Chapter 19

My eyes flew open and I sucked in air. At some point during my nap Sierra must have come back because I could make out her soft snores from underneath me. By now my breath was coming in short, uneven gasps and my room seemed to be spinning. Once I had taken enough calming breaths, had plenty of oxygen flowing to my brain, and could see straight again I grabbed my phone and checked the time. It read 11:30 P.M.

I took another deep breath to try to steady my shaking hands and began my text message to Zane.

Look, we need to talk. ASAP. –S

I quickly hit send before I could change my mind and then set my phone back down near my pillow.

I need answers

, I thought to myself, I need the truth. Why am I having these dreams? If they are even considered dreams… What’s Zane hiding? Who is that creepy reappearing guy?

I let out a sigh of annoyance and blinked back tears of frustration as Sierra began to wake up.

“Summer? Was that you?” She asked then seeing the tears in my eyes, which I was trying(unsuccessfully)to hide. She quickly got up out of her bed and began climbing up onto my bunk. “What’s wrong? Did you get hurt again? Or was it just a bad dream?” She asked as she positioned herself at the foot of my bed.

“Well,” I began but was interrupted by my phone ringing. My heart leapt and Sierra, who must’ve seen my excited face, quietly mumbled something about having to take off her make-up, then got down and walked into the bathroom we shared to give me privacy.

“Hello?” I asked when I was finally able to speak.

“Summer, It’s Zane, I got your message,” He said and there was almost a hint of precaution in his voice as he continued, “but I can’t meet with you.”

I frowned when I heard that and couldn’t help but feel my anger from beginning to rise again. “No? Well I’m pretty sure you can talk,” I replied, and even I

shivered at the ice cold tone of my voice.

“Look, can you drop the attitude? It’s not like I don’t want to talk. I’m in detention and we aren’t even supposed to have phones in here but the teacher walked out so I figured I’d risk it.”

“Detention, huh? For what?” I asked and as soon as the words left my mouth I realized why he was there and felt like a complete, utter moron.

“I’m in here for punching a guy who threatened to hurt this really amazing girl. I never would’ve guessed that I’d be the one to hurt her,” he said his words felt like blows to my heart and normally I would’ve been flattered by him calling me amazing, but tonight it just annoyed me.

“Well the ‘amazing girl is looking for answers and, though she may be mistaken, she thinks she deserves something that starts with I’m and ends with Sorry,” I said and then remembering my dream I added, “You could start by explaining yourself.”

“Look, I want to talk Summer, really I do, but I can’t do
this right now, and I’d rather we talked about this face to face, anyways,” He said an I felt my rising anger begin to slip away piece by piece as it always did when I listened to his soothing voice.

“Meet me outside under the big oak at 6:00 A.M. That’s assuming you’re not in detention then?” I asked and I felt a pang of heart break as I remembered when we’d sat by the oak on our first date.

“Yeah, I’ll be there,” He said pulling me out of my flash back.

“See you then,” I said and was about to push End Call when
Zane said, “And Summer?”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“I’m sorry.”

I took a deep breath and replied in a calm, even voice,” We’ll talk later.” Then I hung up on the only guy I’ve ever loved and for the very first time in weeks, fell into a dreamless slumber.