A Warning

I wake up from a nightmare. I’m twisting in my covers; they feel like heavy weights and are scratching my arms. My pillow is damp with sweat. The beams from cars driving by on the street outside seem like searchlights trying to find me. My chest is tight. I’m taking deep breaths, heaving in and out. It’s like I’m drowning or something. On the nightstand beside my bed, my clock blinks. 12:03. Breathe in. Breathe out. 12:04. In. Out.

Finally, at 12:06, the room starts to look real again.

The car headlights are just headlights. The shapes surrounding me start to make sense, too. That pale ghostly figure floating in space is actually just a white towel hanging from the back of the door. The dark hole to the other side of my bedroom is nothing but the shadow underneath my desk. Phew. I can see the little white light on the top of my cellphone pulsing on and off. I watch it for a while and that helps me calm down even more. You just have to breathe, I remind myself. Oxygen makes you calm. I think one of our science teachers at Halsey said that once.

As my pounding heart goes back to normal and my breathing slows down, I start to think about my nightmare. What WAS that?! Ugh. That dream was just . . . creepy. I switch on my bedside light and sit up. My nightshirt is soaked with sweat and I pull it off right away. Grody. I hate dirty clothes or things that don’t look right. I toss it towards the clothes basket, wincing when it doesn’t quite make it. That’s going to bother me all night.

This dream was one I’ve had before . . . but worse. It started out funny. My best friend Tina and I had to go to drama class, but every time we opened a door in one of the Halsey School doorways, we had to go down a playground slide to get there. Then, when we’d get to the bottom of one slide, another hallway would appear. We’d have to try all over again. Slide after slide. They were never-ending! They were the really twirly kind, too. Like the kind you can slide down at water parks.

Tina kept grabbing the top of my hoodie and saying, “I’m going here for my birthday party!”

Then, suddenly, Tina was gone. It was just me in one of those same long hallways where every classroom looked exactly the same. None of them had pictures and artwork taped to the front like the doors at Halsey. I opened one door and heard the sound of a girl crying, really hard. After that, I opened one across the hall, and this time, a man was complaining to me.

“I try and I try,” the deep voice said, “but nothing is ever good enough for you.”

The more doors I opened in the hallway, trying to escape, the more voices would burst out. And they were all unhappy voices. Angry people. Sad people. Annoyed people. Some of them were even whispering.

“I took it, okay,” whispered a female voice. “I took it and I hid it in the closet.”

I mean, talk about creepy! No matter how hard I tried to close the doors, the voices wouldn’t go away.

They just kept getting louder and multiplying until Dream Me sat down on the hallway carpet. Dream Me put his hands over his ears and shouted, “Shuuuutttt upppppppp!” And that’s right when I woke up.

Weird, right? The thing is, though, I don’t really need anyone’s help decoding this dream. I know exactly whom the voices belong to. One of them is my Dad, a few months ago, when he and mom tried living apart for a while. Another one is a girl at school who confessed that she steals clothes sometimes from her older sister. And even Tina’s in there, complaining about our teachers and her mom and this scary health problem she has.

You might say: “Hey, if you don’t want to hear these weird confessions and complaints, then just don’t listen.” Easier said than done—that’s all I have to say about that. I mean, I don’t want to know any of these things. Sometimes people just need to talk; sometimes people just need a friend. I guess I give off a vibe that makes kids and adults comfortable. They finally let their guards down. They talk. And I’m stuck there, listening. Who knows why? I guess it’s my gift . . . or curse. All I know is, that dream was definitely trying to tell me something. I think it’s a warning.