Shadow Souls

Chapter Thirty-Six

"Don't you dare try to tell me you didn't do anything this time!"

I open my eyes and see Paige standing next to the bed holding two coffee cups and smirking. Tyler next to her, looking at Finn like he is the anti-Christ.

"What time is it?" I ask rubbing my eyes.

I start to reach for my phone to check how late it is since I know Paige never wakes up early and instead, I find two missed calls from my dad. Perfect.

"It's almost noon sunshine," she informs me.

"Seriously!" I start to jump up, but then remembering my lack of pants, pull the blanket higher over me. I look up at Tyler who finally gets the hint and turns around.

"I'm not surprised you slept in so long. I would expect you to be tired after the night you had," Paige continues.

This time it's Finn who speaks up, "Nothing happened Paige. Honestly we just slept."

I watch as her face falls in disappointment. I guess when he tells her nothing happened she will believe it.

I get up to find my jeans and once I finish putting them on, take one of the coffees from Paige's hand. I then turn to Finn to tell him that we will be downstairs, so he can get dressed privately.

Heading into the kitchen I call my dad back before he decides to send the FBI to the house to check on me, but to my surprise it doesn't take me too long to calm his worries. After promising him that everything is completely fine and I had misplaced my phone while doing laundry, I only get one lecture on responsibility before he lets it go. I feel bad lying to him, but telling him I slept till noon would definitely raise his parental suspicious. I don't want him thinking I am falling into some kind of depression that would make him cut his trip short. And even though he thinks Paige slept over so I should have an excuse to stay up late and be tired, he would have only started to think of us partying on school nights. That would have caused even more lectures.

I apologize again for worrying him, then hang up the phone in time to see Finn, now fully dressed, making his way down the stairs. I have to admit, seeing him walk towards me with his hair all disheveled.... He looks like the reincarnation of a Greek God.

"I'm going to head home for a bit," he says leaning down to kiss me goodbye, "I'll text you later."

When Finn leaves, I turn to face Paige and Ty, both of whom are staring right at me. "What!?"

"Seriously nothing happened?" Paige asks.

"I'm ignoring you now and focusing on Tyler," I say turning to face him. "Where were you all night?"

"He was with me," Paige answers for him, obviously not caring about being ignored. "Since you never called to have our sleep over like you promised, Tyler decided to keep me company instead," she adds while sticking her tongue out at me.

"Oh really? Well, isn't this an interesting turn of events." "How so?" Tyler asks, "It's not like I can touch her."

I watch as his face falls, and I'm not sure if it's because of me and Finn, or him and Paige. Until I see him look over at her, his face full of longing and it becomes clear. This is exactly what I was afraid of.

"How did you two communicate, though?" I ask.

Tyler smiles at me then walks over to the counter to pick up a pen, and begins waving it around. "Very clever," I say.

"Well, I'm a genius," he smirks. "And now it's time for the important questions. Did you have any changes to the nightmare again last night?"

"Actually no. I didn't have a nightmare at all last night," I realize, feeling surprised.

"Are you serious?" Ty asks just as shocked as I am.

"What's going on?" Paige interjects, "Once again I get the feeling I missing something important."

"I was telling Tyler how I didn't have a nightmare last night. This is the very first time since the accident four months ago."

"Is it possible you were just overly exhausted?" she suggests, "I mean you did sleep till noon."

"I don't think that's it. I would have nightmares even while on the sedatives the doctors would give me. They made me a zombie though, so I eventually told my dad that I didn't need them anymore. That way I wouldn't have to keep taking them, and he wouldn't have to worry anymore"

"Well then I guess that is weird," she agrees. "Okay, maybe you guys should tell me everything that happened the night of the accident, and don't leave anything out. Let's see if we can try and figure out what's happening once and for all."

                                                                  Ω            Ω           Ω

Going through the details of that night was harder than I expected. Reliving that night in my dreams is torture enough, but having to explain the details out loud... That was worse.

Apparently, Tyler doesn't remember seeing the shadow at all. Plus, since I dream about it almost every night, and those dreams have recently started to change, I don't know how to trust what is real or just my imagination. So, I try to think back to the events that took place before the accident.

I tell Paige how It was basically a normal day for the two of us, and nothing weird or out of the ordinary had happened. We went to grab a quick bite to eat before heading to the dance. Perfectly normal.

"Even the part where you spilled your milkshake. You are such a klutz," Tyler laughs.

"Oh, yeah! I forgot about that. I went to the bathroom to attempt to clean up before we left. Not that it did much good though, I was left with a brown stain right in the middle of my pretty blue dress," I pout.

"You spilled a milkshake on your homecoming dress?" Paige asks in disbelief. "Now that's an actual nightmare!"

"I didn't mean to! I went to pick it up, and it was really cold, so I dropped it out of shock," I shrug.

"Of course, it was cold it was a frozen milkshake, Alice!" Paige laughs. "Who drops a cold drink because it's cold?!"

I join in on the mocking at my expense, since I must admit it was a pretty ridiculous reason to ruin my brand-new dress. "It was this beautiful shade of sky blue that matched my eyes perfectly," I tell her. "It really was a travesty."

"That wasn't even the funniest part of it though," Tyler cuts in. "The best part was after you spilled it, you exclaimed that it was too hot."

He starts to laugh even harder at the memory. "So, you were a ditzy, tongue tied, klutz," he adds.

"Wait, I did?" I think for a minute confused as I try to remember the scene. Then it all comes back to me. I did say it was hot. But it wasn't a mistake. "Oh my god!" I gasp.

Tyler thought I was just flustered and twisted up my words, but that's not what happened. The cup was hot. I tell Paige and Tyler this new information while a feeling of dread spreads through my entire body.

"Wait I'm confused," Paige says, "How can a frozen milkshake be hot?"

"I guess that's the million-dollar question isn't it," I say.

"Are you sure you are remembering right?" Tyler asks me.

"One-hundred percent positive."

The three of us all look back and forth between each other not knowing what this new revelation could mean.

I am beginning to feel like every time we try to find answers, we just end up with more questions instead.