This whole mess started out with me having to go to my brother's music festival.
I don't mind going to them, I really don't. It was that it all took a crazy turn on Monday night, the day after Easter.
During the middle of Ryan's performance that night, I went back early to the hotel we were staying at, instead of hanging around and meeting everyone, as he expected. I was tired and wanted to sleep.
It's not that I didn't sleep – it's that I had yet another nightmare.
My nightmare started out fine. I sat on a bench next to my friend Miranda. My knitting needles clicked together as I worked on a dishcloth. It was quiet and peaceful. Miranda – who records these stories, which me and other people recount, then sends them to somebody she knows who apparently writes them out – had buried her nose To Kill a Mockingbird. Her only movement was to flip pages.
She looked up from the book, screamed, and leaped to her feet.
Something exploded behind me.
Miranda collapsed forward, a bleeding gunshot injury in her back.
I woke up with a scream, heart pounding.
I sat up, trying to keep myself from screaming again. No need to freak out everybody in hearing distance because of a stupid dream. My fingers grabbed for my cell phone. I punched in Miranda's number. It rang for a moment.
"Hello?" yawned a voice. "Ivy? Are you okay?"
"I had a nightmare. It… it…" How do you tell a friend that you just had a nightmare where she was shot? Especially when it's actually not that crazy a possibility? "I'm sorry I woke you up."
"Don't ever apologize for bothering me with this stuff," she ordered. "There are things more important than sleep. I told you to call me if you had a nightmare and that I was available at any time."
An evil laugh echoed off the walls of my room. I recognized it instantly.
"Miranda, I'm going to have to call you back," I said.
"Um… is everything okay?"
"You remember that movie we watched before we left for the week?"
"Yeah? Rise of the Guardians? Oh…"
"Yeah, I'll just be back in a minute. Probably."
I ended the call and took a deep breath. "You know, Pitch Black, if you want hide under the bed and go unseen, the evil laugh really doesn't work."