LENA
Beginning Again
Other people had flying dreams. I had falling nightmares. I couldn’t talk about it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it either.
About him.
Ethan falling.
Ethan’s shoe dropping to the ground, seconds before.
It must have come off when he fell.
I wondered if he knew.
If he’d known.
I saw that muddy black sneaker dropping from the top of the water tower every time I closed my eyes. Sometimes I hoped it was a dream. I hoped I’d wake up, and he’d be waiting out in the driveway, in front of Ravenwood, to take me to school.
Wake up, sleepyhead. I’m almost there. That’s what he would’ve Kelted.
I’d hear Link’s bad music coming through the open window, before I even saw Ethan behind the wheel.
That’s how I imagined it.
I’d had nightmares about him a thousand times before. Before I knew him, or at least knew he was going to be Ethan. But this wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen in any nightmare.
It shouldn’t have happened. It wasn’t how his life was supposed to be. And it couldn’t be how my life was supposed to be.
That muddy black sneaker wasn’t supposed to drop.
Life without Ethan was something worse than a nightmare.
It was real.
So real that I refused to believe it.
February 2nd
Nightmares end.
That’s how you know they’re nightmares. This—Ethan—everything—it isn’t ending, has no sign of ending.