3TS: The Chances of Starting Again

Interrupted Dreams

When you're dreaming of the impossible hopes and wants in your life, and it ends abruptly. You want to go back to sleep for the dream to go on, but it doesn't come back EVER again.

I couldn't help but dream of that dance with him that night (but technically morning). We were laughing at a joke of his as he spun me around. Then he stopped me suddenly, dipping me, and looking into my eyes. With that, my dream unfortunately ended with a beep of my phone.

My sleepy eyes opened slowly. Grunting, but wanting to answer a friend in need (even if it was a small conversation), I stretched as far as I could and took up my phone.

The notification said it was from Arlene:

When the light seems to shine before you, above your head...wouldn't you want to obtain it? Wouldn't you want it to warm your heart forever? 

When the light is taken by another, wouldn't you want to hold it? To share it? Just for one more moment...to see it above you again?

When the light seems to dim forever, wouldn't you want to spend your whole time with it before you are left in darkness? Before the lighted world around you becomes shrouded with black fear?

I sat up, looking over and over at the name of the person who had just sent me a text. Arlene. Arlene?

If I could remember in my right mind (at three thirty in the morning), she never wrote poems. Never in the time I became best friends with her.

So was this a wrong send? Or was something odd about the poem she just sent?

**

I tried to reply to her. Ask her if she wrote this. Ask her if it was meant for me. But there was no reply. No reply at all from the best friend who would stay up late just to chat me.

The next school day (a few days later). I found my answer.

We were sitting around the lunch table, quiet as Trent and his friends were talking among themselves about the basketball tryouts coming up. This was my chance.

"Arlene," I said softly. She turned to me, not saying a thing as she looked at her notes on her phone, something she has been doing when the boys started to join us every day for lunch. "Were you the one who sent me the poem? Right after the New Year's dance?"

She squinted at me, then glanced back at her phone (what was wrong with her? Feeling anti-social today?), "Oh yeah. That was me."

"Why did you send it to me?" I asked, watching her every move. For some reason, I could tell something was bothering her. The way she wouldn't look me in the eye anymore. The way she didn't speak to me much anymore. The way she didn't wait for me at the school door anymore.

Yes, something was definitely wrong. And as I write this, I now can confirm that something was wrong. By the way she said her next sentence. It totally did not fit her giddy and positive attitude.

"I thought it...was...inspiring." She said glumly, as if it wasn't inspiring at all.

"How?" I said in a confused tone. But she didn't look up at me. She even ignored me as she typed away.

What had happened to my friend, Journal? Were we like two icebergs moving slowly away from each other? Slowly moving away from each other in the cold?

"Arlene, are you feeling okay? You seem a little..." I said cautiously.

She stood up abruptly. "I gotta go."

"Where are you going?" I said louder than expected. The boys stopped speaking, turning to us.

In that moment, Arlene's face looked as if she had run a mile. "I have some homework to catch up with." She pushed in her chair hurriedly, as she walked speedily away.

"Are you okay, Krissa?" Trent asked beside me, as Leon started to talk to Juan about how to follow basketball rules during a game (because Juan had a hard time following rules).

I looked at Arlene as she slipped out of the cafeteria. "Arlene always finishes her homework."

"What?" He said, laughing slightly as if I just poked a joke that he didn't get.

I turned to him, but looked down at my lunch food. I didn't feel hungry anymore. "Arlene always finishes her homework at night. Never-ever-at school."

Something was definitely wrong with my friend. And I had to help her.