Daydream (ONC 2024)

Chapter 2: Baubles and Quacks

"You shouldn't sleep here." Fingers brushed against my cheek, and I slapped them away as I jolted awake to a guy bent over to poke me. With a huff, I skipped to my feet, grabbed my school bag, and growled like a defensive stray. "Geeze, I just don't want someone to pass by and call the police because of the dead girl on the side of the road. Who sleeps outside?" The jerk's condescending chuckle had me kicking the dirt as his vivid blue eyes gave me a once over like he was sizing me for a morgue gurney.

Leaves poked at my scalp and scratched my ears, and I self-consciously dragged my fingers through my wavy brown hair to get them out. He was right that I shouldn't be sleeping in the school courtyard during my break period, but I wouldn't admit it. It was against school rules, but I loved the sunshine and the wind so much that I often curled up on the hill between the western door of the middle school's building and the tennis courts. Foot traffic was sparse here though, so this guy's worries were unlikely.

"What are you doing here?" I asked with narrowed eyes as he stood up straight in his way too fancy collared shirt and slacks. He looked like he worked at the school, but he wasn't much older than me. Definitely not a teacher, not with all the loose brown hair running down to his lower back and flowing through the wind like spider threads.

"I'm a teacher's aide for extra credits, Bambi." He pointed up the hill to the high school across the street. "I deliver papers here and there between the buildings. Not used to stumbling over corpses." I resisted stamping on his foot from another stupid laugh. "I'm Kearo by the way."

Kearo offered his hand like he wanted to shake, and I returned the strange gesture out of politeness only to realize how stupid that was. Ducking his hand at the last moment, he plopped it on my head and messed up my hair so vigorously that I stumbled back. The wind further tore my hair away, and I snarled as he cackled and ran up the hill to the high school with a wave.

The dream of my past faded, and I came to with my face on concrete. I peeled myself off the floor and rubbed the indents in my cheek as I brought myself to my knees. Light streamed in through a crack in the warehouse ceiling, and the parade of zombies had died down in the halls. That meant I explore without being dragged anywhere, and I shuffled out of the cell more than ready to leave this place behind.

Thoughts of Kearo consumed my mind as I passed people waking for the morning with eyes as empty as if they still slept. My memories of him cushioned the blow of the world around me as I navigated halls in a slow trot, bouncing from one cluster of people to the next.

As my senior of three years, Kearo has always treated me like a lost fawn, and if I so much as glanced at anything green, he called me Bambi for the next hour. And despite the sheer amount of harassment and chiding he inflicted on me, he insisted on the role of my protector. Because I was so incompetent at caring for myself.

Kearo was so full of it that he went around calling himself my Guardian, and he trailed me like a guard dog for my entire freshman year. It had been nice to have someone shoulder through the streams of students in the hall for me but grating when he moved garbage cans in empty hallways so I didn't stumble over them. Like I was so much of a klutz that I gravitated toward tripping hazards five feet away.

A gust of cool air glided against my face as I trekked through the corridors, so much like that windy day we'd met and also chillingly identical to the feeling that had woken me. I felt Kearo's presence within my heart and knew that he'd broken free as I had. The need to find him tethered me to hope that we could conquer this world together and empowered me as I searched for a way out of this bread dungeon.

Vents created the only breaks in the welded steel walls, and as I stopped near one, I could feel the bond to the missing piece of my heart. If I could get my voice out of this place, perhaps Kearo would be able to find me. It took a firm tug to grind open the flap to the ventilation shaft, and the clank reverberated so long that sweat dripped down the back of my neck.