A/N: This chapter is obviously MUCH longer than the last one, mostly because that one was just the prologue. Most future chapter will be about as long as this one (except eventually the epilogue, probably)
Disclaimer: I own nothing except that medal she uses (but sadly, it isn't worth that much in real life)
2. The wish
I look at the medal in my hand and smile.
It really is pretty. It almost seems like a shame to throw it into the fountain, but that's what I intent to do anyway.
It was given to me this morning, at the bus-station, by a beggar.
I was eating my breakfast, an egg-sandwich and a bottle of chocolate milk, same as I have every morning.
Since I was so excited about the summer festival our class would be attending this afternoon, I could barely eat and when I only finished about half of my sandwich, I found I couldn't eat a single bite more.
So I walked over to the trashcans to throw the rest away.
A beggar came up to me and asked me if he – since I was throwing it away anyway – could have the rest of my sandwich, so I gave it to him.
I mean, even if I was a mean and selfish person, I still would've given it to him.
What's the difference in throwing it in the trashcan or giving it to a beggar?
Either way I paid for something I wouldn't be consuming myself, right?
So I might as well make someone happy with it, rather than just using it to create more work for whoever had to empty those trashcans.
In return for the sandwich, the beggar gave me this medal.
He said the picture on it was of Chronos, the god of time.
At the time, I didn't think anything of it. It's an old medal, sure, and probably valuable, but when I refused to take it, saying the beggar should just sell it, he insisted and practically shoved it down my pocket himself, so I took it.
I didn't think of it again until a few minutes ago, when our teacher started telling the story of this fountain, of how it's supposedly enchanted and wishes made on this fountain are more likely to come true than those made on any other wishing-well or -fountain in the world.
I wish I could go back in time to talk to my younger self.
I have this medal that portrays the god of time.
I have this fountain that can supposedly grant wishes to whoever throws a coin into it.
A medal is really nothing more than an old coin, right?
I sigh deeply, keeping my wish front and center in my mind, and drop the medal into the water.
And...nothing happens. Yeah, I'm not really sure what I was expecting.
...
"oh, look. You're still hideous. What a surprise,"the same person who talked to me before I made the wish says.
I don't know her name, even though I've been in the same class as her for the last three months.
I probably won't finish this year and I'll never see these people again, so I don't bother to learn their names.
I never finish a full year in school.
Ever since I dropped out in my third year in high-school, I've tried to restart my education-program thousands of times.
First I would apply and re-apply to high-schools, never finishing a year, always dropping out after two or three months.
Then, when I turned twenty and was officially too old for high-school anymore, I started applying to colleges, but again I never finished a year.
All in all, I'm sure I got a full education – more than one, even – but I don't have a single diploma.
All the intelligence and book-smarts in the world still won't get me very far in life, if I don't have some piece of paper to prove I have it.
So no diploma, no friends, no job and no time-machine.
Man, that was a total waste of a medal that I could've probably sold for about three-thousand dollars or more.
I have half a mind to fish it back up, but that would be totally rude, so I just sigh and walk away from the fountain, ignoring the insults and high-pitched laughter from those Barbie-lookalikes that are the popular kids.
Well, since this is a college-class, I can't really call them kids anymore, but seriously, the popular clique hasn't changed at all since high-school.
Their laughter still hurts my ears with how high-pitched it is, their insults still couldn't hurt me if I was trying to let them and they still stress over useless things like fashion and boys.
So unless they stop acting like kids, I won't stop calling them exactly that: kids.
...
"this will be fun. It's a trip down memory lane," my mom sighs happily, steering the car off the highway at last.
After three hours in the car, I'm almost as excited as my mom to see our old house, if only because that means I finally get to get out of this cramped space and stretch my legs.
Beside me my sisters are babbling excitedly. 'oh look, that's where my friend from middle school used to live. I wonder if she's still here'. 'that's the playground where I broke my record of how high I could swing'.
Meanwhile, I'm sitting here thinking things like 'oh look, that's the street where that asshole drove his bike straight into my leg, so I had to go to the hospital and I ended up with a scar that is still visible to this day' and 'that's where Cindy used to live, the girl who bullied me mercilessly in high-school, causing me to drop out because I was so miserable, throwing me into this bottomless pit of uselessness that I still haven't dug my way out of'.
Yeah, this trip down memory lane will be great fun.
My mom stops the car and tells us to get out, something I do with great pleasure.
Well, the sooner we get this 'wonderful trip' over with, the sooner we can go back home and I can go back to pretending I know what I'm doing with my life.
I'm not even sure what came over my mom.
This morning she suddenly decided that she wanted to come back to our old home-town and revisit the places we used to visit, back when we still lived here.
I think it's some kind of midlife-crisis. She realizes now that even her youngest daughter is almost an adult and she doesn't have all that much time left with her 'little girls', so she tries to relive the years past, when we were still babies and heavily dependent of her.
That must be it.
What other reason could she possibly have for dragging me out of my room and forcing me into the car to make this three-hour-trip to a town I swore I'd never return to after I left?
...
After about two hours, I'm shocked to find I'm actually sort of enjoying myself.
I realize now that while my bad memories might be more prominent in my mind, there were in fact some good ones as well.
Like Sandra, for example. A short, somewhat weird girl, who was my best friend in the first and second year of high-school.
She transferred to another school at the beginning of the third year, leaving me with no relief from the constant harassing of Cindy.
No-one to talk to about what her constantly annoying me did to my emotional health and my self-esteem, no secretly insulting her when she wasn't around to hear it because I was too shy and scared to do it to her face.
No friend, just Cindy. All day, every day. That's too much for any 14-year old to have to bear.
I consider myself to be a very strong girl, I always have been. I can take a lot of punches before I finally go down.
But Cindy, she punched and punched and punched and punched.
At school, before, during, between and after classes.
At home – she had convinced my mother she was my friend and my naïve mother actually believed her for over four months, so she let Cindy into my room.
On the internet, Cindy had access to my facebook-account, she had my e-mail address, she knew which chat-boxes I frequented – all courtesy of my mother, who believed Cindy's story that she'd meant to ask me in school, but forgot to and could my mom please give the info to her so she wouldn't have to bother me herself when I was busy doing my homework?
And everywhere else I went.
Every time I left the house, Cindy would find out where I was going – usually via my mother – and follow me there, just so she could annoy me some more.
...
Today, that amuses me. That girl had absolutely no life.
She spent all her time stalking me, neglecting her friendships and her schoolwork in favor of spending all her time with me.
She probably had to repeat the year, just because she was so busy following me around that she never got around to actually studying for any tests.
Of course, that is now. Back then, I didn't think of that.
I just wanted to get away from her so badly, but no matter where I went, she would find me. It was awful.
But no, I'm not here to revisit the bad memories, I'm here for the good ones.
Sandra. Winning a walking marathon. Stuff like that.
No crazy stalkers allowed in my trip down memory lane.
Of course, it's almost impossible to ignore all the things that remind me of her.
The playground, where she would come every day, just because I did. The marathon, where I came in first, but she came in second, only because she walked as fast as she could so she could keep up with me, so she could be around me even then.
And, of course, the last part of our little trip: my high-school.
I can still see her lurking around every corner, waiting for me to pass by.
I can even smell her as I approach my old locker, where she would wait for me every morning, to make sure she was the very first person I'd talk to every day.
She was such a huge part of my life back then, so everywhere I go, memories of her keep popping up, completely banishing the good memories I'm trying to recall.
Still, I'm older and wiser now and the memories don't bother me as much as the actual experience did.
...
Watching some other kid opening my locker, getting ready for school – it's Friday, so the school is packed with students that actually go here right now – makes me smile.
I still remember myself opening that same locker every other morning, yelling every swearword I knew when one of the books in them fell out and hit my foot, because I'd carelessly stuffed them in there the day before, desperate to get out of this school and into my room as fast as was humanly possible.
And Cindy laughing every time that happened.
See now why I hated her so much? She was always there. It was disturbing and terrifying.
Not only dirty old men stalk little girls. Other little girls can do it too.
As the kid in front of me takes his books and rushes through the halls, probably late for his class, I sigh deeply.
The hallway quickly empties of students, leaving me alone with my memories and my annoyingly cheerful little sister, running down the hallways laughing loudly.
Sure, she's almost a legal adult, but that doesn't mean she's anywhere near becoming an adult.
I take a few steps forward until I can run my fingers over the cold steel of my locker-door.
I carved my name in there with a screwdriver on my first day here and apparently they never bothered to replace the door, because I can still feel the indentations underneath my fingers.
Out of nowhere I'm hit with a dizzy spell.
Nothing new there, except it usually only happens when I stand up too fast or when I'm in an extremely stressful situation.
Low blood pressure.
I bend over and breathe deeply until it passes, only it takes much longer to pass than it usually does.
Maybe it's just the stress caused by coming here again, to the place where my life went from 'promising' to 'hopeless'.
I can hear the bell ringing, which surprises me, since classes only started about twenty seconds ago, right?
I can no longer hear my sister's annoying laughter, which is a plus, but it's replaced by the sound of my heartbeat, which is a definite minus.
I've learned long ago to recognize these signs.
Outdrawn dizziness? Check. Hearing the sound of my own heartbeat? Check. Seeing black spots? Check. Damn. I'm passing out.
I knew I shouldn't have come back here. This place is nothing but trouble. Always had been, always will be.
...
I open my eyes to a white ceiling I've memorized at some point in my life.
Every speck of dirt, every crack engraved in my memory like my name is forever engraved in that locker-door.
The sickroom of my first and worst high-school.
"feeling better?" I can hear someone asking, the sound of her voice sending shivers down my spine and making me dizzy again, as if I'm once again about to pass out.
I'm dreaming. There's no other way that person could be here.
What are the odds of that girl being here, in our old school, on the exact same day I am?
"you fainted," someone else says, sighing. "again."
The nurse that always had to carry me to the sickroom and nurse me back to health, every single time I fainted in high-school.
Which was all the time.
I've always had low blood pressure and the tendency to keep everything bottled up inside. Anger, fear, sadness,... I kept it all stored deep inside of me where it couldn't bother me and eventually it would come out and slam into me like a cannonball to my gut, making me either faint or throw up.
I'm not surprised she remembers me.
I've been in this same room so many times I'm probably engraved in her memory as much as this room is in mine.
"I'm okay," I say, sighing as well.
My mom is going to wonder where I went.
"classes are already over. Cindy is going to walk you home. I don't trust you to walk home alone in this state," the nurse says, sending my mind into a frenzy of questions and denials.
Yep, I'm dreaming alright, I decide eventually.
Cindy is going to walk me home? Crazy stalker Cindy? Why is she here? And how could she possibly walk me home when my home is about 150 miles from here? That'll be a long walk.
"come on. I took notes from all the classes you missed, so you can study them at home," Cindy says in that annoying sweet voice of hers, helping me to sit up on the bed.
Yeah, I also remember this part. Cindy being so deceptively nice to me all the time, but still following me around and making me damn uncomfortable.
She knew it too, I told her to stop following me at least a thousand times, but she never listened.
...
I just stare at the door as Cindy leaves me, finally – but never for long.
She left me in front of the house that used to be where I lived.
As I watch her walk away, she turns back to look at me at least seven times before finally entering her own house, no doubt running straight to her room so she can boot up her old computer and post weird comments on my facebook.
Just like she used to do. But how? And why? She hasn't aged a day. And she's still acting exactly the same as she did back then.
And the nurse treated me as if I was still a student in that school, even though I left over seven years ago.
"well? Are you going to come in, or are you just going to stand there all day? Please don't tell me you're about to faint again. I am so not dragging your fat ass inside again," I hear someone saying.
Seconds later my sister walks past me and walks into that house as if she owns the place.
Except, it's not really my sister.
Well, it is, but she looks barely eighteen. Last time I checked, she was twenty-five.
I shake my head and follow her inside.
I'm dreaming, I'm sure of it. Well, might as well make the dream last.
Maybe I'll get to tell Cindy where to shove it while I'm at it.
Wouldn't do me much good in real life, but I bet it'll be real satisfying.
"Leila, can you pick up the mail when you come in?" my mom asks as I open the door.
I freeze, not sure what to do now.
This is a dream, right? If it's not, and I don't actually still live here, I'd be picking up a strangers mail, which is really rude.
But then again, would my mom ask me to pick up the mail if it wasn't ours?
Man, this stuff is confusing.
I shrug and turn back around, opening the mailbox and sighing at the four red envelopes in it.
I only know – knew – one person who uses red envelopes. Cindy.
I'm tempted to just throw them in the trash instantly, like I used to do, but then I change my mind and take them inside, along with the rest of the mail. Picking out the ones addressed to me, I throw the rest on the table and run up to 'my' room, sitting down at my desk and starting up my ancient computer.
Well, it'll be ready to go in 3-4 hours if I'm lucky.
This is my dream right? So why does it have to be exactly the same as it all was back then? It would've been nice to at least have my laptop with me.
...
'dear Leila. I know you never actually read these, but I'm going to keep writing them anyway. It gives me something to do when I'm not around you,' Cindy writes in the first letter I open.
Okay...that's not creepy at all.
'I just want you to know that I really like hanging out with you, even though you act a bit cold sometimes.' A bit cold? There were days when I flat-out ignored her all day, leaving her to talk and talk into nothingness, and she calls me 'a bit cold'?
'I wish we could do something outside of school sometimes, but every time I ask you, you say you're busy or you don't answer at all. Maybe you should get your ears checked. There are days when I talk to you and all day you don't respond once. Anyway, I hope there'll be a time soon when you're not so busy and we can hang out. I mean, really hang out, not you doing stuff and me just standing on the sidelines, waiting for you to pay me some attention. Well, I'll write again later. Love, Cindy.'
Right...that's...surprising.
I thought she was bullying me, but if this is supposed to be serious, she just wants to hang out?
So...she's literally 'stalking' me?
Like those creepy old men you hear about on the television?
I'm not sure whether I should be flattered or even more creeped out than I was back then.
Wait. This is a dream, right? So...I'm making this up? Or is this my subconsciousness trying to tell me something?
I throw the rest of the letters into the trash, it's probably more of the same thing anyway, and lean back in my chair.
Let's see.
Cindy always followed me around, yes, but she was never, never mean to me.
She was always super-nice, actually. Taking notes in class whenever I fainted and missed one or more classes again. Helping me with my homework – on facebook, whenever I would complain about something I couldn't work out, she'd always be the first to offer the solution. Writing me all those letters – that I honestly never read until now and considering this is a dream, I don't think this actually counts.
Honestly, I never even thought of Cindy as a 'bully', any time I would think about her, I'd think of her as a 'stalker'.
...
I shake my head and grab my dictionary from my desk-drawer.
Stalker, noun.
(1) a person who harasses or persecutes someone with unwanted and obsessive behavior.
(2) a person obsessed with another to the point of insanity. I.E. following one everywhere, calling constantly, not following restraining orders, collecting personal items of target, etc.
Yeah...that actually sounds exactly like Cindy.
Damn. I'm not sure if it's my subconsciousness or what, but this is big.
Cindy, the person who made my life a living hell, wasn't really a bully or a mean person.
She's just insane and needs help.
I shake my head again and, seeing that my computer finally booted up, open Wikipedia and search for 'stalker'.
Wait, if I search for information inside a dream, do I actually get legitimate information, or just whatever my mind can come up with that sounds reasonable enough?
I sigh and shrug.
Whatever, dream or no dream, Wikipedia has found a match – stalking – and I start to read.
Stalking is a form of mental assault, in which the perpetrator repeatedly, unwantedly and disruptively breaks into the life-world of the victim, with whom they have no relationship (or no longer have). Moreover, the separated acts that make up the intrusion cannot by themselves cause the mental abuse, but do taken together (cumulative effect).
According to one study, women often target other women, whereas men generally stalk women only.
There's a lot more information, but nothing that interests me.
Stuff about people who can't handle rejection and people searching for their soul-mate obsessively.
That doesn't sound like Cindy.
She just searches for a friend obsessively.
So maybe, if I agree to go watch a movie with her or something, I can convince her to stop following me around all the time.
Put a leash on her, so to speak.
That sounds reasonable enough, right?
Okay, so that's probably what gets most stalking-victims raped or murdered, but Cindy is a small girl. If she tries anything funny, I can easily overpower her.
Besides, it's kind of nice to have someone take notes for me when I'm unable to attend class.
Sandra used to do that for me, but obviously, she's not doing that anymore.
Well, neither is Cindy, considering 'today' is the first time I've seen her in seven years, but you get the point.
...
I open the rest of my mail, deciding to leave this Cindy-thing as it is.
For all I know I'll wake up in a second, back in my old school, with some unknown guy shaking me, trying to get me away from his locker so he can get his books for the next class.
I'll deal with Cindy when I need to and not a second sooner.
So, mail... Junk, junk, a letter from school reminding me there's a parent-teacher conference coming up, junk, junk, an envelope with only a coin in it, junk...
Wait.
A coin?
No, a medal.
It looks familiar. Where did I see this thing before?
Staring at the small medal in my hands I once again can hear my heartbeat and see black spots.
That medal...it's the same medal I tossed into the fountain. When I wished I could go back in time to fix my mistakes.
Damn.
