Author's note: Roses are red, violets are blue; me no own, so you no sue! (I probably stole that from someone but we my friends and I used to say it a lot back in the day) Oh, and if you're wondering about the format of the story, I'm too lazy to fix it and make it pretty.

She awoke with a start, his face still fresh in her mind. She quickly reached over to her nightstand and fumbled around in the dark for her sketchbook and a pencil.

Clarissa squinted her eyes shut again and tried to picture the face that had come to her in the dream. The round face, those startling eyes, and that scar… She held on to that face and scribbled away in the book.

This was not a strange occurrence to Clarissa. For the past month she had been seeing this face in her dreams, each night the vision becoming more clear and easier to hang onto when she stirred from her sleep. She had recently taken to trying to draw his face as she saw it in her mind after she roused from her slumber.

She opened her large brown eyes again and switched on the lamp at her bedside. There he was, clear as day. Clarissa tilted the sketchbook here and there, trying to catch some feeling of life in her drawing, trying to sense the kind of person that he was, deep in his soul.

For as long as she could remember, Clarissa had exceptionally vivid dreams of people she had never met. Most of them faded after a week or two, but this dream was especially stubborn. This was also the first time that she was able to accurately depict them in her drawings, a sign that her skills were improving greatly.

Clarissa yawned silently as she switched off the lamp, returning her room to it's former darkness. She felt as though she ought to be learning something from these dreams that she was having, but they always ended before she could grasp even a hint of the true meaning. She made a mental note to look up books on dreams at the school library the next day.

With that, Clarissa dozed off again, returning once again to the dominion of dreams and unsure of what she would find.

The irritating hum of Clarissa's alarm clock propelled her from her sleep and left her without any trace of what she had been dreaming about. She immediately grabbed the sketchbook off the nightstand and saw the drawing of the mysterious face. Clarissa vaguely remembered stirring in the middle of the night to draw the face, but she could not recall the exact dream it had appeared in.

She flipped through her sketchbook, reflecting on the past midnight sketches that she had done. This drawing was becoming part of a series, that was for sure. This particular series certainly the best that she had drawn so far, but she remembered that these dreams were the clearest that she had had. The other drawings were either meaningless symbols, archaic imagery most likely, or less clear faces. She sighed and gathered up her books and shoved them as best as she could into her Hello Kitty backpack.

"Clarissa!" her mother shouted from the kitchen. "Hurry up and eat or you'll be late for school!"

"Blech," responded Clarissa to herself as she dove into her disorderly closet to find a clean uniform. "The evil place where they keep my report card."

She ran out the door just as Jamie was passing her house, whistling and watching the cars pass as if she weren't anticipating her friend to come running out of the house, as usual.

"Good morning, Jamie!" Clarissa chirped, uncharacteristically.

"Look who's become Little Miss Sunshine," Jamie said. "What's gotten into you?"

Clarissa shrugged. "Nothing, it's nothing."

Jamie eyed her suspiciously. After a moment or so she tossed her ponytail in disbelief and continued on down the sidewalk.

Clarissa sighed. There wasn't any way that Jamie would ever understand her drawings, not after that episode a month ago. She had lost hope of making Jamie believe. But it would make things so much easier, having someone to talk to about her discoveries and abilities.

Before she realized it, they were already standing in front of the school. Jamie drew in a sharp breath, as if preparing herself for the worst, and sauntered on with her head bent slightly forward as if to push through the crowd like a bull. Clarissa had to practically had to run to keep up with Jamie's long strides.

Clarissa cast a glance over towards the high school and watched a couple of teens throw a football effortlessly back and forth between them. The schools were rather squashed together, as if to save enough space so that further housing development would be able to take place in the already highly populated neighborhood. Because of this, high-schoolers were often meshed with the middle-schoolers during the free time before and after school.

Clarissa snapped out of her daydream and realized that she had lost Jamie. She looked around in a panic, feeling at once awkwardly alone in the world and unable to function properly. In her panic, she bumped into a group of girls from the high school. She fell backwards, hard on the concrete, and her books went flying out of her backpack.

"Watch where you're going!" scolded one of the girls as she tossed her elegant blond hair. "Honestly, I hate middle-schoolers. They're so helpless."

Clarissa was taken aback and she choked down tears, trying as hard as she could not to let them see how they got to her.

"Here, let me help you." Strong hands lifted her up from her fetal position on the ground.

Clarissa stared into the porcelain face of her savior. He smiled slightly and walked over to where one of her books lay skewed on the sidewalk.

He moved in complete silence and grace, quickly picking up her things from their scattered positions around her. Clarissa blushed bright red and immediately began to pick up after herself as well, suddenly feeling embarrassed by her loud and childish backpack.

"Th-thank you very much," Clarissa sputtered, feeling utterly like a fool.

"No problem," he replied as he flipped through her sketchbook.

Wait, her sketchbook! The one where she kept all of her dream drawings? Clarissa winced. No one ever saw that book, and she had meant to leave it at home…it must have gotten mixed up in her school books this morning!
"These are pretty good," he said as he walked over to her. "Better than what I would expect to come from a middle-schooler."

Clarissa could only nod, unable to speak. She prayed that he stopped before he got to-

"Hey, who's the boy with funny looking scar on his forehead? It looks like a lightening bolt."

Clarissa's eyes widened and she snatched her book away from him. She wasn't sure why, but she wasn't ready for anyone, let alone a complete stranger, learn anything about her secret and see her most private of dreams.

Without another glimpse in his direction, Clarissa fled into the safety of her school. She panted heavily down the hallways and finally stopped to rest by a water fountain. After she composed herself, she walked slowly down the hallway to her locker, to stuff the seemingly innocent book into its four secure walls to lessen the chance of someone else seeing it during the day.