By: Olivia Ho

My name is Kayla Foren. Have you ever read or seen an article that talked about someone who had memories of someone else? I’m one of those people. I’ve always had memories of another person but, I’ve never really tried to figure out who that person was. I remember my first dream, but I never understood it, or any of my following dreams that were always the exact. Same. Thing. I’ve done my research on why this is even happening, but it doesn’t help. However, I learned a few things.

In middle school I had so many friends. In fact, I ended up popular by the end of my first month. But at the start of my last year at middle school, I suddenly felt a strange feeling while my dad and I were driving. As the car started, I closed my eyes to see my dream but this time it was more realistic than ever. I felt the pain from the dream and lost my grip on myself. When I opened my eyes again, I was already at my school and I was walking with my friends. What just happened? I looked around me and I was walking in the school hallway. From the classroom windows, I saw a reflection of someone. She was pale and gagged, her eyes were red and her hands were tied together. I looked closer at her, why was she was walking with my friends? I wanted to stop looking and focus on the conversation my friends were having.

“Kayla, Kayla, are you listening?” asked one of my friends. I wasn’t sure who just spoken because the gagged and tied-up girl’s face was so familiar.

After that day, every time I closed my eyes, I always the same dream, they were always more realistic and I could feel everything that happened. But that wasn’t the only that changed, I lost all my friends. First one friend, then another friend, then a few friends, and after a few months, only three, then two, and suddenly I was all alone. My dreams kept on resurfacing and it affected me.

Anyway, fast forwarding to now tomorrow, I’ll be going to a new school, and I was spending the day wondering how to avoid every person and just be one of those students no one cares about.

Although it was the last day of summer instead of doing all the fun things one last time and moping about the heavy load of school work that awaited me, examining the map of my new high school seemed better. I started drawing concise routes to all my classrooms so I could meet as few people as I could.

I looked out the window of my room, it was dark, and then I saw two cars, one red car behind a blue car. I wanted to continue working on my map but my eyes wouldn’t budge I could just see the two cars crashing. Suddenly the red car started to speed up. It screeched to a stop only a few inches away from the blue car. I stared at the red car, and my racing mind seemed to shut down.

I seemed to be in a car next to a man who was looking at me. He had jet-black hair and wore glasses and he was also wearing a suit. I tried to speak but I was gagged and my hands were tied. A name appeared in my head. Christian. This person’s name was Christian. Who are you? I looked down at my hands that were held together by ropes. I desperately looked into the rear mirror and saw that I had been crying because my eyes were red, why was I the girl from the reflection? Then I looked at this Christian again, his eyes were glistening and we were driving 80 miles per hour.

I looked at the road that seemed to stop suddenly, then it dawned on me: we were driving off a cliff. As we were suddenly halfway off the cliff, he suddenly stopped the car and looked at me. I had started to cry and my heart was beating rapidly and there was a pressure on my toes. I wanted to jump out of the car and run. I was a wound-up spring. I kept on looking at Christian, his eyes were dilated and his hands were gripping the wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. Suddenly he shifted the gears but I was feeling the car tip over and then, we were flying off the cliff and I screamed. It was so loud that although I was gagged this Christian heard it, but I suddenly realized that he wasn’t screaming, his eyes were closed and his face was relaxed but pale. We fell for a long time, I wasn’t sure when it would end as my eyes were squeezed so tightly, I suddenly felt the car slam to the ground but I didn’t feel any pain.

Then I woke up. My head was sweaty and my heart was beating rapidly. My fingers were in fists and it took some time to unravel them. I looked at the clock seated on my desk, exactly seven o’clock. I got changed and walked into the bathroom. As I looked into the mirror, I saw that my whole face was a mess surprisingly there was a thing scar on the side of my neck. I washed my face and brushed my teeth. Quickly I walked back into my room to get the map that I had drawn on last night, then ran downstairs to eat breakfast.

“Excited for your new school, Kayla?” my mom asked as she bustled around in our newly constructed kitchen. As she handed me my plate of scrambled eggs, I nodded and pulled on the hood of my hoodie. It would help me lay low when I was at school. I slowly ate my eggs hoping to spend as little time at school as possible.

When finished eating I double check that everything I needed was in my backpack and went into the car outside with my dad waiting inside. As I sat in the front seat, memories of my dream resurfaced, I could just imagine the cliff that I fell off of in my dream. How many times had I had that same dream both asleep and awake? I heard the engine start and my dad started to drive to my school. I know that my first dream was that exact dream. Why hasn’t it become boring or even monotonous? How come I have to be the one who is exposed to this, what does it mean? I was sure that the girl was half me because I was getting flashbacks from it and every time I looked at the rear mirror in the dream the girl always looked more and more like me.

“We’re here,” my dad said, I smiled at him and opened the door. I looked at the large crowd of kids swarming and slowly trickling through the front gates. As I shut the door and put on my headphones, I made sure my hood covered most of my face and then I took out my map and took a picture of it using my phone. I was able to quickly navigate the school and successfully got into my classroom without socializing with anyone.

The classroom I got into was English, the teacher smiled at me and pointed to the board to where the seating chart was projected by the projector. I quickly found my name on the board and then my seat, I started to look at all the names on the chart and my heart started to thump as I saw who sat next to me: Christian. I was sitting at the very side of the room and no one but this Christian would sit next to me. I forced myself to calm down, there was no freaking way. But it’s him. A boy with jet-black hair sat down next to me, he looked the same way as the Christian who drove me off a cliff in my dream.

I removed my headphones and quickly put my phone back into my bag to take out a large book. I kept stealing glances at Christian, but when I tried doing it for the fifth time, he noticed me and a look of recognition flashed across his face that was slowly turning red. His hands gripped his desk, “I know you.”