I meet a blonde-haired blue-eyed girl in a writing class, Alina.
Write a script together for an assignment.
We end up seeing each other more, going on dates, etc.
Dinner at an Italian restaurant on the patio, wine, sunset. And afterwards we race up the stone stairs outside the restaurant.
We are at some park in the city, there is an outdoor event. There is a river nearby, and a huge grassy lawn with people listening to a classical orchestra. Everyone has blankets, coolers, etc…picnic supplies. The music drifts over the crowd.
We dance together, making fools of ourselves but not caring. At the end of the song we fall down into the grass back at our picnic spot laughing. We are, without a doubt, big time in love.
But then she gets a scared look on her face.
She starts to run away and I chase her.
“Alina! What’s wrong?” I yell. But she pays no heed.
She reaches the water’s edge and starts to swim for the other side. She is an amazing swimmer I realize. There’s no way I will catch her but I try anyway.
I see her reach the other side and run up the hill towards some buildings.
I finally reach the other side, and run up the same way she did but she is gone.
It is a 4-way intersection with city buildings on each side.
I search for hours. Calling her name and asking people on the street. Nothing.
I return to the park and search there. Nothing.
I search over the next few days everywhere I can think but don’t find anything.
A bunch of time passes (months I guess?). I am back at the park and see a Life Guard station (as in the main house where all the guards live, not the chair at the beach). It actually looked like a Coast Guard Station House, but I guess this was as close as my brain could get to what a Life Guard House would look like. I decide to go ask them if they have seen Alina.
I walk up the steps to ask this group of people if they have seen her. I start to describe her, “Blue eyes, blonde hair, etc..” They all apologize saying they haven’t seen her.
I whirl back to the small crowd assembled on the stairs to the house. “That’s her towel!” I exclaim while pointing at the towel. “Hers! She’s here!” I start shouting her name and one of the lifeguards in the back gets up and runs inside. As she does I realize I was a fool, she was sitting there all along but her hair had been dyed brown instead of its normal almost-white blonde.
I chase after her inside and we are in a kitchen. She backs away from me, terrified. She ends up in the corner of the room and falls to the ground crying, trying to get further away but unable.
She clearly doesn’t, I can see that. How can she not remember me I think to myself, but then I realize that I didn’t immediately recognize her either. How long has it been?
I start to tell her all the things from our past, writing class, the dates, dancing in the park.
As the full set of memories comes back to her she gets up and runs to me, wrapping me up in an interlocked hug with her head in my neck and begins to weep.
“It’s ok.” I say, “He’s not here now.” I reply.
“Well then I’m coming with you.” I reply.
I am confused at first, but then realize she means the junior detention facility (I forget what they’re really called).
Well, I think to myself. This should be a snap, how hard could it be to get someone out of Juvie?
“Yes, thank you!”, a look of immense relief appears on her face, and new tears, the good kind, begin to fall. She hugs me tighter and kisses me.
The scene fades away and then fades back in with me and a police officer standing outside a huge concrete wall with razor wire on top. Outside of this wall is a smaller chain-link fence (which is at most what I was expecting).
This is the wall surrounding the juvenile center? I think to myself.
I have somehow gotten the police officer into helping me get through the wall into the center, but I can’t remember how, or why. I remember we both had reasons, perhaps he has someone he needs to rescue too? In any case, I think to myself, we need to get in here.
The officer walks up to the outer fence, in which there is a door with a number lock on it (the kind you would press the “code” to get in). This fence is outside the big concrete wall and is just normal chain-link.
“We can just climb over?” I say. But then I realize the officer is quite portly.
“No.” he replies and gets some sort of weird-looking gun out of his pocket.
He shoots it at the lock and sparks begin to fly. Ohhh, I think to myself, a taser. I guess that works too!
The officer gives me an admonishing look and walks up to it.
“Open it.” he says. Pointing it the door handle, next to which is a computerized lock which has been blasted open, wires spill out and circuit boards are visible inside of the lock’s open panel.
I think for a second and then instead of grabbing the door handle I take a stick and lay it across the handle and the broken lock’s panel. When the stick touches both the door and lock the electrical connection is completed, sparks fly across as the final energy from the taser is released (maybe it had been stored in the capacitors of the lock mechanism?).
The officer gives me a look. Was that of approval or something else? Had he known about the shock and was hoping I would get electrocuted instead?
The officer opens the door and steps through to the concrete wall ahead of us, and I follow him through.
There are bits and pieces that follow this, but I was clearly waking up at this point. As I woke up I thought “noooooo” and immediately tried to go back to sleep (which never works of course).
My alarm hadn’t even gone off yet and I wanted to see how this dream ended. How did I rescue the brother? Was this cop really trying to help me or not? And do me and Alina finally escape this man from her past that is chasing her? So many questions!