CHAPTER THREE

Don't know why

She was confused at first. She didn't know where she was or who these people talking around her were.

It took her a few seconds to recognize Lucas' voice. There was another male voice, saying that no, she shouldn't be moved around, not after her fall. That it was just better to leave her on the floor. Her eyes flickered open. She could see underneath a bed: a lone sock, a pair of shorts, and lots of dust balls. She was lying on her left side. Why was she lying on her left side? She closed her eyes, feeling tired, and rolled on her back. She winced as she felt a dull ache on the back of her head. Her right hand went to the source of the pain and rubbed her scalp. She moved her other hand and grabbed the bed, trying to pull herself up.

She froze when she heard someone say, "Careful Brooke, you hit your head pretty hard."

Brooke opened her eyes once again to see that Keith was kneeling at her feet. She lied down and looked up at the unfamiliar ceiling above her. She turned her head a little to her right to see that Lucas was imitating his uncle, only he was at her head.

"Welcome back," Keith told her in a soft voice. "Looks like you passed out."

Again, she thought bitterly. Except this time had been different, she hadn't dreamt of anything. And before her fall, she hadn't felt the tingle, or heard the buzzing sound, or felt drowsy. What had happened to her this time? Why was she here? Where was she anyway?

It all came back to her like a crashing wave. She sat up swiftly, surprising Keith and Lucas. She knew why she had fainted. It was because she had been in Lucas' room and that it looked exactly like the room she had pictured in her dream. Her eyes travelled fast around her, stopping briefly on the bed, the door, the chest of drawers, the walls. They were all the same. How was that even possible? What the hell was wrong with her? How could she dream of things that existed but that she had never seen before?

"Brooke, are you okay?" Keith asked her.

She looked at him and opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Instead, she felt a lump in her throat, getting bigger by the second, until she felt like it was crushing her windpipe, blocking the air in her lungs. She couldn't breathe properly anymore, she had to take sharp, erratic intakes. She was drowning, yet there was no water around her.

She heard Keith say something about hyperventilating, but she couldn't focus on his exact words. She barely noticed when he ran out of the room. Her eyes were brimming with tears that she could not stop. She couldn't stop, or control anything anymore, not her dreams, not her breathing and definitely not her hands that were now shaking.

Lucas shifted to sit on her side and put a hand on her back, "Brooke, hey, slow down. Everything's fine."

His uncle rushed back in the room and handed her a paper bag, "Here, put this on your mouth. Luke."

She couldn't possibly do any of that, it was just too hard. "Come on," Lucas told her, grabbing her left wrist and lifting it up to her face. He brought the paper bag to the same level, which made it easier for her to hold onto it and to bring it to her mouth.

"Alright," Keith said, "now I need you to take deep, slow breaths, okay? Can you do that? Look at me, Brooke." She looked up at him and watched as he motioned her how to proceed. "In, and out. Come on, do it with me Brooke. Just focus on my voice. In, and out." She wanted to, but her mind was just too bothered with the tremor in her right hand. Thankfully, it disappeared when she felt another hand covering hers and gripping it with strength. "In," ─she breathed in and waited for Keith's signal─ "and out."

The first one was the hardest; it gradually got easier and after six or seven intakes, the lump in her throat was gone and her mind seemed to clear up. She eventually moved the paper bag off her face and put it on the bed.

"Alright, that's better," Keith told her with a comforting smile.

She did feel better, as she managed to give him a faint smile. She could still feel the pressure on her right hand; she looked down and saw that Lucas was still firmly holding it. Well, at least, she wasn't blushing; she had been too caught up in her panic attack to be flustered around him. Her eyes moved away from their intertwined hands, to a spot near them where she could see shards of a broken lamp. A lamp she had been holding when she had fainted.

"Oh no. I'm so sorry," she muttered.

Lucas followed her gaze, "Who cares?"

"But─"

"Do you think you can stand up?" he asked her.

She nodded, prompting him to help her up. When she stood on her feet, she noticed that he had let go of her hand.

"Come on", Keith told her, "let's get you something to drink."

She thought about refusing him and telling him she was alright, but she felt different from the two previous times she had fainted. She felt… Tired, somehow. That was what she described to Keith when, as he was inviting her to sit at the kitchen table, he asked her how she was feeling.

"Well I think that's normal, at least that's how I remember it."

She sat down, "How you remember what?"

"I fainted once," he said, filling a teapot with water and tea leaves. "It was awful. It lasted a few seconds only, but when I woke up, I didn't know where I was, and it took me a few seconds to realize what had just happened." He put the teapot on the stove. "And then I felt exhausted for, I don't know, an hour or so. Karen, that's Lucas' mother, she loves telling this story because─ What are you still doing here?"

She turned her head to Lucas, who was standing arm-crossed against the fridge and watching her closely. He threw a puzzled look at his uncle, "What do you mean?"

"Go take a shower already!"

"But─"

"I won't take my eyes off her, now go."

He looked reluctant as he left the room. Once the water was ready, Keith poured it in a cup and brought it to her with a chocolate bar and an ice pack. He offered her a big chunk of chocolate and took one for himself, sitting in the nearest chair.

"Feeling any better?" he asked her after she had eaten her chocolate.

She sipped on her tea, still holding the ice pack against the bump on her head. "Yeah, I think so. Thanks a lot." She hesitated before asking, "What were you going to say? You didn't finish your story."

"Right, well Karen loves telling this story because it happened when she was giving birth."

She almost spat out her tea. "What?"

"Yup, welcoming Lucas into this world was just too hard for me to handle." She giggled, making him smile. "See, people faint for the most ridiculous reasons. It doesn't mean something's wrong with them." Her laughter faded out. "I'm guessing that's why you panicked?"

She looked down at her cup of tea, frowning a bit. "I think so, yeah. It's just that… When I got in Lucas' room, I had a sense of déjà-vu. It became" ─she paused, looking for the right word─ "overwhelming. And then when I woke up it scared me."

"There's nothing scary about having a déjà-vu. It's just your brain remembering something similar."

But how could her brain remember something she had never seen before? Though Keith was right, it was nothing to be scared of. Weirded out, sure, but not scared. She smiled at him, "Thanks Mr Scott."

"Just call me Keith."

He stood up and went to the fridge, taking out a casserole dish. "What were you doing here anyway?" he asked her as he was putting it in the oven. "Don't tell me Lucas was drunk again?"

She chuckled and put down the ice pack on the table, "No, I came to, erm, give him something."

"Oh right," Lucas' voice came from behind her. She turned around to see that he was standing in the doorway, dressed in clean clothes. "I haven't even looked at it. I was about to when I saw you passed out on my floor." He tilted his head, "What were you doing in my room?"

"Nothing," she replied way too quickly. "I mean," she added, racking her brains for an excuse, "I started feeling bad, so I came in to call you."

He nodded, apparently buying it. She finished her tea and as she was about to stand up and leave, Keith asked her if she was a vegetarian.

She wondered where that came from but answered nonetheless: "No. Why?"

"Well," Keith answered, pointing at the oven, "this has beef in it, so─"

"No, wait," she jumped up, "I'm fine now, I'll just go home."

"Are you crazy? I can't let you go home with an empty stomach."

"But you already gave me tea and chocolate─"

"Which is famously known as a substantial meal. Come on Brooke, we're gonna have lunch anyway, you might as well join us."

She turned to Lucas, who simply shrugged with his palms up. "But I'm─"

"Brooke," Keith said, sounding suddenly just like her father when he was inflexible, "you're eating with us, period."

She was about to reply but when she saw how decided he looked, she gave him a slight nod and sat back on her chair. He nodded back at her with a gentle smile. They both startled when they heard Lucas laughing, his gaze going from Keith to her.

"Keith you've got a gift!" Lucas said between two laughs. "No one ever gets the last word with her."

She looked at him with feigned offense, "I'm not that bad."

"I think Erica Marsh begs to differ. Poor girl," he explained to his uncle, "she was her opponent during the election debate, and she couldn't get a single word in."

Brooke smiled proudly as she recalled that debate. She had to thank Mouth for that though, they had prepared quite the winning speech and perfect answers to every possible question. "That is true."

Keith took out a pile of plates and cutlery from a cabinet and handed them to Lucas. He then came to her with a tray carrying glasses, "Can you take this to the dining room?"

"Sure," she said, standing up.

She followed Lucas to the table where he started putting out the plates. She froze as she started counting the glasses on her tray. She put it down on the table. "Why are there six glasses? And six plates?"

Lucas looked up at her as he was arranging the knives. "Nate and Deb are coming too."

"You're having guests?"

"I don't know if you can call them guests─"

"Thank you for that," a male voice said from behind them. They both turned to see that, right on cue, Nathan had just arrived. He bumped fists with Lucas then turned to her as she was putting out the last glass, "When Keith told me that we were having lunch with Brooke Davis, I thought he had lost it."

She did a curtsy that made him laugh and turned to the doorway from where he had come, "Where's your mom?"

"She's getting here with Karen, they were working together this morning. Not that I'm complaining Brooke, I would never dare to, but what are you doing here?"

She looked quickly at Lucas, "I was, um, just passing by─"

"To pay for her car," Lucas finished for her. "So Keith invited her to stay."

They sat down when Keith brought the casserole on the table. "When did you leave last night?" Nathan asked her, eying the meal with obvious hunger.

"Early," she said with a shrug. She took out her phone and texted her mother that she wouldn't be eating at home for lunch. "Aren't you tired? When did the last people leave?"

"5 am. But I'm fine, I woke up like half an hour ago."

They all looked at him as if he was insane, but it was Brooke who worded it out to him, "You mean you haven't cleaned up your house yet?"

"No," Nathan said, confused as to why they looked so shocked. "I'll do it when I get home. And anyway, Dan is getting his stuff out of the house right now, so I figured I could leave him a few obstacles."

"A few?" Lucas repeated in a sceptic tone.

Brooke shook her head in dismay, "Nate, your mom's gonna kill you."

"She won't."

"She will," Lucas and Brooke said at the same time.

Nathan looked at his brother then at her, his grin getting wider. "Look at you two, syncing up."

She squinted at him, wondering why he sounded so thrilled. But before she could ask him, they were interrupted by his mother and Karen. She got up as soon as she saw them.

"Brooke!" Deb exclaimed as she was hugging her. "It's been so long! I didn't know you were joining us!"

"I didn't know either," Karen said with an amused look at Keith.

"Long story," Keith murmured, kissing her cheek, "I'll tell you later."

"I don't think we've met before," Lucas' mother said, turning to Brooke. "I'm Karen."

"I know. I mean, I've been to your Café several times and many times to the Tric. Peyton's my best friend."

"Peyton's best friend…" she murmured with a quick glance at her son. "Well it's nice to meet you."

They all went back to their seats and started eating. Karen and Deb told them about the meeting they had had with Tric's workers and it sounded like it had been awful. They had explained that they wouldn't be done in October, as it had first been planned, and that they would need another couple of months.

"What?" Keith said between two mouthfuls. "But then that means you won't be able to open until─"

"January," Deb said dryly.

Peyton was about to be deeply disappointed. She had desperately been waiting for its reopening.

"I still haven't told Peyton," Karen told them and then looked at Brooke. "How long have you known her?"

"Pretty much my whole life. We met in kindergarten, we were in the same group as Nathan."

"So, you guys have always been together then?"

"I grew apart, in, what was it, middle school?" Nathan asked her. Brooke nodded. "And then I started hanging out with them again in high school."

"How are your parents by the way?" Deb asked her. "I haven't seen them in a while."

"They're good," she said tentatively. Or were they? Had her father even come home for lunch?

She looked around the table, as Nathan was thankfully changing the subject. She listened as they talked about many things: work, school, basketball, the weather, their Thanksgiving plans. She suddenly felt nostalgic. When was the last time she had had a real family meal with her parents?

When there was no food left on their plates, Karen and Keith went to the kitchen to get the dessert. It was probably then that Keith told her about Brooke's little incident, for when they came back, Karen kept asking her if she wanted more water or another slice of cake.

"No really," she declined politely after finishing her dessert, "I'm full. I should go anyway, thank you so much for the meal."

"I'm going too," Nathan said, imitating her as she stood up. "I've got some cleaning to do."

Deb turned her head to him, her eyes suddenly darkening. "You haven't cleaned the house yet?"

"No, but" ─he looked at Brooke as she snickered─ "Brooke said she'd help."

"Excuse me?" Brooke retorted, raising an eyebrow.

"Do you have anything else to do?"

"Not right now, but─"

Lucas cleared his throat. "Didn't you say you were tired?" he asked Brooke.

She looked at him, confused. "When did I say that?" She realized that he was trying to get her out of this, but it was too late.

"So you're not tired and you have nothing else to do," Nathan summarized.

"I… I guess I can come then," she mumbled reluctantly, shooting daggers at him.

After giving her a satisfied look, he turned to his brother and asked, "What about you Luke, are you free for some cleaning?"

He stared at Nathan, clearly about to refuse him but seemed to give it a thought. He gave Brooke a quick glance before answering his brother, "Sure."

Wait, what had just happened? He had clearly tried to get her out of this, and he had clearly looked like he didn't want to help, so why had he changed his mind?

She didn't get a chance to ask him, as she said goodbye to the adults and thanked Keith and Karen for their hospitality.

It was no wonder he needed help: Nathan's house was a war zone. Cups, papers, empty bottles and even clothes littered the floor.

"She is so gonna kill you," Lucas told his brother as they were making their way to the kitchen.

"She won't, not with your help." Nathan turned to Brooke who was staring at a suspect stain on the floor. "Hey, do you think Peyton would come too?"

She looked up at him. "Why don't you ask her?"

"She'll never agree if I ask. Different story if it's you."

She hesitated for a second, "Alright, I'll try."

"So, how about you guys go upstairs, and I'll stay here until Peyton gets here?"

"If she gets here," Brooke corrected. "And that's a big if. You really want to handle all this," she said, motioning around them, "by yourself?"

Nathan took her by the shoulders and pushed her towards the door. "Don't worry about me."

He gave them each a pair of cleaning gloves and lots of garbage bags. She went upstairs, Lucas following her.

"Oh thank god," she said as she noticed that it wasn't half as bad as downstairs. She turned to Lucas, "I take left and you take right?"

"Sure."

She watched as he walked to the right end of the corridor and turned to her left to the last room there: a bathroom. After she was done picking up cups from the floor and as she was cleaning the bathtub, she remembered that Nathan had asked her to call Peyton.

She didn't know why, but part of her didn't want to do so. She felt that if Peyton were to come, she would spend time with Lucas and… And then what? Why was that idea bothering her? She frowned and scrubbed the bathtub harder than before. Was it her dreams again, was that why she felt uncomfortable with Peyton and Lucas hanging out? So, what if her unconscious kept showing her spending time with Lucas, it didn't mean he was hers. Did she want him to be hers? Was that really what those dreams meant? And that still didn't explain how she had guessed with acute precision what Lucas' room looked like.

She finished washing the bathtub and took her phone out, calling Peyton.

"Hi P," she said as her friend picked up. "Am I waking you up?"

Her friend sounded groggy, "Almost, yeah."

"When did you get home?"

"Too late. Where are you?"

Brooke closed the bathroom door as she left it and went to the next room, Dan's former office. The carboard boxes were all gone now. After a quick glance, she knew it didn't need to be cleaned, and moved on to the next room. "Nathan's," she answered. "He needed some help to clean his house."

"That's very generous of you."

"I didn't have much of a choice, he cornered me in front of his mom─"

"Deb? How come you saw her?"

"Well, um, I kinda had lunch with them and Lucas' parents and─ Hey you didn't lose a shoe, did you?"

"I don't think so, why?"

"Because there's one in the toilets," she said as she picked it up. "Maybe we could organize a lost and found at school, but I'm not sure Turner would be up for it."

"Okay, but back to what you were saying, how did you end up having lunch with all of them?"

"I wanted to give the book to Lucas, so I went to his place."

"And?"

"And that's it. His uncle invited me for lunch."

"And you said yes?"

"I tried to say no, but he wouldn't listen."

"Who, Lucas?"

"No, his uncle. Keith."

Peyton stayed silent for a few seconds. "What are you not telling me?"

"Nothing! And anyway, that's not why I'm calling you. Can you get over here? We could use another pair of hands."

"Okay," she said after a moment.

"Thanks P."

She hung up before her friend could ask her more about why she had agreed on having lunch with a bunch of people she barely knew, minus Nathan and Deb. Peyton didn't need to know about her passing out this morning. If she heard about it, Brooke would have to tell her parents, and she didn't want to do that. Not to mention that this morning's episode had been very different from the two other times it had happened. It had really felt as if she had fainted this morning, whereas the other times, it had felt like… Well she couldn't explain it, but it had just been different.

She looked at the door in front of her. Did she really need to go in Nathan's bedroom? He usually locked it up before hosting a party. She still opened the door and looked around quickly; no one had been there, it was perfectly clean─ wait no, there was something on the floor. She slowly walked to his bedside table and crouched next to it, picking up a bracelet. When she stood up, she felt a slight pang of pain to her head. She sat on Nathan's bed, raising a hand to the bump on the back of her head. She looked down at the bracelet in her other hand and twirled it around: it was made mostly of pink beads and a couple of heart-shaped ones. It looked like it belonged to a little girl. What was it doing in Nathan's room?

She quickly put it in her pocket as she heard a knock on the door. A second later, Lucas opened it and peered in the room. "Hey. How are you feeling?"

He looked concerned. Or was it just her mind playing tricks on her? "I'm okay."

"Good. By the way, thanks for the book. It looks interesting."

"Come on, I couldn't just have you work for me for free, right?"

"You mean like how Nate is making us work for him right now?"

She laughed, making him smile. "Exactly like that." She stood up and they both went to pick up the cups that were layered in the hall. After a few minutes of silence, she eventually said aloud what she had been thinking since lunch. "Your parents are nice." She closed her garbage bag and lifted it up. He didn't say anything back; instead he stared at her, his eyebrows raised. "Did I say something wrong?"

"No. But you said parents. Plural."

"Well, isn't Keith like your dad? He acts like one anyway."

He smiled warmly at her. "Yeah, he is."

They finished cleaning up the second floor in a silence that reminded her of the car ride he had offered her earlier that week. It wasn't uncomfortable or awkward. It felt… good. When they were done, they brought the garbage bags downstairs and went to the kitchen.

"Wow," Brooke said as she glanced around the room. It looked brand new.

Nathan stopped moping and grinned at them. "I know. Where's Sawyer anyway?"

"She said she'd come. Nathan you did a great job here."

"There's still the living room but I'll take care of that. You guys can handle the garden, it shouldn't take long."

"You go first," she told Lucas, "I need to talk to Nate."

Lucas looked puzzled by her request but didn't pry and left them alone. She turned to Nathan, who seemed like he didn't have a clue either on what she wanted to talk about. She took the bracelet out of her pocket and put it on the kitchen table.

Nathan's blood seemed to drain from his face as he walked to her and picked up the beaded jewelry. "Where did you find that?" he asked, his voice unusually high-pitched.

"In your bedroom."

"Did Lucas see it?"

"What?" she asked confused. Why did it matter whether Lucas had seen it or not? "No, I didn't show him." Relief came across his face as he relaxed his shoulders. "So?" she asked him when he stayed silent. "Whose is it?"

He put it away in his pocket and went back to the mop. "No one."

"Nate," she sighed, "I know you said yesterday that you couldn't say anything and I feel like this" ─she pointed at his pocket hiding the bracelet away─ "has something to do with it. But I just want to make sure of something. You're not dating a 5th grader, are you?"

He stopped cleaning the floor and roared with laughter, tears coming to his eyes. "What? Are you nuts?"

"Well, it's just… You're clearly seeing someone in secret and from the looks of it she's in primary school."

"She's not─ I'm not seeing anyone. But, erm, just to be safe, could you not mention any of this to Lucas?"

She shook her head, rolling her eyes. "Sure, but that's two favors you owe me now. Actually, make it three with the spring cleaning you've forced on us."

"I swear I'll make it up to you. Now go help my brother."

Brooke left the kitchen, shaking her head at him. Something was definitely up with him. And why was he so freaked out about Lucas seeing that bracelet?

She went through the back door and looked around her: the area was clean and Lucas was nowhere to be seen. She walked around the house, wondering where he had gone, and froze when she saw him standing at the other end of the driveway, speaking to Peyton.

Her best friend looked… Well, she looked quite upset, Brooke could tell even from afar. Why was she so upset? Lucas seemed embarrassed about something. Peyton grabbed his arms and shook him as she was asking him something. Or rather, demanding something.

Lucas eventually told her what she wanted to hear, because she let him go quite abruptly, and turned her face to Brooke. She then swiftly marched towards her, her hands clenched into fists, her eyes so dark that it scared Brooke a little bit. Lucas was following closely behind, looking anguished, but Brooke's attention was focused on Peyton. She hadn't looked like that since─

"You fainted again!" she hissed at Brooke.

Brooke stood gaping for a long second, until Lucas had reached them and she could give him a death stare. "You told her?"

Before he could answer, Peyton stepped in, "And he was right to do so!"

"I, erm, I'm gonna leave you two alone," Lucas mumbled, fleeing towards the house.

Brooke watched as he ran away and turned to her friend, "It's not what you think."

"It's not? Because he just told me that you fainted at his place this morning."

"Well, yeah that happened but─"

"That makes it three times this week Brooke! You have to tell your parents now!"

"No, you don't get it. This morning was completely different, it" ─ she stopped for a second, fumbling on her words ─ "it was different."

"Different how?" Peyton asked her with a frown.

She couldn't possibly tell her that. It would mean telling her of her dreams about Lucas, and that was unconceivable. "I can't really explain it, but trust me, it was─"

"No!" her friend shouted, startling her. "You told me yesterday that if it happened again, you would tell your parents!"

"But I'm fine, I swear!"

"You don't know that!" Peyton's anger seemed to fade away in an instant; she suddenly looked anguished as she grabbed her shoulders. "You don't know that," she repeated in a softer tone, her voice quavering.

Brooke stayed silent for another moment. "I'm not Ellie," she murmured.

"You don't know that."

"I'm not─"

"Anyone could be Ellie. You, me, anyone."

Ellie was Peyton's birth mother. She had come into her life a year and a half ago, and although she had been quite hostile at first, Peyton had gradually warmed up to her and bonded with her. And then she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Six months later, she had passed away.

Peyton had been devastated at the time. Sure, she had only known Ellie for a few months, but losing her had deeply wounded her. A year ago, right before summer and at the age of seventeen, she had lost her second mother and had been in a very dark place for several weeks. Brooke had stayed by her side the whole time and had essentially become her roommate for a while, until Peyton seemed to go back to her older self, at the beginning of their school year.

"Alright," Brooke sighed. "I'll talk to them."

Peyton hugged her, almost crushing her ribs in the process, "I just─ I can't lose you too."

"You won't," she said, hugging her back. After a few seconds, she freed herself from Peyton's arms, "You know what, I'm gonna go right now."

"What?"

"Yeah, Nate's almost done anyway and you're here to help him."

And if she were to face Lucas right now, she would probably rip his head off.

She thought of Lucas' behavior as she went home and waited for her father to come back from work. What was up with him? He hadn't told Nathan about her fainting, so he obviously knew she didn't want this information to be known. And yet for some reason, he had blabbered it all to Peyton the minute he had seen her.

Well, she knew the reason, she knew why he couldn't keep his mouth shut around Peyton. Everyone knew it.

She had to wait until dinner; that was when her father finally came home from his office. She could have told her mother in the meantime, but she had the feeling that she didn't want to tell this story twice. And at least, that gave her something to talk about at dinner.

"So, erm, I thought you should know that I kind of passed out several times this week. But I'm feeling fine. Mom, can you pass the peas?"

They both stared at her with the same dumbfounded look. "You did what? When was that?" her mother asked.

Her father spoke almost at the same time, "What do you mean, several times?"

Brooke looked down at her plate, "It happened on Monday, and then yesterday. And also this morning."

"What?" her mother shouted, startling her. "Why didn't you tell us sooner?"

"I didn't think it was that bad," she said with a shrug. "And honestly, I feel fine."

"I'm calling James," Ted said, making her look up. "He'll know what to do."

Before she could say anything, he left the table. She turned to her mother, whose face was partly covered by her hand. "Mom, I'm sorry, I didn't want you to─"

Victoria's voice came out as a murmur, "In case you haven't noticed, lately, your father and I haven't been talking a lot." She put her hand down, staring at Brooke. She looked exhausted. It wasn't just her face; it was her whole demeanor.

"I know."

"He hasn't been talking to me," she repeated, insisting on the first word. "So I really need you to talk to me."

"Mom, what's going on with─"

She stopped when her father came back in the room. Victoria sat up straight and suddenly looked less worn out. Ted didn't look at her though, he sat in front of Brooke and told her that he had talked to James and that he would see her tomorrow morning.

"Wait, who's James again?" she asked her father, struggling to remember who he was referring to

"I went to college with him, remember? He's a neurologist in Charlotte."

"I can't go to Charlotte tomorrow, I have school! I have cheerleading practice and a student council reunion with Principal Turner and─"

Ted stopped eating and looked at her as if she had gone mad, "I think the principal will understand that this is more important."

She didn't argue further, she knew there was no room for discussion here. And anyway, she might as well get rid of this checkup as soon as possible.

She didn't sleep well that night; she woke up at 2 am and kept tossing around in her bed, trying her best not to think of Lucas and Peyton talking together and of why it irritated her so much.

At 5 am, her mother told her to get up; they had to leave for Charlotte as soon as possible since it was a three-hour drive. Ted was not coming; he had work he couldn't cancel. During the trip, Brooke pondered on asking her mother about what was going on between her father and her, but she looked worried enough as she was driving. She could ask her later, when the doctor would have officially confirmed that she was perfectly healthy. Because that was what he was going to say, right?

Her father's college friend turned out to be a very nice person. He was waiting for them in his office when they reached the hospital. He introduced himself as Dr. James Merrick, and then proceeded to ask her a hundred different questions. He asked, amongst other things, about her medical history, her intake of medication or drugs, and her last period.

"Wait, you think she's pregnant?" her mother asked, her eyes growing wide in fear.

"That's not what I'm saying," he said with a smile, "but from what Ted told me on the phone, we have to rule out a pregnancy. So, Brooke, when was it?"

"Two weeks ago."

"Oh thank god," her mother whispered, making Brooke chuckle.

"So, where was I," Dr Merrick said, looking down at a paper on his desk. "Right, well I think we're good here."

"Really?" Brooke asked, full of hope. "Can I go now?"

"Not yet, that was just the beginning. Now I need you to tell me exactly what happened to you on these episodes you've had."

She told him about the tingling, and the buzzing, and the drowsiness. She told him how it had felt different the day before because she hadn't felt any of these symptoms. She told him that she had had dreams on the first two times, but not on the third. Obviously, with her mother sitting next to her and hanging on to her every word, she didn't say what, or rather who she had dreamt about.

"Are you sure you had dreams?"

"Positive. Why?"

"Well, people don't dream when they faint. They dream when they fall asleep."

"Isn't that the same? Don't you fall asleep when you faint?" Brooke asked, puzzled.

He shook his head, "Not at all. From what you just said, I think what happened to you yesterday was just a vasovagal syncope."

Brooke frowned and turned to her mother, who looked just as lost as herself. "Vaso-what?"

"Vasovagal syncope. It's very common, and it's completely harmless."

"Good," Brooke said with a sigh. "That's good right?"

"We can say that, yes," he said with a reassuring smile. "However, what happened to you on Monday and Saturday doesn't sound like common syncope to me."

"Then what could it be?" Victoria asked him with a frown.

"Well, it sounds like Brooke is falling asleep, so we have to rule out a couple of diagnoses, including narcolepsy and epilepsy. Unfortunately, in order to do that, we would need to perform, amongst other tests, something called a polysomnography. And for that, we need you to be sleep deprived, so that we can study how your brain reacts when you fall asleep."

"So we'll have to come back another day?"

Before he could answer Victoria's question, Brooke asked: "What do you mean by sleep deprived?"

"We usually ask patients to sleep a maximum of four hours before doing this test."

"Well, then I'm definitely sleep deprived," she said with a grin. "Last night I slept like three hours, tops."

They both looked at her with surprise. "Then we might be able to do it all today. Let me check on that."

He called a few people, using complicated medical words she had never heard before. After a short while, he told them that they would have to spend the whole day at the hospital, but at least they would be able to run all the tests he had in mind.

He led them to an examination room where Brooke had to change into a hospital gown and then lie down on a bed. Victoria was sitting on a chair on her left, reading a magazine. They were eventually joined by a nurse who could not have been drearier. Her own mother looked like a sunshine next to her. She drew what Brooke thought was a lot of blood, although nurse Dreary explained to her that it was just the usual amount.

Brooke met a lot of people that day. After the nurse, it was a duo of interns who came into the room to do her an electrocardio-something. They put a bunch of sticky dots on her chest, wrists and ankles then wired her to a machine that kept beeping. It printed out a piece of paper that they looked at closely for a long minute. Before they left, they told her it was all good and that she could take off the electrodes. She figured they meant the sticky dots, so she pulled them off her skin and pulled her gown back on her shoulders.

Then another couple of interns came in her room and checked her blood pressure when she was lying down, then sitting down, then standing up. She was prepared to have it taken while she was hopping on one foot but that never happened.

After a short while, they took her to the third floor of the hospital and insisted that she stayed on her bed, although she told them several times that she could walk. They told her she had to do an MRI for them to check her brain. It was like a long, white and cold tunnel; she stayed in it for around ten minutes and did her best to stay still as the interns had asked her. It wasn't that easy though, not with the loud noises the machine around her kept making.

One of the intern's voice came from a speaker in the machine, "I'm sorry but we really need you to stop moving for this to work."

"I'm trying," Brooke murmured with impatience.

"We can put some music if you want. What would you like?"

She gave it a thought. "Norah Jones," she replied, saying the first thing that came to her mind.

She stopped fidgeting when a soothing music filled the room. She closed her eyes and focused on it, forgetting about the thudding sound of the tunnel around her. When it was done, they took her out of the machine and brought her back to her room.

After an hour or two, Dr Merrick came with a nurse who fortunately looked merrier than the previous one. The nurse, who told her she was named Anna, put a kind of helmet on her head. It wasn't really a helmet though, it was a bunch of sticky dots ─ or electrodes, as the interns had called them ─ connected together through wires; the ensemble took the shape of a helmet. She then put something around her left index finger and told her it was to check her pulse and oxygen level.

"So now, what do we do?" Brooke asked them, looking down at the device on her finger.

"Now," the doctor answered, "we wait until you fall asleep, and we check your brain activity."

It didn't take long for her to fall asleep; after all, she had barely slept at all the night before. When she woke up, her mother was still sitting on her chair, reading another magazine. She told her she had slept for three hours. Nurse Anna came back into the room, helped her out of the apparatus on her head and told her she could put her clothes on now. She then accompanied them to Dr Merrick's office, where he was waiting for them. Brooke and her mother sat down, while Nurse Anna was standing up next to the doctor.

"These results are good," he told them with a smile, looking down at a bunch of paper on his desk, including what looked like her brain imagery.

"What does that mean?" Victoria asked him.

"It means there's nothing wrong with Brooke. The MRI is normal, the polysomnography is also normal, there's no sign of neurological or cardiac disorder at all."

"So then why did I fall asleep like that?" Brooke asked him with a frown.

"Probably a mix of fatigue and dehydration. But really, your results are perfectly normal."

Her mother seemed relieved. "Thank you so much James, this… Thank you."

"You're welcome," he replied with a cheerful tone. "I'm just glad for you. With my job, it's not often that I can give good news to patients. Now Victoria, before Brooke can go, you still have to sign some papers, Anna" ─he nodded at her─ "will walk you through it."

Victoria stood up and followed the nurse out of the office. Brooke watched as Dr Merrick was typing something on his computer, probably an e-mail for her father. He seemed like a trustworthy person, and anyway, he was a doctor, wasn't he? That meant he had to keep secret anything she asked him to, right?

"Dr Merrick?" she asked tentatively.

He stopped typing and glanced up at her, "Yes Brooke?"

"There's something I haven't told you, about those dreams I had. But only because I don't want my parents to know about it."

"Oh. Well of course, I won't tell them if you don't want me to."

"And no one's listening right now?" she asked, eying warily around them.

"No," he chuckled, "no one is spying on us."

She sighed. "Alright, so here's the thing…"

She told him everything about her dreams; well, not that Lucas was naked but she told him how she had dreamt of Lucas' real bedroom when she had never been there and explained to him that that was why she had fainted the day before.

"So, what do you think? How can that be possible?"

He seemed to give it a thought, "Are you sure you've never been in his room? Maybe you went once and─"

"No, honestly, I had never been there, I'm sure of that."

"And how well do you know him?"

"Know who?"

"Lucas, the boy in your dreams."

"Oh. Erm, a bit. I've known him for many years, but we're not friends or anything, why?"

"Sometimes when you know someone really well, your brain can manage to guess certain characteristics about that person. To put it simply, it's like an advanced intuition."

"But I told you, I don't know him that well."

"At some level, you do. Brooke, a person's brain does a lot of work without them realizing it. Even now, it's taking in unconscious stimuli of everything around you. So, even if you think you don't know him, it sounds like your brain has been noticing him and recording information on him for a while."

"So how do I stop my brain from doing that?" He laughed at that, though she couldn't see why he would. This didn't seem funny at all to her. "I'm serious, how do I do that?"

"I'm afraid there's no medication for that yet."

He gave her another smile and went back to his typing. Her mother came back after a couple of minutes; Brooke stood up, shook the doctor's hand, thanked him for his time and left with Victoria.

She slept through most of the trip back to Tree Hill, but before she did that, took the time to text Peyton and tell her she was completely fine.

The next day, when Brooke went to school and saw Peyton at her locker, she knew right away that her best friend was back to her usual self. She started telling her about everything that had happened the day before but stopped when she saw Lucas standing next to his own locker, at the end of the hall, speaking with Haley. She felt a sudden surge of anger and before she knew it, told Peyton she'd be back in a minute and strode to where he was.

"You!" she shouted when she was behind him.

He turned around, startled, and looked weirdly relieved to see her. "Hi Brooke."

She didn't pay attention to Haley's friendly wave and kept scowling at Lucas, "Don't hi me! Why the hell would you go blabbering to Peyton, huh?"

Haley's smile quickly faded away, "I think I'm gonna leave you two─"

"Oh no," Brooke told her with a fierce look, "you can stay, this won't take long." She turned to Lucas again, "So? What the hell happened to you to become so talkative all of a sudden?"

He looked utterly confused. "What are you talking about Brooke?"

"You shouldn't have told her that I fainted! I didn't want her to know, and I never told you I wanted her to know!"

"But… She was worried and─"

"So what? You don't tell Nathan but you tell her the second you see her? I mean I know you could do anything for her, I get it, but can't you restrain yourself just a little bit?"

Lucas was speechless; he turned to Haley who shared the same expression on her face then looked back at her, "Brooke, that's not─ I just thought you wouldn't want anyone to know but I didn't think you would mind if it was Peyton."

"Well you thought wrong!"

"Come on Brooke," he chuckled, which only made her angrier, "you guys tell each other everything!"

"Says who?" she asked, placing her hands on her hips. "You? You don't know me, so stop acting like you do!"

She turned on her heels and walked away from them, ignoring him as he was yelling her name.

Dr Merrick was wrong. He had to be wrong. There was no way her brain had been observing Lucas in secret and even if it were the case, there had to be a solution to stop it. She needed it to stop.

At lunch break, she ditched on Peyton and her squad and told them she had to study on the lessons she had missed the day before. She did go to the library, but only because she was looking for the answers that Dr Merrick couldn't give her.

She wanted to go straight to the computers but did a little detour when she saw Nathan sitting at a table with Haley. She was reading a book while he was writing on a notebook.

"Hi," she said, stopping by their table.

They both looked up at her; Nathan cracked up a smile. "Oh, Tornado Brooke."

"What are you doing?" she asked him, peeking at his paper.

"Studying," he said with a shrug.

"During lunch break?"

"Yeah, didn't I tell you I was struggling with my grades?"

"Erm, yeah you did." But she never thought he would be studying during his lunch break too. "Wait, what did you call me?"

"Tornado Brooke," he repeated with a smirk.

"You haven't called me that since 6th grade."

"That's because I thought you had settled down." He turned to Haley, who looked confused at the nickname, "Brooke used to have major fits of rage."

She still didnt get why he was using this old nickname. "But why─"

"Didn't you lash out at my brother this morning?" he asked with a smirk.

"That's not funny Nathan," Haley told him with a light punch on his arm, "he feels…" She stopped and looked up at Brooke with hesitation. "He didn't want to hurt you."

"Hurt me?" she repeated, raising an eyebrow. "He didn't hurt me, he pissed me off."

Haley didn't seem convinced by that, "But you looked" ─ Nathan, with an appalling lack of discretion, kicked her below the table ─ "you know what, never mind," she said with a polite smile.

"Well, I have to study," Brooke told them, pointing at the computers at the other end of the room. "See you guys later."

She made a stop at the psychology aisle and picked a couple of books that seemed to be about the unconscious mind. That was what Dr Merrick had told her, unconscious stimuli, but somehow, she felt that there was more to it than just "advanced intuition", as he had explained.

She went to a computer and contemplated the keyboard for a while. What was she supposed to search for? She tried "advanced intuition" first. 229 000 000 results. She sighed, took a pencil and a notebook out of her bag and started taking notes.

At some point, and without realizing it, she stopped writing about what she was reading, and started scribbling down. She was still reading articles, mostly about people who claimed to have super-powers, but she didn't think it was worth noting that down on paper.

"Brooke?"

She raised her head to the person standing next to her. "Mouth! Hi!"

"Hi," Mouth said with a grin, then glanced at her paper. "What are you drawing?"

"I'm not drawing" ─she looked down at her notebook─ "anything. Or maybe I am."

She had drawn a lamp. Of course, it was not just any lamp; it was the one from her dream, the rabbit-shaped lamp she had envisioned in Lucas' bedroom. It was exactly as she remembered it, down to the small chip on the left ear sticking out of the shade.

"Are you okay Brooke?"

She looked up at Mouth, who seemed genuinely concerned for her. He had already asked her that same question at Nathan's party, but unfortunately, she couldn't possibly tell him─

Wait, she could tell him.

She couldn't tell Peyton, because of the whole Lucas situation. And anyway, from the way she had freaked out with just the fainting, she would definitely get her to see a shrink if she told her about the dreams.

She couldn't tell Nathan either, because the dreams were about his brother.

But Mouth? Sure, he was friends with Lucas, and they regularly hung out together, but she was also friends with him. She trusted him as much as she trusted Nathan. And she knew he wouldn't make fun of her if she told him about her dreams.

"I don't know," she admitted with a frown. "Do you have a minute?"

"Sure," he replied quickly, though looking taken aback. He took the nearest chair and dragged it next to her. "What's up?"

Brooke told him, just like she had told everything to Dr Merrick. She did omit a few details, like Lucas' nakedness, but she told him about everything else. Her first dream, her second dream, how she had realized that the room in her first dream was an exact replica of Lucas' bedroom and how she had fainted afterwards and had had a panic attack.

"Wait a minute," he said with a frown, "how could you dream of his room if─"

"I don't know! The doctor I saw said this could happen when it's someone you know very well, but come on, Lucas? I could probably guess this stuff about Peyton, but not Lucas. Do you think I'm crazy?"

"No, I don't think you're crazy." She sighed with relief. "But it's weird, I mean, how is that even possible? Just… Do you remember those dreams? I mean, do you remember them in detail?"

"Pretty much, yeah. I wrote them in my journal. Why?"

"I don't know about you, but usually when I wake up, I can tell what I dreamt about for about five minutes. And then it gets fuzzy and by the end of the morning I forget about it."

She let that sink in. "You're right, that's usually what happens to me too. But for some reason, I can still tell you what happened in those dreams. I mean not down to every detail, but I've got them down on paper." She looked at the time, "Shoot, we have to leave. Hey, are you free tonight? Can we meet after school, say around 6?"

"Sure, we can go to the Café."

"Thanks again, Mouth," she said with a bright smile, squeezing his forearm. "Oh, and if you tell anyone about this, I will kill you."

The rest of the day didn't go fast enough; after her conversation with Mouth, she had felt a weight lifting off her shoulders. Just talking to someone about her weird episodes had seemed to relieve her a bit.

She had asked to meet at 6 pm, so that she would have enough time to go home, get her journal, make a copy of the pages that detailed her dreams, double check that there wasn't any entry other than the dreams, and head to Karen's Café.

Mouth was already there when she arrived; she sat next to him, taking the pages out of her bag and putting them, face down, on the table.

"Remember," she told him in a solemn voice, "this is very sensitive information and you can't─"

"Oh Brooke," he said, rolling his eyes, "just hand it over already!"

She was about to but froze when she saw the waiter coming over. "Are you kidding me?" she hissed at Mouth with a glare. "Lucas is working here tonight?"

"So?"

"So this" ─she pointed at the pages on the table─ "is all about him!"

"It's okay Brooke," he said with a chuckle, "it's not like I'm gonna read it aloud for him."

They stopped talking as Lucas reached their table. "Brooke," he said with obvious hesitation, "what can I get you?"

"Oh," she sneered, refusing to look at him, "now you're asking what I want?"

She noticed Mouth frowning in confusion, looking back and forth at them. "Erm, is something wrong?" he asked them.

"Everything's fine," she said curtly, looking up at Lucas. "Now will you please leave me with my friend?"

Lucas frowned and looked like he was about to say something, but he changed his mind and walked away.

"Wow," Mouth said next to her, "that was harsh."

"Maybe," she mumbled, "but he deserved it. Now, back to our secret meeting." She slipped him the pages.

He started by the first dream. He hadn't even read the first paragraph that he exclaimed, "Holy shit! Brooke, you didn't tell me it was a wet dream!"

"Oh my god, really?" she hissed at him, looking nervously around them and noticing with relief that no one had paid attention to him. "Why don't you say that even louder?"

"Sorry," he whispered, his eyes grown wide, "but I wasn't expecting that."

"And it wasn't a wet dream, he just… He happened to be naked."

Mouth started laughing but suddenly stopped when he saw the threatening look on her face. He went back to his reading and reached the end of the first dream. After a few minutes, he was done reading it all.

"That's…" he murmured slowly, amazed. "You had really never been in his room before that dream?"

"No, why?"

"Because even I can see from what you wrote that it's a perfect description of Lucas' room. Well almost perfect, there's that lamp─ wait, was that your drawing?"

"Yeah. That freaking rabbit keeps showing up everywhere."

"What do you mean?"

Oh right, she hadn't told him about the rabbit that she had seen all summer. So she did, even though she still couldn't see the connection between that and her dreams about Lucas.

"Okay…" Mouth murmured, looking down at the pages. "Are you sure you had never been in Lucas' room?"

"I think I would remember."

"It's just that… This is so detailed, Brooke. It almost seems like, like… A memory."

She frowned, "But it is a memory. It's what I remember of my dream."

"No, I mean you wrote this like it really happened to you."

"That's how it feels like," she said with a shrug. "But it's impossible! And Lucas was so different in my dreams."

"I know, I mean he was naked."

"Hey!" she cried, punching his chest. "No teasing allowed!"

He chuckled, "Alright, alright. So anyway, what happened on Sunday? You said you fainted in his room, right?"

"Yeah, I think my brain just... short-circuited. I freaked out and I passed out, and then I freaked out some more. And this time, I really fainted, there was no weird dream."

"And you didn't have the same symptoms too before you fainted, right?"

"Exactly," she nodded, "which is why the doc said that I hadn't really fainted when I had the dreams. So, on Sunday, I fainted, and─" She froze, suddenly remembering something. "Wait a second," she murmured, skimming through the first dream. "I broke his lamp," she muttered in disbelief. "When I fainted," she said, looking up at Mouth, "I dropped his lamp and it broke. And in the first dream, Lucas tells me that I already broke his last lamp."

Mouth stayed silent for a minute, reading through the first dream again. "Let me get this straight. On Monday, you have a dream where Lucas tells you that you broke his lamp, past tense, and then it actually happens, in real life, seven days later? And look, here" ─he pointed at another paragraph─ "he asked you for the date, why would he do that? And then there" ─he fumbled through the pages to get the one he was talking about─ "he tells you about that Elton John movie and tells you it came out two years ago, but I saw it last month!"

She could see how odd it was, but it still didn't make any sense to her, "What's your point?"

"I don't know, maybe you're just time travelling?"

They stared at each other for a second, and both burst out laughing, this time getting attention from the other clients. "Right Mouth, now how about a realistic explanation?"

"I know, but hey, wouldn't that be really cool?"

She chuckled, shaking her head, "In another universe, maybe."

"Okay, so, what happened after you fainted on Sunday?"

"Nothing," she said with a shrug. "I went to Nathan's to clean his house, Lucas was there too, he tattled to Peyton, and so I went to the doctor's yesterday."

"Wait a minute, is that why you sound so hurt?"

"I don't─ I'm not hurt," she said, shaking her head. "I'm mad, because he told Peyton something that he was supposed to keep for himself."

"Did you ask him to keep it a secret?" Mouth asked tentatively.

"No," she admitted, looking at Lucas from afar. He was reading a book, sitting behind the counter. "But he should have known."

"How?" he asked her with surprise. "You said yourself you don't know him that much. And anyway, Peyton and you? You've always been attached at the hip. Honestly, I would have told Peyton too. But I won't tell her about this," he added quickly when she frowned, "because you made it clear that it has to stay secret."

"I… We're not here to discuss that", she said with a dismissive hand wave. "We're here to figure out what the hell is happening to me."

They stayed for almost an hour, reading the books she had taken at the library and taking notes. After that, they decided to call it a day and to meet again the next day, same place, same time.

That night, she didn't sleep very well. She kept thinking about what Mouth had told her about Lucas. She didn't even know what he had spoken about with Peyton. Part of her didn't want to know though, she felt uncomfortable just thinking about it.

She eventually asked Peyton, the next day, during their lunch break. Peyton was surprised at first but told her what had happened.

"I knew you didn't tell me the whole story so I was worried, and when I arrived at Nathan's I asked Lucas what was going on. He didn't want to tell me at first, but I said I'd run him over if he didn't."

So, they had just talked about her? Somehow, that seemed to lift her spirits. "That's it?"

"Yeah. To be fair, I really didn't leave him any choice, B."

"Why are you saying that?"

"Because I've seen the way you've been glaring at him. And he tried to talk to you twice this morning, but you ignored him." Brooke looked down at her plate, "Come on Brooke, it's not like he did something awful."

"I know," she admitted reluctantly, "but it feels like…"

"Like what?"

"Nothing."

It felt like he had betrayed her. Which was insane, because to betray someone, you need to gain their trust first, but… The Lucas from her dreams, she could just tell, from the way he looked at her and the way he talked to her, that he would never do anything to hurt her.

Hurt? Wasn't that what Mouth and Haley had told her? So that was it, she was just hurt? Over a fictitious version of Lucas? Had she seriously transferred her expectations from Dream Lucas to Real Lucas?

Oh no, she really had done that. Which meant she needed to apologize to Real Lucas.

She didn't run into him that afternoon, or maybe she just avoided him. Either way, when she met Mouth that night at the Café, she hadn't seen him and this time, he wasn't working there.

"I took my laptop," Mouth told her as she was sitting next to him. "I figured we could use it."

She continued reading her book; Mouth however used his computer to find about other people claiming to have dreamed about places that existed but where they had never been to.

"I can't find anything," he muttered after a while. "There's just a million stories about people saying that they have prophetic dreams but nothing on stories like yours."

She sighed, closing her book, "There's nothing in here that can help us." Her stomach growled. "I'm getting something to eat, are you hungry?"

"I'm good," he said, his eyes glued to his laptop.

She got up and walked to the counter, waiting for someone to take her order. Karen came out of the kitchen and greeted her with a bright smile. "Brooke! It's nice to see you!" She put down a magazine on the counter and said in a lower voice, "How are you since last time?"

Keith had definitely told her about her fainting. "I'm fine," she said with a smile.

"So, what can I get you?"

"A cookie, please. And a tea."

"Right away," she replied, turning around to infuse the tea.

Brooke's eyes landed on the magazine; she took it in her hands, flipping its pages at random. It was a furniture magazine.

She froze, her finger landing on a specific image of a specific page.

It was impossible. Simply impossible. She must have been dreaming again.

"Mouth!" she shouted, jerking her head back at him.

He glanced up at her, and seemed to immediately grasp the urgency in her voice as he jumped on his feet and rushed to her side, "What's wrong?"

"It's, it's..."

"It's what?"

She grabbed his chin and pulled it down, making him look at the page she had left open. At the photo of the lamp that her finger was furiously tapping on. His eyes grew wide and he looked back at her, "That's the same one! The one you drew! The one from─"

"M─ my dream!" she stuttered, feeling suddenly dizzy. "How is that possible?"

They both looked up as Karen put down a cup of tea in front of her. "There you go. Oh," she said, looking at Brooke's finger still pressing on the white rabbit-shaped lamp, "do you guys like this one?"

Mouth and she reacted at the same time, "Huh?"

Karen turned the magazine so that she wasn't looking at it upside down. She glanced at Brooke then back at the lamp, "Alright, he should like it."

"He?" Brooke repeated. "Who's he?"

"Lucas. He broke his lamp, so I'm looking for a replacement. This one should do," she said with a grin.

They both looked at Karen as she walked away to the kitchen, then stared at each other in disbelief.

Wait a minute, did that mean that she was…

No, it couldn't.

Or could it?


I know this has taken longer than announced, so I hope you've enjoyed reading it!

Thank you so much for your reviews, I really love reading your theories.

Chapter 4 should be up in the next two weeks.