When I could again see, I once more beheld the boy. That beautiful, immaculate boy. I gazed into his eyes, even as he glared back at me. We shared each other’s gaze for what seemed like eons before I blinked, and he was replaced by…

Vik?

“Andi?” Vik called. “Wake up, Andi!”

But I didn’t want to wake up! I wanted to remain in the dream, with the boy.

But he was gone…

“What… what happened?” I asked groggily as I sat up in the school nurse’s office.

“You fainted,” Bree answered.

After that enlightening statement, the nurse riddled me with questions about whether or not I was eating sufficiently, if I’d suffered any blows to the head recently and so on and so forth.

When I was finally set free from the confinement of the bleached white room, Vik, ever the humble pal, offered an apology.

“I am really sorry, Andi,” he admitted. “I shouldn’t have blamed you.”

“It’s okay,” I answered. “I forgive you.”

The storm had apparently passed as quickly as it came, and as we left school, we talked for a few minutes about class and Mr. Dunleavy’s latest barrage of horrible history puns and everything that wasn’t the Necronomicon, before eventually parting ways in the parking lot.

Vik took off on his Vespa, but as I walked with Bree to her car, I had the oddest sensation that I was being watched. I looked behind me, but the place was deserted. All the other students had left campus long ago and only a few lonely faculty cars remained.

“What is it?” Bree asked, always quick to jump in with the third degree.

I shook my head dismissively, but as I went around to the passenger side of her car, the feeling struck me again—an icy chill that made my flesh crawl. I twisted back to look over my shoulder, and this time, I saw someone standing on the school steps.

Across the expanse of the parking lot, his eyes met mine, and I instantly felt an overwhelming sense of hatred emanating from them. I tensed and pulled the car door open, scrambling inside. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if I even knew the guy. But then I realized… It was him.

The boy from my dream.

Chapter Four: Consternation

My alarm went off at 7:30 a.m. the next morning, just like it did every school day. The smell of fresh coffee wafted up from the kitchen. Outside my window, a bird chirped. It seemed that the world would keep on turning, indifferent to my personal crisis.

It was all in my head, I decided, staring up at my bedroom ceiling. I’d just seen a guy who happened to resemble the one from my dream. Nothing strange about that. After all, there must have been hundreds of tall, handsome guys with black hair and green eyes in the world.