Chapter Three

I snap awake, and become aware of everything all at once. 

The back of my neck is drenched in sweat. 

My dog is staring at me. 

It was only a dream. 

After the last realization, a kind of hole forms in the middle of my chest, and I can feel tears burning at the corners of my eyes. All traces of wonder and hope that came with being in a good dream washed away as my consciousness returned. 

I sit up, and hold my dog's head in my hands. “It was just a dream.” I tell her, and she responds by licking her waggly chops. 

I sigh, and let go of her face. I throw my blanket off of me, and perch on the edge of the bed. I can see my reflection in the tall black framed mirror that I have leaning against the wall across the room. My dark brown eyes look wide and wild. My shoulder length black hair is matted in the back, making it look thicker than it usually is. Even from across the room I can tell it looks like I’ve just seen a ghost.

Dream or not, that was intense. I rub my fingers together, and I swear I can feel soft muddy dirt from the grassroots in between my fingers. I cup my hands around my nose, and I swear, I can smell earth and grass. I think about the fact that it felt like I was having an actual conversation with that guy. Normally when I talk in dreams, it’s confusing and I can’t remember what was said. It’s like I’m speaking in fragments, or in a different language. But this time I can remember every single word that was said. I remember how it felt when he looked at me, scary and exciting. How it felt when our skin touched, electric and new.

I shook my head. I was acting like an idiot. Still, as I got up, let my dog out back to use the bathroom and padded barefoot into the kitchen, all I could think about was the hole in my chest. I’m glad my mother has already left for work and the house is empty, because as soon as I get to the fridge, I slide down its length and collapse onto the floor in a heap. I feel like someone has kidnapped my new born baby.

Like the love of my life had died in my arms.

The sun was incredibly hot. 

I was standing in line to take my drivers test with my mother, and we were some of the lucky ones who got to wait outside rather than in the nice air conditioning. I may have been nineteen and one year graduated from highschool, but I had yet to acquire this fundamental key to become a functioning adult in society. I had never been interested in driving, it scared me to be honest. And until recently my mom has been available to give me a ride. But she’s been getting busier and busier at work, which is by no means a bad thing. She’s been there for almost eight years now, and is finally starting to get the recognition she deserves. 

But she can’t do what she needs to do if I’m texting her every few hours asking when she’s going to be home because I have to be at work at five. 

“You had better pass this, because we’re not coming here again.” She says, patting at her hairline which is beginning to collect sweat. She’s a small woman, even more so than me. Five foot even last time I knew. I got curves from my dad's side of the family, so my frame isn’t quite as small as hers. However, despite her small stature, I’d always thought she was kind of scary. When she needed to be.

“We both know that’s not true.” I smirk at her, and she rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. Ever since my dad died, we had been really close. She had stepped up, let go of her dreams to become a photographer and got a “real” job that could better provide for us. She had put on the big girl slacks, and the dad pants at the same time, and somehow still managed to come out with a daughter that knew how much she loved her, even between the hundred jobs she had on a day to day basis. Grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry, helping with school work, working sometimes ten hours a day, taking me to school and work, upkeeping the house and yard and paying bills and taxes and taking care of things when dad died. And she never made me feel like I owed her for doing those things. She just… did them.

If she could take care of all those things, I could do this one thing to make her life a little easier.