Do you want me to book you an appointment for after school?"

"Can you make it tomorrow? There's Cross Country practice after school today." She smiled sweetly up at her ma. Her ma was always good at making the appointments and was very organized while her mom likes to let the wind take her wherever she needs to go. Opposites attract as they say and they really are complete opposites.

"Yeah, of course. But you need to hurry up the bus will be here soon and you haven't even finished breakfast yet."

"I can take it to the bus stop with me, don't forget to pick me up at 7 in front of the school." She rushed out the door after grabbing her backpack. The bus would be at the bus stop soon, so I need to hurry.

The neighborhood she lived in was the typical white picket fence American house type of area. She thinks her moms started living here just to disrupt the normalcy of the people living here. Her town, Anasville, was a moderate sized mid western town in Nevada.

"Hey Alesia! Wait up!" her best friend, Alex, came running up to her at the bus stop, slightly out of breath. They were very tall and had an undercut with long hair on top, styled in a sort of fringe. The color this week was blue and now matched their clear blue eyes.

"Hey Alex, cutting it a bit close don't you think?" she says as the the bus comes rolling to a stop in front of them and the doors hiss open.

They grin and say behind their shoulder while getting on the bus, "You know me, it's better to be just on time rather than early."

Alesia shook her head in fondness and followed Alex onto the bus.

"Hi Mrs. Lisa. How was your weekend?" She greeted Mrs. Lisa. Mrs. Lisa had been her bus driver for 3 years now and all the students on the bus were nice to her since she lets them get away with pretty much anything.

"It was pretty good, Alesia. Went hunting with the family, but old Josh was too loud for us to actually get anything. How was yours?" Mrs. Lisa asked while slightly distracted with getting the bus moving again.

"It was good too Mrs. Lisa." she said while sitting down next to Alex in their usual seat near the front.

"You have Cross Country after school right? Do you think i could hang out with you after school? I don't really want to go home today." Alex asked rubbing the back of their neck, looking a bit sheepish.

"Of course you can. Is your dad bothering you again?" Alesia asked. Alex's father didn't react well when Alex came out as non-binary and they haven't gotten along since. He had never hit them as far as Alesia knew, but he was very emotionally abusive. Dorman Engel was an intimidating man who was even taller than his child, who was one of the tallest people Alesia had ever met.

"He was just a lot last night and I don't want to deal with him so soon after our fight. He got kinda drunk and said some things about mom." Alex looked down with a scrunched up expression on their face. Alex's mom had passed away three years ago, right after they had come out. Their dad had, for some reason connected the two, and now blames Alex for the death of his wife.

"I'm sorry your dad is such a douche. Do you want to spend the night at my house tonight? You know my moms adore you. I think they forget that you aren't their kid sometimes." she says reassuringly with an arm around Alex, though struggling because they are so much taller than her.

Alex's face brightens some and they laugh, "Yeah that would be awesome."

"Cool, I'll text them to let them know." She whips her phone out of her back pocket.

Alesia: Hey can Alex spend the night tonight?

Mom: Of course Alex can. They can come over whenever they want to. You know we like them more than you lol.

Ma: Is everything okay?

Alesia: Just something with their dad. No biggie

Ma: If you're sure everything is okay,,,

Alesia: I'm sure

"Okay, they know you're coming, but Ma is a little suspicious. Are you sure you don't want to tell them how terrible your dad is to you?" she asks in concern, "they might be able to help."

Her ma is a defense attorney and would have some pull with social services, if they ever decided they want out of their dads house. They've had this conversation multiple times however and for some reason she doesn't understand, Alex would rather put up with a terrible father than go to someone for help.

"I'm sure and look we're at school so we should ignore this conversation and get to class. Education is important and all that." Alex stands up and waits to follow off the bus. She sighs a bit, but listens to them.

Davidson-Jefferies High School is a small school with only about 700 students. It is old, small, and trashy. They never want to use budget money on school repairs instead of athletics, which is the only good thing here.

Alesia isn't necessarily popular, just knows almost everyone in some way or form. On their way to homeroom, multiple people said hi or asked questions or even flirted with her. Since she is openly very flirtatious, some people don't like her, but she just flirts with everyone cause everyone is attractive and they know she doesn't really mean it.

Their homeroom teacher, Mr. Donason, is one of the coolest teachers she knew. He has a prosthetic hand which he likes to take off sometimes during class. He's a very quirky and well dressed older gentleman.

"Hello Alex, Alesia, how are my favorite students doing?" Mr. Donason said jokingly with a small grin. He was dressed today in a dark blue three piece suit, which looked way too expensive for a teachers salary, but he dressed like this every day.

"We're doing good. Anything interesting happening this week?" Alesia asked while walking into class and sitting on top of her desk.

"Oh you know, world domination on Wednesday and an alien invasion of Friday, but those are no big deal." His dark skin crinkled around his eyes in a grin. "In school, there's a pep rally on Friday that you'll have to be in for Cross Country, but I think that is it."

"Well world domination sounds fun, but a little inconvenient. Could you change those plans to next week?" Alesia asked teasingly.

"Well I don't know, I'll have to talk to the big boss about it, but anything for my favorite student", he winked his warm grey eyes very obviously at them.

She shook her head, laughing under her breath and sat down in her desk waiting for the day to finally start.

///

     Ever since she was a child, she loved to run. It seemed to clear her head better than anything else and just washed away all her worries and fears for a time.

After school, Cross Country practice did their usual laps around the field and up and down the hill off to the side of the football stands. While she was running at one point, her vision seemed to blend into the girls vision of last night. One second she was running next to her teammates and the other second she was alone running through the woods in the middle of the night.

Alex was sitting in the stands doing their homework along with some other stragglers. Alesia had been doing different sports for years so this early in the year practice was pretty easy, but rewarding. Her muscles were starting to ache when she finally joined Alex in the stands after picking up her stuff from the locker rooms.

"Hey, you ready to go? Ma should be out front soon," she said getting their attention since they were distracted while drawing. Alex closed their sketch book and Alesia caught a glance of a drawing of someone with dark red hair standing in front of a half finished building. "Ooh were you drawing me again? You know my birthday is Sunday."

Alex was a very talented artist, but didn't like to share their drawings often because of anxiety about their art not being good enough for someone to like it. It was something they had shared with their mother when they were young and became even more invested after she died. The only time she had seen a drawing of herself done by Alex was for her birthday last year.

"Don't worry about it, just something I was kinda daydreaming about. You ready to go now?" Alex stood, putting their things away in their bag.

She nodded and the friends head out to meet up with Ma out front. On their way, a shiver went down Alesia's spine. Something felt wrong, like they were being watched. She slowly turned around in a full 360 degrees, but nothing seemed amiss. "Do you feel that?"

Alex was facing straight ahead with a glazed over expression on their face. Their breathing slowly started increasing until they were breathing as though they has run a marathon.

"Alex? Alex?!? Are you okay?! Snap out of it!" she grabbed their arms and squeezed at different parts of the arm in hope to calm them down. Alex's breathing started getting even again and they finally snapped back to life, eyes no longer glazed.

"Did- did you see that? It was- it was like a house was on fire right in front of us! And that girl.." Alex stumbled back a step. Their eyes were looking around erratically for any sign of what they just saw. Their breathing started to pick up again, so without a thought Alesia grabbed Alex's face and brought it down to her level, which caused them to hunch over some.

"Look it's okay. There's nothing there, it was just some weird hallucination, okay?" she said reassuringly looking into their blue eyes. They nod and take deep breaths, collecting themselves once more.

"Let's get to the car and we can talk about it later. I'm really tired and kinda freaked out now." Alex starts walking ahead without saying anything else to Alesia.

She stood there for a second, surprised that they just brushed off what was basically a panic attack, then jogged to catch up to them.