She was standing in the middle of a plain. On either side in the far distance were a line of trees, in the front and back of her the plain stretched on seemingly unbroken. The sky was an endless sea of blue dotted with little white puffs of clouds. A gentle breeze flirted with her hair and tugged on her white dress. In the distance thunder sounded coming ever closer and closer, but it wasn’t thunder, it was the sound of thousands of hooves of horses pounding the earth as they galloped towards her. A grin spread across her face as she saw the sea of horses. Before they could trample her, she grabbed onto the neck of the horse in front and swung herself up on its back, a beautiful, majestic, black mare as wild as the sea. That herd was her herd; the horse she was riding was the leader, and one of her best friends. On either side were two other riders and a pure white horse as majestic and beautiful as her sister and as serene as she was wild. The rider on her left was a teenager girl with long black hair curled into ringlets. She had beautiful mocha colored skin and eyes as warm as melted chocolate yet sparkled with mischief. The girl laughed gaily and she couldn’t help by smile and laugh back. The rider on her left was a beautiful teenage boy whose skin was tan from the sun. His hair was brown with light brown highlights that glinted in the sun and his hazel eyes looked more golden that anything. He caught her looking at him and smiled at her tenderly.
“Kate? Kate are you okay?” a voice broke in her dreams abruptly. Kate frowned. She wasn’t done with her dream yet. She wanted to continue to feel the wind blowing through her hair and the rush of the speed of the horse underneath her.
“Kate you gotta wake up,” the disembodied voice pleaded with her.
“Go away,” she mumbled, irritated at the voice for disturbing her pleasant dream. The voice chuckled, a very familiar chuckle. Kate opened her grey eyes to find a pair of blue ones staring back.
“Good, you’re awake,” Eric smiled.
“Ummm…Hi.” She managed breathlessly. In the small school of Winchester High, Eric was high on the social scale though he probably didn’t realize it. He had a strange personality. Jocks and nerds are usually two totally separate beings but Eric was an exception. The two personalities before had been walking on two separate roads but had met on a single road up for him to choose from. He had readily embraced his nerdy side but the he kept some of the jock attributes. Eric was self-confident, strong, popular and interesting to talk to. He was good looking with his fly away, messy, beach-blonde hair and the muscles from when he had been playing football but the killer were his eyes. Crystal blue, the color of a cloudless sky. But he was really intelligent too. He was one of those people that would graduate with a four point-o and grow up to be the who finds a cure for cancer. Though, he’d rather be blowing things up and doing fun experiments. Eric loved hard equations, he loved the challenges they posed.
At least every girl in the school was in love with him, as far as Kate could tell, and he was totally oblivious to it and all the jealousy that was going on around. Kate felt sorry for him, because of all those girls who hovered around him like vultures. Ready to strike at anybody who poses as a threat, (they changed it to anybody because there had been a gay guy who'd got smitten with him) and to them if you so much as talk to him then that puts you in danger.
There'd once been a girl who'd recently moved to the town and had had a crush on him, so she talked to him for a while, unfortunately the vultures had been watching. She moved in a couple of days after that and still has to go to a therapist and physiatrist. Their motto was: “If they can’t have him, nobody can have him.” It’s scary huh?
Kate had a little crush on him but she decided to bury it deep because trying was futile. It had almost seem like it had gone away, but now she was trying to remember why she even decided to forget about him in the first place with his glorious face looming so near hers, she could feel his warm breath on her face.
“I got worried when I saw you lying here,” Eric said. “I thought something terrible had happened to you, but I now see you were just sleeping.” He chuckled and Kate wondered if it was in embarrassment or if it was really just that funny. She chose the former. She shook her head trying to clear it.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I got here kind of early and just…fell asleep.” Kate explained, thinking of how lame that sounded.
“Let me guess, you forgot to set your clock back, am I right?” he guessed. She seemed a little forgetful. He knew he had hit the mark when she scowled and turned her head, blushing with embarrassment.
“Ha! I am right!” he said smugly, teasing her.
“Well what are you doing here so early then?” she asked irritated, stupid smart people.
“I’m here to check on an experiment for chemistry,” Eric answered her matter-of-factly.
“And you know I’m still not entirely convinced you okay. You’re eyes are all blood-shot. How much sleep have you been getting?”
“For the last time I’m fine!” she said exasperated. “You don’t have to sit here waiting for me. Go on and check on your fancy little science experiment.”
“You just called my chemistry experiment a little fancy science experiment. Now I know you’re not okay.”
Kate rolled her eyes but smiled. Eric laughed.
“You know if you wanted to sit with me that badly you could’ve just said so.” Kate said, scooting over for him to sit down.
“Yeah, I could’ve, but where’s the fun in that?” He responded.
“Difficult,” Kate muttered. Eric laughed again.
“So what’s your project even about?” Kate asked him. She was surprised she didn’t feel nervous anymore. It all felt so…natural. She was expecting to feel major butterflies especially with him sitting so near their knees bumped each other. Neither of them moved. And she actually was curious about his experiment. He was known for his creativity in them and they usually ended up being quite fascinating. And this time was no different. Apparently his teacher had decided for them to try and come up with an alternative energy. It didn’t matter what for, and Eric had decided to go with fuel for cars.
As he tried explaining it to her, Kate noticed that he took time to explain some things so that she would understand. She thought it was thoughtful, though she still didn’t understand some of things he said though she would never admit to it. That would be embarrassing because if he didn’t explain it, it was probably because he thought she knew what it was and there was no way she going to confess to being dumb!
“My teacher gave me a key to the school so I can go check on my project. If I’m correct then it should turn blue. But honestly I doubt it.” Eric chuckled.
“Hey! Eric! Come check out the new car I got!” They both looked up as Johnny, one of Eric’s friends called out to him. They had been stuck in their own private little bubble not really paying attention to the fact that students and teachers had been pulling up while they’d been talking. Kate looked down at her watch. It read seven-ten. Well, at least she gotten an hour’s worth of sleep in.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you later,” he said, getting up and stretching. Kate was momentarily distracted as she watched him but quickly recovered.
“Yeah. See ya later.”
“Are you sure your ok?” he asked her one more time. She swore he was laughing inside.
“I’m fine!” she exclaimed. Would this guy never give up?
“Ok. I’ll believe you. Bye.” Kate watched, morosely, as he walked away.
Eric looked back one last time, he wasn’t sure if it was just him but she looked a little dejected. He didn’t know why but that made him a little happy. It surprised him to find it had been a little difficult to walk away from her. Truth be told Eric had not been just worried, but terrified when he’d seen her limp body lying there against the tree. It wasn’t just because he’d thought she was badly hurt or even worse, dead. No, it was the simple fact that it was Kate, Eric realized. That it was her body lying there that had horrified him and made him rush over to make sure he wasn’t staring at a corpse.
It was puzzling him, this new line of thinking. Sure he had seen her in the hallways and even had a couple classes with her but she was always in the background. He had never felt this strongly about her or for that matter, anyone else. The only time he’d ever felt such a tremendous surge of protection was when he built his first robot puppy for a science competition in seventh grade, it even barked and could wag its little coiled, wire tail.
Eric wasn’t quite sure what to make of this new development. Sure he thought she was pretty. The way the light shone on her brown hair in the sun and the way her grey eyes always lit up and sparkled with amusement or when she was excited about something. He’d never really talked to her, never really tried. To him, she always seemed distant from the world except from her friends. But he had noticed a change in her in the beginning of High School. Kate seemed to come…alive, to become more aware of her surroundings and her life. She was much more outgoing than before. He’d told himself his eyes kept wandering in her direction because of that, because it was strange no? She was just another science experiment or specimen he was studying, watching the changes and watching for a conclusion. But now he was starting to think that wasn’t it. That it was more than that. He still watched her, he watched her slowly start to deteriorate from sleep deprivation and exhaustion. It worried him and he wondered what was up. Whatever the reason, he decided he would analyze his feelings later, because they could definitely no longer be ignored and decided right there and then he would start talking and interacting with her more.
