PREVIOUS: Dasey is advancing! Both Derek and Casey have come to realize that there is something between them. The question is, what happens now? Will they admit their feelings to each other or will they stay silent in fear of ruining what is coming to be some sort of comforting friendship?
CHAPTER 8
Derek's POV
I woke up. I was confused. I couldn't quite remember what had happened last night. I mean, this wasn't one of those creepy I don't know who or I am kind of things. I was Derek and I was in my room but I couldn't remember what I'd had for dinner much less if I'd brushed my teeth or not afterwards. I could remember making brunch for Casey and I think having some sort of conversation with her about our original summer plans but that was about it. I looked at the clock and saw that it was getting on 8, I assumed in the morning. Wait, 8am? I couldn't remember the last I'd woken up of my own accord at freaking 8am. Had gone to bed early or something? I sat up and immediately regretted it. My head felt like it weighed a thousand tons. I groaned and laid back down in hopes of losing myself in sleep. After spending who knows how long memorizing my ceiling, I figured that sleep wasn't an option. So, I tried to figure out what was going on by trying to jog my memory for details about last night.
It wasn't until I directed all of my attention to it that I began to remember. Not the previous night or day, mind you, but my dream. It's strange. Some scientists say that you either dream with one half of your brain or the other and this determines whether or not you can remember your dreams. Obviously I am not exactly one to either analyze or care about science in any shape or form but up until now it wasn't like I'd had any reason to doubt it. Everyone has to dream and usually I wake up having some sort of notion of what I dreamt about for all of ten seconds before I would completely forget everything about it. It seemed that right now, I was experiencing the opposite. At first, my mind had been hazy and it hadn't even occurred to me to think about the dream that I was coming out of. And then, all of a sudden my dream came back to me so vividly that it was as if, even though there was no question that I was fully awake, I was still in it.
I was on the ground, facedown in some sort of mud. It started to rain and the mud was so thick that I was unable to pull myself up. That was until a hand appeared in front of my face, offering me a way up and out. I took it and suddenly found myself face to face with a forked path. To the left, everything was perfectly familiar. The trees were green and leafy, parting at the top to reveal a clear blue sky obstructed only by the occasional cloud. At the base of each tree rested a part of my life. In front of the first tree Marti was jumping rope. She seemed to be smiling at me and yet I couldn't make eye contact. At the next, I found my hockey stick with that familiar scratch near the top showing off its past battles that I knew all too well. And then, I let my eyes wander past the rows of oak trees, the ones that line the streets I walk every day, off into the distance. I pushed my vision to its limits and strained my eye as far as possible. That's where I found her: tall, blonde and familiar. Sally might not have been the final destination but she was definitely the stepping stone that would be taken in choosing this path's direction.
Then, I dared look to the right. The, trees, if you could really even still call them trees, were menacingly different than anything I could ever remember seeing before. Everything from the way they bended to the way the breeze travelled through their leaves was new and frankly frightening. I ran forward as suddenly the forest life behind me disappeared; sucked away by a black confusion until I could hardly remember its original shape. I ran forward, searching beneath every tree for something I could remember but nothing was familiar. At first, I was scared. But then, so suddenly that I had to force myself to remember otherwise, a feeling of closeness and security washed over me telling me that I wasn't alone. Before I even saw her, I knew she was the path's purpose; my ultimate destination. The wind moved and with it the trees and there was Casey. Then and there I saw her not as my step sister, my patient, me responsibility or my past. I saw her then as my future and was swept up in a moment of blissful understanding. I felt that I knew what I wanted and began a quick approach. And just when I was about to grasp her hand in mine the wind picked up and the trees returned to their original role of disguising Casey. A wall emerged held strong with boulders, vines and doubts: the disapprovement, the misunderstandings and the many other obstacles I would have to get past in order to pursue this path. The one to the left reappeared in my line of vision; immaculate and straight forward. With one final glance in either direction I found myself pulled back to reality.
I opened my eyes, realizing only now that they had been closed. I was fully awake, but even if my head was still buzzing, this time I felt much more like myself. I remembered watching tv with Case until she fell asleep and I covered her with a blanket. I had then left her reluctantly to quiet my phone which had been beeping incessantly with a sudden surplus of text messages. I had gotten the new phone for grad from my dad and Nora and still hadn't quite figured out how to change the settings so that it wouldn't go of every two minutes for the same text.
I bounded up the stairs two at a time and fished my phone out from under my bed. The sender took my breath away. The number was one that I hadn't seen on my screen in almost a year. How had Sally gotten my new number? Had I given it to her? I really couldn't remember. I opened the message and proceeded to reread the simple message about four times before it finally began to sink in:
"Coming early! C u in 1 week! Luv Sally"
I had only one more week alone with Casey. Had my new fascination for my step sister erased my feelings for Sally? Now I knew why my memory had been so foggy. I had blocked out the world after reading the message, more due to my subconscious than any thought out plan to deal with my confusion. That dream though, if anything it had only put my worries into images. And yet, the beauty of it all had taken my mind in a different direction: deciding what I wanted to fight for. Funny that my subconscious had chosen something so real and yet so unlike anything that would have occurred to me consciously to conjure for the first dream that I could remember. I felt an undeniable need to follow the path of the dream. The question was, which one?
Little did Derek know that across the hall, Casey's dream was yet to reach its conclusion.
I'm back! I'm sorry that this chapter took me so long but I had to redo parts of it before I was happy with it and I'm still not so sure that its quite right. Thoughts? Reviews would be much appreciated as they inspire me more than anything else to update
Midnight Trills