SEPTEMBER 28, 2004 NINE YEARS LATER
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
“Wasn’t that a good poem Chancey?” A gentle female voice inquired quietly.
“Yes, it was wonderful,” a much smaller, squeaky voice replied. The mother smiled and laughed at her precious four year old who had obviously just learned a new word.
“Where did you learn to say ‘wonderful’ my Chancey?” The boy giggled and squirmed as his mother tickled him continuously.
“From Daddy,” the boy replied between laughs.
“From Daddy? What was he saying ‘wonderful’ for?” Bethany Blake asked her son, smiling brightly at him. Chance stopped wriggling around and was now sprawled out on the floor, out of his mother’s reach.
“He was talking about your eyes,” Chance said, uninterested. The warm yellowish glow of his living room intrigued Chance as he ran his fingers through his short dark hair over and over again. He looked into his mother’s deep brown eyes, but saw nothing looking back at him, and yet, he agreed with his father.
“My eyes? Well isn’t that wonderful my Chancey?” Bethany lowered herself out of the recliner she was in onto the floor next to a smiling Chance.
“It is wonderful Mommy,” he giggled. She continued to tickle him and hummed like a song:
“My Chancey, my Chancey, I love my little Chancey. Chancey, Chancey, I love my . .”
“Chance! Chance!” A raspy boy called to him. Unfortunately, Chance came to find that, again, he had been awakened from a most excellent dream, and now the magic was over.
“What?” He moaned, a bright white light burning at his eyes.
“We gotta go . . . Like, now man! Come on, get up!” Chance opened his eyes, but only just, to see a boy with messy blond hair, baby blue eyes, and he had the look of being able to snap like a twig easily, like Chance.
“You woke me up Trigger,” Chance moaned again. He tried to turn over and forgot that he’d fallen asleep in his hammock, causing him to fall to the floor with a loud thud.
“Alright, good, you’re up. Now let’s go!” Trigger exclaimed, talking quickly without even a breath between words.
“Go where? Man, there better be a damn good reason you woke me up.” Chance said wearily, attempting to stand and failing. Trigger scurried over and started heaving at Chance’s left arm repeatedly, causing him to bounce off the hard wood floor at least five times.
“To school, moron! It’s Wednesday! We have to go!” Trigger exclaimed worriedly, still tugging at Chance’s arm.
“Ow! Lemme go!” Chance cried out when Trigger pulled his arm too hard. He ripped his arm out of Trigger’s firm grasp just as a tall, skinny woman with sandy brown hair and sparkly emerald eyes walked in.
“Trigger! What are you doing?!” She shouted. Trigger automatically removed himself from the situation to avoid trouble, (he was remarkably good at that.) Chance threw himself back into his hammock, one leg on either side, and closed his eyes.
“I’ll be up in a minute Dani, I swear,” Chance said quietly. He swung back and forth in the hammock casually and tried to pull his dingy blue blanket over his head. Danica, of course, was not suede so easily, and crouched by his side with a smile.
“What’s wrong Chance?” She asked gently.
“Nothing’s wrong, Trigger just woke me up,” he replied.
“You don’t ever snap at him like you just did Chance,” she said, her smile fading.
“’Course I do, just not all the time.” He sat up and rubbed his sore eyes viciously.
“You hardly ever talk to him that way Chance, what’s wrong?” Danica asked again. Chance lifted himself out of the hammock and wandered across the room to a drawer that he and Trigger kept their clothes in.
“I told you, nothing’s wrong. I was just really tired this morning, that’s it. End of story,” he said bluntly. Danica took the message he was sending and left the room without another word.
She did, however, stop Trigger in the narrow hallway and ask him to talk to Chance. He was slightly reluctant to do so, but Danica promised that they could go to the football game on Friday if he at least found out what the problem was. At this, of course, the teen ventured bravely back into his room. He knew good and well what Chance’s problem was, he just didn’t know what to tell Danica.
“Tell me about it,” Trigger said quietly, walking into the room.
“Tell you about what?” Chance snapped.
“The dream you had.” Chance’s heart stopped cold.
“What dream?” He asked in mock stupidity.
“The one you had last night. The one I woke you up from.” Chance sat back down on his hammock and attempted to pull on a t-shirt while listening to Trigger.
“What makes you think I was dreaming?” Chance asked with a fake smile after he had finished dressing himself. Trigger dropped his backpack lazily to the floor and then plopped down beside it himself.
“Chance, I’ve known you forever, and in that time, you haven’t been mad at me a great too many times.”
“So?” Trigger held up a hand.
“Let me finish, now. Anyway, you haven’t been really all that mad too many times before. You only get upset when you sleep in late and somebody wakes you up. The somebody nine times outta ten being me. Now, don’t make me feel stupid by saying that you weren’t dreaming something that you didn’t want to be woken up from.” Trigger exhaled deeply and waited for Chance’s response. After a few moments of silence, he wasn’t entirely sure one would come, but then . . .
“I dreamt about her again,” Chance said quietly after several long moments.
“Your mom?” Trigger questioned, and Chance nodded slowly.
“She was beautiful,” Chance whispered, and Trigger couldn’t help but smile.
“Did anything happen?” Trigger asked, running his fingers through his hair that was in desperate need of cutting.
“Not really. She was just tickling me and reading me my favorite poem,” he said.
“That gold one right? By Frost?”
“Yeah. It was . . .” He thought for a moment. “It was wonderful man. We were both so happy and nothing was wrong and,” again he paused for thought.
“And what?”
“And her eyes man, they were so . . . Cold,” he said, staring right through Trigger, who was giving him weird looks.
“Cold? I thought you said your mom had brown eyes. Nobody who has brown eyes has cold eyes.”
“But she did, man!” I looked right at her and it was like she wasn’t even lookin’ back!”
“Weird,” Trigger whispered, partly to himself.
“Yeah, it was weird.”
“So why didn’t you want to be woken up?” Trigger questioned bravely.
“I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to be with her a little longer. I . . . Wanted her to be with me. It was just so perfect.” Trigger looked on out the window, knowing what he needed to say, but not wanting to.
“Chance, dreams aren’t real,” he said gravely, staring into the sunlight.
“I know that. But, you don’t even know your parents dude.”
“Neither do you.” Chance shook his head.
“No, I don’t. But I see her face almost every night, and still, I can’t remember one single thing about her Trigger, not one. Heck, if I didn’t say “Mommy’ in the dreams every once in awhile, I wouldn’t even know it was her. So the least you can do is give me time with her.” Trigger stood silently, picked up his backpack, and walked to the doorway where he stopped.
“You can’t live in dreams Chance,” Trigger told him quietly, and walked out. Chance sighed deeply and stared at the ceiling as he bit his tongue. Slowly, he got up and moved to the drawer on the opposite side of the room again, knelt down to the bottom drawer, and removed a small piece of white rolled paper. Chance carefully unrolled it one the floor to reveal a set of handprints belonging to a small child. The left print was blue, Chance’s favorite color, and the other was yellow.
“Yes I can,” he whispered to himself. Chance placed his hands gently on the prints, and almost immediately felt a huge adrenaline rush. From out of nowhere he felt a huge gust of wind overwhelm him, and filled his lungs to bursting, and then everything went black.