"Stiles?" Sophia McBride called out, brow furrowing as she saw her former friend in the otherwise empty high school hallway. She had snuck back into school to spend some time in the art studio to work on the different projects she had going for her art classes. Her teacher decided that it would be a good idea for the students to create a theme for each week and Sophia had been picked to go first. So Sophia had spent the evening in the studio trying to come up with ideas of what could be cool and interesting — trying to use the studio as inspiration, but she had come up empty.
Luckily, there was pretty much no security at the high school; they couldn't keep a night guard employed after everything that had been going on over the past year. So Sophia wasn't worried about getting caught as she left the studio, but she was surprised to see Stiles at the school. She rarely ever saw another student, let alone a former friend,
"Hey, what are you doing here?" Stiles ignored her question, walking away from her and for a split second, Sophia thought about just letting him do whatever he had come to do; it didn't concern her and obviously he didn't want her involved. But Sophia couldn't help but follow him.
Stiles was in his pjs, bare feet padding against the school floors as he stopped in front of an open classroom. Sophia crossed her arms over her chest and stepped closer to him, opening her mouth to call out to him again. But before she could say anything, Stiles stepped into the classroom. Walking up to the open door, Sophia peered inside to see that it looked like a tornado had ripped through the classroom,
"Woah." She breathed out, eyes traveling around the room and the destruction before settling on where Stiles stood.
In the middle of the classroom, there was a giant stump — like giant. Sophia couldn't even fathom how it got into the classroom, but it looked like it had made a home there, roots extending across the floors, traveling up the walls.
"Hey, man, maybe we should get out of here." Sophia said to Stiles, raising her voice slightly. Stiles ignored her, almost like he didn't even know she was there, and Sophia watched him reach out to the stump.
His fingers brushed against the against the wood for a brief moment. Sophia realized she was holding her breath, waiting for something — anything, to happen once his fingers connected with the wood. But nothing did.
Stiles went to pull his hand back from the stump when suddenly roots shot up around his hand, wrapping tightly around him and yanking it back down, pulling Stiles with.
Startling awake, Sophia shot up in bed, taking in a deep breath as she suddenly woke out of her dream. She blinked rapidly, trying to take in her surroundings as she calmed herself down. Her pineapple nightlight gave minimal light to the otherwise dark room, but Sophia glanced over to see the time displayed on her digital clock. It was almost four in the morning. Sophia took in a gulping breath as she pushed her covers off of herself, bringing her knees to her chest as she calmed down.
It had been such a vivid dream — everything about it felt real, even though it wasn't. Turning her head to the side, Sophia rested her cheek on her knees, eyes on her clock as she thought about her dream, specifically how Stiles had appeared. She hadn't ever had such a vivid dream involving Stiles before, especially after their friendship dissipated. Seeing him in her dream, plus the stump that grabbed him, left her with a funny feeling in her stomach.
Sophia reached for her phone from where it was charging on her nightstand. She unlocked it and pulled up a search engine page. Her fingers tapped against the screen as she Googled what it meant when you dreamt about a tree stump. Scrolling through the results, Sophia clicked on a random link, which brought her to a page where she skimmed a rather dull meaning about her dream. According to the website she clicked on, the stump represented that her attention was going to be called for in connection of unlocking an important message from her spirits. And since she saw the roots, it meant that there were many things she needed to discover in order to get a happy life.
Sighing, Sophia exited out of the app and went into her camera roll, going to one of her first albums back from when she had first gotten her phone. She hadn't looked at the album in years. but it was full of pictures of her and her friends from middle school. She swiped through them, knowing they mostly consisted of her, Scott McCall and Stiles Stilinski. They were barely through puberty in most of the pictures but they were the most recent ones she had of her and the kid who appeared in her dream. Sophia smiled to herself at a few of them on the bus or at different school functions. There was a video towards the beginning of the camera roll that Sophia clicked on, turning the phone horizontal so the video filled the screen.
"This is the first ever video on Fia's brand new phone!" Stiles's voice came from behind the camera as he zoomed in on Sophia's face. They were on the bus and the video shook with each bump the bus hit,
"Please don't zoom in on my face." Sophia heard herself as she covered her face with her hands, but she was laughing a bit.
"Are you zooming in on her face?" The camera swung around suddenly to reveal a close up of Scott McCall's grinning face.
"Yup. Getting reeaaaalll up close and personal." Stiles dragged out the word, moving the camera around as Scott laughed at him.
The phone was suddenly taken out of Stiles's hands and his face appeared on screen — or rather his nose, but the camera zoomed out to reveal his entire face and he gave whoever was holding the phone an unamused look as the camera moved around his face, both Sophia and Scott's laughs in the background. Sophia heard her voice, using a crappy Australian accent "Oh well would you look what we've stumbled upon. The wild Stiles Stilinski traveling somewhere. I—oh!"
The bus went over a rather nasty bump, causing Sophia to lose her balance and fall backwards onto the seat. Sophia watched the camera show the bus ceiling as she heard herself laughing, joined by the two boys as the bus driver's voice floated back, "And that's why we stay in our seats!" And then, the video abruptly ended.
Sophia turned her phone around in her hands, exiting out of the video and camera roll. As silly as the video was, she didn't feel like going down memory lane at four in the morning. Sophia may not have remembered when and how she became friends with the two boys — her mom would say that it was because they all were from single parent homes and only children, but Sophia certainly remembered when and how she stopped being friends with the boys. She plugged her phone back into the charger and let out a breath, extending her legs and glancing at her phone again.
Screwing her mouth to the side, Sophia got out of bed and went over to the far side of her room where her sketch books, paintbrushes and other various art supplies were scattered across her desk. She figured she was already up and there was no point in trying to go back to sleep before she had to wake up again for school, so she might as well try to think of a theme for her class. Sophia grabbed her newest sketchbook — one that she had just started using, and a pencil before folding herself on the floor, her back up against the wall.
Flipping open the sketchbook, Sophia searched for an empty page to start doodling on when she stopped at the sight of something that looked familiar. Pushing up to a straighter position, Sophia let the sketchbook fall on her lap, looking at what she had drawn on the page. It was a tree, one that had a wide base and long, scraggly branches. It had been something she started doodling a few weeks prior; it just came to her, out of the blue. At the time, Sophia thought nothing of it, but something inside of her made her pause at the doodle and slowly, Sophia turned the book upside down, getting a different angle of the tree.
Upside down, the tree looked exactly like the stump Sophia had seen in her dream. Her fingers traced down the roots as her mind wandered back to the dream she had. The way the roots had reached out and grabbed Stiles, yanking him down, almost pulling him into the tree. Sophia's eyes flicked up, looking over the sketchbook and into her dimly lit bedroom — she had to talk to Stiles.
A/N: Any questions, comments, concerns or cries of outrage? Please let me know what you think! I'm excited to share Sophia's story so be sure to [Youtuber voice] smash that follow/fave button and leave a review!