Today, with my thoughts focused so heavily on walking, all I want to do is sleep so I can walk again. I want to find clues and figure out why there is a dark, evil presence in my world. I want to know if the young girl who has haunted my thoughts and walks for weeks is real or just a projection by my subconscious. I want to know how the dark walker has found me, twice —and why.
***
I suffer through four excruciatingly long and boring classes without paying an ounce of attention to any of my teachers before I get to meet up with Zoë again at lunch.
“So based on the fact that your eyebrows are almost touching, I’m going to assume you’ve been obsessing all day.”
“Hey, you know me," I say while forcing my forehead to relax. "It’s what I do best.”
We set our bags down at our usual table with a handful of our acquaintances. Olivia, Taylor, Alexis, Chelsie and Faith are all seated around the large circular table, having several different conversations at once. I have a hard time focusing my attention on any of them.
Everyone at the table is distracted by their own conversations. It feels safe to talk about the only thing I want to talk about. I keep my voice low so that only Zoë can hear.
“I’ve actually been thinking a lot about what happened to me when you were on vacation.”
“You mean the castle?”
“Yeah. I think it’s possible that the guy from last night was there.”
“Did you ever mention that walk to your dad?”
“No, I didn’t want to worry him. It seemed like an isolated event. Plus I didn’t know if it was real or just a nightmare.”
“Well I guess we know it was real now.”
“So, Emma,” Chelsie Miller demands my attention, “are you going with us to the game on Saturday night? All Zoë did last week was go on and on about how she wished you were there.”
Zoë smiles and elbows me as she peels her banana. “Yeah, Em. You need to come have some fun with us. Dylan is having a party at his house after the game.” She raises her eyebrows up and down. “It’s going to be epic.”
I facetiously roll my eyes at her. “Maybe. I’ll have to see what all I have going on, family wise.”
“Well, you better be there," Chelsie orders me. "You miss all the best stuff! You’re not going to have any embarrassing high school stories to tell your kids in twenty years.”
I laugh at her statement. “Okay, Chelsie. I’ll keep that in mind!”
***
I have never been so thrilled to hear the last bell of the day. I practically speed walk from my last class to my locker and then to Zoë’s car, beating her there by a good five minutes. School has never felt more like prison than it did today.
The ride home consists mostly of Zoë babbling on about her latest crush. I feign interest in her stories of flirtation and intrigue and laugh half-heartedly at her jokes, trying to hold up my end of the conversation. How can she possibly talk about these things when we clearly have someone who wants to harm us in our dreamwalking lives?
The usually quick, ten-minute car ride feels like it takes forty-five. As she pulls the car around the bend that leads to our houses I notice a sleek black sports car with deeply tinted side and rear windows pull away from a rarely occupied parking space across the street. The car stands out like a sore thumb in our incredibly middle-class suburban neighborhood.
The world feels like it slows down as the car pulls away from the curb. I put as much effort as I can into focusing my eyes on whoever is driving the car as it maneuvers around us and speeds away.
“Zoë! That’s him!” I scream as I practically climb out of my seat.
“Him who?” she questions me, startled.
“The dark walker!”
“What? How can you be sure? You only saw him for a split second!”
“It was him. It was the same guy who was there last night!”
My phone rings and the surprise of the sound nearly sends me through the roof. It’s my dad. “Hey kiddo, what’s up?”
The words come exploding out of me. I tell him everything. About our twisted, backwards world walk last night, about the dark walker, about how we hid in Zoë’s meadow, about how this wasn’t the first time I had encountered a dark walker, about