I woke up gasping. My chest ached, my head was pounding, and I felt like I couldn’t get enough air. I sat up, took a couple of deep breaths, and climbed shakily out of bed. My alarm hadn’t gone off yet, but it was almost time to get up anyway. I felt like I hadn’t slept all night long.

  My hands shook as I got ready. These dreams were getting too real. My throat kept burning, even after I drank a whole cup of water and the cut on my arm was stinging.

  I shook my head at my reflection, cheeks flushed and hair damp with sweat.

  I refused to entertain the thoughts that struggled to surface. I’d had a couple of highly realistic dreams, and all of the talk about dreams in psychology class was starting to mess with my head. I had not just drowned in my sleep!

  When I finally went downstairs, Mom took one look at me, and concern filled her eyes. “Are you okay, Maria?” she asked.

  “I think so.” I said, the hoarseness of my voice surprising me.

  “You don’t sound too good.”

  I smiled weakly at her. “It’s just the first time I’ve talked today.”

  She came towards me and put her hand on my forehead. “You feel a little warm. Do you want me to take your temperature? Maybe you’re getting what Jessica has.”

  “No, I’m okay. Just still a little tired.”

  Mom frowned. “You are always tired these days.”

  I smiled weakly at her. “I should get going, or Barb is going to have to wait for me.”

  “Okay. Call me if you feel sick today, though. I’ll come get you.”

  I nodded and left, making my way carefully down the long driveway. The ground was muddy and the dirt road was now covered with brightly-colored fallen leaves.

  I didn’t write anything in my dream journal as I sat alone on the bus. I felt wrung out, physically and emotionally exhausted, and I staggered through the morning.

  When I walked into Psych class, I was almost relieved to see that John was back. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about dreams. I didn’t even want to talk to Keegan. I looked around but didn’t see him. Maybe he was sick. I sat down and lay my head on the desk, trying not to think about anything at all.

  A few minutes went by as talk swirled around me. I heard someone asking if I was okay, but I didn’t bother to look up. I was so tired.

  “Hey, Keegan!” John’s call stood out from the jumble of voices.

  I glanced up just in time to see John give Keegan a friendly slap on the back.

  Keegan jerked away, flinching.

  “You okay, man?” asked John.

  Keegan recovered quickly and smiled at John. “Just sore. Weight training. You would know if you weren’t gone all the time.”

  “Yeah. Yeah.” John turned around and sat down.

  Keegan glanced over at me, his eyes serious. I just stared back, not wanting to think about what I had just seen, but I couldn’t help it. My mind was racing. Keegan had jerked away when John hit his back. The punishment for helping stowaways in the dream was five lashes. That was what the captain had said.

  But that couldn’t be the reason Keegan had jerked away. It was so absurd that even thinking about it made my brain hurt. A feeling of panic began to well up inside of me, but I shoved it fiercely away.

  After the lesson, when everyone moved towards the front to get the dream dictionaries, I got up mechanically and joined the line, got a dictionary and shuffled back to my seat. I already knew what dreaming about a ship meant, so I slowly flipped the pages to “drowning.” The dictionary said drowning meant I was overwhelmed, that I needed to slow down, stop digging into my unconscious.

  “Stupid dreams,” I said quietly, looking down at the dictionary.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Suddenly an open notebook was pushed towards me. Keegan was holding it. “Read it,” he said gruffly.

  I slowly looked up at him. His face was pale. The barrier that I was so used to seeing in his eyes was gone. His hand shook ever so slightly as he held out the notebook to me.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Please,” he said, “just read it.”

  I took the notebook and started reading Keegan’s sloppy handwriting:

  Last night, on the ship, Maria was there again. We climbed up to the lookout and watched the sea until we sailed into a mist. When we climbed back down, she was discovered by the men. She managed to jump over the side before they got her. We couldn’t see her in the mist. We couldn’t even hear her. And even though I hope she drowned, she won’t be much safer anywhere else.

  I don’t know what to do…

  There was more, but I stopped reading. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. My eyes darted to Keegan’s, searching desperately for some rational explanation for what was happening.

  “I’m sorry,” Keegan whispered, seeing my panic. “I know it seems crazy.”

  I stood up and rushed from the room without stopping to get permission to leave. I ran down the hall and out the door into the cold outside. I kept going, through the parking lot, across the street until I got to the football field. I ran up to the top of the bleachers and sat down, hugging my knees, staring into the distance, afraid I was going crazy.

  “Maria,” Keegan said. He had followed me outside.

  I took a deep breath to calm myself, but didn’t look at him.

  “Ria, are you okay?” He touched my arm lightly.

  I jerked away from him. “What is happening to me?” I choked out.

  Keegan sighed and sat down resting his head in his hands. “It’s called Dreamwalking,” he said quietly.

  “But what is happening to me, Keegan?” I whispered.

  “You’re going to Dream Worlds,” he said, head still bowed in his hands. “When you dream, it’s real, and everything is really happening to you.”

  I tried to wrap my brain around what he was saying. It seemed so impossible, but how else would he have known about the dream? I hadn’t told anyone; I hadn’t even written it down. He must have been there. He had really been in my dream, or I had been in his. Or, we had both been somewhere else, in some world that was made of dreams.

  “I don’t believe you,” I said, desperate for that to be true.

  Keegan looked up at me. “I know you do,” he said softly. “I’m sorry. I know how crazy it all feels when it first starts.”

  I stared at him. “How long have you been… you know… Dreamwalking?” I said the word hesitantly. I still couldn’t believe that I was really having this conversation.

  Keegan sighed a long sigh, staring out across the field. “About a year. And I get it. I really thought for a while that I was losing it.”

  “But… but… it’s impossible! You can’t go places in your dreams!” I protested.

  Keegan gave a bitter laugh and reached out to take my hand. He pushed up my sleeve, his fingers tracing the scrape down my arm. I remembered him flinching away from John, remembered what the captain had said on the ship about the punishment for helping stowaways.

  “They did something to hurt you, didn’t they?” I asked.

  Keegan shrugged. “It’s not as bad once you wake up.” I could see the dread in his eyes and ignored his nonchalant tone.

  “Show me,” I said harshly.

  The smile left his face, and he slowly turned around. He lifted his sweatshirt partway up his back. Angry, fiery-red welts criss-crossed his skin. There were far more than five.

  I gasped.

  Keegan quickly dropped his shirt and turned to face me. “The Captain got pretty angry when you got away.”

  “Keegan, I am so sorry,” I said.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said, shrugging. “And I’ve had worse things happen to me.”

  Suddenly all of his injuries over the past months made sense. I just shook my head at him as a tear slipped out and ran down my face.

  Keegan watched me, a pained expression in his eyes. “I tried to stop it,” he said. “I tried to keep you out of it. I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.”

  “How is this your fault?”

  Keegan took a deep breath. “You wouldn’t have started Dreamwalking if I hadn’t started talking to you again,” he said. “But there are powerful Dreamwalkers after you. They sent someone to pull me into the Dreams over a year ago. They figured you and I were so close that I would pull you in with me, but I just couldn’t let that happen. I…I had to keep you away.”

  I stared at him. “This whole last year… it was all because of dreams?” I asked.

  Keegan nodded, mouth pressed into a thin line.

  Something suddenly made sense to me. “It was your dad, wasn’t it?” I asked.

  Keegan nodded. “They made him come home.”

  “So what changed?” I asked. “Why are you talking to me now?” I didn’t mean it as an accusation, but it came out sounding like one.

  “They sent someone else after you, Maria. I thought if I could get to you first, if I was the one who pulled you in, I could at least keep you away from them. But then it worked, and I wasn’t even sure what to do. I definitely didn’t want you in the ship dream. I almost killed you there myself when we were up in the crow’s nest.”

  “What would have happened if the Captain had caught me?”

  Keegan shook his head. “Nothing good. I don’t think he even knew it was you, but it’s not safe for any Dreamers there now.”

  “What am I going to do?” I asked.

  “I’ll find you, wherever you turn up next. I’ll keep you safe.”