The Dream Stalker

6) "You Cannot Run; You Cannot Hide"

I practically sleepwalked my way through the rest of the school day. My mind was so concentrated on the strange guilt eating away at me that I barely registered anything that happened.

I remembered eventually leaving the bathroom and returning to homeroom where I caught the backend of Principal Peterson's morning announcements, "Due to recent developments, we have it on good authority that our school has been infiltrated by an illegal drug-trafficking ring. Therefore, we will be conducting a thorough search of every locker located in our school. Any student who is found to have contraband items in their possession, will face the threat of immediate expulsion."

Sometime later Principal Peterson confronted me in the halls. I had no real recollection of the locker searches ever taking place but based on Principal Peterson's ragged appearance, I guessed they turned up nothing. The man spoke for a great length, but I didn't comprehend anything he said. I only stood silently until my crazy principal finished ranting. After that, I continued to my next class.

I was so caught up in my own head that I didn't realize McKenzie seemed almost as beaten down as I did until we climbed into Uncle Kasey's truck bed for the ride back home. It was disturbing seeing my cousin so depressed, considering his usual jovial personality in almost every other instance. I immediately chalked it up to him being upset by Jordan's death, which made me envious, because at least he didn't have to deal with the knowledge that he had been the cause of his friend's death. I now felt strongly my dreams had been warning me. And I had ignored them.

Back at home, McKenzie's uncharacteristic attitude continued as he went off to bed before it was even dark out. I thought of following his lead and trying to hit the sack myself, since one thing I did know was that if I wanted to reach this supposed World-Between-Dreams, I needed to be asleep. However, since I wasn't quite sure how the process exactly worked, I didn't want to risk finding out I could only access it during the night or some other equally stupid rule. Plus, due to my recent problems, I had no real guarantee I would be able to fall asleep on command. So, I decided to wait until my usual bedtime, and hope I could manage to fall asleep or drop from the exhaustion.

For the rest of the day, I sat on a stool in the bedroom, waiting for night to come. None of my relatives ever came into the room and tried to talk to me, and that was something I was grateful for.

After listening for hours to the same playlist of songs on my old phone, the sun finally began to set. I didn't bother to turn the lights on with McKenzie still asleep on his bed, buried beneath his covers. I didn't want to disturb him. The darkness also fit my morbid mood.

Several minutes later, Aunt Katherine called everyone to the kitchen for dinner. I ate my dinner almost mechanically, barely paying any attention to what I was eating. McKenzie also begrudgingly came to the table to join the rest of the family. Even Aunt Katherine wasn't oblivious to the awkward silence that engulfed the table, although Uncle Kasey was sullen as always. She didn't question it, instead tried to lighten the mood by speaking cheerfully about her day. However, only one who would engage her in any conversation was Kody. I still wasn't sure what he was saying half the time he spoke, since he talked so very fast and had his mouth stuffed full of food.

I was about to excuse myself from dinner when something about the way McKenzie was acting caught my attention. Something familiar. I studied my cousin, watching how uninterestedly he picked at his dinner, and saw shades of myself; I had acted this exact same way when I had finally gotten over the shock of my parents dying in that fire, when I had begun to withdraw myself from the world.

That sort of behavior didn't make sense in this current situation. I lost my parents, while, sure, McKenzie and Jordan got along okay, it wasn't like they were close. If I hadn't shown up, I doubted they would have even interacted as much as they had in the last week.