Serena stared at the blank document on her computer. Clueless what to write, she scratched her head. 'I have to write it though,' she thought. The idea of her writing a story about what had happened had stuck with her the entire day…it could not be worded, what she felt this morning.
Nevertheless, she would try as best she could.
She was sleeping, dreaming.
It started like all dreams (at least hers) did: totally random things. Something about a house, and weird tenants…maybe something about X-Men, that show she used to watch. Anyway, she was told to go put away a wheelchair and a green jacket. Thinking about the layout of the house that she mysteriously knew, she realized she would be going right past the military planes.
Appearing somehow at the top of the stairs, she wheeled the chair into the spacious closet, and hung the jacket next to the chair.
The next second, she was outside the closet, looking out to a plane that was beginning to take off. She glanced at the peculiar logo on the planes tail, but remembered: the pilots got to design their own.
It was a flat metal color, like it hadn't been painted at all; it was being flown almost hot off the assembly line, with the exception of the tail.
There was a grafitied J, O, L, O. The two O's were mushrooms coming out of the sides of someone's head, like Toad from Super Mario Brothers. Somehow, she knew this was "his" plane. She brought her hands up to her head, and gave a double solute, but felt quite stupid afterwards. Lifting her right had, she gave another, when "he" was suddenly right behind her.
"Aw guys, you got it wrong, the 'J' was supposed to be an 'I'!" He laughed anyway, not really caring, and faced her, smiling. He walked over to her, still smiling gently.
At some point in time, two other people, a male and a female, had joined them in the room looking out onto the runway. Serena paid them no heed, and smiled at "him", Nik. They smiled at each other and both rushed forward into a hug.
While she was hugging him, a feeling washed over her, and she didn't realize until later that morning when she woke up, that the feeling was the knowing that she would never see him again.
The next thing she knew, her mother came and woke her up.
Serena sat back, sighing and wiping away the tears that would not stop coming from her eyes. When she could stop and think, her mind always wandered back to when her arms were around him, and the feeling of sudden desperation that swamped her as she tightened her arms around him, the knowing that she would never see him again.
She laughed angrily at herself as she shed more tears. She didn't even know him that well and her heart was breaking as if they had been the best of friends, not the mere acquaintances they had been!
But the thing was, she'd seen him at an office supply store that summer, had said hello and chatted for a bit before she walked out with a mouse.
The next time she heard about him, it was from her younger brother, Sammy.
The little spore was on the computer, instant messaging with one of his friends, and as she crested the top of the stairs, he turned to her. "Hey, do you remember Nik? He was in one of the clubs you were in, remember?"
She dumbly nodded, "Yeah, he was in a committee with me. What about him?" She continued on to her room, which was next to the computer, and blinked when she heard her little brother say, "He's dead."
Stunned, she turned to face him, forgetting why she'd come upstairs in the first place. "How'd it happen?" She felt detached as she asked, the news not really sunk into her brain yet.
"He was drinking at a frat party I think, over the weekend, and had too much. He'd been in a coma for a while, but he's dead now, the doctor's pulled the plug."
The little grasp she had on her sanity slipped away as she began babbling incoherently. "But the doctor's wouldn't do that after only a day, would they?" Sammy said weekend, and it was only Monday.
Sammy shrugged, a little shocked himself. "His parents probably decided to do it; they said he was almost brain-dead anyway."
After that discussion, life went on normally…until Thursday morning, when she'd had the dream.
It struck her then, that he was really gone.
That morning in the shower, she stood, still reeling from the dream and being woken up early, and it finally dawned on her. The sorrow slammed in to her like a massive tidal wave, causing a tear to slip from her eyes, and then more followed, until a river flowed down her face.
Serena had kept herself busy all day, doing chores until she had to go to work. She didn't give herself time to think about him, throwing herself into her job, but as she drove home, and as a particularly sad song came on over her radio, she began to cry again.
Wiping burning tears from her eyes, she glanced up at her rearview mirror in her little red car. Red and blue lights were flashing, and she suddenly heard the screech of the siren and realized an ambulance was headed in her direction!
Anxiously looking at the red light, she sighed in relief as it turned green. Flooring it, she sped in front of the car that had been next to her in the speeding in front of it, just making it out of the way. As it wailed past, she thought back to Nik again.
That night, he rode in an ambulance. That night, the EMT's tried to revive him, and she was suddenly in the ambulance, watching them work over him. That night, Nik had arrived in the hospital, like someone was about to that night, and he was in a coma before he died.
A sob forced its way out of her throat, but she forced herself to keep driving; there was nowhere to stop. Half way home, she finally calmed down enough to make it the rest of the drive. As she parked her car, she quickly turned the headlights off and tried to rid her face of the tears. Walking through the door, her parents greeted her as they worked over their new computer. "Hey honey, how was work?"
Serena glanced to her mother and smiled. "It was good." Before she could retreat upstairs, her mother saw her puffy eyes. "Are you ok honey?"
Nodding quickly and thinking even faster of a lie, she sighed. "Yeah, they've been like this lately."
"It might be hay fever," said her father as he pushed his glasses up his nose turning away from the computer to look at her. "Have you been sneezing?" At her nod, he nodded as well. "That's it then."
Changing the subject, Serena asked what they'd had for dinner that night, and since it had been leftover, decided on a hot pocket. After she was done eating, she headed upstairs.
And here she was.
Looking down in soft pride, she smiled as she read over the story, again shedding more tears. But she had done it. She did what she set out to do, and that was to write out her feelings and hope that somehow, Nik would know she wrote it, and, oh she didn't know, tell her it was going to be ok or something. She just wanted to let others know.
Later in the week, about Wednesday or so, she learned that he'd died from alcohol poisoning, which in her opinion as strange…he was a grade younger than she was, and yet…She couldn't believe he was really gone, but her dream and the obituary in that day's paper solidified it.
Thinking over what happened Wednesday, she thought maybe the dream could have come to her because she thought she'd never be able to go to a funeral, and have people be talking past tense about someone, and looking in the casket and seeing a person just lying there, as if they were sleeping. It would be too hard. She would think about the person being alive, talking, joking, something! She never got to say goodbye, and this dream was her way of doing that. Somehow, she had a strong feeling that it was really Nik in the dream, receiving her goodbye because she hadn't gone to the funeral.
Shaking her head, she shed one last tear before she saved the document. She really didn't know what she was going to do with it, but she wanted to post it somewhere at least, just so others knew, so she could get her feelings out and just leave a memory of the boy she hardly knew behind.
Clicking the Ctrl and S button, she saved it one last time, before she sighed and went to bed.
RIP Nik. I may not have known you very well, or for long, but I hope wherever you are, that you're happy, and that what I'm trying to say comes across somehow.
This is all true. I am portraying Serena in this story, and my friend's name really was Nik. Please everyone, don't drink underage…I don't know how old Nik was, but please, don't ever drink too much, because this can happen. You can go into a coma from drinking too much alcohol, and you can DIE from too much; it's called alcohol poisoning. So please, if you drink be careful, and if you're underage, please, don't drink at all.