Dreamcatcher

7

This morning everyone gets a well-deserved lie-in till 9am. Most of us wake up at 8, and have an hour of chatting, and visiting dorms. I, instead, wake at 6, breathless and with sweat beading at my forehead. After a couple of minutes listing the pros and cons are of bringing a book and my vision diary to the lit bathroom to read and write, I decide that the pros win. Wrapped in my blue blanket throw, waddle to the cold but lit bathroom and analyse my vision, listing the key events in my book:

- Sƚιʅʅ ზʅσσԃ, αɳԃ ԃҽαƚԋ.

- Sƚιʅʅ σʋҽɾɠɾσɯɳ, ƈɾυɱზʅιɳɠ ɾυιɳʂ.

- Sƚιʅʅ ƚԋҽ ზσყ σρρσʂιƚҽ ƚσ ɱҽ: Lαρσ.

- Hҽ ƈσʅʅαρʂҽʂ.- Tԋҽ ɾυιɳʂ ƈσʅʅαρʂҽ.

- Lαρσ ʂαყʂ ʂσɱҽƚԋιɳɠ.

- Eɳԃʂ ɯιƚԋ ԃαɾƙɳҽʂʂ.

- LAPO ιʂ ɱყ SOULMATE!!!

Aaahh! I swear my handwriting is just getting worse by the minute. It really hurts my brain to think about my visions and hurts my hand to write it down. Being left-handed (and awesomely so), I always smudge my ink. Especially when writing birthday- of thank-you-cards, so I have to ask someone for help. It's sort of embarrassing now that I'm 16 and can't write a letter without help.

I rest my head against the wall and stare at the ceiling, it grey-white paint peeling and old. Zoning out generally helps me collect my thoughts compose myself. Once I feel bothered to stand up, still huddled in my blue throw, I walk to the window.

It's still quite dark outside, but I can make out the individual trees in the woods across the Little Valley. The stars shine against the navy expanse, some crowded in large groups, others alone, attention-drawing, and fierce. I definitely regret opening the window; a strong gust of wind surrounds me, but disappears as quickly as it appears, leaving me shivering.

Like how I felt in my vision when the ruins crumbled, flattening the ground, those corpses, Lapo-

The bathroom door bursts open and girl rushes in, her dark bed-hair covering her eyes. 

'Aislynn! That's where you are,' says an unusually energetic Leigh for 6:24am. 'I thought you had disappeared but actually that was in my dream... You were there, you know, and everyone was on their laptops down in school. Then all the laptops got some unfixable, super bad bug, which spread to humans, and everyone died, or actually, became evil then died, apart from you, me, Kaede, and Marianne. Then we became spidermen! Aka super sticky and stuff but still, it was really cool, and those powers were awesome. Well actually, Kaede, Marianne and I became spidermen, but you got a different power.' She pauses for a moment, spreading out her arms dramatically. 'The power of being tall!'

I roll my eyes. Honestly, being the tallest girl in our year and the year above isn't exactly great. It means your short best friend keeps asking why you've got tall genes. 

'Your screaming woke me up,' grunts Marianne in her thick Spanish accent, opening the bathroom door slightly. 'Please quiet yourself. I want sleep.' She trudges off back to the dorm and just as I'm about to agree, Leigh slips on absolutely nothing, falling to the floor with a crash that sends Marianne back, giving us death stares. After she leaves for the second time, Leigh starts to choke on air.

'You okay?' I ask. Leigh nods, struggling to contain her laughter.

'Oh my, I just slipped and Marianne's face like that is just-' Leigh bursts out, laughing and laughing until it turns silent and she clutches her stomach, buckling over. 'AHH, IT HURTS!'

'Leigh, it's like 6:30 now. Do you want to get back to sleep-' 

'AAHAHH, IT HURTS!' my friend screams. 'Cramps plus laughter equals- AHAH! Oh, I need to grab a hot water bottle...'

And there goes Leigh. Time passes quickly without any distractions as such, and next thing I know, it's 8am. We can get our phones.

The first thing I do is call my eldest brother. As he's in Year 13, in the sixth form, he has the advantage of being allowed his phone 24/7. It rings through my favourite song twice before Ben picks up.

'Aislinn?' He sounds surprised.

'Yeah, I know it's not a great time to call. You're probably have breakfast?' I take a guess, considering that Ben is definitely an early riser, but not an early eater.

'Nah. Still in bed, trying to memorize the periodic table,' he answers boredly.

'We studied the periodic table back in Year 7, didn't we?'

'Yep.' I hear a sigh. '6 years later, I still don't know it. What's, uh, Cu?'

I rack through my memory for the answer: 'Copper. And have you sort of heard of this disease thing? It's also razing all through Australia.'

'Yeah. Burnt my friend's home down back there.' A painful pause, then he takes a deep breath. 'Why?'

'It's the, the-. It d-destroys the Earth.' I spend a couple of seconds deciding whether or not to say this. 'And Liam knows.' 

'Liam? How? What have you done?' Shoooooooot, we now have Ben is rant-mode. 'Why? Did you tell him?' Or your friends?' They're untrustworthy, you should really-'

I hang up. And stare at the all is disbelief that I had the audacity to hang up on my eldest sibling. I knew 'respect your elders' wasn't going to work anway.

Still huddled in my fluffy blue throw, I close my eyes, drifting off.

And I wake in the bathroom, where everyone is looking at their phones, whispering to each other, and with tears in their eyes.

'One of the b-boys' boarding houses,' someone says loudly, making an unnerving and fierce eye contact with me, 'burned. And cracked.'