In My Dreams

by Kaelyn Faulk

Lying here on his chest, I feel safe from the outside world. Listening to his heart beat, I fall deeper and deeper in love with him. This is where I wish to stay. Here, counting the freckles on his shoulders and only worrying about whether I would have enough time to number all of them.

Denial is the first stage of grief. It was a prank. They must have called the wrong number.

That morning, I could hear my phone ringing from the other room.

(417)-725-2510

It was the Nixa sheriff’s office, a number I had memorized since I was eight. My dad was always in and out of trouble and I was always his first call. “Hey bug I got into some trouble, I won’t be home for a while.” It was always the same, a never-ending cycle. I quickly learned how to find the bus stop and cook dinner for myself by watching those awful videos on Facebook that never truly give you the full measurements. I learned to enjoy being on my own. That is until DCF would come around. It was never long before word got out that Pop had gotten himself in trouble again and calls would get made. I would come home from school to the same silver Volkswagen parked in the driveway and a woman in a grey pant suit standing at my door. She always had the same bob cut that hung just below her chin, and a cross necklace that caught her neck fairly tight.

“Where is mom Kiddo?” she would always ask.

She didn’t have to know that my mom was never coming back. My pops always said it was because she was the lost princess of an island in the middle of the ocean and they found her and took her away. It was nice to believe that there was a reason.

I hadn’t seen my pops in a couple of weeks and even when I did he normally just came around for a couple of days.

After four rings I answer the call with a sigh, waiting for the usual short talk with my dad.

“Hello, I’m trying to reach Trinity Warn?”

“Just Trin”  The only person who called me Trinity was my mother who hadn’t even called in seventeen years.

“We regret to inform you that there was an accident off of DD Highway last night, there was one casualty, and unfortunately we can not find the body.”

My brain spun, I had heard this conversation play out a million times in the movies, but this was not happening to me.

“Who? Who can you not find?”

“Miss, I'm sorry. The family wanted me to inform you so you could come down to the station. The specific geography of the area…making it difficult…..so a search party….”

I could barely process the words as my mind raced on. The phone fell from my hand. It felt as though the floor had just been ripped out from underneath me. As I fell to the ground I was reminded it’s still there, it was just waiting to catch me. Suddenly, I could feel every sensation in my body. I felt the tears burn my skin as they trailed down my cheek. My legs shook on the ground in front of me. My chest caved in as though it was being crushed. This isn’t real. I was just with him, watching him drive away from the field with his friends after the game, with the promise that he'd be safe and I would see him tomorrow morning.

Sage. It was Sage. In three weeks, we’d have been together for four years.

He was the only person I had, the only person who took the time to make me feel like I deserved to have a life, to live. No matter how bleak the day seemed, his laugh from across the room would bring a smile to my face. I never had the fancy clothes the other girls did. I never had the money to get my hair or nails done, but he never cared. He used to tell me that people hide behind those things to hide their true selves. I always thought he read that somewhere or heard it from a school counsellor.

I wasn’t ready to let go of him yet, this couldn’t be where it ended.

I made the floor my bed that night. I fought sleep for as long as I could until I lost the battle, my eyes shutting, allowing the night to take over, and my dreams to run wild.

Suddenly, my eyes opened. I couldn’t move. I heard the hum of a car engine. I felt the cold air blowing on my face from an AC unit that had been turned up to full blast. I heard voices. I tried to make out the different people who were in the car, at least two, I think. One voice stuck out, a safe voice that reminded me of home. But something wasn’t right.

My body thrashed back and forth. The swish of windshield wipers. The rain pouring down. A haunting symphony of sounds. The rubber screeched against the asphalt, losing its grip against the wet road. I heard panic in the boy’s voice as the driver tried to regain control. Then time seemed to slow along with the crunch of metal against the wet wood, echoing through the night. The windshield shattered and glass shards flew around the car, cutting everything through its path. It all happened so quickly, twenty seconds and it was silent. The driver let out sighs and groans asking if everyone was okay, but that sweet familiar voice was gone.

My body jerked up off the floor. My back ached. Sweat beaded off my forehead. I searched the room in a panic trying to figure out where I was. My heart slowed as I realized I was back in my room.

———————————————————————————————————--

The Brewer’s home stood right across from mine. When I was younger I used to look out at their house and imagine what it would be like to be a part of their family. Their home stood tall and bright. The front door was painted a bright turquoise, the lawn was always mowed and they had a basketball hoop in their driveway, which meant that they were filthy rich, at least, thar’s how I saw it as kid. Kim Brewer was the poster mom. She walked her kids to the bus stop every morning and sunbathed in the front yard while her kids played so she could keep an eye on them. Not to mention what she did for me. I think she always knew I envied that life. I can’t remember when it started but Kim began to take me in as her own. Maybe it’s because she didn't have daughters and she always wanted one. Or because she heard through the other moms about my situation. Bringing me home-cooked meals once a week turned into Kim bringing me leftovers after every dinner. She taught me how to do my hair and pick out clothes. She also gave me my built-in best friend, Sage. We were a year apart in age but somehow we just got each other. He didn’t care what or where I came from. To him, I wasn’t just “the druggie’s daughter.”

Looking over at the turquoise door now it seemed to be darker, less inviting. The river fog was bad this fall, the mist hanging in the cold November air. It would be so easy to go back to bed and continue to tell myself none of this was true. Before these thoughts of retreating filled my head more, I took the first step.

T​​here were a few cars outside their house, one that I recognized as Kim’s, a cop car, and the other I had never seen before. I knocked on the door twice, before a second could pass it opened. It was Kim, her eyes bloodshot and her hair twisted up in a bun that looked days old. Her cheeks were flushed and seeing her then, I realized I’d never seen her without her makeup done to perfection. We both paused looking over each other and breathing in the other's pain. Kim reached her arms out, wrapping them around me and pulling my body close to hers. That's when I lost it.

“Oh, Trin” She moved her hands to cup my face using her thumb to wipe the tears from my cheek.

“Come sit with us” Kim turned and headed towards the couch. Walking in behind her I felt like I was interrupting something. Mr. Brewer, the sheriff, and a man in a black and white suit accompanied her. I found a seat closest to Kim across from the Sheriff. His face always seemed to be stuck in a fake apologetic frown, and his eyebrows were glued in a questioning look as if he was trying to understand a foreign language.

“Miss.Warn, how are you holding up?” His voice haunted me from the phone call I received last night.

“As well as can be expected” Kim’s hand reaches over to rest on my knee reassuring me to breathe.

“Mrs.Brewer, we can continue this conversation later if you wish when it’s more private.'' The man in the black suit spoke while his eyes flickered back and forth between the Brewers.

“No, She's okay to stay.” She moved her arm around my shoulders.

“Okay then, a decision is left to be made. Do you wish to press charges against Mr. Raulin?”

Raulin. Scott Raulin. Almost like a flash of memory I was brought back to my dream from the night before but this time it was clear. Scott was driving. They had taken off from the game that night in that 1967 Chevy Impala that his dad had given him on his sixteenth birthday. I never understood why Sage was friends with him, I guess it had to do with the fact that they had played football with each other since well, forever. I never got along with him though, he always seemed to be looking for a way to get in trouble.

“Trin?” Mrs. Brewer asked.

I must have zoned out. The conversation had moved past me.

“You’re coming to help with the search party right?

———————————————————————————————————Walking back to my house I kept thinking about how Sage might still be alive. It was dark when I came home and sleep came easy. Drifting to sleep, I felt my dreams tugging on my mind. My skin felt hugged in the humidity, a small fan in the corner barely making a dent in the heat. The air smelled like metal and musk. I tried to move but it was like my mind was here but my body wasn’t. Then I heard it. Through the clanking of lockers being slammed shut, the cheering of loud voices, and the sound of cleats tramping through on cement flooring, I heard him.

“It’s getting pretty nasty out though.”

“What did Coach say? We won’t get nights like this much longer.”

“I don’t know. Plus, I have to meet Trin at…”

“Trust me.”

Now, I recognized this second voice from last night’s dream. Scott. I wanted to scream. I wanted to tear him apart. I lunged toward him hoping to make him feel the pain I felt, but nothing happened. I went straight through him as if he was a mist. When I turned around, we weren’t in the locker room anymore. The night was lit up by the fluorescent lights in the parking lot. People were honking and backed up in a line trying to leave the stadium, the cars blaring music, people hanging out of their windows yelling from car to car. Sage and Scott reached the Impala. Freshly waxed. Pristine.

“Please walk away. Please, oh God, just walk away.” I tried to get him to hear me, to listen, but it was pointless. The doors of the Impala shut and my eyes sprung open. I sat up in a panic to find I was back in my room. My hands were trembling and my mind was running wild. Why was I seeing these things? Was this some sick way that my heart was trying to hold on to him?

It was still dark outside, the clock on my nightstand read about three. There was no way I was going to be able to sleep again tonight, and I might have let my intrusive thoughts take over when I grabbed my keys off the counter.

The drive took me about fifteen minutes. Anyone who didn’t know these roads was sure to wreck at night, and I understood why there were over a dozen accidents on this road every year. But Sage and I grew up driving these curves and I knew them like the back of his hand.

Slowing down after the first curve, I started to look for signs of the wreckage, a broken sign, tread marks, or a mangled tree. At the highest peak overlooking the lake, the Old Mill Forest held the sharpest turn of the drive. A guardrail was put up after the third wreck on this turn, but tonight the guardrail barely stood, ripped in two, broken mangled pieces of metal stuck out bent and sharpened. A tree grew just behind it, blocking an almost ninety-degree drop to the water below. The bark was almost rubbed gone and its leaves had all fallen.

I rolled my car to a stop, putting it into park as close to the side of the road as I could. Stepping outside, the cold air struck my face. I grabbed the flashlight out of the trunk and to my surprise the batteries hadn’t fried out yet. The ground crunched under my feet as I got closer to the break in the railing. Shards of broken glass covered the site like a warning to everyone who would drive down.

It would be too steep to reach the water from here and I knew if there was any chance of finding him it would be at the banks. There was a gate a little ways down. My pops used to take me into the woods through it during hunting season. A lot of people hunted in these woods; they were teaming with wildlife. I hadn’t been out into the old mill forest since I was a kid, and I had never been at night. My dad used to bring me out here with hopes that I would sit in silence with him for hours and end up waiting on a deer that would never come and feel the excitement that he does, showing that maybe I truly wasn’t a product of the mailman.

The trees trembled in the wind, breaking the silence of the night. Continuing deeper into the darkness, I tried to focus on the dim light of my flashlight. The trees concealed any light coming from the moon or the stars and made the path pitch black. My flashlight moved from rock to stick in front of me as I started to make my descent, deeper into the woods.

The rocks under my feet shifted beneath my steps, and I fell, the flashlight thrown from my hands by momentum. My hands felt hot and I didn’t need to see them to know they were bleeding. There, on the cold forest trail, in complete darkness, I felt stupid for the first time. What was I doing? Why was I so quick to follow this compulsion in my dreams? Then I saw something.

In the distance, a figure stood tall and human-like in front of me.  I tried to call out to it.

“Hello?”

It wasn’t moving. It just stood there, stopping me in the tracks. For some reason, I wasn’t afraid. The figure moved with ease as it glided further and further away. I was drawn to follow it. I tramped quicker and quicker trying to keep up. As the moonlight grew brighter and the fog grew thicker, I knew I was leaving the heaviest tree cover and reaching the water.

As I followed the figure forward, my throat got tighter and tighter. It was as if I was drowning on dry land. The figure stopped again like it knew what I was feeling, allowing me to catch my breath before we continued on. It was leading me somewhere.

The temperature seemed to keep dropping as I moved forward and a fear was brewing inside me. My flashlight started to flicker and died shortly after, but the figure was still there, moving quickly with no sign of stopping, I followed behind.

The figure stopped about twenty feet ahead of me and just behind it lay a large lump on the ground. At that moment I knew what the figure had led me to. Sage. It was Sage. I dropped everything in my hands and ran the rest of the way. When I reached him, I dropped to my knees beside his body.

His face, once tanned. now was pale blue. His hair was soaking wet, and knotted, sticking to his forehead. His clothes were ripped and covered in mud. He lay there so peacefully, hunched over on the bank. The figure stood watching us, just a few feet away now, and I could see his clothes matched the boy lying in front of me. His face glowed in the moonlight, his lips forming a faint smile as he turned and walked away. Somehow, with every step away from me, I could see Sage’s face more clearly.

I wished he would come back and tell me what to do now that I found him. I reached out and grabbed his hand, so cold and hard. The water had washed the blood from his wounds and anybody who was passing by could have thought that he was sleeping, waiting the night out.

I knew I should call somebody, but I needed one more moment with him alone. Even now, with the sun only just rising, in the middle of the woods, I no longer felt scared or alone. I laid my head down on his chest once more, but the sound that I used to fall asleep to was no longer there. I laid there with him trying to put into words my final goodbye.

Acceptance is the last stage of grief.

The cops found us an hour after I had made the phone call. They pulled me away from him, dragging me back. They told me to go home to “get some rest,” and that they would let me know any more details. I couldn't explain to anyone how I found him that night, and if I did they would call me crazy.

Sleep was my only comfort now, the only way I could escape the days. Counting the freckles on his shoulders, listening to the faint sound of his heartbeat, and praying that the sun would never rise and I could stay here a little while longer in my dreams.