I took a swig of my purified “flavor enhancing minerals” drinking water in an attempt at not falling completely asleep in my chair. History class, pfft, what a bore. I understood the importance of it all but seriously now. Did I really need to know every treaty, colony, battle, and slaughter to get by in life? As I un-comprehended Mrs. Gaye’s (ironic, huh?) new lecture on her favorite president (and why), I thought about my exciting plans after school and counted down the minutes till 3:30 (sweet freedom). Only twenty-six more minutes and countless sips of water to go. Not only did the class absolutely suck, but there was not a single good looking guy in this room. Okay, so there was this one decent guy over in the corner, but I caught him once with his finger up his nose. And I mean way up there. I’m not saying I don’t pick, but do it in public and you’re just asking to be single in my opinion. I glanced again at the clock suspended over the door frame. Nineteen minutes. Sigh. I couldn’t take it anymore. My head was hopelessly flopping around as if it was a bobble head on my shoulders. And the desk in front of me just looked way too inviting to ignore. I willingly gave in allowing my eyes to droop slowly into unconsciousness. I was running. Not from someone, but to someone. And not just any someone. Perfect and beautiful as always, though I was never quite able to tell him that, Tristan stood just a little ways in the direction I was heading with a frightened look on his flawless face. Though I had been smiling before, I was now frowning in confusion and as I approached him his expression only worsened. What was wrong with him? Why did he look so afraid of me? I reached out to touch his cheek. “Tristan?” He flinched away from my touch. “No! Get away from me!” and then he backed away and disappeared leaving my outstretched arm still dangling in the air. “Wait! Tristan! What’s –“, I stopped immediately as I saw something dark and wet on my fingers that I hadn’t noticed before. What was it? Why was it there? What had I done? Was I going crazy with memory loss or something? Why did the sight of it make my mouth water and my head spin? I brought my hand to my begging lips and started to lick when a sudden blaring noise stopped me. Suddenly I jumped in my seat as if I were just shot straight through the chest. The bell. Everyone was too busy scrambling towards the exit to notice my recent spasm and the horrid expression on my face as I stayed motionless in my chair. I sat blinking, trying to clear my head and make sense of what I had just dreamt. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder as the room cleared of students. I looked up. “Uh, Eva, the bell rang”, said a voice. Once again I blinked furiously trying to see who I’d just made a fool of myself in front of this time. Oh, nose picker. And he touched me. Ew. “Uh, yeah, thanks.” I muttered. I watched him walk past me and out the door. Still confused and in a daze, I slowly crammed the paper I doodled on during the first hour of class into a pocket in my backpack. I usually wasn’t one to dwell on dreams, and I will frequently have one of those crazy that-made-no-sense-at-all dream, but this one was way different. It seemed too realistic to just shrug off this time. But the look on Tristan’s face… Whatever. I wasn’t going to let some silly dream get in my way of the plans I had with him on this wonderful Friday night. Okay, it was nothing humungous really, but we were going to go see a movie together. This morning when he picked me up for school (yup, still carpooling though I’m seventeen and ready for wheels) he suggested we go see the new horror movie that was released. Now, we’ve been best friends for about 6 years now, but I’ve always had this secret thing for him that I was too afraid to admit to him or anybody else. I’m so pathetic, really. So yes, naturally I was excited, and still am. Sort of. Even though I was sure when I walked to my locker and saw him standing there that he wouldn’t have the look of horror he had so clearly planted on his face in my dream. But I was still partially worried. All worry dispersed from my mind though the second I saw him leaning against my ugly engine red locker. I caught him in the act of looking at the watch he wore around his wrist, but when he looked up and saw me a grin spread across his face. Those damn butterflies (though lately they were beginning to feel more like twisters) fluttered around in my stomach, again. “Hey, Eva”, he smiled as I finally waddled my way over to him and my locker. “Ready for some gut-wrenching, blood-gushing zombie action?” I laughed. “Definitely ready”, of course, he couldn’t see the double meaning behind my words. *** As Tristan and I walked up to pay for our tickets (actually, he insisted on paying for mine), I glanced at the movie posters that were framed on either side of the booth. The movie we were going to see, Night Terror, sounded pretty much like the cheesiest horror movie on the face of this planet. And after seeing the poster for it I concluded that it was the cheesiest movie on the face of this planet. Maybe we could get a good laugh out of it at least, I smiled to myself. The theater was much fuller that I had expected it to be for this type of movie. Usually people took the gushy-romance route instead. Tristan and I ended up having to practically crawl over people’s laps in order to get to a set of seats between two very large families. “Oops, sorry”, I muttered to a sour-faced woman once I accidently stepped on her foot. She only grunted at me and continued eating her overly buttered popcorn. The second Tristan and I finally took our seats, the lights in the theater dimmed and the previews began playing on the screen. I didn’t pay much attention to them. All I could think was that it was dark and Tristan’s body was only a mere two inches from mine. So tempting, yet so wrong. I knew he didn’t like me in that way. He couldn’t have. Could he? I pushed my pointless thoughts to the back of my mind once our feature presentation finally began. I suddenly felt like getting lost in some ridiculous messed-up fantasy where nothing mattered except trying not to lose your life to the un-dead. The beginning started out pretty much like your typical horror movie; four girls alone in an insanely expensive house at night swapping horror stories to each other when suddenly a seriously messed up and hungry zombie comes flying through the window. I laughed hysterically along with Tristan as the girls ran wildly around the room trying to escape the creature’s flailing arms. I laughed even harder when the zombie, with ease, grabbed one of the girls with very wide and terrified eyes, ready to dig in. I watched as the zombie lowered his head without hesitation and ripped open the girl’s neck causing blood to ooze out and down her body. I started to laugh once more, but my voice suddenly got caught in my throat. Tristan was now the only one still in hysterics; too loud to notice that I’d stopped. And I felt strange. I couldn’t understand the sudden pain in my stomach and the way I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the girl’s mutilated neck. I suddenly desperately longed to be the zombie. I couldn’t see or hear anything or anybody. To me, the only thing existing was what was right in front of my eyes. Without thinking, as if I were in this sudden trance that I couldn’t seem to break myself from, I slowly rose from my seat, my eyes glued to the screen the whole time. As I stood, I heard a steadily growing uproar of commotion from the rows behind me, but I was too distracted to understand exactly why and what they were yelling. Nor did I care at this very moment. I vaguely felt a hand persistently tugging on my arm and I wished they’d stop. But suddenly, somehow, the hand released its grip from my arm and I took the opportunity to make my way towards the screen that was so obviously calling my name. And then, I was out of the trance in a flash. I was me again and the first thing I realized was my head hurt, really bad. The second thing I noticed was I was on the ground and I had a whole theater full of people gathering around me with various looks of confusion and anger formed on their faces. Oh. I suddenly realized that in my attempt to walk towards the screen, I had flipped over the row of seats that blocked me and landed head first on the hard floor. How embarrassing. I rose to my feet and muttered countless numbers of apologies to everyone as I quickly made my way towards the exit. I heard someone, Tristan of course, repeatedly yell my name as he tried to scoot himself past the row of people to get to my fleeing body. He eventually caught up and tried to stop me but I wouldn’t let him. All I wanted was to get the hell out of the building so I could clear my head or possibly find a bridge to jump off of. He finally gave up and waited to talk until we approached his beat-up convertible. It took him a moment to speak up. “Eva? Do you want to help me understand what just happened in there?” he said it so caringly that I almost balled right then and there like a scared, lost little girl. I shook my head, avoiding his eyes. “I – I don’t know what I was doing,” Oh god, I didn’t even know what to say. How could I explain the fact that I so desperately wanted (more than anything, and possibly more than him) to drink blood! That’s when I realized that what I had felt in the theater, was the exact desperation and dizziness I’d felt in my dream. I tried my best to ignore the frightening comparison. He flashed me a look like he didn’t believe me. I continued with my lies anyways. “I guess I’m just really tired. Or maybe it was something I ate for lunch today,” As my grandmother always said, when in doubt, blame it on the food you ate. I finally forced myself to look into his eyes, but something distracted me. I noticed, on his left cheek, a deep long gash. I reached up towards the wound (as I noticed the sudden feeling of deja’vu run through me) and said “Tristan, what the hell happened to you?” Once again, as I said the words, my mouth started to water. I stood there in front of him having some sort of a secret internal conflict with myself and I finally, with enough effort, was able to force the hunger away; for now, at least. And I figured that since it wasn’t so much blood this time that I could control myself. This was so messed up. He held my hand to his cheek, oblivious to my possibly very strange expressions, and said slowly “You scratched me, remember? I tried to pull you back into your seat, but you used your other hand to push me away.” I could see the hurt in his eyes. I stared at him open mouthed. So that was how I was suddenly free of that grasp that had a hold of me. I couldn’t remember doing that. I would never do that to anyone. Especially him! Oh my god, I was turning into a monster! Wasn’t I already enough of a freak in this world? In my sudden realization, my eyes betrayed me and they sent tears soaring down my cheeks towards the pavement. “I’m so sorry Tristan. I never would have done that to you. I don’t know what’s happening to me!” I said the words so frantically that they came out in such a jumbled mess I wondered if he even understood what I was saying at all. I just figured he did because he pulled me into his body and said something that was an attempt to calm me down, but didn’t. The next thing I knew I wasn’t on my feet anymore and I was being placed into the passenger side of his car. I watched with blurred vision as he went around the front of the car. His new injury seemed to stand out like a sour thumb on his once before smooth cheek; glowing bright red. It almost seemed as if it was laughing at me, but I figured and hoped that was just the bump on my head talking. He opened his door and crawled inside. I turned away as he looked at me, wanting, yet again, to avoid eye contact. This was just too much embarrassment for one day. Could one die from consecutive events of humiliation? At that last thought, as Tristan roared the engine to life, everything went black and I drifted off yet again into a deep, this time dreamless, sleep.