Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: I'm asking you to give me a little leeway with the way I represent college (more specifically college courses) in this chapter as they may be incorrect. But this is the way it works at the college I go to... you know, the one that exist solely in my mind...
Bella sat alone on a bench in the GALU quad, her head cradled in one hand and a small frown on her lips as her eyes flitted between the group of students spread out on the lawn laughing about something and the four boys on the opposite side tossing a football between them.
She had to admit she was a little disappointed. Not in the courses themselves, they were incredibly enjoyable for the most part, and her Intro to Arts teacher was hysterically eccentric. The very first class he had dropped trou, exclaiming, "A true artist cannot be constricted," as he stood before them in his (admittedly awesome) 'The Scream' boxers (and yes, the screaming face was directly over his crotch area.) Why he found it necessary to strip to his skivvies to get that point across, she'll never know, but it would definitely be a day she'd never forget.
No, it wasn't that at all. It was the social aspect of college that she was disappointed in. She thought this was going to be a time to meet new people and make new friends, but she hadn't been too successful on either part. She just wasn't sure if the blame lay with her or with her peers.
She wasn't antisocial by any means, but she had always found it difficult to make friends. As a quiet and thoughtful child who could easily get lost in a book or her artwork, many had thought her strange and it was a stigma that carried on through her entire life. No one wants to hang out with the weird girl. Sure she'd eventually had a few people she called friends, but she found out how little that word meant when they lost touch with her only weeks after graduation.
Even in a new town, with new faces, it already looked like history was doomed to repeat itself.
She wondered if she was putting a vibe.
She sat up with a sigh and admitted to herself that she already knew the answer to that.
She was definitely putting out a vibe... and it wasn't a very good one either.
When you had a tendency to flinch back slightly whenever someone with a distinctly southern accent (and being that she was in a city in Texas, it was pretty much a gimmie) attempted a conversation with you it was probably a good guarantee that there wouldn't be a second one. She still wasn't sure about this... reluctance towards twangs, only that it was proving to be pretty much a social killer.
She had gotten better at not reacting after awhile (usually biting down hard on her tongue or her cheek) but it was a method that would eventually work against her. In her last attempt at carrying on a conversation (with sweetly shy boy that Bella sensed was interested in her) she had ended up biting clean through her lip. Blood, it turns out, especially when it's running down your chin, is just as much a conversation ender as flinching is. Maybe even a better one.
Seeing how this was a smallish campus, where gossip traveled quickly; it was clear she had already been labelled as a... well, she didn't know what exactly, but she was sure it wasn't very nice. Almost a month here already and it didn't seem as if anybody was going out of their way to engage her. There had really been no attempts, aside from the occasional mandatory exchanges during discussions and group projects and even then she could sense a bit of reluctance on their parts.
Out of the corner of her eye Bella noticed one of the girls from the group on the lawn exchanging a low murmured conversation with the girl beside her, before tossing a smirk in her direction. Refusing to react (fighting hard with the glare that she wanted to level at her) Bella checked her watch and let out a small sigh at the fact that her next class was starting in fifteen minutes. Casually standing, she slung her bag over her shoulder and briefly met the smirky girl's eyes with the most unaffected, blasé look she could muster. A look she hope hid the mild hurt she felt and instead conveyed the 'I don't give a rat's ass' attitude she had veiled herself in since arriving here.
Turning to leave, a bray of laughter sounded out from behind her.
Pausing slightly, she firmly decided that she really wasn't missing out on much. Who wanted to be friends with such judgmental people anyways?
-oo-
Bella stopped typing with a frown.
She was now two months into her first semester and she had officially given up on the attempt to make friends. Instead, she had made up for the lack of social relationships by throwing herself into her school work and it had shown significantly in her grades. But her newest assignment for her Psych 101 class was proving to be difficult.
Her mother had laughed heartily when Bella had told her she was interested in taking it.
"Thanksgiving dinner with your crazy relatives when you were a kid encourage that?"
She had laughed with her mother and replied "Probably," while secretly admitting that it was more for herself. She was hoping it would her understand why she felt some of the things she did. Why she felt so out of place... so lost sometimes. She figured getting her hands on a psych text book would be like getting the therapy without actually having to go to a therapist.
The class turned out to be surprisingly dull and uninformative.
Unfortunately the teacher seemed to be fresh out of college himself and desperately wanted to appear 'cool' to his students, focusing mainly on topics he thought would appeal to the teenage mindset. Finding some way to dedicate entire discussions to music, movies or even video games and how they 'affected the psyche.' Not exactly what she had been hoping for.
Then of course there was last week's discussion about sex and sexual desires.
She hadn't been able to concentrate at all during those classes. Not with the girl two rows behind her giggling every time the word sex was mentioned, or the guy in the row across from her who kept leering in her direction. Thank god the seats weren't assigned.
By next class, she had moved to an empty row in the back, chuckling to herself at the thought that the only person Mr. Perv had to leer at now was the overweight guy that had been two seats down on the other side of Bella.
She spent that entire week wishing she had dropped the class when she had the chance.
That opinion changed with the new topic her teacher had introduced a few days ago.
He had entered the class room, uncapped his marker and wrote one word on the board.
DREAMS
Bella had perked up in her seat, leaning forward as he launched into his introduction. (What Bella sometimes likened to a grandiose opening statement to a jury of his peers.)
'Dreams are our subconscious desires. They are wants, needs, fears and sometimes even memories we think we've forgotten. In order to understand them, to understand yourself, you must first understand where they come from.'
And that was exactly the question the teacher posed when he assigned this paper. Where do dreams come from? Bella found it amusing that a group of teenagers fresh out of high school were being asked to explain something that still baffled scientists on occasion.
All Bella knew was that after four straight classes of dream talk, it was getting harder and harder to ignore the questions she had about her own.
She minimized the assignment she was working on and opened a blank page, deciding it was high time she'd given more thought to these dreams. Despite promising herself she would in her motel room that night, she had quickly latched onto the excuse of 'adjusting to college life' to keep pushing any attempts away.
She thinks she may have been approaching the whole thing wrong that night anyways. A little too focused on why her dreams had stopped instead of trying to decipher what was happening in them. As her fingers flew over the keyboard, typing up the details of the dream (using bullet points to separate each object and event) and how they had changed over the years, she came to the startling realization that it appeared that moments in her own life had shaped them.
She remembered when they first began, a little later in her childhood, when she was roughly eight or nine years old. It was simple then, just her in an old fashioned dress standing in a completely empty field. Vague and uneventful.
The tree with the faint heart carving came next.
The typing paused as she racked her brain, clamping down quickly on the event (her mother hadn't told her she had a scary good memory for nothing) that preceded it. She had that creepy kid Jason Weaver in the fifth grade to thank for that addition. Thinking he'd be able to grab Bella's attention by carving their initials into the tree in the middle of the playground (all he had gotten was detention.)
It shifted again after her thirteenth birthday, when she had reacted badly to that ranch hand. The night, she'd been holding the rock and primrose in her hand.
The destruction of said objects came almost three years later, after she had witnessed the house four doors down almost burn to the ground.
Her father, who had been police chief at the time, had heard the sirens and had rushed out of the house. A curious Bella had followed after him ignoring her mother's protest, not even bothering to grab a jacket, despite the cool night air.
The sight of the flames had unexplainable tears running down her cheeks. She had shuffled closer, feeling the heat on her face as she grew nearer... and nearer... it was so hot... almost comforting...
Her progression was stopped by a fireman snatching her off the lawn yelling, "Jesus kid, what the hell are you thinking? Do you want to get burnt?" before passing her to a practically hysterical Renee.
She had been marched home after that and ordered into the shower, to wash off the 'smoky smell.' And later in bed, when her eyes had closed the rock had crumbled, the flower died, and the tree had burst into flames as bright as the ones she had seen that night.
The dreams had started to scare her a little after that and a few weeks before his death, she had contemplated telling her dad or her mom about them.
When they had eventually stopped, she had assumed at the time that it was because of the grief she felt over her father's death and the fact that she couldn't sleep properly for months after it happened.
But maybe it was something else; maybe it was the threat of her telling that had stopped them. But that didn't make sense, why would a dream feel threatened?
And it didn't explain why they stopped again after she made the decision to come to GALU? (but not before adding the road sign that had encouraged her, of course.) After all, she had no intentions of telling her mother about any of that.
Could it be that they stopped because she just simply hadn't come across any more 'triggers'? And if that's truly what they were, were these really memories?
That is not possible, Bella thought hesitantly.
Her cell phone rang, jerking her attention from the screen. She glanced down at it, MOM, and pressed the answer button.
"Hey mom," she greeted, placing her hand on the mouse and clicking on the red 'X' button at the top of her page.
DO YOU WANT TO SAVE THE CHANGES? A pop up prompted.
"What am I doing?"
Her hand hesitated briefly, wavering between the yes and no options.
"Nothing, mom. I'm not doing anything."
She clicked no.
-oo-
Bella crossed campus heading towards the library. Her Art class had just gotten out and with another hour before her next class, she decided to put some final touches on her Psych paper. She had managed to finish most of it after the conversation with her mother, which thankfully pushed away the questions about her own dreams that were niggling at the back her mind. Again.
She entered the doors, taking a moment to relish the slightly musty scent of books that tickled her nose, and headed towards her usual spot. Passing by the desk, she gave a friendly wave to Linda, the head librarian, jerking to a stop when something around her neck caught Bella's eye.
Almost in a daze, she approached the desk, her eyes never leaving the shiny object dangling from the golden chain.
"Hello again, Bella." Linda greeted with a friendly smile. "Did you need something, dear?"
"Your necklace.." Probably not the most eloquent way to start off a conversation.
"This thing?" Linda asked, reaching up a hand to lightly caress it. "I know, most people think it's silly to wear a rock, when you could be wearing a diamond instead. But when your husband's a geologist..." She trailed off with a fond smile.
"A rock? Does it... does it come in different colors?"
"Oh yes," Linda nodded enthusiastically. "Blue, green, purple, orange, even yellow. Virtually any color you can think of."
"What kind is it?"
The grin on Linda's face grew. "Despite being married to a man who made rocks his life, I made books mine, so I probably only know the name of, maybe, four different kinds. This happens to be one of them. It's called Jasper."
Her stomach dropped and Bella paled.
The smile faded from Linda's face. "Are you alright, dear?"
"I- I'm fine. I've been feeling a little under the weather all day," she fibbed.
"Ah yes, I heard there's a cold going around campus. Try not to strain yourself."
Bella nodded jerkily before quickly excusing herself. She walked to the nearest vacant table her thoughts and stomach churning madly. Why had that name invoked such a reaction in her?
Taking her laptop out of her bag, she quickly booted it up and brought up a web browser, typing 'Jasper' and 'Rock' into the search engine. A plethora of pictures popped up and she immediately clicked on the third image. A shiny, smooth, gold-colored rock filled her screen.
That's it. That's what I'm holding in my dream.
She closed the picture and started a new search, simply typing in 'Jasper' this time.
Scanning the results, she wondered if she'd made the right choice coming to Galveston. Maybe her dream was trying to tell her she should have gone to, she looked at the screen again, Alberta.
Canada? Really?
She continued scrolling through the pages, scrunching her face in confusion at each new suggestion.
Jasper's Purrfect Pet Emporium? So what, does that mean I'm supposed to drop out of school to work in a damn pet store?
She sat back with a sigh. Now she was really stretching for answers. Maybe she had the right idea last night, by just trying to ignore it. After all, it had worked for 19 years.
Okay, Bella, let's approach this rationally. Maybe Jasper is not referring to a place, but a person instead.
A twinge.
She frowned at the peculiar feeling; similar to the one she had felt when Linda had first mentioned the name.
But I don't know any Jasper's... do I?
Her brow furrowed as her mind cycled through the names of the people she had went to school with, the few she had met outside of school, and the ones she had met here.
Jason, James, Jessie, I even remember a Jedediah, but no Jasper.
Her head was starting to throb. Maybe she was getting that cold that was going around.
"Hey!" Bella jerked her head up to see Amber, a girl from her English Lit class and currently her partner for a project in said class, standing beside her.
"Hey," she greeted in return.
"Listen, I know we were supposed to meet up her later tonight to work on our project, but something sort of came up. This absolutely awesome band is playing at the bar a few streets over and it's for one night only. I just have to see them."
Half expecting to be blown off anyways, it was Friday night after all (and seeing as how she had completed a good chunk of the project herself anyways) Bella shrugged.
"Yeah, it's okay."
A large smile broke out over Amber's face. "Great, thanks!" She turned to leave, before turning back with a questioning look. "Hey, do you maybe want to come? It'll be a lot of fun."
Bella eyed Amber, surprised. Sure, they seemed to get along alright when working on the project, but she didn't really think they had become friends or anything.
What to do?
She dropped her gaze back to her laptop. Stay here and try to figure this out even though it's giving me a headache? Or go to a bar with a girl I barely know and can't even decide if I like?
She closed her browser.
"Sure. Sounds great."
A/N2: What can I say? Bella finds Egypt quite nice this time of year. And the moment you've all been waiting for... it's so close you can almost taste it. Please refrain from licking your screens though...