By: Olivia Ho

Don’t move, I thought. Christian barely even said the words out loud; I practically couldn’t hear him say ‘I know you’. The only dream I ever had was starting to come alive, my worst fear. My eyes darted around the room looking for an escape. I looked at the clock. There were still five minutes before class started. And then, the world shifted. A hole opened up in the floor and all the chairs started to fall inside. Only my desk and Christian’s remained. And then everything changed again and a road appeared instead. I squeezed my eyes and I knew right when I would have to open them eventually.

Sweat prickled at the back of my neck. The fabric of my hoodie stuck to me like a second skin. Slowly, I opened one eye and then the other. Yes, definitely in the usual car. I studied the familiar scratches on the dashboard for a long second. After a couple of deep breaths I looked at Christian. His eyes were closed tight, face completely drained of color. Great. My killer is suffering worse than I am. I didn’t try talking to him or asking if he was okay because, well. Look at him. I doubt that me in my dream would forgive him. Class started and his eyes were red, I did my best to focus during class and not look at how his emotional and mental state was.

After class, I pulled out my phone and zoomed in on my route to my second-period classroom. You are still alive and breathing so make sure you stay like that, Kayla. I glanced out the classroom window to check the hallway and saw a flash of dark hair. Christian. Wait, is Christian following me?

Focus Kayla, I thought. Your classroom is only three steps, two steps, and now through the doorway look at the seating chart just to see that you sit in the same area as you did for the first period. But who is sitting next to me? Again it’s Christian. I see him walk into the classroom and once he sees where he’s sitting, he clenches his jaw and sits down.

For every single period, as he sat next to me again and again, I found my mind wandering back to the dream. Eventually, I convinced myself that I was just making a big deal out of nothing. But that changed when I found a note in my bag with the ominous words, “We need to talk.” The note didn’t say anything else. My day went on and no one mysteriously showed up, and eventually I thought nothing of the note.

So over the weeks I stayed to myself and focused on my work doing my best to get a good grade. I eventually got to know this girl called Veronica. I wouldn’t call her my friend but it’s better than nothing. The only reason I even ‘befriended’ her was because she seemed to know everything about everyone at our school.

One day during the first period a new project was assigned to us, the students would be split into pairs chosen by the teacher and would have to research a historical event. As we both looked at all the accidents we were allowed to choose, we both chose the same thing.

What was it that we chose? A car being driven off a cliff. The people inside? A boy named Christian and a girl named Kayla.

Image Credit by Rodolpho Zanardo