"You gonna go lay down that track today?" Stella asked.
"It is four thirty in the morning, why are you awake so early? Go back to sleep!" I growled as I covered my head with my blankets.
"Can't, I already drank coffee. Want some?"
"No! I want to sleep. I had a bad dream earlier but, I'm having a good dream, for once, right now and you're ruining it," I mumbled sleepily.
"Just wake up, already," Stella rocked my body back and forth, shaking me awake.
"I'm up!" I yelled as I sat up in bed, frustrated.
"Well, good morning, sunshine!"
"Get outta my face, Stella," I chuckled playfully.
"Who was it this time?" Stella asked as she handed me a perfect cup of coffee and sat down on the edge of her bed.
"Who was what?" my voice groggy and my eyes fluttering.
"Who'd you dream about this time, Chasyn?" her face serious.
"The same guy as last night, in both dreams," I gulped as I recalled the first. "I saw him fighting someone incredibly strong. It wasn't like fist fighting, like normal people do. He had a sword in his hand. He was skilled with it but…but, he was losing the fight terribly."
"Who would he be fighting with a sword?"
"I have no clue. I didn't see who it was."
"Wait, so did you see his face yet?" she asked excitedly.
I sipped my coffee before answering but raised a conspirator's eyebrow and smiled as I said, "Kinda."
Stella grinned with me, "That means he's cute! He's cute isn't he?!" she squeaked.
"You forfeit the right to know when you woke me up before sunrise," I smirked as I stood up from the bed and wandered into the bathroom to take a shower.
I stepped into the hotel shower and adjusted the water temperature before getting under.
Stella had been my best friend since she was in the seventh grade and I in the eighth. Both of us had been placed in the same Algebra class and during a Code Red lockdown in the middle of the year where she and I had to hide in a corner together because we were the smallest and the shortest in the class, she and I became the "FS" duo (FS meaning Fun Sized). We were the same height, both of us standing at 4'9.
She and I had saved up enough money for the two of us rent out a decent hotel room for the first week of summer. Although we were just in Ocean City, only forty five minutes away from where we lived, we were happy just to not have to drive through the crazy traffic to get to OC every day.
When I toweled off, I changed into one of the bathing suits that I had stocked in the bathroom for quick access. This one was a two piece of tie-dyed of blue, purple, and white.
I was combing my hair as I thought about the last dream I had. The boy I had dreamed about had beautiful brown eyes and dark hair. Despite the bad dream, the good one I was having when Stella woke me up, I saw a softer side to the boy. I saw him and me walking by some kind of body of water and holding hands while some swimmers- who could hold their breaths for a long time- waved to us. It was a place I'd never been to before, but I recalled how vivid the dream was…like most of the dreams I had. I remembered the smell of warm strawberries and crisp air. And I swear there was a rock wall on fire…
It was certainly one of the stranger dreams that I'd had.
See, I get dreams about the future, always had. The dreams always came true, no matter how much I didn't want it to happen, or tried to prevent it from happening.
I rarely had dreams that delighted me like the one I had had before waking up. It wasn't like I wasn't going to wake up soon anyway; I woke up every morning just before sunrise. A nice reprieve from my dreams…until I stepped into the horrors of the outside world. Apparently, other people didn't see the things I could, although I never understood how they couldn't.
"Come on, Chase!" Stella banged on the bathroom door.
I jumped and it made me mess up my eyeliner. "Stella!" I exclaimed.
I unlocked the bathroom door and let Stella see what I had done to myself. She burst out laughing at me.
"I just wanted to take a shower," she said.
"Go!" I laughed.
She got in the shower while I finished up my make-up before walking out of the bathroom to sit on the balcony of the hotel looking at the sun rise over the Atlantic with a fresh cup of coffee.
I saw the faint image of a red sports car driving across the sky, like I saw every morning. I would watch the sunrise every morning just to see it as the sun rose, and I would smile to myself every day, feeling like the day could finally begin with seeing it.
My mom and sister couldn't see what I saw, but I would always tell them the weird things I could see, Stella too. They would bear with me through my freaky dreams and descriptions of the world around me. Not everything was just human and animal- not even just plants. There were…creatures in this world. I'd been running from them my whole life- I had the scars, bruises, and burn marks to prove it.
"You ready?" I asked as I stood up. The sun was significantly raised over the horizon.
"Yup!" Stella said.
We put on sunblock, me because I was already caramel skinned and didn't want to get any darker, and she because she was a flushing blushing fair skinned girl. We only put on pairs of short jean shorts over our bikinis and flip flops before grabbing our beach towels, cell phones, money, and room keys and walking down to the beach.
We laid out our stuff on our beach towels before running straight into the ocean. We were frolicking and swimming pretty far out into the ocean for our height with the other early risers. I saw something in the water and started swimming toward it. It looked like a boy trapped by a string to branch buried in the ocean. He was struggling to free himself from the thick rope.
When he saw me swimming toward him, his eyes bucked and he waved frantically for me to help him. He didn't look like he was short of breath, and I had learned to hold my breath for a long time because I was a singer, but I signaled to the boy that I'd be right back.
"Stella!" I called. I'd swum farther out than where she was, talking to a group of people who were floating on boogie boards.
She swam over to me as fast as she could. "What? What is it?"
"There's a boy trapped down there! Help me find something to cut him loose with!"
"I don't see anyone down there…?" she said after staring into the depths.
"He's there!" I insisted, looking back on the boy again.
She didn't fight me on it, but swam with me as we scoured for something to cut the boy loose with. Thankful for someone's litter- for once- I found a beer bottle on the beach and promptly broke it and took the sharpest shard and swam out to the boy again.
Stella saw that I was swimming back out and she followed me. I dove back under the water to the boy and he looked relieved to see me again. Stella was right by my side, and this time, she saw the boy because she pointed at him in surprise. I set off to work with my shank and started slicing away at the thick rope where Stella had pointed would be the optimal point.
Without having to come up for breath, I got the boy free in the time that it took Stella three trips to the surface to breathe. He didn't even rise back up to the surface with me, just waved and swam away.
After I broke the surface, Stella was floating in the water, perplexed by what had just happened after the boy was well out of sight.
"I didn't think you would ever come up. What were you doing down there?" Stella laughed.
This was typical for me. People around me would see something during one moment that "wasn't there" and then claim that I was delusional when they said that what I had known for a fact had happened hadn't. Stella wasn't one of those people.
"A boy was trapped, I saved him, he swam away," I said simply.
"Oh, did I help any?" she asked innocently.
"You showed me the stressed point in the rope," I shrugged.
"At least I did something this time," she laughed.
We swam back to the shore and sat in surf as the waves washed over our legs.
I heard the sounds of an intense fight behind me. Up the beach, where it was too early to be occupied by beachgoers, a girl was fighting with a serpent-looking creature with a dagger.
I didn't have a weapon, but I was glad I'd left the broken beer bottle up at the beach, because when I saw her in the fight, I ran to the bottle, grabbed it, and went straight to help her in the fight.
Stella called after me, but I was too busy paying attention to the blonde girl fighting for her life.
The serpent had its back to me and was focused on the girl. I could see now that there were snakes as its legs…and green scaly skin as a torso. After my shock had gone, I'd seen some freaky things in my lifetime, I jabbed the serpent thing right in the back. Off guard, it turned to look at me in surprise and hissed, yellow eyes full of loathing. Before it had a chance to come after me, the girl took a killer stab at it and it hissed in pain before it disintegrated into ashes.
"Quick! Scatter them!" the girl in front of me said, adrenaline evident in her voice.
I looked at her as she bent down and dipped her hands into the ashes of the creature and threw them, running up and down the beach, letting a handful go here and there.
I followed suit and ran with handfuls of ashes along the beach, making sure to drop some in the surf.
The girl and I had properly spread out large amounts of the ashes before reconvening where she had killed the creature that was hunting her.
"Thank you," she said breathily.
"Hey, I'm Chasyn," I said reaching out to shake her hand.
"I'm Annabeth," she nodded and took my hand for a pump.