Girl of My Dreams, Girl of Your Dreams

“Hey, so did you find the girl I was talking about? With white hair and purple eyes?” I asked Rachel as I took out my textbook from my backpack, settling myself at the table in the corner of my dorm’s lounge.

“Don’t forget we’re here to study…”

“Hey, hey, don’t worry, I got an expert to help us! She took this class last year with Professor Mendez too and totally aced it, so she’ll definitely be able to give us pointers before our midterm next week.”

“But, before she gets here, you need to update me on what you found.”

“Well, I didn’t find anything,” said Rachel with a sigh.

“What? But you know like everyone at this school,” I said.

“I do not…”

“Well, you know people who know other people, so that’s close enough! And you have so many friends in the art department…”

“I don’t think you should assume she’s an art major just because she dyed her hair white…or you know, she could have albinism.”

“Okay, so did you find someone like that?”

“No.”

“Hmm…maybe she doesn’t really have white hair…or purple eyes.” The Internet said my brain couldn’t make up faces, but I guess technically it didn’t say anything about any other parts of the body…

“Sooooo could you look for someone like that?” I continued.

“You are giving me nothing to work with, Mia…”

“Oh, her name is Bea! Maybe.”

“Maybe?” Rachel sighed. “You really are impossible.”

“Hey Mia! Is this your friend?”

I turned around to see Tam waving as she walked over to our table. Her short hair was in an updo with a white claw clip, and she wore a casual light brown t-shirt and jean shorts.

Rachel stood up quickly, her hand almost knocking over her (luckily still capped) water bottle.

“Oh, yeah! Hi! I’m, I’m…Rachel! Yeah, but you can call me Rache!” Rachel scratched the back of her hair with one hand, clearly nervous.

“I’m Tam, Mia’s roommate. Nice to meet you.” Tam grinned.

“To reward Mia for keeping up her morning run habit for over a week and for running an entire mile this morning, I’m here to tutor you two,” she continued.

“Thank you so much for your help! I’m sure I’ll ace the exam now since you’re here! Stats is so cool, isn’t it?” Rachel replied excitedly, even though this was the one class this quarter that she couldn’t stop complaining about.

Tam unpacked her backpack and sat down next to Rachel, who had uncharacteristically begun to fidget with her hair.

“I appreciate your enthusiasm! Alright, let’s get started…”

I’m telling you, love at first sight totally exists, it isn’t just me and Bea.

Though, I realize there’s a chance that the girl in the real world with Bea’s face might be nothing like the Bea of my dreams at all…

Wait, no, what was I saying?

Universe, pretend you didn’t hear that.

***

“So, I'm pretty sure Rachel has a crush on Tam, but she refuses to admit it.” This was my fifth nightmare with Bea, and I already felt like I was at the point in our relationship where I could ramble on about whatever crossed my mind.

“You really care about your friends a lot, don’t you, Amelia?” Bea called back. We were currently carefully walking across a very thin, floating stone wall that ran around the outside of some castle-looking ruins. Naturally, Bea was walking gracefully and effortlessly, while I had already fallen once into a chilling greenish-purple pool of ooze that had left permanent purple goosebumps on my arms.

“Of course! They’re always there for me, you know? Even if…well…”

Even if I’m flaky and probably not the best friend to them.

“We’re here!” Bea announced, jumping down from the wall onto a patch of dark gray grass. After my shoes hit the ground, I realized that this was no ordinary grass, since somehow each “blade” of grass felt like a real sword blade that was slashing through my jeans. My jeans weren’t ripped at all, but that stinging icy feeling was not something I could easily ignore.

As expected of this nightmare world that’s always so freaking cold.

“I call this place the Garden of Wisdom.” Bea announced with a flourish of her arms. She then took my hand and led me around a gray, rectangular courtyard surrounded by Roman-looking columns in various states of brokenness.

Just kidding, this pain is nothing.

The “garden” as Bea called it, was probably around the size of a large university lecture hall. A path made of evenly spaced, long stone bricks cut through the middle of the courtyard. Some of the stones had words carved into them that I could not read.

“This one is my favorite. From Virgil’s Aeneid.” Bea said, stopping at one of the stones in the middle. The engraving had been filled with silver that shone in its very own moon spotlight.

TUNECEDEMALISSEDCONTRAAUDENTIORITO

I…couldn’t read this, but I didn’t want to give away how uncultured I was…

“Oh, I know all about Virgil! Real cool poet, that guy, huh…I really like the Aeneid more than the Ilidad and Odyssey combined!” Having my sleeping schedule mostly fixed and only falling asleep during class about 15% of the time was really paying off.

“Iliad, but I’m glad we have something in common then,” Bea laughed.

“So, uh, do you just go around reading Latin for fun?” I asked.

“Hmm…maybe you could say that. But I don’t find my skills to be at a level that I’m satisfied with. Even this one I’m probably most drawn to since it’s a relatively common saying…When I try to read on my own, my translations are never as eloquent as I’d like them to be.”

“Hehe, still impressive to me. Do all nightmare people know Latin?” I asked, mostly as a joke or maybe as a rhetorical sort of question. Honestly, that huge word probably wasn’t even Latin at all and just something my brain made up, like that time I was fluent in Mandarin in one of my dreams even though I speak like a toddler in real life.

“Well, why don't we ask some of the other ghosts and demons in this place? I mean, you are used to flying by now, right?” Bea held her arms out as she gave a lopsided smile.

“Hey, stop it! You know that they'd probably try to kill me and then I'd have to wake up and leave this place!”

“I know, I know, only jesting.”

“Though, not many people study Latin these days, so do I wonder what sort of person I must be when I’m awake…” Bea mumbled.

Wait. What!?

“When you’re awake? Bea, are you a real person after all? And you enter this nightmare world when you fall asleep just like I do?” I shouted.

“Ah, did I say that out loud? Pretend you didn’t hear that.” Bea laughed, waving her hands as if to swish the thought away. I could still hear the anxious edge to her voice though.

“Wait, you should have told me earlier! I’ve been looking for your face in the real world, but it turns out all the other parts of you are real too?” I almost didn’t dare believe this was happening, but I knew it wasn’t just my wishful thinking, because everything made way more sense now. My anxious imagination couldn’t be this vivid after all.

“Would you like me to show you another one of my favorite spots?” Bea asked.

“We could be going on real dates in the real world, Bea! We could be sharing an umbrella hiding from water instead of glass!”

“Dates?” Bea laughed with a huge smile on her face, and my heart almost stopped because of how cute she was.

“Uhhh…wait, I mean, we could be hanging out in the real world! You know, as friends do. Hang out.”

“Is it not enough to ‘hang out’ here? Isn’t this world so much more fascinating than the real world?” Bea asked.

“Uhh…fascinating, sure…but isn’t it also super scary? Are you not scared all the time?”

“Hmm…I think I’ve been here long enough to appreciate it properly. And think about it, it’s just you and me here, isn’t that perfect? Nothing else like taxes or rent or hunger or sickness to bother us?”

“But…in the real world we could go hiking and not have to run away from flesh-eating monsters. We could go to the ocean and see the sunset instead of chasing weird moon spotlights. And if it rains, we don’t have to worry about glass getting in our eyes!”

“Fine, fine, if you can find me in the real world, I’ll go on a real date with you.” Bea replied.

“Really?” I asked, holding my breath.

“A movie, the carnival, a walk in the botanical gardens, anything you like.”

“Okay, I accept!” I closed my eyes and quickly thought about my schedule for the upcoming few days.

“How about, on Tuesday, October 13, I’ll wait for you at 6pm in front of the Acacia dorm building. I have dark hair, but something more like dark brown than this black, and I have brown eyes, and I’ll wear a neon green shirt so there’s no way you could miss me.”

“How are you so certain that I attend your university?”

“Do you not?”

“That’s up to you to figure out, because I said you need to find me. Not the other way around.”

“Why don’t you want to look for me?” I asked.

“Oh, Amelia, look up. I think it’s morning.”

A flurry of shooting stars came out of nowhere, zooming towards me before burying me in glittering indigo and violet stardust.

Is this the worst timing ever, or does Bea have control over the morning or something?

I could already hear the rustling of Tam’s clothes that indicated she was getting ready for the day.

Well, at any rate, I’m glad I decided to get rid of the rooster alarm.