Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 68195 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68195 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Mom was never forthcoming with details. Whenever I would ask about our lives and why we seemed so different from all the other families we came in contact with, she’d just shut down or change the subject. This went on for a long time and only fed my sense of loneliness and fear.
But then the dreams had come, just when my life was about to change again, when I was going through that change from girl to woman.
At first I didn’t know what they meant, still don’t know truth be known. I just knew they were my only solace, the only things I had to look forward to in a life that I found very confusing.
After the first time I asked mom about the boy in my dream, the one I somehow knew was Angel and she had freaked way the hell out and moved us in the dead of night. I’d learned to keep them to myself after that.
These dreams were like no others that I’d ever had before. They seemed more real, as if I had been transported somewhere else.
Somewhere where I was safe and happy, where I didn’t have to live in fear of whatever phantom was tormenting my mother. Whatever demons chased her from place to place.
Back then he would appear whenever I was feeling down or scared. I don’t know how Angel knew when I needed him but he always showed up in my dreams. I had a strange feeling that there was once a time when he hadn’t been there when I’d needed him most.
At sixteen they had changed altogether and had become darker. There was a new sense of danger, though the underlying feeling of comfort was still ever prevalent.
That’s when I’d started seeing him, first it was just his eyes, but gradually I’d seen him. It was silly I know, but I fell in love with that dream man.
Then just before I’d made the decision to come here, the dreams had changed once again. Now I was always running from someone, or something. I wasn’t sure that it was he doing the chasing, but I was always aware of his presence there as well.
Now I’d seen him in the flesh and it was all very confusing. I touched my forehead where his lips had touched me and my heart jumped. Shaking my head at my fanciful thoughts, I walked back the way I’d come.
***
I made my way back to class at a snail’s pace, constantly looking over my shoulder in the hopes that he’d show up again. I had so many questions and somehow knew that he would have the answers.
There was no sign of him by the time I reached the door, and I had no choice but to walk back to my desk, in front of the gawking students who’d all witnessed what had transpired.
“Ms. Tanning thank heavens, what did he do to you?” The teacher seemed spooked, for lack of a better word, and kept looking towards the door as if expecting him to follow behind me.
“Um, noth...nothing...um, he didn’t do anything sir.” I did my whole lost girl routine in one shot. Biting lip, check, wringing hands, check, hanging head, check, shuffling feet, check. You’re such a dweeb Jazz.
If I’d thought to avoid the attention of my new classmates I was off to a rocking start. Now, the looks were even more penetrating, and some of them were outright hostile, especially from the females.
I didn’t even bother looking at the kid who’d been roughed up; I’d decided that he must’ve been the one who threw the paper at me. How this Azarov even knew it had happened was a mystery, since he obviously hadn’t been in class.
“Where’d he go?” Why was a teacher so nervous of a kid anyway? Weird.
“I’m not sure sir, he went that way.” I pointed in the general direction Azarov had taken.
“Okay, take your seat.”
He carried on with the rest of the class like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. At the bell I hotfooted it out of there as fast as my feet would carry me, not even paying attention to the not so subtle little jabs from the blonde cheerleader type, who was shooting daggers at me with her eyes.
I found the rest of my classes with ease and tried my best to be as unobtrusive as possible.
I think the word had spread that Azarov had nearly decapitated some guy, whose name I’d overheard was John Bryn, for hitting me in the head with a harmless paper ball.
It worked to keep people away from me that was for sure, except...
“Hi, I’m Michelle Sever and you have got to tell me how you know the delicious Azarov.” A girl with a friendly smile peered out at me from behind wire rimmed glasses.
We were in the cafeteria for lunch break and I’d found the table closest to the wall and away from the usual hubbub of a high school lunchroom.