Asleep

1 Is It Too Late to Quit?

This book is copyrighted and registered with the United States Copyright Office. The copying of this text will result in charges. If you are not reading this on Watt pad, then it has been stolen. Please report this to me (MikaelaBender on Watt pad) and get off of the website you found it on, as you may be at risk of a virus. I can then let Watt pad know about the site.

Nora~~

Some say dreams are visions from God. Others say they're neurons firing in our brains. I say they're both.

As Dad and I walk through the woods, the humidity thick and dampening my new business-casual attire, I hold out my hands in front of me. Ten fingers. Ten thin, slightly crooked fingers.

Dad claims dreams are the latter, but after five years of therapy to help me with my own dreams, I've found I'm unable to take his stance.

"Keep up, Nora," he says from up ahead where he stands in a patch of shade. I've lived in the same town in South Carolina for all of my life. If I didn't think it was a good idea to venture this far into the woods when I was eight, I'm not finding it any wiser at sixteen and dressed in a satin blouse.

Dirt clings to my flats, and I'm grateful Dad told me to change out of heels right before we walked out the door. He's never taken our one car to work, leaving it for Mom, but I didn't think he walked through the woods to get there.

I've had to count my fingers five times since we've left just to convince myself that I'm not dreaming.

I do my best to keep up. Dad knows the terrain of this path like the back of his hand and his dress shoes don't threaten to slip off his feet with every step like my flats do.

"Are we far enough from any sort of civilization that you can tell me now?"

Shaking his head, he braces his hand against the bark of a tree for only a few seconds, pausing to take a breath. "Your boss will do a better job explaining than I would."

Dad's always kept his job a secret from me and my two siblings and for as long as I can remember, I've known that when I turned sixteen, I would be going to work with him. Keagan, my brother, and I have tossed theories around, most fantastical and wild. A drug lord. A crime lord. A superhero—a favorite theory of mine from when I was eight. A monster hunter: that was Keagan's.

I catch up with Dad, keeping right behind him to watch how his feet navigate the ground.

Even though he's my father, I want to scold him for walking by himself every day, a task that has been frowned upon for decades. A twig crunches under my foot. I shouldn't be surprised. Both of my parents have made me walk to and from school with only Keagan for company once he was old enough to join me at the high school.

Ahead there's a clearing in which sunlight pours.

It's in that empty clearing that Dad comes to a stop.

"We're here."

My heart sinks at the same time that it starts to race. Dad's either led me into the woods and is planning to abandon me or he's discovered an impossible magical portal to a fairy realm that he's about to open.

A hand taps me on the shoulder, and I yelp, whirling around.

Coming face to face with the culprit has my brows narrowing even as I fight off a laugh. Aaron, who I will go to my grave swearing is the cutest boy in my grade—not hot—just heart-meltingly cute, grins at me. Blond hair, blue eyes, and all the manners of a South Carolina boy. Cliché? Very. I hated myself the moment I felt butterflies in my stomach. Our dads work together, and we've spent the semester comparing our notes and theories about what we think it is that they do. There was also a period when he believed his dad was a superhero.