The Girl in My Dreams (22 page)

“I’ve been nothing but happy—ecstatic, really—since I found you in here,” I said.

“And you’ve also been unwilling to really move on and forget about me,” she said.

“Belle, I can never
forget
about you,” I said in a panicked tone.

“I don’t mean literally, Theo. I mean forget about what we had together. To see that you can get that somewhere else, with someone else, and be totally happy. I can see your thoughts, Theo. I know you think that you can live your life alone, only seeing me in your dreams, and that we can magically somehow be together. That can’t happen,” she said.

“Sure it can,” I said softly, feeling nervous.

“Sure, it
could
happen, but I can’t let it. I won’t let it. There’s so much good you can do in your life, and you can’t achieve that good if all you’re doing is counting the minutes until you come see me again,” she said.

“Please don’t do this. I’ll change, I swear!” I said.

“No, you won’t. It’s not a bad thing, I promise. I appreciate your love and I value your desire to be with me, but I need to let you go,” she said.

“So this is it?” I asked.

“Not yet. You’re about to wake up, Theo. I’ll see you tomorrow night, so that we can have one last memory together, but then I’m afraid I must go,” she said.

She drifted backward as I watched her dissipate into the air and the swing set we grew up vanish beneath me. I was rushed back into my bed. My eyes opened, and I wiped the crusted boogers off them and put my palms on my forehead. I wanted to cry—weep, actually—but nothing would come out. It was as if my tear ducts had dried up from the amount I’d shed for her already.

I couldn’t believe she was going to leave.

There was almost what I’d call a solemn aura around me as I walked into school the next day, not that anybody would notice. I felt a sense of panic inside, but I didn’t quite display it on the outside. I displayed more of a sense of not caring that I couldn’t say I’d ever felt before. My world was about to end, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.

“I tried texting you this morning,” Martin said as he came up beside me at my locker.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I could’ve given you a lift, you know,” he said.

“I didn’t see it,” I said.

“Dude, what’s wrong with you? You look horrible,” he said.

“It’s Belle. She’s leaving me tonight,” I said.

“What do you mean?” he asked with a curious tone.

“She thinks she’s holding me back from living life. She said she’s going to leave, and I’ll basically never see her again. She wants me to move on and experience life, even if it hurts both the both of us, and there’s nothing I can do,” I said.

“When did she say she’s doing all of this?” he asked.

“Tonight. She said we’d go on one last adventure or something so that we had a good final memory together, but that’ll be it,” I said.

The warning bell rang, and I shrugged before turning around to walk toward class. Martin walked with me, and I could tell he was scratching his head to come up with a solution.

“I got it! If you don’t go to sleep, she can’t do it,” he said.

“That won’t work. I have to sleep eventually,” I said.

“You could always hide from her!” he said.

“She can find me anywhere. She’s found me when I didn’t even know I was looking for her,” I said.

“What if you—”

“There’s no point,” I said as I stood outside my class. “It’s over, Martin. She’s leaving me, and I just need to accept it, I guess. I’ll never get over her, not completely, anyway, but I can’t get her to stay and I can’t rip my hair out over it.”

I saw Martin look a bit disappointed before I turned around and walked to my desk. Why did I have to even bring up her death and how she could’ve prevented all this? It all started with that comment. My one stupid comment ended what was possibly the greatest friendship and relationship I’d ever experience in my life. Now I’d have to go back to dreaming about scarecrows chasing me and failing my math test.

It’s strange how life can change in a literal instant based on one bad decision. One minute you could be happy and living life, unsure of what the future will bring but being optimistic about it, and the next minute you’re wallowing in your own misery and self-pity as you wonder how you got yourself into this hole in the first place. This was true about my situation, and even about Belle’s death. One bad decision changed things for both of us, and each decision affected the other person tremendously.

Not only that, but it was almost as if I was reliving her death for a second time. The last bit of her I had inside me was withering away, like a rose crushed between the pages of hardcover book. It was drying up, soon to be a relic of its once living, beautiful self. I wasn’t lucky enough to just be talking about a rose, though.

I went through the rest of my day trying to come up with ways to stop this or to convince her otherwise. The problem with Belle was that she was stubborn, especially when she really had her heart set on something or felt that whatever she was working toward was for the best. I think I knew that deep down there was no changing her mind, and that was what made me dread closing my eyes even more.

I didn’t see Kelly the rest of the day, thankfully, as I wasn’t in a state of mind to talk to her without royally screwing everything up. Martin gave me a lift home, probably out of pity, but I appreciated it nonetheless. I was lucky to have such a kind and supportive friend. Everybody deserves a friend like that.

We sat at my house and went over homework for a bit while our pizza bagels cooked in the oven. We didn’t say another word about my impending doom, which was either really good or really bad, depending on how you look at life. My mom came home, and Martin left, having to babysit Tanya for the night while his parents went out for their ballroom dancing class.

I looked at the clock on the microwave. Five-thirty. I had about five or six hours left before I hit the guillotine.

•••

What was I getting myself into? I thought about that as I sat in my bed, ready to go to sleep, with just the small lamp near my bed on. It was all so hard to process, and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to handle it. I thought about not going to sleep like Martin said, but I knew it would only be a short matter of time before I finally had to sleep and there she’d be. I just wanted to buy myself more time, but it couldn’t happen. She somehow knew whenever I was there.

I decided to take my fate like a man, and like a man I did. I lay back, turned off that little lamp, and closed my eyes without looking back.

It took a while, probably twenty minutes, but I finally drifted off. The black abyss of my eyelids disappeared and I was at the swing set. I looked around, the sun shining brightly, but I didn’t see Belle. Maybe she wasn’t going to show up. Maybe she had no idea I was here and I could figure out a plan in the morning.

Before I could get comfortable, though, she appeared in front of me, about twenty feet away, and walked toward me with a somber look on her face.

“Hi,” I said, unsure of what else to say.

“Hey,” she said, walking over to me.

“So, what are we doing today?” I asked.

“Did you have anything in mind?” she asked.

“Not really,” I said.

“There’s one place I haven’t taken you so far. It’s beautiful,” she said.

“We can go if you want. Where is it?” I asked.

“Everest. I was just there, actually. It’s pretty beautiful,” she said.

“Okay, sounds like a plan,” I said.

It was painfully awkward between us, more than it ever had been before, and I thought we both felt it. She might say she wanted this, but it was more than apparent that she was taking it with at least some difficulty, just like I was. It was a breakup that you know should happen, but you find yourself having a tough time actually breaking it off. This was a bit harder than that, though.

She grabbed my hand, and we were transported somewhere I’d only seen in nature documentaries and in magazines. It was majestic.

The visibility was insane, as the winds blew but weren’t cold like I’d imagined. I guess that was a perk of being in a dream world. That and the whole being able to breathe thing, that is.

“I like to come up here when I need to think or just need a break or whatever. I feel like it really allows me to free my mind,” she said.

“I can see why you chose it,” I said, sitting down on a rock.

“Are you okay?” she asked as she sat down beside me.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” I said, looking in the other direction.

“I want this to be a good memory, Theo. I don’t want us to be down in the dumps or whatever. We shouldn’t give up an opportunity like this,” she said.

“We’re not really giving up an opportunity, though. It’s not like we can’t still see each other in here,” I said.

“Do we have the ability to? Sure, we definitely do. Can we, though? No, we can’t,” she said.

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it. There’s no point. We both have our opinions on the matter, and like you said, we should just enjoy the time together,” I said as I looked back over to her.

She bit her lower lip gently, but not in the cute way she used to when I’d say something sweet. Instead she just looked a bit defeated, a little sad, and a lot unsure about what to do next.

“Hey, it’s okay,” I said, putting my arm around her.

She scooted in closer, resting her head on my shoulder, and we looked out into the distance together. It was nice, being like this again, all cute, when I’d only had thoughts about our demise since I found out about it.

We found ourselves transporting to many different locations, including the field, Paris, and even back among the cosmos, where we flew like rocket ships between the stars. We found ourselves inside that valley where she shocked me that one day, and as we sat on the ledge, reflecting, I was reminded why I fell in love with her in the first place.

“How about that time I made soda shoot out of your nose?” she asked, laughing.

“That wasn’t funny! You wouldn’t believe how much that hurt. I can still feel the fizz shooting out every time I take a sip,” I said.

“Or when you gave me a black eye,” she said.

“Okay, that wasn’t my fault and you know it. Well, it was my fault, but it wasn’t intentional. I slipped!” I said.

“I know you did. I’m just teasing you,” she said, laughing.

There was something both joyous and melancholic about sitting here laughing and reminiscing with her. On one hand I was happy to relive the memories, some of which I’d forgotten, but I was also sad because I knew that we wouldn’t relive them together ever again. They’d only be memories to me, memories that I’d think about alone, and if I forgot any of them, they’d be lost forever.

“It’s nice to be like this,” I said.

“Yeah, I like it,” she said, smiling at me.

“How much time would you say we have left?” I asked.

“Not enough,” she said.

“There’s another place I want to go to before it’s too late,” I said.

“Where?” she asked.

“Surprise,” I said, as I held out my hand.

She took it, and I teleported us to the one spot that meant more to the both of us than anywhere else in the world. It wasn’t the fanciest place, and it definitely wasn’t the most beautiful, but it beat those other places on every single spectrum.

“I thought we could go back to where it all began,” I said as we stood on the curb in front of our houses, facing the swing set.

“It’s only fitting,” she said.

We didn’t let go of each other’s hands, instead finding some kind of solace in the closeness that we were bound to soon lose. The grass was dewy, and the once-beating sun was now absent as night had fallen and the soft glow of fireflies lit the way. We walked slowly, and I savored every single step, every single breath, every single second I had left with her.

A blanket, the same one we’d used a ton of times, sat on top of the grass, and we both lay down without saying a word. I stretched out my arm and she rolled up into place, resting her head on my chest and wrapping her right arm around me. It was bliss.

“So, what are you going to do with your time without me?” I asked.

“I guess all the same stuff I do when you’re not here. You’d be surprised how much there is to do in this world,” she said.

“Are you going to miss me?” I blurted out.

“Is that a real question?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied softly.

“I’ll miss you a lot more than you know,” she said.

I tried as hard as I could to hold everything back, as I knew that I couldn’t get emotional or mess things up. My mouth got me into this mess, and saying something wrong, especially when this was our final time together, could be one of the costliest mistakes I’d ever make in my life. I could yell it out once I woke up.

“I’m sorry about yesterday, you know,” I said.

“It’s okay. I’m not mad at you or anything. I think it needed to be said,” she said.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Because it was what you were thinking, and I never want you to feel scared around me. I always want you to speak your mind and let me know how you feel,” she said.

Even though she was basically giving me a free pass, I bit my tongue and instead agreed, telling her that I’d never held anything back from her. She must’ve bought it, because she didn’t press any further.

“It’s getting close to the end,” she said.

“I know. I can feel it,” I said, as I started to feel anxious.

“Before anything happens, I need you to understand something, Theo,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

“I love you more than you know. I always thought you were my soul mate, and I haven’t lost that love for you. I know this seems a bit harsh of me, and you’re likely resenting it, but I’m doing this for you. Sometimes when you love somebody as much as I love you, you’re forced to sacrifice things to make sure they’re happy. You only get one life, one
real
life, and trust me, you don’t want to screw it up. There are many things I wish I would’ve said or done, and now I’ll never have the chance to. There are also many joys in life that I know you want to experience someday, and I can’t hold you back. You might say you can handle seeing me and still have those things, but I know you better than you know yourself, and I know that it isn’t true. I know I’m saying an awful lot right now, but if you retain anything from what I just said, please just remember that I love you with all of my heart. All of it,” she said.