This is the first in a series of posts which will introduce you to characters from the series at various points in their lives. As it progresses, I'm going to add things. Expect two-four posts per week. Sometimes they will be vignettes from the lives of the characters, sometimes poems which Trey has written. At other times they will be diary entries from the diary of Bethany Turner, Trey's doomed love.
I woke up in Detroit with laughter on
my lips. My mother was looking down
quizzically at me.
“You were laughing in your sleep,
Andrew.” She said.
I shook the sleep out of my head,
still hanging onto the dream, as I always did, as I always would, for as long
as I could.
“It’s Saturday, Mother.” I said.
“The game is at one, all of the boys
in your class would give anything to be playing in the Semi-finals today. You need to be over there by ten-thirty at
the latest. It’s nine.”
I nodded. The dream was always so disorienting I always
had trouble placing myself when it was over and I was awake. It always seemed real, more real than my life
in the suburban ghetto in which we lived.
“I’ll be up in a few minutes.” I said.
She nodded.
“Do you want a ride over?”
I shook my head. The walk, while it would take a half-hour or
so, would let me relive the dream for the length of the walk. It always seemed like the dreams came when I
was the most in need of them, the most stressed out.
“Well, then you probably ought to
hurry.” She said.
I chuckled.
“Food will be ready in five
minutes.”
I nodded. She had left it to the next to last possible
minute to wake me. I wondered what she
would say if I told her about the dreams.
“What were you laughing about?” She asked.
“It was just a really good dream,
Mom.”
She smiled at me.
“Is it going to be a good game?”
I laughed.
“I have no idea, Mom. Hopefully I won’t screw everything up.”
“You’ll do fine.” She said.
“Dad and Gary will be over there in time for the game.”
“I take it you and Lou-Lou won’t?”
She smiled. “I hate watching you play football, I’m
always concerned something bad will happen.”
I waved her away.
“I’ll be right up.” I said.
As soon as she was gone, I took a
moment to luxuriate in the afterglow of the dream. I could still almost taste the strawberry lip
gloss she had been wearing in my dream, smell the flowery perfume, and hear the
happy sound of her melodic laughter. She
was like nobody I had ever met, but it felt so right, it felt like what I was
promised. Her blonde hair glowed in the
reflected sunlight in the dream, her blue eyes sparkled. All I knew was that she loved me, and every
time I woke up on a stressful day having dreamt about her, I had a good day.
I was fifteen years old, living in
suburban Detroit, I was a sophomore in high school, getting ready to play
strong safety for the varsity football team in the 1985 Class A Football
semi-finals, and I had never been west of Chicago in my life. I was having dreams about being married to a
beautiful blonde woman a half a continent away, in some distant future, in a
place I had never been or even seen pictures of, and despite all of that, those
moments, that time in the dreams I had of her seemed more real and more right
than anything in my life.
I threw on a plain gray t-shirt and
my insulated warm-ups from track. I ran
a brush through my hair, even though it wouldn’t matter in an hour, and went
upstairs to eat with my family, pausing on the stairs and licking my lips. It seemed crazy but I swore I could taste the
lip gloss from my dream on my lips. The
rest I could examine on the walk over to the high school, but the taste would
be gone as soon as breakfast was eaten.
So I savored the last taste of her from the dream.
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