Dedicated to: William and everyone who joined me on this journey. You're the real number twelve.
*****
Chapter 1:
Dreams can be the strangest things. You can have dreams where you know it's fake, where you know that you're dreaming because everything is so preposterous. Yet, there are some dreams that are the exact opposite. You have them and they feel so real that you wonder if you're asleep or awake. Yet, you forget about them as soon as you wake up and go about your day, locking them forever to the deepest recess of your mind. But, little do people know that dreams are your mind simply trying to tell you something.
You just have to figure out what they're trying to say.
I can hear it like it was yesterday, the screaming of the crowd, the dull thud of football players running into each other. I'm the quarterback, directly behind the center and ready to take the snap, creating order among chaos. I hike the ball, dropping back three steps, ready to fling it into the endzone. I see my open man and throw the ball to him.
It never gets there.
My eyes widen as the safety steps in front of the ball, intercepting it before it can reach my receiver's outstretched hands. The safety immediately takes off, hell bent on reaching our end zone... and there's no one there to stop him except me. Everything else disappears until it's just us in a dance floor the size of a football field. I chase him down, lowering my shoulder to go for his legs, the safest way for a quarterback to tackle.
He's faster, he's stronger, and he's better. I miss him by a mile, grunting as I hit the ground in a tangle of limbs. The last thing I see before the tears take over and blur my vision is the shrinking uniform number of his back as he celebrates his way into the endzone. I want to lay there and do nothing but feel sorry for myself but I know I can't.
Because sports are all about strength, speed, and agility.
But they always miss one thing. The most valuable thing that applies outside of sports. It applies everywhere. It applies to life, it applies to relationships, it applies to love and not hate. They always forget about it.
They forget about heart.
Everybody, no matter your age, race, or species, is capable of being great.
******
Cool, warm serenity. My body was flowing down a soft river. Except, I wasn't flowing anywhere. It just felt like I was. I was trapped in one place, my body completely immobilized, unable to move anything except for my eyes. It didn't matter though, I liked what I was seeing.
I was staring straight up into the sky, my vision dominated by towering redwood trees. They were majestic plants, towering up to three hundred feet in length. Some say that the giants we knew now were descended from them... if that made any sense.
That's besides the point.
I knew this place. My body moved without my control, sitting up and looking around. Yes, I've been here. It just looked differently. It was once a bitter winter landscape, filled with nothing but cold, snow, and hate. Now, it was just a cool and field, shaded by the gigantic trees.
I've been here before. How had I not recognized it? I loved this place. Or, I did love it the last time I visited here.
Yosemite National Park. My parents took Stasi and I up here when we were younger. It was a beautiful place, with miles of hiking trails and acres of unpopulated areas. I remember because of an incident when Stasi accidentally tripped and fell into a stream, nearly getting hypothermia. We shared a sleeping bag that night to conserve body heat. She couldn't fall asleep and neither could I being so close to her, so I ended up spending the entire night with her pointing out anything of note: stars, constellations, and animals.
That was not only the most awkwardest moment of my life, but it was the beginning of my feelings for her... or at least it was one of the most moments where I saw her as more than a best friend. Holding onto her lithe, developing frame and comforting her throughout the night would do that to you.
Too bad we never went back there. National Parks, no matter how uncomfortable the Sun made Stasi, were our sanctuaries. It was a place where the DTOSA could never reach us. Our own little nature wonderland.
"Chris?" A melodious voice asked to my right. A quiet accented voice, with a pretty heavy trace of Russian.
I turned my head, or at least I would've turned my head had it not been done for me. Every action I made was unconscious and automatic. I had no free will. I didn't care Stasi's face stared back at me. It was a face I knew and loved dearly, a delicate featured face, framed by tresses of wavy raven hair, accompanied by large crystal blue eyes, and accentuated by that gorgeous fang-filled smile.
Yes?
"Hi sleepyhead." She whispered.
Hey Stasi.
So many things to say to her, yet I didn't know where to start. I was happy to see her. I was always happy to see her. As a matter of fact, I was ecstatic. With her, I was whole. Without her, I was a broken toy. So, so broken. It was a mentality that was born through our long and joyful companionship, tested by the fires of racism and hate.
"Honey," Stasi said firmly, taking hold of my hand with her cold one. "Honey, it's time to wake up."
What?
"Wake up!" She repeated. "Come on."
My eyes opened as my mom shook my shoulder again.
No! Give her back!
"Honey," She repeated. "Are you awake?"
"I'm awake, I'm awake." I mumbled, my head pounding. I brought my hand up to my neck, rubbing at the muscle as pain shot up through it. I had a crick in my neck and it hurt. I looked around my room. I had fallen asleep at my desk, not for the first time in my high school life. Not for the first time these past few weeks, either. I was always so tired that I would fall asleep anywhere and everywhere.
My eyes travelled back to my laptop. I fell asleep right on my keyboard and not only was there a puddle of drool of the palm rest, but the Google Doc I had open had ten pages worth of complete gibberish from my head resting on the keys.
Along with the damn notification for damn sticky keys. No, I didn't want to turn on the most useless function on my computer!
"What time is it?" I asked.
"6:28 PM. I was coming to get you for dinner." My mom said, peering at my computer screen. "Someone was busy."
"Mmmhmm," I grunted. "Totall-... oh crap."
Stasi's name was at the top of the page, announcing that she had logged in. Google Docs was pretty cool because we could collaborate with each other on the same online document in real time. It made group projects a breeze... except when you didn't pull your own weight.
Like me.
With bated breath, I watched her cursor scroll all the way down from her part of the case, to my part, then to the part where it was nothing but nonsense for about ten pages. She scrolled all the way through it before coming to a rest at the bottom of the document.
She didn't move.
"I wonder what she's thinking," My mom said dryly.
"She'll kill me," I groaned, massaging at my neck.
"I think you're overreacting," My mom replied, brushing my hand aside to knead the taut and sore flesh. "She won't kill you for something you can delete with a drag of a mouse."
