Chapter 1
As long as I could remember I have dreamed of you. When I first saw you, you were just a scared little boy trying to hide from the dark surrounding you.
“Hey, don’t be afraid.” I offered him my hand, pale and cold from my own fears. I had to act like I was strong because if he thought I wasn’t afraid maybe he wouldn’t be either. He looked up at me with wide green eyes that shone with his unshed tears. A look of defiance moved across his features, masking his previous terrified expression. He cocked one thick eyebrow at her, something she didn’t even know someone his age knew how to do.
“I’m not afraid.” He tried to sound sure and tried to hide the small shake in his voice. It seemed that he wouldn’t take nicely to my mock strength, so I tried something else.
“Well I am, so could you please just take my hand, so I don’t feel so scared?” He looked up at me from where he was crouched on the floor and tried to look comforting. He took my small hand and pulled me to the floor with him where I sat cross-legged. When he touched my hand the room around us began to lighten and become more of a cloudy grey. As the walls shifted and changed, I realized they weren’t walls at all and this wasn’t even a room. Beyond our small bodies, in all directions, stretched an expanse that slowly became a brilliant, stark white. There were no walls and no ceilings, just white, and it looked like it went on forever. It felt like we were trapped on a blank piece of white paper and we were just two small ink spots in the center. We looked around, marveling as the world around us changed. The new bright, colorless surroundings made me squint compared to the previous darkness. When I looked back at the boy, he was squinting too. He was an scruffy looking boy. Well scruffy for what I assumed was about a six-year-old... like me.
I could still see those bright green irises piercing through his narrowed eyelids. He had light skin, but not as light as mine, and freckles everywhere. His hair reminded me of the color of tree bark. It was also curly and sticking up in some places. From where we sat on the ground, I could tell that he was probably a good bit shorter than me. He was wearing pajamas with little dinosaurs on them, mostly green and blue with a few orange ones sprinkled in. I looked down at my plain sleep dress that was a snowy white, faded by constant wear. It was my favorite because it had ruffles around the collar and at the ends of the long, billowy sleeves there were delicate, purple ribbons tied neatly into bows around my wrists. My pin-straight, black hair fell past my shoulders and onto the ruffled collar of the worn dress. Between my too dark hair and my too pale skin compared with my faded white dress I probably looked like a ghost to him.
When I looked up again, he was looking at me intently. Maybe he was thinking the same thing about me being a ghost. Or maybe... “What?! Is there something on my face?” My hands shot up and I began wiping my mouth and chin with my sleeve.
“No. I was just wondering how your head stays up.” That’s a weird question, why would he- “it must be really heavy because it’s so big.” And that was it. That was Darcy.
Every night after that I would fall asleep only to wake up in Dreamland, our very creative name for our wall-less room. But come on... we were six. Always the same endless white room and the only speck of color was Darcy. He was my only company and I was his. Most of our first nights in Dreamland were spent trying to see if there was anything else to be seen or maybe a door to somewhere else. When we finally realized that there was nothing but white, we stopped looking and started playing. We played with the only thing that we had in Dreamland. Our imaginations. We would run around Dreamland as ships captains or dinosaurs or, on my favorite nights, a prince and princess. Darcy didn’t really like playing the prince, and most of the time he would just decide to change characters and be a dragon.
One night, many weeks after that first night we spoke, Darcy was different. When I went to sleep that night, I had so many ideas of games we could play, like enchanted forest or princess and pirates. I thought he might like playing a pirate more than playing a prince, but when I got to Dreamland everything was black again like it was the first night we met only this time it felt different. I didn’t feel fear I just felt... empty. I saw Darcy sitting with his knees to his chest. I couldn’t see his face because he was facing away from me. When I came up next to him and sat beside him, I thought he might be crying, but he wasn’t, he was just looking. I followed his eyes, but I knew that I wouldn’t find anything, there was nothing but us in Dreamland.
“What’s wrong?” He didn’t say anything and kept looking into the endless void of space that was now Dreamland. As I examined his face closer and saw two identical streaks on each freckled cheek where his tears had fallen earlier. “Come on Darcy you can tell me.” As I said this, I scooted in front of him and sat back on my heels. He turned his head away. I leaned forward and took his hand, “Darcy, just tell me what’s wrong and I can help fix it.” He ripped his hand back from me like I had burned him. He swung his head back in my direction and at the same time all the walls around us became blood red.
“You can’t help fix anything. There is nothing you can do so just leave me alone.” He didn’t yell it but he had put so much venom behind his words that I felt my eyes immediately begin to well with tears. I could feel myself beginning to cry and I tried to hold it in. I didn’t want him to think I was a big baby, so I shot up and ran away from him. As I ran further and further away, the room shifted to a dense blue. It wasn’t until I felt I was far enough away that I finally sat down and let myself cry.
As my crying subsided the blue all around me lightened, but still embodied the sadness I felt as it resembled a stormy sky. I could hear Darcy walk up and turned my face away from him when he sat down next to me. I began frantically wiping my face, I wouldn’t let him know I’d cried.
“Hey, November, I’m really sorry.” He said my full name, making it seem that much more like he meant it. I turned and looked at him. His face still had those small streaks that gave his tears away, but he had a new light in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before when we were in the dark.
“Will you at least tell me what was wrong?” I wanted to know what could have made him feel so... empty. His face fell slightly.
“I will. But just not today. I wanted to push it further, but he said he would tell me, and I believed him. Besides, his face looked like a little puppy and I couldn’t stay mad at him forever, we had to play pirates and princesses.
