• The Beginning~
    The beginning is always the best at first. Because you don’t know that there’ll be a happy ending. You just assume it’ll go downhill from there.

    I can’t even start to explain why I was out of it. I guess I can start and say that it’s my dreams have been bugging me. I keep waking up in the middle of the night gasping for a breath and sweating. I know they’re just dreams… but they’re really bad. What’s worse than Nightmare? Because that’s what they are.
    “I don’t even like coconut! I‘ve had it before! It‘s nasty!” My friend Lacey said. She had a lollipop stuck in her hair. I guess that she licked it, threw it --aiming for the trash-- and hit her brother who threw it back and got it in her hair. When I heard ‘coconut’ I knew for sure that the world of Dum-Dum’s had gone terribly wrong if they got the brilliant idea to make one coconut.
    “That. Is. Disgusting.” Then I pulled out the lollipop and dropped it in the trash. Lacey’s hair was a total mess now and I was going to be late home. But I didn’t want to walk all the way home… even though it wasn’t that long of a walk. Just a couple minutes. But I was tired. Like really tired.
    I felt like I was going to die one of these nights. Because there are always the same people in my dreams. I can’t get away from them then they catch me and then… it’s not even a dream anymore. Because even when I wake up I can still feel the pain. Then I have to pretend like everything’s okay during the day in front of my parents and sister. I should be thankful that I don’t wake up screaming. I wouldn’t know what to do if that happened. I can’t explain my overly nightmare-ish nightmares to my family.
    “Hey! Ivy! Ivy Lanks!” Lacey yelled about two seconds after I ran out her front door. I stopped and turned around to see what was wrong.
    “What, Lacey?” I asked.
    “I like your socks! They’re all cool and colorful and stuff!”
    “You couldn’t mention this before the entire time I was there… why?” Lacey confused me sometimes with her utter randomness. One time we were talking about something about ninjas vs. pirates and she voted bananas. Even though bananas won the fight and people moved on, I would have loved to know what was going through her head right then.
    “I don’t know… I just felt like it now. Would you have preferred I bring it up next week instead?”
    “No that’s okay. But I got to go now. Like badly. It’s almost dark and I don’t want someone at home asking ‘What on earth could have been so important that you had to stay later than you should have?’ I don‘t really want to explain the lollipop
    incident.” I said, trying to imitate my mom’s voice. She must have decided to leave it at
    that, ‘cause she just waved good-bye and closed her window.
    I was walking down a hill that got onto my street and was in my own little world. So I didn’t notice the weird teen boy watching me in the woods. A motorcycle went by me from behind and scared me so bad that I fell over into the little path of water that was next to the road. That’s when he can over and helped me up. Which by the way was kind of awkward.
    “Uh. Hey? Thanks…” I was brushing the dirt off of me and my hair. The boy stood there for a second before saying, “Yeah… No problem… bye.”
    I stood there until he had been out of eyesight a few seconds. It was like my touch had made it awkward. Like he just found out something horrible, like his grandmother died. But I thought nothing of it and assumed I’d never see him again. I just ran the rest of the way home and went to bed like nothing weird had just happened.