Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,194

door, Greg opened it for her. “Well, let’s do what we can to make sure that day doesn’t happen for a very, very long time.”

Inside, all was quiet. The others were already asleep.

In his room, as Greg threw his shoes into the closet and gathered his things for bed, Taylor took her jewelry off and thought about telling him about Monday. It was going to be sad to say goodbye to being so close to him and the others.

“Well, goodnight, Eliza,” he said as he turned at the door.

She smiled as she turned. “Goodnight… Alexander.”

He laughed, and with that, he walked out and shut the door.

The dreams gathered her into their arms as she sat on the bed and pondered everything at once. The only thing she wanted to do was watch it all again. With that thought cheering her on, she pulled her laptop over and settled back into the pillows, kicking her shoes onto the floor. It wouldn’t hurt to just watch it once more…

Is this all there is?

Is this all there ever will be?

What if there is more?

What if there is more and you’re too afraid to

Try for it…

Greg heard the words the whole night. In his head. In his dreams. In his heart. He did not know just where they lodged. What he did know, did feel in the whispers and the screams was the fear, the utter and total fear of trying for more, of even thinking about it. This. This was safe and predictable and reliable. Going for more was dangerous, risky. Volatile. Unstable. Impulsive.

“It’s dangerous,” he kept telling the voice, her voice when she sang around the words daring him to let go of safe and reach for more.

“What is more dangerous,” she asked, “to live and hope never to die, or to die never having lived?”

“I can’t,” he said, knowing she would never understand.

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“I’m afraid. I’m so afraid.”

“What are you afraid of…”

He awoke shaking and covered in sweat. His heart was beating like the rap songs in the movie, unyielding and unceasing. Sitting up in the darkness, he fought to breathe as his heart heard her ask again and again. “What are you afraid of? What are you afraid of? What are you… afraid… of…?”

Stats was a blur Taylor hardly took notice of the next morning. It was after four in the morning when she had finally fallen asleep, and she had brought her laptop for the break between classes when she could find a quiet spot and listen again. Look around, look around…

The music called to her as she sat in stats, not hearing a word of the lesson. Instead, the lyrics were showing her the world like she had never seen it before. She looked around at her fellow students. All these people going through the motions. What were they learning? Anything? Or were they simply trading their days and hours for something else? Little pieces of paper with Hamilton’s face on them. How ironic.

Were any of them passionate about anything life? So passionate they would do whatever it took to make it happen? They didn’t look like it. They looked bored and resigned to life as it was and would be forevermore. One guy was even snoring quietly in the back.

When stats was over, she had an hour before psychology so she found a bench in the middle of the crossing students, put in her earbuds and just watched to see what the world and Hamilton could show her.

“Today we turn our attention to the hero’s journey,” the English professor, Ms. Griffin, said.

Greg had made it to class, barely. Right now heroes and journeys were the last thing on the list of things he wanted to think about.

“The hero’s journey follows the three act structure. There is the departure act where the hero leaves the ordinary world, think Harry Potter on Platform 9 ¾, Luke Skywalker leaving Tatooine, Neo taking the red pill.”

That caught his attention, and he sat up a little straighter.

“The first act of the hero’s journey is broken into five parts. Our introduction into the ordinary world of the hero. The hero’s call to adventure. Refusal of the call. Meeting a mentor. And crossing the first threshold.”

He wrote down each in turn.

“Once the adventure begins, we shift into the initiation act sometimes called the special world. Think Belle entering the beast’s castle, Dorothy waking up in Oz, or Neo after the pod scene. In the special world, the hero must pass tests