Dreaming of Alten

Chapter 9. Alten in Real Life

We drive back to school in time for lunch. I wanted to spend the entire day at the beach with Alten, but he said he needed to keep an eye on Colin, so we had to go back.

I pause at the entrance to the cafeteria. Lily and Tyler and the rest of our friends are sitting at our usual table, laughing about something. It's a familiar sight, except that Tyler has his arm around the back of Lily's chair. I've never seen her eyes shine with so much happiness. It looks good on her. It feels strange watching them as I flashback to Lily's tearstained face when she found out about Jacob.

Beside me, Alten puts his hand on my shoulder and I turn to smile at him.

None of this feels real. I feel like an alien in my own life.

"Are you okay?" asks Alten.

I give myself a mental shake. "Fine," I say. "I'm fine. Just thinking."

His hand slips into mine as we go to get our food. We're just about to pay for it when I feel Alten's fingers tense against mine. I turn to look at him and see that he's staring at Kimberly and Colin's table. Kimberly is straddling Colin, and if her tongue was any further in his mouth, it would be in his throat. He's got one hand tangled in her hair, the other hidden underneath her shirt.

Alten isn't looking at Colin. His eyes are on the three other people sitting at Kimberly's table. "You know those guys?" he asks, in a low voice.

"Yeah, they're Colin's friends," I say. "Mike, Ethan, and Benjamin. Pretty much one of them's always in trouble for something, you know, fighting, smoking, drugs, vandalism. Why?"

"They shouldn't be here."

"What?" I freeze in the middle of a step, but Alten urges me along by pulling gently on my hand. "Why?"

"They're from our reality. I'd know them anywhere," he says grimly. "I've run into them a few times. They're definitely not someone you want to hang out with. Even in our world people tend to avoid them."

"So how did they get here?"

"I guess Colin brought them here."

I stare at him. "He can do that?"

"Yeah." Alten takes another look at Colin's friends, then turns back to me and grins mischievously. "But so can I."

"You can do what?"

He nods over to our table. There, as if by magic, are three guys I've never seen before. Two of them are talking and laughing with my friends. The third guy, sitting right at the end of our table, is staring blankly in front of him with a scowl on his face. I get the feeling that he would rather be eating lunch on his own.

"Who are those guys?"

Alten grins some more. "They're my crew."

"They're what?" The word crew sounds foreign coming from his lips, like he's put quotation marks around it. "What crew?"

Alten picks up our tray. "You should remember, Ash. You're the one who gave the crew to me."

A faraway memory stirs at the back of my mind. The summer when I was thirteen, I watched a bunch of motorcycle gang movies at Lily's house. Back then, I thought it would be the coolest thing ever to be a member of a "crew" or a "gang" or have a boyfriend who was.

But I don't remember assigning a "crew" to Alten. Or maybe I did, and just grew out of it afterwards. I guess Alten is stuck with all the things I wanted him to be or to have being a part of his life forever.