Chapter 4

I was lying on my bed; the playbook Coach Heidemann had given me open on my chest. In middle school, we’d just kind of learned plays and run them. There hadn’t been all this homework. I’d forgotten how much work it was at this level.

The thought almost made me laugh out loud. The thing I’d ‘forgotten’ hadn’t actually happened to me. It had only been a week since the dream, and already I was starting to think of things from it as my past, as much as just a dream.

The past week had been wild. The first week of practice had been a major moment in my dream, the start of the career I’d never had, and it really stuck with dream me. Now that I’d lived it for real, everything I remembered from that week in the dream had happened. Not just happened but had been identical.

The only things that had been different were how I’d done that first day. Instead of getting sick and screwing up, I’d played much closer to how I’d always thought I should, and that had rippled out into me getting a lot more play time through the week, which in turn had me pegged as a starter for the freshman team. That and all the stuff with Elijah and the rest.

But again, that had been a conscious choice. They’d done exactly what I’d remembered them doing in the dream. The difference was that in the dream I’d gone along with it as opposed to being annoyed by it and standing up to them. That had, again, rippled out into other things being different.

But everything not connected to those two things had been identical in every way, down to the order things happened in and what people said.

Not that I believed in that crap, but was it like ... prophecy? Was my dream showing me the future?

It wasn’t just this week. I could remember everything from that life. Not just remember it, I could feel it. I was almost certain that, if I tried, I could do some half-decent welding from those last few years before I got sick, when I’d finished that welding program and jumped careers.

But if I was seeing the future, how did things end up differently? Wouldn’t the dream take into account the changes and show me what actually happened, and not the slightly different version?

Honestly, it was making my head hurt just trying to think about it. But I couldn’t stop. So much was the same, and I’d made decisions based on that, like not eating the sandwich, that had actually worked out in my favor.

Should I be taking this more seriously? Should I be actively trying to make decisions based on the dream to change things for myself?

Maybe not with everything, but some things. Like Brandy. That was already heavy on my mind. True, it was probably not great to break up with someone based on a dream, but I’d seen how she looked at Mason. In my gut, I knew I wasn’t imagining it.

Brandy wasn’t the worst part of my dream, or the part that had been occupying my thoughts the most. Every time I saw my dad, I relived his death in my dream. The phone call that shattered my world, the chaos that followed, Mom breaking down completely, and Josh becoming more ... Josh.

I remembered the funeral and how awful that had been, dropping out of school early the next year when Mom started having her episodes and couldn’t work anymore. Arguments were made that Josh really started his descent into what he became with Dad’s death. It destroyed all of our lives.

Was my dream telling me Dad was going to die? Was it real? Was this why I’d had the dream, to do something to save Dad? I had a pit in my stomach every time I thought about him being gone, but it was more than just me. It was everyone.

Should I try to stop something I wasn’t even sure would happen? But that wasn’t really even the question. The real question was, could I afford not to?

So much else had come true. If I tried to pretend this wouldn’t and then it did ... I wouldn’t ever be able to forgive myself.

I started to think through what I knew about the night my dad died. The details were fuzzy because nearly all of my memories were wrapped up in a haze of depression that kind of obscured everything.

I don’t remember it clearly, but I know he’d gone to work that day pretty much like any other day, driving the fifty miles down to Midland for his shift. Dad had come across a group of people, kids the paper called them, stealing a car. I seemed to remember something about it being an initiation for new members of a gang. He’d tried to arrest them, and one of the kids pulled a gun. They said he was killed at the scene.

There was something else. The gang was based in Midland, but there were stories about the kid who did it living right here in Wheaton. People talked about how weird it was, that Dad and his killer were both from the same small town but never met until that night, fifty miles away.

But what could I do about it?

Telling Dad, or really anyone else, wouldn’t work. “Hey, I had this dream where you were shot next year, and I think it’s true.” They’d never believe me. Hell, I barely believed it.

I also couldn’t just wait until the day of the shooting and run in to save the day. For one, I didn’t know exactly where it happened in the city. For another, I could just as likely get shot as save Dad. Of course, if I couldn’t think of anything, that would still be an option, but I needed better options.

I lay there the rest of the night, thinking through everything I could remember. Over and over.

By the time I fell asleep, I still hadn’t thought of anything.

I slouched in my seat as I tried to focus on the teacher’s voice. The classroom felt stuffy, even with the windows cracked open to let in the late August breeze. It seemed like hardly anyone was paying attention. Half the people in the class were on the team with me. The rest were people I had only ever seen in passing. Stoners and idiots. The one thing we all had in common was that we were terrible students.

Which was why we were all sitting in remedial math.

“Good morning, everyone!” the teacher, who seemed on the young end for a teacher, maybe not even thirty yet, said after the bell rang. “Welcome to pre-algebra. I am Ms. White, and I will be working with you this year. Now, I know math is not everyone’s favorite subject, but I promise, by the end of this year, you will all have a solid foundation in the basics you need to tackle more advanced concepts.”

She set a stack of papers for us to take on my desk to pass back, which was a first for me. I had not sat at the front of a class since I was in third grade but had picked it on purpose as part of my promise to myself not to end up like I did in the dream.

In that other life, I had sat at the back of class and blown it off. I had always thought I would end up being a famous NFL player. What did I need with algebra? It was how I ended up in this class in the first place. I had barely paid attention last year and skated by with a C minus.

Of course, sitting in the front of the class was not going to be what fixed that. I had been a terrible student, basically forever, and it was not like the stuff I remembered from my dream life would bail me out. There was not much math in construction. If I was going to get out of this class and into on-level classes, I needed to do more than just want to do better.

Which was why, when the bell rang and everyone else escaped from the room as fast as they could, I grabbed my backpack and stopped next to Ms. White, who was erasing the whiteboard, her back to the room.

“Ms. White? Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“What can I do for you...?”

“Blake,” I supplied. “I’ve been thinking a lot about this class, and I would like to discuss the possibility of moving out of remedial math.”