The next morning, I slowly began to wake up to the sound of my alarm clock and knocking on the door.
“Chiara, get up or you’ll miss the bus,” it was the voice of my grandfather before he had had his morning coffee.
My eyes slowly opened and…why was I staring at the ceiling? I sat up and noticed that I was in bed, but how; I fell asleep next to the door. Throwing off my bed covers, I found that I was still wearing yesterday’s clothes. How strange, I suppose someone, grandmother or grandfather, must have come in and put me to bed later last night.
After a few seconds of pondering how I got into bed, I finally did get up and changed into my school uniform; a brown plaid mid-thigh skirt, a white collared shirt with the same brown plaid vest over it, white knee-high socks, and brown loafers. It’s a very basic uniform, yet at the same time, it was so boring and in need of more color than browns and a little red.
After I got dressed, I went over to my bedroom door to leave the room, and ...it’s still locked. More questions on how I ended up in bed ran through my head, but seeing the time quickly snapped me back to reality. I rushed to unlock my door, grabbed my school bag and raced downstairs. At the dining room table I grabbed a piece of toast with an egg on it, I waved goodbye to my grandparents, who acted as they always do in the morning; grandfather reading the morning paper and drinking his coffee with the morning news playing on the TV, and grandmother refilling his cup and talking to him about her plans for the day.
I ran out the door, toast in mouth, towards the bus stop. I just barely made it before the morning bus left; actually, I jumped in right as the door was closing, but I still made it. I stood there on the bus, munching on my speedy breakfast when a familiar voice whispered good morning. I turned to see whose voice it was.
“Katautoshi,” I mumble with a mouthful of toast, “good morning.”
Katautoshi goes to the same school I do; he wore a brown straight leg trouser, the same white collar shirt, vest, and tie, the same shoes, but he carries a large sports bag instead of a school briefcase like I do. Katautoshi is a member of the soccer and basketball team, so he also carried his team uniform with him, but I rarely see any school team events because of the work I did at the inn. But I’ve heard that our team is ranked third in the area.
“Good morning, Miss Chiara,” he said with a smile. I really didn’t like it when he talks formal to me but no matter how often I tell him to stop, he keeps doing it, “what happened, you’re not one to race to catch the bus.” He laughed at me, he actually laughed at me.
I shot him a nasty look and turned away, swallowing my meal, I said my comeback, “this is my first offense, what’s your excuse?”
You could hear a pin drop with that, I had beaten Katautoshi. I glanced back at him, he had a depressed look to him now, and it almost made me feel bad…almost. I sighed and patted his head, which made him look at me and gave me a goofy grin. I swear just about anything could make him go back to his “normal” self.
When the bus stopped a couple of blocks from our school, Katautoshi and I jumped out and bowed to the driver. We ran off to the school’s main gate, before long we were able to catch up with the rest of the students inside the school grounds. A little while later, I sprinted away from him to catch up to my friends; then my friends and I head to our classroom. Each one of us had a seat in the class that we shared; I sat in the middle of the room next to a window, one friend sat in the front row middle seat, and the other sat in the very back of the classroom near the door. The first portion of the school day was homeroom/math class, followed by history, music, and physical education. At lunch, the three of us pulled three desks together and began to socialize.
“So, how was your visit with your parents,” Eiko asked. Eiko, she and I have been friends since our second year of junior high. Our first year in junior high, Eiko didn’t like me at all; in fact, I’m pretty sure she hated me, but now we’re best friends. Eiko is a tall girl, with waist-length blonde hair with her roots showing, our classmates, and probably most of the school and the community where we live consider her to be a Yankee or delinquent, despite being obsessed with boys like any other high school girl. She has worn her school uniform skirt extra long and a black trench coat like a jacket, she always gets detention because of the “lack of attention” to the dress code our school has. Eiko used to run with a local gang before I helped her out with the authorities when her gang vandalized my family’s inn, I suppose that’s how we became close.
“Yes, I wonder that as well. It’s been ten years correct,” Fumie quietly asked next. Fumie, she’s so quiet and shy you might not even have known she existed. She became friends with me in elementary school, then with Eiko when she stood up for her against some bullies; that was about seven months after our first year of high school. Fumie has charcoal hair cut at her shoulders, glasses, and a petite body, which is probably why she’s an easy target for bullies. She’s very mousy, but the smartest girl in our class. She wears her skirt slightly shorter than most girls, but I haven’t heard the teachers complain.
I looked up with melon bread in both of my hands and in my mouth, “It was fine. I got separated from my grandparents for a while, but everything went well.”
We continued to talk a little more about my trip and laughed. Maybe, I could talk to them about these weird dreams I’ve been having over the past couple of days. I mean, they’d understand and can give me advice about them, or completely mock me for the rest of the day.
I put my bread down on the desk and sighed, “Hey, do you guys ever dream?” My friends starred at me, like a deer in headlights.
“What do you mean,” Fumie softly spoke.
“Yeah, of course, I dream. Everyone dreams,” Eiko blurted.
“No, I mean…,” I sighed again, “I’ve been having really strange dreams, some of them nice, but others are terrifying,” I explained, “it’s like there’s something about them that’s familiar but…”
“A past life.”
Everyone in our group jumped at the sudden appearance of another classmate; she was like a ghost the way she showed up at our group tables.
“Rin-chan,” I said with a very shaky voice, “you surprised us,” I laughed nervously.
“Your dreams. They're of a past life,” Rin said calmly and in a matter-of-fact tone.
Eiko started to laugh, and Fumie began to say something along the lines of “the probability of rebirth in this day-and-age is unlikely, it’s just a religious excuse to keep practitioner, blah blah blah…” And I, well, I guess it made some sense; I mean the memory-familiarity, the traditional clothes I saw, it made as much sense as anything, I suppose. Rin glanced at me, I could tell she was staring by the chill that ran up my spine, but I didn’t look up from my desk. Her cool black eyes, behind her square-cut raven-colored bangs, seem to pierce through to my core; it’s kind of creepy.
Rin has always been an odd girl, ever since I knew her in junior high. Quiet and always looking out of place; aside from her slightly depressing attitude, Rin always has her inky black hair cut in a mid-neck bob and her bangs in a square cut across her eyes. She also seems to get away with wearing a lot of skull pins on her vest and skirt.
“Something to think about,” she said as the lunch bell rang, signaling the race to return to class for the second portion of the day, then stood up from the chair she was sitting in and walked out to her own classroom.
I watched her leave the room; meanwhile, Eiko and Fumi moved the two desks they used, back to their original places. I can hear bits of Eiko complaining about lunch being short and having to put the desks back and how Rin was saying weird things again; Fumie told her to just hurry up. When the English teacher entered the room after the second bell rang everyone in the classroom, ran to their desk and prepared for the lecture he had in store for us.
I felt my thoughts wonder the rest of the day; thankfully, not enough that I wasn’t paying attention to the lecture, especially when the teacher called on me to read and/or translate parts of the Nineteen Ancient Poems of the Han Dynasty in literature or solve a problem in math. But why does it bother me that these dreams are, in fact, a past life I see.
Comments (0)
See all