The Odd One

Date: 4/21/2019

I remember falling from somewhere into darkness. There were a bunch of girls in front of me organized in a line of spotlights. The spotlights got brighter the further to the right of me they were. There was one unoccupied spotlight, but it wasn't in the line. It was right behind the line, touching one of the spotlights off to the left. I went to that spotlight. The girl in front of me was angry. There was an adult women who was apparently the leader of whatever we were doing. She was angry. Everybody was angry. Then there was a boy next to me who I've never met before. In the context of my dream, he's my friend. Suddenly we're out of the spotlights. Everybody's out of the spotlights. My friend and I are on my street now. It's night and we're towards the left end of the block. We both head back to my house. For some reason, there's a group of girls standing in front. Three I recognized: Ali, Sophie, and Cassidy. They aren't happy with us. He starts walking away. I try to convince him to come back, but he doesn't budge. He asks me to come with him. So that's what I do. By the time I get to the next block, I try convincing him to stop again. He doesn't listen. We kept walking until we reached a cliff by the ocean. It was bright and beautiful. I looked down at the water. There was a little island of rock with maybe five seagulls congregating on it. Five seagulls and one other bird. It looked like a small, emaciated pelican and it stood a little too upright. At least I does now when I reimagine it. In the dream, I turned to my friend and said, "Look. Stay for a while and look at the tinamou. It's the first and last tinamou you'll ever see." The "tinamou" jumped into the water. My friend looked at it in wonder. While he was entranced by the dream bird, a girl came walking up. It was one of the girls from the group standing outside my house. She was also the girl who was in front of me during the whole spotlight thing. She looks at me with contempt, but she doesn't look at my friend like that anymore. She's nice to him. She tells him that he's going to need a boat to cross the sea. She says she brought a boat and wants to come with. My friend seems happy but I'm not. I tell both of them that I'm not coming with them. My friend tried to get me to stay but I kept walking in the opposite direction. I remember seeing him on my trail until I got to my block. Back there, it was night again. After that I starting running extremely fast. Everything blurred past me and I didn't look back to see where he was. Eventually got to my house and ran inside. I peer out the window to see if he was there. I couldn't see him. The group of girls started pointing at me saying, "Look, look." I hid behind the curtain. They were mad at me because I left him. For hours I paced around eating fruit snacks. I could hear them outside my house. They were circling around the perimeter, and my friend gave up chasing after me. I felt like they were a group of vultures just waiting for me to fuck up so I'd feel even worse. I felt so lonely and scared. Fed up with what the girls were doing, I went outside and confronted them. I told them that this was their fault and that my friend was going to die out there on that boat. I stormed back inside. They stopped circling me after that. The next day I was at the library. I was trying avoid the girls. I think they were trying to apologize to me, but I didn't want to hear any of it. I put on my coat and jacket. I left the library with my dog, Sally. We walked down Main Street, but it wasn't the real Main Street. My house was where the Dairy Queen used to be. Ali was outside the house. She knocked the door and asked my grandma (mom's side) where I was. I kept walking and avoided making eye contact. I them heard them calling me, so I pretended not to hear. "Joie?" Shit. She was right behind me. I turned around and acknowledged her. She handed me a slim scrapbook. She asked me if I wanted to look at it. I opened it and saw a few pictures. That only picture I could remember clearly was a picture of the stars. It was the second to last picture. "Your grandma says you made this when you were little."