Post by Shira on Sept 1, 2006 14:30:39 GMT -5
10/6/05
I'm in my math class; only my seat has been moved closer to the front of the room on the other side. The teacher is teaching the lesson of probability. I'm writing down the notes in my notebook when the fire alarm starts to ring.
No one in the morning announcements had mentioned anything about a fire drill, so everyone knew that it was either a prank or the real thing, and nobody wanted to see if it was the latter. I sat there, dazed, my legs refusing to move. I finally do move as the last few students left in the classroom reach the front of the class. Shrieks and loud talking can be heard in the hallway as they open the door again - there are many students running past the room as the math room was in the middle of the hallway.
I look back over the room, to see if I was really the last person, but I see someone that I've never seen in the class before. This kid had brown hair and brown eyes that feel like they could see into my soul. He had on a pair of blue jeans that fit him just right, and a blue shirt that seemed like it wasn't really for him; it seemed harsh on someone so…innocent. There's really no other word to describe him.
I waited for him at he front of the room; it didn't take long, as he looked like he needed to leave. I didn't blame him, as there was a fire alarm going off in the background. Or was there? It had stopped ringing.
I turned to go through the classroom door into the hallway, but there isn't a normal high school hallway out there anymore. There was a green sunny field - the sun was shining, trees were growing, butterflies were floating around without a care.
I stopped in my tracks. What the hell was going on here? My math room was nowhere near the exit of the school, and anyway, there were no clear meadows anywhere I lived - only houses and businesses. Anyway, this defied everything I ever learned…
The boy stopped directly behind me, and put his hand around my waist, and his chin on my shoulder.
I stiffened against his touch, and my breathing stopped. He moved his chin off of my shoulder, but his fingertips still stayed on my hipbone.
"I forgot. I'm sorry," he said, as if he knew about my past.
10/8/05
I woke up in the field once again, but this time Jethro was right next to me, not far off like last time. We were wearing our same outfits from yesterday, with me in the white shirt and black skirt while he was still in the white shirt and black pants. He smiled when he saw I was awake, and I smiled back.
"Why do you live with a foster family?" He asked gently.
"How do you know about them?" I asked back, feeling my defenses go up.
"You talked about them in your sleep. You sounded like you were talking to someone named Sebastian about the pain it is living with a foster family with ten kids."
I smiled; that conversation he mentioned was one I had with Sebastian in my real world. Before I had a chance to answer him he said, "Is Sebastian your boyfriend?"
"No, he's not," I said, moving one of my hands under my head, and one over my stomach, since I was lying on my back again. "He's almost like my brother since we're so close. He's over at my house so much he is my brother."
I paused. "I live at a foster home because...because...I don't want to talk about it."
"Why not?"
"Don't like to. It hurts too much." I remembered something he said before, during the first time we met. "You got too close to me one time, and then backed off, saying 'I'm sorry. I forgot.' How do you know about my past?"
He sighed. "I know little about your past specifically. I only know that you were hurt greatly growing up, and that it still hurts to this day."
"And how do you know that?" I asked, greatly agitated that a complete stranger knew so much of me.
"I don't know. It's the same here. I know it's peaceful, and that it's unreal, and I also know that you were hurt. What happened to you?"
I closed my eyes. I knew that he wouldn't give up. He was as stubborn as a mule. I spoke softly, and tried to keep my voice calm even though I wanted to cry. "My real father used me as his sex slave, and I had his kid at the age of fourteen. Happy now?" My voice broke.
Jethro started towards me, as if to console me, but I had gotten up and moved to a nearby tree, where I squatted down against, my back to the tree, my head down. Jethro squatted down in front of me, and put a finger under my chin and lifted it up.
"I'm sorry." When I still refused to open my eyes or even acknowledge that he was there, he continued to speak. "I just wanted to know more about the real you."
"By making me relive memories that I don't want to remember?"
"By trying to show you that what is in the past is in the past. It's now behind you -- there is no reason to feel pain over and over again because of something that is already done. Just know that it is there, but don't relive it."
"How can I not feel pain when I have a daughter that I can only see a few times a year, knowing full well that her father is also my father?" My voice cracked.
"By not dwelling on the past. She is your daughter, living a better life that you could ever give her. She's doing better because of a choice you made."
Jethro tugged on me, and I stood up. He moved closer against me, and whispered. "It hurts to let go of your pain. But it hurts even more to hold on to it."
Tears gathered up and fell. His hands covered my cheeks, with his hands covered my cheeks, with his thumbs wiping away the tears. I wasn't crying because it hurt; I was crying because he was right.
I wrapped my arms around him, and buried my face in his chest. His hands went around me.
"Let it out," he whispered. And for once, I did. I let myself cry until there weren't any more tears to cry.
When I was done, I put my chin on his shoulder. Jethro was almost holding me up because I was so exhausted.
He turned his head so that his lips were right against my ear, and whispered, "I love you."
I jerked back out of his arms and out of the dream.
10/23/05
I opened my eyes and saw I was in the field again, which is weird because during the last two weeks I haven't been here in my dreams.
I sit up and see Jethro sitting against a tree, as usual. He looks ragged around the edges, like he's the one who's been crying him to sleep lately, not me.
I smoothed out the wrinkles in my skirt as I wait for him to acknowledge I'm here. He does; his eyes open and he smiles, but it seems forced.
"What's wrong?" I ask.
"Nothing, really. I just haven't had much energy lately." He looked like it too; his eyes looked like they had seen too much, and his movements, once graceful, now seemed sluggish.
I walk over to him and sit next to him, placing my hand in his. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry for how I behaved. I -"
"You don't have to apologize. What I said was out of context. I shouldn't have said it so soon."
I squeezed his hand and smiled at him. He smiled back, but then, obviously noticing the bags under my eyes, asked, "Are you okay?"
"I haven't been sleeping well."
He made a weak gesture with his other hand that meant continue, so I did. "Sebastian and I had a fight over a girl he started to go out with. I don't like her at all. And now he refuses to talk to me."
Jethro closed his eyes and shifted his hand so that our fingers were intertwined, and then he smiled. I could feel his happiness radiate out from him. "I've got to tell you something," he said slowly.
"What?"
"I won't be able to see you for a few weeks. I've got to do something."
"But why? And what is it?" I started to shake - I got him back and I didn't feel like I could lose him again. I needed him to be there.
"Why? Because I need to. And I can't tell you what it is; just trust me, please." He scooted closer to me, putting his hand around my waist so I could comfortably put my head on his shoulder.
"Don't go. I love you too, and I can't lose you now. I need you here, Jethro…" Tears threatened to form.
"Senneth… oh my Senneth…" He put a hand on my cheek, took it off and then turned my whole body and lifted me so I could sit on his lap. Jethro held me close, in a way showing me how he wanted to hold me, hold on to me, forever.
Truthfully, I don't understand how I could love someone so deeply even though I had only seen him a few times in my dreams. Maybe it was because he taught me how to let go of my past that had been following me so closely, or the fact that he was in a different, surreal world that seemed so real sometimes. I don't know, and I may never know.
"If something happens to me, I just want you to know that I love you, and I always will," I heard him say softly.
"What could happen?" I asked, but he refused to answer any more questions I had.
Senneth sighed, done reading her dream journal. She ran her hand back through her black hair, trying to get the few wisps of hair that always escaped her ponytail out of her eyes. That dream journal entry had been written almost a month earlier; it looked like her dreams were just that. Dreams. Jethro wasn't real; she had created someone in her dreams to try to get away from her daily humdrum. How typical.
She rubbed her black eyes, and then hoisted her chin into her hands, staring off into the distance. Senneth was wearing a black shirt with the words "Dream Big" in big white letters and a pair of hole-y, ragged jeans. She was sitting at her wooden desk in her room up in the attic. It was pouring cats and dogs outside; the usual noonday sun now hidden behind black clouds. Today was Saturday, the day she usually went out with Sebastian, but he was sick. Their friendship had finally been mended over that girl he had been going out with - the girl had finally broken up with him because he refused to sleep with her "no strings attached" as he had put it.
I miss him, Senneth thought sadly, her eyes closing. Jethro appeared in her head the same way he had appeared in her dreams - brown hair, and brown eyes that could make her want to hold on to him forever because he had her heart forever. Jethro still had on the white shirt and black pants, just like he always had - oh, what she would do to just see him one more time, to be able to hold him just one more minute.
"Senneth. Hey Senneth, are you here on earth?" Lynne, her foster mom, popped her head into her bedroom. Lynne was full-blooded Irish, had her red/orange hair pulled back into a loose tail, and her green eyes sparked with life. She had on a gray jump suit with pink strips down the sides of the fabric.
Senneth turned around and looked at her. "Yeah, I'm here."
"There's someone at the door for you. Well, technically, he's in the living room, but he won't give his name, and he says you know him. It ain't Sebastian."
Senneth looked at her weirdly, even though Lynne always talked funny like that, but Lynne had already left. She got up, turned off the light, and went down the flight of stairs to the first floor of the house. She turned the corner into the living room, and there he was. He was standing in the middle of the living room, his hair and clothing all but drenched from the rain outside, talking to a few of her foster brother and sisters about being stuck in the house when it was raining out. His clothing was the same outfit that she had seen him wearing the first time she had seen him in the math room in her dream.
He turned and faced her the moment she walked into the room, and smiled at her. She smiled back at him, her heart wanting to stop and beat quicker at the same time.
Quickly walking the few paces that it took to get over to him, and pulled him close into her arms. She hugged him like she never wanted to let him go again, and only stopped when he squeezed her back.
"But how, Jethro?"
"I'm here. Don't ask questions." He gave her a chaste kiss that promised love, life, and of years they were going to spend together as they ignored the whistles and catcalls from her brother and sisters. "Now, introduce me to everyone," he said as Julie, one of the two three-year-olds wrapped herself around his leg.
Senneth never did ask the questions that were in her head about how Jethro was able to be real when she had only seen him in her dreams, but truthfully, she didn't care. She loved him, and he loved her.
Having someone to love is all that really matters, even if it doesn't make sense.
((And I got finalists on it!!!!! With it published, and all pretty and a plague and everything!! WooT!!))
I'm in my math class; only my seat has been moved closer to the front of the room on the other side. The teacher is teaching the lesson of probability. I'm writing down the notes in my notebook when the fire alarm starts to ring.
No one in the morning announcements had mentioned anything about a fire drill, so everyone knew that it was either a prank or the real thing, and nobody wanted to see if it was the latter. I sat there, dazed, my legs refusing to move. I finally do move as the last few students left in the classroom reach the front of the class. Shrieks and loud talking can be heard in the hallway as they open the door again - there are many students running past the room as the math room was in the middle of the hallway.
I look back over the room, to see if I was really the last person, but I see someone that I've never seen in the class before. This kid had brown hair and brown eyes that feel like they could see into my soul. He had on a pair of blue jeans that fit him just right, and a blue shirt that seemed like it wasn't really for him; it seemed harsh on someone so…innocent. There's really no other word to describe him.
I waited for him at he front of the room; it didn't take long, as he looked like he needed to leave. I didn't blame him, as there was a fire alarm going off in the background. Or was there? It had stopped ringing.
I turned to go through the classroom door into the hallway, but there isn't a normal high school hallway out there anymore. There was a green sunny field - the sun was shining, trees were growing, butterflies were floating around without a care.
I stopped in my tracks. What the hell was going on here? My math room was nowhere near the exit of the school, and anyway, there were no clear meadows anywhere I lived - only houses and businesses. Anyway, this defied everything I ever learned…
The boy stopped directly behind me, and put his hand around my waist, and his chin on my shoulder.
I stiffened against his touch, and my breathing stopped. He moved his chin off of my shoulder, but his fingertips still stayed on my hipbone.
"I forgot. I'm sorry," he said, as if he knew about my past.
10/8/05
I woke up in the field once again, but this time Jethro was right next to me, not far off like last time. We were wearing our same outfits from yesterday, with me in the white shirt and black skirt while he was still in the white shirt and black pants. He smiled when he saw I was awake, and I smiled back.
"Why do you live with a foster family?" He asked gently.
"How do you know about them?" I asked back, feeling my defenses go up.
"You talked about them in your sleep. You sounded like you were talking to someone named Sebastian about the pain it is living with a foster family with ten kids."
I smiled; that conversation he mentioned was one I had with Sebastian in my real world. Before I had a chance to answer him he said, "Is Sebastian your boyfriend?"
"No, he's not," I said, moving one of my hands under my head, and one over my stomach, since I was lying on my back again. "He's almost like my brother since we're so close. He's over at my house so much he is my brother."
I paused. "I live at a foster home because...because...I don't want to talk about it."
"Why not?"
"Don't like to. It hurts too much." I remembered something he said before, during the first time we met. "You got too close to me one time, and then backed off, saying 'I'm sorry. I forgot.' How do you know about my past?"
He sighed. "I know little about your past specifically. I only know that you were hurt greatly growing up, and that it still hurts to this day."
"And how do you know that?" I asked, greatly agitated that a complete stranger knew so much of me.
"I don't know. It's the same here. I know it's peaceful, and that it's unreal, and I also know that you were hurt. What happened to you?"
I closed my eyes. I knew that he wouldn't give up. He was as stubborn as a mule. I spoke softly, and tried to keep my voice calm even though I wanted to cry. "My real father used me as his sex slave, and I had his kid at the age of fourteen. Happy now?" My voice broke.
Jethro started towards me, as if to console me, but I had gotten up and moved to a nearby tree, where I squatted down against, my back to the tree, my head down. Jethro squatted down in front of me, and put a finger under my chin and lifted it up.
"I'm sorry." When I still refused to open my eyes or even acknowledge that he was there, he continued to speak. "I just wanted to know more about the real you."
"By making me relive memories that I don't want to remember?"
"By trying to show you that what is in the past is in the past. It's now behind you -- there is no reason to feel pain over and over again because of something that is already done. Just know that it is there, but don't relive it."
"How can I not feel pain when I have a daughter that I can only see a few times a year, knowing full well that her father is also my father?" My voice cracked.
"By not dwelling on the past. She is your daughter, living a better life that you could ever give her. She's doing better because of a choice you made."
Jethro tugged on me, and I stood up. He moved closer against me, and whispered. "It hurts to let go of your pain. But it hurts even more to hold on to it."
Tears gathered up and fell. His hands covered my cheeks, with his hands covered my cheeks, with his thumbs wiping away the tears. I wasn't crying because it hurt; I was crying because he was right.
I wrapped my arms around him, and buried my face in his chest. His hands went around me.
"Let it out," he whispered. And for once, I did. I let myself cry until there weren't any more tears to cry.
When I was done, I put my chin on his shoulder. Jethro was almost holding me up because I was so exhausted.
He turned his head so that his lips were right against my ear, and whispered, "I love you."
I jerked back out of his arms and out of the dream.
10/23/05
I opened my eyes and saw I was in the field again, which is weird because during the last two weeks I haven't been here in my dreams.
I sit up and see Jethro sitting against a tree, as usual. He looks ragged around the edges, like he's the one who's been crying him to sleep lately, not me.
I smoothed out the wrinkles in my skirt as I wait for him to acknowledge I'm here. He does; his eyes open and he smiles, but it seems forced.
"What's wrong?" I ask.
"Nothing, really. I just haven't had much energy lately." He looked like it too; his eyes looked like they had seen too much, and his movements, once graceful, now seemed sluggish.
I walk over to him and sit next to him, placing my hand in his. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry for how I behaved. I -"
"You don't have to apologize. What I said was out of context. I shouldn't have said it so soon."
I squeezed his hand and smiled at him. He smiled back, but then, obviously noticing the bags under my eyes, asked, "Are you okay?"
"I haven't been sleeping well."
He made a weak gesture with his other hand that meant continue, so I did. "Sebastian and I had a fight over a girl he started to go out with. I don't like her at all. And now he refuses to talk to me."
Jethro closed his eyes and shifted his hand so that our fingers were intertwined, and then he smiled. I could feel his happiness radiate out from him. "I've got to tell you something," he said slowly.
"What?"
"I won't be able to see you for a few weeks. I've got to do something."
"But why? And what is it?" I started to shake - I got him back and I didn't feel like I could lose him again. I needed him to be there.
"Why? Because I need to. And I can't tell you what it is; just trust me, please." He scooted closer to me, putting his hand around my waist so I could comfortably put my head on his shoulder.
"Don't go. I love you too, and I can't lose you now. I need you here, Jethro…" Tears threatened to form.
"Senneth… oh my Senneth…" He put a hand on my cheek, took it off and then turned my whole body and lifted me so I could sit on his lap. Jethro held me close, in a way showing me how he wanted to hold me, hold on to me, forever.
Truthfully, I don't understand how I could love someone so deeply even though I had only seen him a few times in my dreams. Maybe it was because he taught me how to let go of my past that had been following me so closely, or the fact that he was in a different, surreal world that seemed so real sometimes. I don't know, and I may never know.
"If something happens to me, I just want you to know that I love you, and I always will," I heard him say softly.
"What could happen?" I asked, but he refused to answer any more questions I had.
Senneth sighed, done reading her dream journal. She ran her hand back through her black hair, trying to get the few wisps of hair that always escaped her ponytail out of her eyes. That dream journal entry had been written almost a month earlier; it looked like her dreams were just that. Dreams. Jethro wasn't real; she had created someone in her dreams to try to get away from her daily humdrum. How typical.
She rubbed her black eyes, and then hoisted her chin into her hands, staring off into the distance. Senneth was wearing a black shirt with the words "Dream Big" in big white letters and a pair of hole-y, ragged jeans. She was sitting at her wooden desk in her room up in the attic. It was pouring cats and dogs outside; the usual noonday sun now hidden behind black clouds. Today was Saturday, the day she usually went out with Sebastian, but he was sick. Their friendship had finally been mended over that girl he had been going out with - the girl had finally broken up with him because he refused to sleep with her "no strings attached" as he had put it.
I miss him, Senneth thought sadly, her eyes closing. Jethro appeared in her head the same way he had appeared in her dreams - brown hair, and brown eyes that could make her want to hold on to him forever because he had her heart forever. Jethro still had on the white shirt and black pants, just like he always had - oh, what she would do to just see him one more time, to be able to hold him just one more minute.
"Senneth. Hey Senneth, are you here on earth?" Lynne, her foster mom, popped her head into her bedroom. Lynne was full-blooded Irish, had her red/orange hair pulled back into a loose tail, and her green eyes sparked with life. She had on a gray jump suit with pink strips down the sides of the fabric.
Senneth turned around and looked at her. "Yeah, I'm here."
"There's someone at the door for you. Well, technically, he's in the living room, but he won't give his name, and he says you know him. It ain't Sebastian."
Senneth looked at her weirdly, even though Lynne always talked funny like that, but Lynne had already left. She got up, turned off the light, and went down the flight of stairs to the first floor of the house. She turned the corner into the living room, and there he was. He was standing in the middle of the living room, his hair and clothing all but drenched from the rain outside, talking to a few of her foster brother and sisters about being stuck in the house when it was raining out. His clothing was the same outfit that she had seen him wearing the first time she had seen him in the math room in her dream.
He turned and faced her the moment she walked into the room, and smiled at her. She smiled back at him, her heart wanting to stop and beat quicker at the same time.
Quickly walking the few paces that it took to get over to him, and pulled him close into her arms. She hugged him like she never wanted to let him go again, and only stopped when he squeezed her back.
"But how, Jethro?"
"I'm here. Don't ask questions." He gave her a chaste kiss that promised love, life, and of years they were going to spend together as they ignored the whistles and catcalls from her brother and sisters. "Now, introduce me to everyone," he said as Julie, one of the two three-year-olds wrapped herself around his leg.
Senneth never did ask the questions that were in her head about how Jethro was able to be real when she had only seen him in her dreams, but truthfully, she didn't care. She loved him, and he loved her.
Having someone to love is all that really matters, even if it doesn't make sense.
((And I got finalists on it!!!!! With it published, and all pretty and a plague and everything!! WooT!!))
;D
^_^
I've been finding embarrassing mistakes in some of my posts on here... ^_^' Must do better!