Jess could remember the first time a dream had come true. She'd been seven, and she'd dreamed about her birthday and a pink cake and a brand new Barbie doll.
That had been back before all the trouble had started.
She'd turned eight, and there had been a pink cake and a new Barbie doll for her, complete with two new outfits. She hadn't dreamed about the outfits. The similarity to her dream had made her happy all the same.
Two months later, it had happened again. She'd dreamed about a dog walking into their backyard and staying with them. It had happened three days later, with the arrival of Prophet. She'd named him, and told everybody that she'd dreamed about him before he came.
Her mom called her imaginative, her dad told her to quit talking about it, and her friends left her alone.
They thought she was crazy.
Jess had slowly learned to not talk about the dreams that came more and more often. She didn't tell anyone about the time she dreamed of a meteor shower, or the opening of a store, or her dog dying…or the car accident that had left her mom fatally injured. And then had left her mom dead.
She tried her hardest to keep the dreams from coming, then. She went to a doctor, who called them night terrors. He said they were probably induced by her mom's accident. He put her on medicine.
Six months later, the dreams were back. Her dad had retreated deep into some shell nobody could get through. And Jess was on her own. She was sixteen when the blue box first appeared. Dreams stopped being terrible. She paid attention.
And somehow, she knew that she'd see the blue box someday. Just like she'd seen everything else.