CHAPTER - 3

Avy Winston.

I covered my face with my hands.

"Really Anwir, you are going to stalk her now?"

I helped myself up to see what he was doing. Five minutes and they both were already texting. Wow, that was fast. I started feeling drowsy. And hungry. A little war inside my brain gave an instant answer.

Food first.

"Hey, help me to the kitchen, I gotta eat."

"Dude, there's a railing all along the stairs, take its help. I'm in the middle of an important mission. She's just…. damn bro!"

I eyed him, which had to be the scariest in our history.

But it definitely didn't scare one fiber in him.

"Dick."

"I'll take that as a 'you're-the-best-but-you-have-a-life-too'."

He glared back at me.

"Fine."

And I left. I walked down, really slowly, given that I always sprinted on the steps. I reached the kitchen counter. I stood there, holding the corner of the granite. Then I went around, into the kitchen and took out a plate and a bowl, and went to the fridge. Mac and cheese. Not good not bad.

I had no strength to search for anything else or cook up something new. I settled for it and left it to heat in the oven. I waited for the ding. There was a ringing instead. Concussion? Even if it was, I'm just waiting to get dozed out by the Tylenol. I need this day to be over already. So I'm going with the ringing just being the oven. I picked up two forks and an extra plate, just in case for him. And when I went up panting just to look at him laughing his ass off.

"What?"

"Oh, she's funny!" he screamed. Wheezed, to be particular. He started saying something else while swallowing half the stuff because he couldn't catch his breath.

"Okay, only dogs can hear you now", I told him but far be it for him to even care about what I said.

"So be it, they also deserve her humor, bro!"

Oh wow, this is escalating really fast.

"You're crazy," I muttered in a singsong tune. Sitting beside him on the bed, I dangled my legs. They felt a little better already. Could be a placebo too. Whatever it was, I didn't care at that moment. I started digging in.

And of course, very soon, his hands were in it too. Not literally though. I have a thing about people touching my food.

"Hey!"

"What? You would never eat it all alone, boy. Come on. I've known you my whole life, like, literally."

"I could," I suggested.

He then finally tore his gaze away from the screen and looked at me.

"Man, you have the worst appetite, okay? Let me eat my part."

I ate some part of it. He was absolutely right. I couldn't eat the whole thing. Not even half, to be fair. And I gave up. I hate it when he's right. It's just too much ammunition in his inventory. Free tip: (not what you're thinking, you garbage-minded freaks) NEVER let your best friends be right. They'll always hold that over your head. Make it your life goal to keep proving them wrong.

"Fine. You know what? I'm done here. I'm done with you. I think I'm done with life in its entirety. Listen, calling it a night now. Please, please stop creeping that poor girl out and just keep the conversation light and breezy."

"YOU don't tell me about light and breezy. You've never asked out someone. What would you know?"

I scoff. Audibly.

And a second would've passed after the words left my mouth, when, "Dude! Get up. Get up. Get up!" came out of his.

"You do realize that it hasn't even been a nanosecond, right?"

"Whatever. Just look at this. Look, look." And when I saw that, I knew my jaw hit the floor. THE HOLOGRAM CLOAKS. Frickin' hell. Someone in Montreal had used them already. It had disguised an object. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? If I wasn't bruised all over, I would've asked Anwir to punch me or just do something out of the blue to make me believe that this is a thing now. Disguising objects. Hologram cloaks.

It's like a crossover between Harry Potter and Aladdin, don't ask me why or how. I'm not very clear on that yet. As much as this news filled me with adrenaline and my mind wanted to read more and more about it, my body didn't obey. I fell back on the bed.

You know how when you have an imaginative brain, it's not always a good thing? Yeah, dreams are a firsthand testament to this statement. I've come to know that people like having dreams. First of all, they're all psychotic. I mean, come on, why do you want to see people do terrifying, horrible things in your sleepy and supposedly comfy time when that's your daily life? But the thing I also discovered is that people have...….sweet dreams. That cannot be a thing. Sweet dreams are just fairy tales elders tell their toddlers. I might be sounding sad right now, but it's my truth.

I've never had a happy dream. Reading up the psychology that goes behind dreaming something lovely and giggly itself freaked me out because sleeping so peacefully never occurred to me. Obviously, I don't remember my sleep when I was a kid but after a certain age, I started dreaming. And boy, that wasn't off to a good start. The typical nightmares are people falling off the buildings, someone stabbing them, non-metaphorically, and fires and whatnot. But my first dream was that someone who looked exactly like me was trying to erase me from my own life. I was crying and screaming, duh, no surprises there. Ira was the first one to get me. She woke me up from my sleep, switched on the light in our room, got me water, and called for Mom and Dad. I could feel my heartbeat in my ears. Something like runners high, I suppose. I joke about it now but it was difficult for me to sleep for about a week after that incident. Mom reached my bed first. She pulled me in a tight hug and asked me what had happened. Not being able to get any information out of me, she turned to Ira for the goss. Had I only realized then that Ira had been crying her ass off as well?

Dad had come in later with the nunchakus and a baseball bat. That was his attempt at humor. But no, he clarified that he brought those to kick my "attackers" away from me.

No no, he didn't bash my head. I finally got to take it after gulping down a jug of water. Told all of them about my dream, watched them hide their reactions, and tried to make me understand that it was just my brain tying up images I'd probably come across on TV or the Internet. Seems lame now but it was enough to get young Ash. Ira, however, who was still distraught because she was worried something had happened to me, was not fine yet. They had to take us out for ice cream later in the night. Looking back, I think it was a fairly neat way of solving that issue in the middle of the night. Expert spontaneity right there.