Chapter 3

"Rosey, anything. I don't think she's going to be okay." I heard Chase's voice faintly in the background.

The falling sensation I had been experiencing came to a halt and my stomach went through my throat. My heart was beating irregularly but I was just glad it was beating at all. My eyes slited open and sunlight invaded my field of vision painfully, I snapped my eyes shut again, unable to lift my hand to shield them. When I open my eyes again, Chase was sitting next to me on the bed, blocking most of the incoming sunlight. Yes, I was on a bed. My own bed actually, I registered, as I recognized the room around me. My room. I breathed in sharply, not knowing what to expect next.

I had a headache, a reasonably bad one. I closed my eyes again. The sunlight was only making the headache worse. Chase said my name worryingly. I said I was fine, but my head hurts. Really, it wasn't the light hurting my eyes that mattered, the light hurt my mind. I grimaced, as if in pain, but it was fear not pain behind that look. I must have been dreaming. And that frightened me, because I was not in control of that dream. I could always control my dreams, I could always control everyone else's too. I was as helpless as anyone in that dream, and dreams can kill you.

I shuddered at the thought and at the memory. When I was little, I thought dreams were fantasies and fears. So when I began showing up in other people's dreams, as an observer, I thought that I was imagining myself being in the dream. It didn't cross my mind that I might be a dreamweaver even though I came from a powerful family and had shown no other talents. I didn't figure it out until I was six.

I'd been in school at the time, listening to my ever-boring teacher drone on about something or other. I really wasn't paying attention, because I was focusing on this girl in the front right corner of the room. The girl was falling asleep and I was watching her, when suddenly part of me was in her dream. I didn't have to be asleep to be in a dream, I always thought of it as daydreaming. I wasn't really in her dream, I was in her nightmare. She was afraid of the dark because to her it represented death, and she was close to dying. The doctor's gave her a year at most, there was no treatment for her because they didn't know what the problem was. She was so scared, she had this fear I had never felt before, and that's when I knew that it wasn't me dreaming about her- it was me watching her dream about herself. And that's when I began to tap onto my talent.

Maybe that's why I was so close to Chase, because I knew what his dreams were. He was sleeping in the school library when I first meet him. He was leaning over one of the school digi-functioners. Trying to study for a math class he had next period I found out later, math is not his best subject. But regardless he was dreaming, he was remembering the night before. It wasn't a pleasant dream needless to say. Yes, Chad and Chase were a lot alike. I went over and woke him up he didn't need sleep as much as he needed to get away from that dream. But I didn't wake him up in the waking world, I was sucked into his dream but unlike the other dreams I wasn't just an observer- I was a participant. When he saw me in the dream, he jolted awake, like he had seen a ghost. Then he spotted me, the girl from his dream. That's how we became friends.

We were the closest of the group. Chase meant too much to me but I could trust him. I had felt his pain, and now he was watching mine.

He sat on the bed watching me, I could feel his eyes. He looked worried when I opened my eyes to look at him, well I was worried too. My eyes adjusted and the headache had all but gone away in those few minutes I had lain in my bed.

"Hey Chase." I said.

"Rosey. Oh god, you're awake. I was so scared. I thought you were sleeping but dead. Rosey, Rosey," he said, hugging me strongly.

Sleeping but dead, yeah. When you die in a dream, it effects your physical body, usually it's just the falling sensation. But sometimes it doesn't work like that and you die consciously. Comatose, sleeping but dead too. It was almost common in what few dreamweavers there are, that and insanity.

Dreamweavers, that's what they called people like me. There aren't a lot of dreamweavers. Only one in ten thousand in a world with a population of 200,000. The least common talent, really, and dangerous to those who possess it. Because if a dreamweaver lost control of the dreams they entered, they could unleash any amount of terror. It had happened before, ten years before I was born. A dreamweaver named Briston Gerrison had been injured and part of his brain stopped completely functioning. He also entered the dreams of the other people in the hospital, automatically, but he saw them as demons or something. Not a single sleeping being made it through that night alive. That was the first big murder scene in the history of Genesis. Since then they've been a little extra cautious, which is why I wasn't surprised to see my watcher, Serea, standing by the window.

"Chase, I'm fine." I said. "And Serea don't worry. I didn't go on a mass murdering spree." I sneered.

I'm not exactly fond of Serea, and the feeling's mutual. It mostly had to do with the fact that I had kinda terrorized her in a dream when I was like eight. I was in a bad mood and she was being rude previous to falling asleep. Since then she had sorta avoided me, in the way that she wouldn't get within fifty feet of me unless absolutely necessary. Funny how people don't like being avoided, so we weren't exactly on the best terms.

Serea turned to face me and said, "Good, now I can get out of here."

"Bye-bye." I replied.

She left and I exaggerated relief. Chase giggled. He must have been really scared.

"Chase I can't exactly tell you what happened, I wish I could, but I was just dreaming. I was in total control once I got in the dream," I lied.

There was no sense in having him worry.

"So, how long was I out?" I asked.

"Five hours." He replied quickly.

"Five hours," I muttered to myself, "That sounds right."

Before Chase could ask what I meant, Angel bounded into the room.

"Hey, sis, glad you're awake. Had us all scared, but now you're okay. Don't do that again, k?"

"I'll try not to," I laughed.

She leaned over so Chase couldn't hear her next comment. "Want to go scope out some cute guys?"

I laughed; Angel did have a one-track mind, and usually it was on guys.

"Maybe later, Ang, maybe later. I think I'll just hang out with Chase for awhile."

"You are way too committed sis. Really, you should come have some fun with me."

I rolled my eyes and Ang laughed, then she bounced back out of the room accidentally slamming into Adler- Hayden, dude…names are confusing.

"Hey Amby," He said.

"Hey."

"So, you're going to be okay."

"I'm me, what do you think?" I laughed.

He hit his head; acting as if he had just said the dumbest thing. "Oh yeah, how could I forget, you were never okay."

I rolled my eyes again.

"Well, I think she's perfect just the way she is," Chase said, and he kissed me.

It felt good, him kissing me, but part of me wanted Alder to be kissing me instead. Adler, not Hayden, and it took me a second to realize why. Amber was still in my head, but I was awake, this felt like a nightmare I couldn't escape and nothing had even begun yet. This was the tip of the iceberg, and I wasn't going to stay aboard the ship. God, I'm going insane. This is worse that not controlling my dreams, this is much, much worse. Sh*t. I closed my eyes, trying to hold back the tears. I hate not being in control, and I could always control myself before. I still could really. I just couldn't control Amber, and Amber was part of me now. Chase picked up on my feelings immediately, and he hugged me and whispered in my ear 'What's wrong?'

"Nothing, just a bad dream," I insisted.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. You know how sensitive I am to dreams."

"Okay, if you're sure," he said, sensing my lying.

I wasn't sure. I wasn't even close to sure.

"Chase, man, she said she was sure," Hayden agreed.

Now I remembered why I chose Chase over Hayden. Chase knew me and understood me. He didn't need to be sure of what I was saying because even if I was lying I had a good reason. He trusted that. My good reason now was that I was telling a boy who looked exactly like him about it instead of him, a great reason really. I feel bad. He feels bad, and Hayden and Angel are oblivious. They really do fit together well, even if it would be weird having my best friend and my sister date.

Chase met my eyes, and I bit my lip nervously. He sighed. I mouthed 'don't worry' and smiled weakly. He smiled back unhappily. I sat back up in the bed and pulled to covers off, I was still wearing what I was out in the park.

"You guys want to leave, I'm kinda need to get dressed," I said.

"Why doesn't Chase stay?" Hayden said.

I punched him on the arm jokingly and pointed towards the door. "Out people," I said.

Hayden shrugged. "Just a suggestion," he said as he left.

"I'll be right out," I told Chase and closed the door behind him.

I got dressed quickly, just some jeans and a baggy thin sweater thing that was lilac and totally clashed with my hair. Then I wet back out into the hall. Chase and Hayden weren't there. The hall wasn't there. I was in a bathroom, and the bathroom adjoining my room and the guestroom. I was back on Earth. D*mn it! But I realized something, this time instead of me blacking out Amber and I had just switched places. In the back of my mind I could see the hall and Chase through her eyes, on my world. Where I should be.