It’s three in the morning, and I find myself tossing and turning. I feel like a rope is connected to the inside of my stomach and someone is on the other end, consistantly playing tug a war. A familiar scene takes over my dreams and replays each night. I see the same beautiful creature I see each night and my mind twists as I try to contemplate the screaming that overtakes the breath that this creature has. He is alone in a woodsy area just half of a mile from civilization. He crunches down by an old redwood tree, trembling and weeping, and screaming between breaths. I walk more toward the redwood tree to see what he is crunched over for, and I collapse to the ground. Fear began to take over my thoughts as I looked toward the girl beneath him and then at him drenched in the girl’s blood. I look at her face, and any breath that I have escapes out of my lungs and into the atmosphere around me. Inside my head I was screaming, “It’s me! He killed me!” Suddenly this scene leaves me as I awake to the alarm clock reminding me that I had more nightmares to come. The first day of my senior year.

Any normal person would be excited for their senior year, but I wasn’t anywhere near normal. For me, my senior year meant antoher year with angry teenagers, whinning and causing rebelions over unimportant things like, “Omg! My biology teacher took my phone!” or “Gosh! I can’t believe I have homework again.” Seriously, like what else do they expect? For me senior year meant another year full of protecting who I really was, a Wiccan. Sure I had friends that knew my secret identity, but they don’t go to my school, and the friends that are in school only know half of me, they don’t understand me.

Dreding the morning, I freshen up and head to school. I walked alone to my first period English class. I opened the door and took a seat in the back lefthand corner. The tardy bell rang and the teacher entered the room. “Okay people stand up, I have a seating arrangement for ya’ll.” He walked around touching each desk with the tips of this fingers blandly stating each person’s name. I had to sit right smack in the middle of the room. As I sat in my new seat, I looked around for familiar faces. I peaked at the door as it opened and my heart dropped. It was him, the beautiful creature from my continual nightmare. The one that was drenched in my blood. My body started to tremble and I began to lose my breath in fear. The teacher appointed him the desk to the right of me. I balanced myself on the edge of the leftside of the chair and glaced at the nightmare that has repeated itself for two months. My death. My thoughts were interrupted with the bell, and I didn’t realize the time that had passed. I hastened through the hallway and I felt a light tap on my shoulder. “Excuse me, are you okay? Have I done something to you?” I fell mute, and I had to assure myself that this wasn’t a nightmare.

I stuttered,“n-n-n-no.”

“Oh I’m sorry you don’t even know my name. It’s Jamus. I just moved here from Conneticut. I noticed, in class, that you seemed skiddish. It might seem weird but I thought it was me cause you glaced at me and scooted to the edge of your chair. So are you okay?”

“Ya, I’m fine. I was just cold.”

“You were cold?”

“Ya cold.”

“Do you always glance at people with fear in your eyes?”

“I don’t know. I guess I should pay attention to how I look more often.” I saw a pathetic look of panic approach his face.

“I didn’t mean that you looked bad. I-i-i, I just meant that you looked scared I’m sorry if I affended you. Im sorry.”

I laughed inside. “Its okay Jamus.”

“Oh…okay. Bye.”

He walked away and as I walked to my second period, confusion surrounded my brain. “How can he kill me? He’s so sweet and pathetic.” I kept thinking about him. He was so beautiful. His hair was a wavy dark brown, and when light shined, a red tint shined like precious red sapphire. He wore torn jeans with a white buttondown collared shirt, and he rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. His shoes were brown moccasins that had fur on the inside.

To myself I kept thinking. “How can I be having these dreams about him? He seems so innocent. He’s like a little puppy. What is this dream supposed to really mean?”

Second and third period flew past me, and soon I found myself at lunch. I felt curious. I wanted to find out what this dream meant but I kept forgetting what the alternative meaning of death was for a nightmare. It didn’t matter anyways. There is still a chance that this nightmare was a vision. I cant trust the though that it wasn’t a vision, not when my life was at stake.

I skipped the food lines and went straight to an empty table to sit by myself. I saw some of my friends in the corner table on the other side of the lunchroom, but being alone sounded more soothing than, “Omg look at Kelly, she got so hot. Oh and look, Jason looks like some baby fat came back.” I had enough on my mind. I didn’t need annoyance to tag along. I sat in silence, and I heard footsteps come closer and closer to me. I turned around and my nightmare retirned as he sat down at the seat next to me. “Mind if I take a seat?” he asked me.

I paniked in fear.“Actually, I was on my way to class.”

“Really? Cause you haven’t even touched your food.”

“I didn’t realize I wasn’t hungry that’s all.”

“Ooooh I see. So, you want me to walk you to class?”

My mind scattered to find an excuse to not be with this nightmare.“No I am just going to head to the library.”

“That’s great I needed to find a book to read in english. You have english with me don’t you, we can find one together.”

My mind went blank and I gave up. We walked to the library in silence, and I began to remember that in my dream he was crying over me. Maybe he didn’t kill me. Maybe what my dream really meant was that he loved me. Maybe my dream was trying to tell me something more than death. I then dropped everything from my dream, for now, and focused on the beautiful figure that walked beside me. He pathetically tried to force my attention on himself, and for some reason I began to love it.

We scrolled through the library sections, and nothing interested me. I found myself glancing at Jamus, and smiling inside and out. For some reason, all my fear drained out of me. It was like I was drawn to him. We ended up grabbing a book off a shelf without even looking and sitting at the only empty table in the library. This time I wasn’t edging away from him. In fact, I found myself just five inches apart from him. We dropped our books and he began to speak. “So, tell me about Conneticut. Do you like it.”
I answered flattered that he is interested in what I feel. “ Not really. I don’t know how to explain it but I am just different than everyone here. Like people here worry about little things like what people wear and all that. I believe in much more. I want what all the world can offer except high school, and its like that’s all they want. They want the drama. They crave it.”

He looked me straight in the eyes and left my breathless. “I know what you mean, but that’s everywhere. Teenagers are just dumb period, and you always get the more mature ones who end up dreding what should be the best years of their lives like you and me. I hate high school, but I do love Conneticut. Its so much different from where I’m from.”

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“I’m from Arizona. Phoenix, Arizona. I hated the desert so Conneticut is like a heaven to me.”

“Wow, it must be cold for you up here.”

“Ya, but I love it. So can I ask you a question?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Are you a Wiccan?”

“Yea. How’d you know?”

“I noticed the symbol on your binder and I thought it was facinating.”

My heart dropped. No one had ever considered me as facinating, just bland and uncool. “Thanks.”





We kept talking, and ended up talking throughout the day. I realized my dream was just a dream. If I didn’t have that dream, I wouldn’t of noticed Jamus, and Jamus might not have even talked to me. It was like we were meant to be though. He made me smile, and our dull conversations were like poetry in my mind. His words soothed my heart and he always knew what to say. I was begginning to feel love and acceptance for the first time in Conneticut. My nightmare was nearly a sign, and a gift of love.