Lilly had always been fascinated by dreams.

The way they can reveal everything there is to know about your subconscious. Every hope, every fear, every secret.

The look on other people faces whilst they're dreaming, their rapid eyes movements, their facial expressions. You look at the true person while they sleep. No one is cruel or spiteful while they are sleeping. They are at peace.

But sometimes you have nightmares. Some people say that if you don't like what happens, you should just change it to something better. But Lilly disagrees. She doesn't think dreams can be controlled like that. The world of dreams is a parallel of your mind, it cannot be transformed or manipulated, and it must run its course, complete its purpose, before you awake.


Lilly had a nightmare that night. It was dark, so dark, with a faint mist illuminated from an unseen light source. She saw a circle of people around her, all chanting something unrecognisable. It sounded like her friends' voices, but she couldn't see their faces. A floating candle lit above her head and she realised she was sitting on the ground. Her feet were dirty and there were dead leaves and sticks covering her long dress. She shivered and wrapped her hands around her bare shoulders, trying to warm herself. The chanting was louder now, reaching the climax. The figures were swaying, moving in time to the eerie drone. A sudden gust of freezing wind extinguished the candle; she heard something emit a high-pitched scream…

"Lillian! Get up! I don't have time to drive you to school this morning!" Her dad banged loudly on the bedroom door.

Lilly opened her eyes with a start. Morning light drifted through her purple mesh curtains, illuminating the print of Henri Rousseau's The Sleeping Gypsy tacked on her bedroom wall. Her mother had sent it to her for her sixteenth birthday last year, as a bribe. It didn't work, but Lilly still kept it, as a reminder of how strong she could be, for both her dad and herself. She was never going to go and live in New York with her mother and Steven, no matter how much money Heather spent on elaborate books and art supplies for gifts. The only gift she wanted was her father to be happy again, and that was never going to happen with Heather across the other side of the country.

"Lilly! Up now, young lady!" Her dad yelled again.

She sighed. The only way to get some peace and quiet would be to answer. "Alright, I heard you the first time!" she yelled back. Her dad had been on her back recently about being on time, being a responsible adult, blah blah blah. Lilly figured it was just because he didn't want her to turn out like Heather.

Lilly lay still for a while, in her cocoon of blankets, making no move to indeed get up, and tried to ignore the unpleasant feeling in the pit of her stomach. Something bad was going to happen today. She knew it. She sighed and rolled out of bed, got dressed quickly, and moved into the bathroom. She washed her face, brushed her teeth, her mouth curved into an 'O' shape as she swiped mascara over her lashes. It's funny how people can never keep their mouth closed while putting on eye makeup. She looked at herself in the mirror and heaved a sigh. Just another regular day so far.

The sound of claws against a wooden floor came from Lilly's bedroom. Crash. Oh no. Gomez.

Lilly sprinted out of her and looked desperately around her room. Her school bag had been pulled off her desk, scattering stationary and various bits and pieces all over her floor. She searched around in the debris for her USB stick, containing a very important science assignment. "Dammit!" she cursed, and burst into the hallway is pursuit of her idiotic pet.

"Gomez! Here boy!" she called as she fumbled down the stairs. A fat, shaggy dog with paws the size of saucers galumphed up to her, looking shamefaced. "Where did you put it, you stupid animal? That assignment is due today!" Lilly demanded.

When Heather had finally let Lilly have a puppy the year before she left, Lilly had taught him how to play hide and seek. She would show him a rubber toy, then lock him in the laundry while she hid in somewhere around the house. Then she would let Gomez out and he would search around, nose pressed to the ground and tail wagging proudly in the air, and when he eventually found the toy, Lilly would heap praise and treats on him. But when she found a friendship bracelet Miley made her in Gomez's basket, she realized that the game worked both ways. Gomez would take something of Lilly's and hide it, and she would find it a few days later. Mostly it was fine, but her science teacher was the meanest teacher in the school, and it looked like she was going to have to face him without her assignment.

She couldn't ask her dad for help. He didn't like Gomez, always complaining about how much she spoiled him. He'd just sigh and tell her it's her own fault, and no he wasn't going to help her look for it, and she had to bear the consequences of her actions. Boring responsible adult crap. He was nothing if not predictable, and it wasn't the first time Lilly guiltily wondered if that was the reason her mother left. She avoided his gaze as she dragged her feet into the kitchen.

"You're late" he growled "You have to eat breakfast and the bus will be here any minute. I already told you I'm not driving you"

"Doesn't matter. Miley's picking me up." Lilly said curtly. They never had real conversations anymore.

She heard the beeping of Miley's car coming from the driveway. "Bye dad!" she mumbled quickly as she grabbed an apple out of the fruit bowl and swung her bag over one shoulder.

The angel broke as Lilly rounded the corner. Her empty bag strap caught on the wing as she passed it. She felt the jerk, and spun round to watch it fall, in slow motion, with the feeling of dread one has while watching the inevitable. It shattered as it hit the floor, a crystal tinkling sound echoing around the hallway. Her dad walked out of the kitchen with an alarmed expression on his face, which changed to crestfallen when he realised what had happened. Heather had given him the angel on their seventh wedding anniversary. As a child, it had fascinated Lilly to no end, and she longed for the day when she would be able to read the inscription on the bottom. How disappointed she was when she found out that it was not secret angel dialect, like she thought, but just a boring message.

Darling Matthew; I adore you my darling, forever and eternity, until we are both angels in the sky. All my love, Heather.

And now it was smashed to smithereens, beyond repair. "Dad…dad, I'm so…" Lilly began.

"You have to go now, Lillian. Miley's waiting. I'll clean up this mess" he made a dismissive gesture towards the glittering fragments on the ground.

"Sorry." Lilly whispered, and ran out the door.

First the assignment going missing, then the angel breaking. Bad luck comes in threes, and Lilly felt fretful with anxiety when she thought about what could possibly go wrong next.


"Oh my gosh, guys, did you hear what happened last night?" Sarah gushed sombrely to Miley and Lilly walked through the entrance to Seaview.

Lilly's stomach dropped. "No, what?" Miley asked in a concerned tone.

"Oliver Oken was in a car accident!" Sarah obviously wanted to be the bearer of bad tidings. "He was with his little brother Kyle" she continued, but their friend Becca had joined them, and cut in.

"And he died!" Becca hissed with thrilled dismay.

Lilly was thunderstruck. Miley gave a cry of horror. "Oh my god, Oliver's dead?"

"What? No, Kyle is. Oliver's in a coma. He's on life support. They reckon he's not gonna make it." Becca whispered.

Why are they whispering, Lilly thought. It's not as if it's a secret. Everyone who knew Oliver would know by now. Although none of them knew Oliver Oken very well, she was still in shock. She and Oliver had talked a couple of times, mostly about the weather or teachers or school gossip, but they'd never actually had a conversation. In fact, the only time Lilly had heard him say more than 3 words strung together was in science a couple of weeks ago.


Donny and Amber were talking and asking rude questions all the way through Lilly's speech on Asperger's Syndrome. She was never any good at public speaking, and the fact that the sadistic Mr. Kelly wasn't doing anything to stop them made her even jitterier. He just sat there and watched with a smirk as Donny made moronic comments and Lilly stumbled over her words. Suddenly, Oliver Oken, the quiet, aloof boy who only came to Seaview the previous semester stood up and turned around, anger apparent on his usually passive face.

"Shut up, you cretins! She's trying to talk and I want to listen!" He yelled.

The whole class, Lilly included, stared at him with astonishment. Lilly finished her speech without another hitch, but Oliver had been forever branded in Mr. Kelly's eyes as a troublemaker, and was given a lunchtime detention. As the bell rang and they all went to leave, Lilly made her way over to Oliver's desk while he was packing away his things.

"Oliver? Thanks for that. It was fantastic!" She gushed.

He just raised his eyes to shyly meet hers with a small smile. "No problem. Your speech was really interesting."

"Yeah, I guess so" she shrugged. At that moment, Donny shoved past Oliver's desk, scattering his remaining books all over the floor.

"Asshole" Lilly sniped, as she bent over the pick them up. One of them, a sketchbook, had opened up, and a sketch of a beautiful landscape was drawn on the page.

"Wow, this is amazing!" Lilly exclaimed. "You drew this?"

Oliver just nodded modestly.

"It's gorgeous!" She marvelled. Flicking through the other pages, she fawned over more exquisite sketches and transcendent doodles. As she got closer to the end, he suddenly reached out and pried the book from her hands.

"We're late for fourth period" he reminded her.

"Crap, we are too. Thanks again, Oliver, your pictures are awesome" Lilly smiled kindly and picked up her bag. "See you round."

"Yeah, see you" he replied, so softly she barely heard him.


More details about the accident came to light over the course of the day. Oliver was driving his mother's bomb of a car. He was at the lookout at eleven o'clock at night with his little brother Kyle. No one knew why. It had been raining so the road was slippery. He skidded around a nasty corner too quickly. The car broke over the escarpment, and plunged into a net of trees twenty feet below. There still had to be an autopsy for Kyle, but apparently he was already dead but the time the rescue crew got there. Oliver had head and chest injuries, and when they finally got through the wreckage to him, he was barely alive.

Lilly felt sickened. The assignment. The angel. The accident.

Her bad luck certainly did come in threes.