Dreams, Again

I don't even have enough time to ramble about school or anything else unrelated to what I came here to talk about. So let's just leave it at this: I have no fucking time and I'm under so much pressure and I am the epitome of a stressed out catastrophe. Got it? Good.

Last night I only got about five hours of sleep, but I had two dreams, I want to get them in writing, like I usually do, before I forget. In the first dream, I was with my sister, my best friend Marisa, and her younger sister Katie. Our mothers dropped us off in front of a large building that looked like a cross between an abandoned factory and a run down school. It was evening, but the sky was more gray than dark blue. Everything looked surreal, as if I was trapped inside a video game. Everything I saw and touched glinted and shone as if painted on. The four of us had some sort of mission to complete in the cafeteria, and we were supposed to do it quickly, so we took off running. I'm convinced I was in a video game in my dream, because my legs felt controlled and mechanical, and most of all, distant and unreal. I was a puppet controlled an unseen puppeteer. We found the cafeteria and there were a lot of lights. That's all I remember. I remember the four of us mostly running around aimlessly and not getting anything accomplished, like in those video games where you're playing with another person and you can't leave the screen's view unless they're following. You'll end up running in place. Eventually we finished our mission. Whatever it was, I don't know. But afterwards we caught glimpses of two people we did not know, both of whom looked like a cross between a custodian and a security guard. We decided to play a Breakfast Club-esque game and see how long we could run around before one of them noticed us. We ran for a long time, at least two hours, all of us taking separate routes to make the game last longer. What was weird was that even as I was running by myself, I knew where Christie, Katie, and Marisa were. It was as if there was a small camera in my head that allowed me to peek into their lives. After, as I said, hours of jogging around this strange building, the four of us met up at the top of the stairs. We ran back down (we must really love running) to the first floor because our mothers were out there. Just as we passed a room, we realized, too late, that one of the two men was in there. We started sprinting, but the man was tall and his long strides easily caught up with my short, quick ones.
"What are you doing here?" he huffed.
"We finished the mission." My voice was cold and sharp, not at all like how I would usually address an intimidating man.
"You should have done that hours ago."
"We did." As if on cue, Marisa, Katie, and Christie caught up with me and we bolted ahead of the man. I winked at him.
We burst through the doors leading outside to see our mothers standing against the gray sports car they apparently owned. My mother was smoking a cigarette, even though she quit smoking in her twenties.
"What the fuck took you so long?" she growled. "Standin' out here for hours, dammit."
"It doesn't matter. We're done now," I answered.
The man, who I hadn't realized was beside me until now, spoke up. "I brought 'em out for you, ma'am." He tipped his hat, and I rolled my eyes in response.
"No, you didn't," I argued. "You followed us out."
My mother shot a glare at me.
"Why thank you, kind sir." She tossed the cigarette on the concrete in front of her and smothered it with her foot.

That was all.

My second dream took place at Starbucks, except everything was either red or maroon. Around Christmas, Starbucks had started giving out red cups with snowflakes on them instead of their normal cup. All of the walls were painted this color now, and the inside of the building was shaped like a lightning bolt. There was a counter where you could order a drink and two-person tables along the jagged walls, but in the middle were lab tables, the kind you see in high school biology and chemistry classes. I was sitting at one of the biology lab tables in the middle of the cafe, with my friend Raksha drinking a coffee to my left. She was chattering away, like her normal self, but all I could hear was my father's loud voice echoing in my ears. He was standing behind me, and I wondered who he could possibly be talking to, and why he was even at Starbucks in the first place. I turned around to glare at my father and noticed for the first time who he was talking to: Tyler's mother. I froze for a second and then tore my eyes away. She was a short woman, oddly enough, considering her whole family was above six feet. She had hair exactly like my mother's except a shade lighter. My mother went to high school with her, but I've always been scared to look her in the eye. As if, by just one look, she would be able to see through me and understand the real reason I went to church every Saturday: because I was irrevocably in love with her younger son.
So I turned away immediately, my face losing color. I pushed my drink away from me and Raksha immediately noticed.
"What? What?" she asked. Then she turned around. "Oh, oh, whatever! Whatever! Don't worry!" She pushed back her stool and began to do something in front of our lab table. I don't remember if it was a dance or a song or something...but she was trying to divert my attention away from who else was inevitably behind me. Ignoring Raksha's useless effort, I turned around the other way, and sure enough, there was Tyler. Looking at him felt like a kick to the stomach, as it has been feeling like that lately. I glanced briefly up at his face just as he looked at me. There were no smiles exchanged between us, just like church last Saturday. We just looked at each other, and then looked away. In my dream, however, after I turned around, Tyler said, "Hey." I turned only halfway around on my stool.
"Hey," I said quietly. My God, I sounded like a tortured animal.
"Isn't this the most god awful thing you've ever seen?" Tyler obviously didn't take note. I looked up and noticed that he had a large dry cleaning bag in his hand, and he unzipped the front to reveal a monstrously huge sweater. It was tan with a picture of Mickey Mouse on the front, and for a second I thought of Two-Bit. but I didn't mention that. Instead I said, "It's not horribly ugly." Tyler leaned forward a bit and cocked an eyebrow. My mind was stuck on Two-Bit, still, and controlling my shaking hands.
"Come on," he said. "Honestly." He shoved the sweater so it was right in front of my eyes.
"Okay." I gave in, pushing it back towards him. I bit my lip to keep from laughing. "It is horribly ugly."
"Most god awful ugly as hell thing you've ever seen?"
"Absolutely." I glanced back at Raksha, who appeared to be performing an extravagent one woman dancing routine, and decided to get up and stand next to Tyler. We made quick small talk, but mostly we listened in on the conversation my father and his mother were having. I don't remember what they said, but their conversation was finished too soon. Tyler's mother said they had to go, and promptly walked out of Starbucks.
"Well, I gotta go," he said, patting my father on the shoulder. I didn't know they knew each other. Then he turned to me and bent down a little to hug me, his arms around my waist for only a brief second before he pulled back. I thought stupidly that maybe he was as smart as his mother, and he feared that if he hugged me, I would never let go. So he pulled back before I had a chance to hug him back. "See ya," he said, turning around to walk away, his mind already erasing the past fifteen minutes from his memory, his eyes already forgetting my face.