Page 5

Lily

I have no idea why I agreed to tutor Luka Russo. When I saw the panic in his eyes, I froze. It was like I was right back in the dream where it feels like I’m falling to my death and see those same intense and beautiful gray eyes staring back at me just before impact.

I’ve never understood what those eyes mean in my dream. All I know is that when I see them, I feel an overwhelming sense of relief, maybe even hope, that whoever it is can save me. I never, in a million years, expected to meet someone who had those eyes.

I certainly didn’t expect it to be Stella’s brother.

When I saw him, panic took over my body . I mean, what are the odds? And what does it all mean? Those questions swirled in my brain until I finally snapped out of it and realized I looked like a looney tune.

I tried to push all of that to the back of my mind and focus on the conversation, but it was difficult. It seems that Luka has had some serious academic issues and needs help in order to keep playing hockey.

The last thing I need on my plate right now is a needy jock, but I also can’t tell Stella no. I especially can’t tell her no when it comes to saving her twin brother’s college hockey career. He’s her favorite person in the world, and I’m her second. That means he’s kind of my responsibility, too, by proxy.

She’s been so great to me that I promised myself I would figure out a way to make it all work. This will be tough, but if I focus, I can do it. I’ll need to keep up with my own studies, the part-time coffee shop job I started over the summer to make ends meet, and also squeeze in time to tutor Luka.

I think about how happy Stella looked when I agreed and how contemplative Luka looked when we made plans later in the week to sit down and put together a game plan for his classes.

I need to know what I’m up against here. Planning and outlining everything I need to do helps ease the anxiety brewing in my body. When I first saw Luka, my first reaction was astonishment because of the obvious comparison to the person in my dream. Immediately after that, I felt a cold bite of fear run up my spine.

As dumb as it sounded to me, the truth was I’d dreamed of someone remarkably similar to him since I was a kid. I saw him up close, face to face, today. That implies the rest of the dream might have a kernel of truth to it.

Meaning I may have dreamed of my death since I was a little girl.

And that scares me.

Those are questions I don’t have answers to, and I won’t lie. The whole thing freaks me out.

After unlocking the door, I step into my apartment and drop my school bag right next to it. I kick off my tennis shoes and slide into a comfy pair of slippers I keep right there also. My place is cozy and all mine. It’s the first place I’ve had on my own, and after living in the dorms and having a roommate, I appreciate my tiny space even more. That’s why I’m willing to work a part-time job along with the money my grandma sends in order for me to have my own space.

I reach inside the front pocket of my purse for my phone before making my way over to the tan velvet lounge chair in the living room and sinking into it. I thrifted the couch, along with the high-winged-back chair and rug that I have in the room. All the pieces are comfy and functional—two of the main things I look for in a piece before I buy it . I pull up the number I talk to the most besides Stella and hit dial.

“Hello, honey, how did your test go?” My grandmother’s sweet but slightly gravelly voice settles that part of my stomach that’s been doing flips since I saw those intense gray eyes staring back at me .

“It was okay. I think I got a B. I’ll have to work the rest of the semester to make up for it. I didn’t sleep great last night,” I say as I pick at the insignificant speck of white on my blue jeans.

“ Oh, honey, you worry too much. Getting a B is fantastic!”

I nibble my bottom lip. “I know, but I wanted to do better. I will do better on the next one.” That statement is more of a distraction than anything because I need a few more moments to gather my thoughts before I ask her something incredibly important.

“Oh, pfft . You will. Don’t be so hard on yourself! I have nothing but faith in you, sweetheart.”

Her confidence in me always surprises me, and I don’t know why because it hasn’t ever wavered. Maybe that has more to do with my parents than with my grandma. While I’d love to sit and analyze my family dynamics, there is a far more important topic at hand.

“Do you think people can have premonitions?” I blurt, unable to contain it anymore.

The nibbling on my lip intensifies as I wait for her answer. I haven’t talked about my dream in years because of how everyone reacted when the dream continued.

At first, my parents were concerned, but only because they thought I had an overactive imagination. They were patient at first, but the longer it went on, that patience dwindled. Night after night of being woken up by my screams, the more their concern turned to anger, especially where my mother was concerned.

She would tell me I just needed to get over it and that it was silly to think I was actually dreaming about my death. She took me to a counselor once, but I was too terrified to talk to her. I knew the power that woman had, and I wasn’t about to look crazy enough to be hospitalized.

By that point, I knew my parents thought something was wrong with me, and I didn’t want a counselor confirming their fears. My mother became increasingly angry about it because she was convinced if I didn’t “knock my shit off,” that she would be the laughingstock of the neighborhood with a crazy daughter. Her words—not mine .

My father was more sympathetic and wanted to help me work through whatever was going on, but he grew tired of fighting with my mother about it every time I had a nightmare. In the end, it was easier for him to give in to her and dismiss me. To her, anything less than that was—and I quote from an argument I overheard one night—“enabling my psychosis.”

After seeing the counselor, I realized no one could or would help me, and I was making it harder on myself and my father by talking about it. After that, I kept the dream to myself. The frequency didn’t diminish, but my willingness to acknowledge it sure did.

For a long time, I thought something was wrong with me, too, but I slowly worked on pushing it out of my mind. I tracked when I had it and tried to find patterns in when it appeared in an effort to control the frequency.

Maybe it was stress or something I watched on TV, or maybe it coincided with my parents fighting. There were lots of things the counselor thought it could be, and I figured, “Why not test it?”

After a while, I found that stress and fatigue did, in fact, bring it out more. That was a relief at the time, so I tried to get to bed on time every night and do a schedule for my studies so I wasn’t stressed with my schoolwork or deadlines.

Unfortunately, while it worked to a certain degree, it never stopped it.

There was a long pause. “What’s this about, Lily?”

I hesitate to tell her. Do I want to bring all this back up? Maybe I should just keep burying it deep down. I’ve done it for years, and I’m still kicking. Clearly, it isn’t hurting anything.

Well, aside from the fact that I’m now convinced I met the man who has starred in that dream all my life.

Maybe I am crazy, I think.

I shake the thought away. If I can trust anyone, it’s my Grandma May. Seeing Luka’s eyes scared me, and now I have to see them on a regular basis. I need to talk this out with someone so they can reassure me and I won’t feel so dang crazy.

“Do you remember the dream I used to have?” I bite my lip nervously again.

She’s quiet for a moment. “Yes, I remember. ”

I rub my chest in soothing circles, then up the column of my throat because I’m feeling queasy. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel like it’s not just a dream.”

Shuffling around comes across the line, and I imagine her sitting down somewhere. “Does the dream feel real?”

I swallow hard, shocked by her clarity. “Yes.” There. Short, simple, and forward because that’s exactly how I feel. How can one part of it be real and not the other?

She sighs, and when she speaks, her voice is low and apprehensive. “I never thought you were crazy, and I’m sorry your mother made you feel like you were. Lily,” she pauses for a moment before continuing, “there is so much I need to tell you.”

My eyes snap wide open as I stare at the wall in absolute shock. “Wait—what?”

She sighs across the line. It sounds partly relieved. “I’ve held on to this for years. I always wanted to tell you, but I knew your mother would murder me. I knew the day would come when we would have this conversation.” She mumbles something under her breath that I can’t make out before speaking clearly. “Your Great-Grandma Pearl saw her death, too.”

A surprised squeak leaves my throat as I straighten even further. “Did I just hear you right?” Now my eyes dart around the room as I search back through the tone of her voice for any hint she may be joking or, heck, crazy herself. “Seriously? Why did nobody tell me this?”

“Well, your parents knew, but neither one of them wanted to admit that the same thing might have been happening to you. Especially your mother. Everyone thought my mother was losing her mind.”

My eyes somehow widen even further. “ What?! My parents knew ?!”

Grandma sighs again. “Yes, but your mother made me swear to never mention it to you, and I was terrified she’d never let me see you again if I told you because she threatened as much. I’m sorry I never mentioned it after you were eighteen. Honestly, I didn’t think you were still having the dream because you stopped talking about it.” There’s a tremble in her voice.

To say I’m shocked would be the understatement of the century. After all these years of being told and gaslighted into believing that I had a mental illness to now finally hearing that I’m not the only person in my family to experience it is… Well, it’s freeing , but it also pisses me off .

My nostrils flare from anger, but not at Grandma May. It’s for everyone else who lied. “The dream never stopped. I just stopped talking about it so they wouldn’t commit me.”

“Oh, no. I was afraid you might say that.” The shaking in her voice only grows stronger.

Tears prick at the corner of my eyes. “So, I take it by the way you worded it that her dream was , in fact, a vision? Meaning it came true?” I ask tentatively. I’m scared to hear the answer, but I need to know.

My grandmother swallows hard before answering. “Yes. It did.”

My heart immediately sinks, but my mind races for more clarity. “How did she die?”

Grandma May pauses for a moment, and when she answers, I can hear the pain in her voice. “It was an accident. She fell twenty feet from the top of our barn loft onto a pitchfork that was lying on the ground below. My brother was shoveling hay into the stalls earlier and left the pitchfork out. She slipped . She was fifty-eight.”

I swallow nervously. “Did she have the dream since she was little?”

“Just like you, honey. As the day got closer, the dream became more intense, more vivid. When she was little, she said there weren’t many details. All she ever felt was the sensation of falling over and over. Toward the end, she could close her eyes and see the entire scene play behind her eyelids.”

My mind races because I fall in my dream, too. Could our deaths be that similar? “And she couldn’t stop it?” My heart races so hard that I take my hand and flatten it across my chest in order to calm it.

It doesn’t help.

“No, by the time the day came, she had accepted it as her fate and had given up. She told Dad and all her children, including me, goodbye. Momma knew it was her time.”

I shake my head. How? How could she just give up like that? If she knew all the details, why wouldn’t she try to stop it?

“I don’t understand why she didn’t try harder,” I whisper .

“I know, my sweet Lily. Why don’t you come home on your break, and we can talk about it more? There is so much I want to tell you, but not like this. Not over the phone.” She chokes up at the end, and my heart tries to reach her through the phone.

“Actually, that sounds great. I’d like that.”

We have a long weekend break coming up in a few weeks. I couldn’t help but think that maybe going home to my grandma’s is exactly what I need to figure this whole thing out. The dream hasn’t changed in intensity or in detail for years, so I think it’s safe to wait to talk to her until I can really spend time with her.

I make plans to come to her house as soon as school lets out on that Friday and hang up.

I lean back against the chair and close my eyes. How could my parents have kept this from me? They made me feel like something was wrong with me. I can’t and won’t ever understand why they handled things the way they did. As much as I hated it back then, I hate it even more now.

I also know how difficult my mother is. I understand why my grandmother would be scared that my mother would hold true to her threat and never let her see me again. My grandmother made the only choice she felt like she had.

And at this point, it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m over eighteen, and nothing can stop me now. I’ll go to my grandma’s and get the answers I’ve been searching for all these years and then figure out a way to stop my dream from coming true.

I swallow hard, thinking about what it means if I fail. I shake my head to clear it of the negative thoughts. There is no other option than to figure this out and find a way to stop it.

Luka Russo may be the key to finding said way.