06

“Hey. Hey, come on, you need to wake up. HEY!”

I let out a small squeak of shock and bolted upright, looking around frantically to try and find what the source of trouble was. As I looked around, as it happened, I noticed that a few things were completely out of the ordinary.

For one, I was wearing a pair of jeans, a pretty blue blouse, and a dark jacket I distinctly remember wearing a few weeks ago.

Two, I happened to be slumped awkwardly over at a table in the corner of some small, family owned Chinese restaurant that seemed to be completely empty of customers, save for myself.

And lastly, there was a tall, imposing figure leaning over towards me across the table with a rather weirded out, concerned look in his intensely colored eyes, his lips twisted down in an unpleasant frown.

That last thing was probably the most surprisingly, freakish one of all. Because you know why?

Archer Morales was the one who was standing in front me. And he was most certainly not dead. On the contrary, he looked very much alive. Well, rather annoyed, but still alive all the same.

“Uhm…I’m sorry,” I started babbling out of embarrassment. “I didn’t even know I fell asleep, and – “

“Fine, whatever,” Archer Morales cut me off in a deep, rich voice I hadn’t expected to hear. “Look, you can’t stay here. You need to go.”

I was slightly taken aback by the sharp, annoyed tone he used. Sure, I’d heard him speak about one time before, but that had been years ago. It shouldn’t have felt as if I’d just gotten slapped in the face or something with the way he was talking to me.

I couldn’t help the fact that I was staring up at him with an awed expression on my face, sort of like I was seeing Jesus Christ in the flesh or something.

“What are you doing here?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.

“Me?” Archer repeated in a sarcastic voice. “I happen to work here, and we’re closing. So you really need to leave.”

The last place I expected Archer Morales to ever work at was a tiny Chinese restaurant, but I suppose there were firsts for everything, right?

This sure as hell was.

“Closing?” I repeated in a high pitched voice once the word finally sunk in. “What time is it?”

“Quarter past eleven,” Archer deadpanned in a bored voice.

“Oh, shit,” I yelped, scrambling my way to my feet. “My parents are going to be so pissed! How the hell did I let this – “

“Jesus Christ, Hadley, would you shut up?”

I immediately stopped my frantic pacing and hurried mutterings to stare at Archer in amazement, trying to keep my mouth from falling open in surprise.

“You know who I am?” I couldn’t help but ask him in shock.

“Hadley Jamison, junior at JFK High, daughter of that famous hotshot lawyer and his businesswoman wife,” Archer drawled as he grabbed dirty dishes off a nearby table, dropping them into a Tupperware bin. “We had English together freshman year.”

Okay, that was a little unusual.

“You remember that?” I said aloud in a duped voice.

“How could I forget?” he said, like it should’ve been plainly obvious. “You blushed like a freaking lobster anytime I looked at you.”

“Well, that wasn’t my fault,” I fired back without thinking. “What was I supposed to do, just stare at you or something?”

“You and everybody else at that hell they call a school,” he muttered, rolling his dark hazel eyes.

I could not believe this was happening. This had to be some sort of cruel, cruel trick that my mind was playing on myself. The last time I’d seen Archer Morales, he’d been tightly encased in a freaking casket in some cathedral a few blocks over.

Yet now he was standing in front of me, actually having a conversation with me, and he wasn’t dead?

What fresh hell was this?

“I’m dreaming,” I finally all but shouted, tossing my hands up in the air. “I’ve got to be dreaming.”

Archer stared at me like I’d just started speaking gibberish or something.

“Excuse me?” he said in a flat voice, arching an eyebrow.

I convinced myself not to care about that one.

“This has got to be some horrible nightmare that I’m having,” I continued on ranting and raving, starting my pacing again. “And when I wake up again, I’ll just be back in my bedroom, ready to start another boring day at our idiotic school.”

“I figured you were a bit weird, Hadley, but I didn’t know you were this – did you just pinch yourself?”

Archer was now staring at me with a completely baffled look on his face, watching me as I pretty much had a complete and total breakdown in front of him. And yeah, I had just pinched myself.

“So?” I muttered defiantly, trying to keep the blush back that was working its way into my cheeks.

He just continued to stare at me with a weird look on his face, like I was some alien or something. Normally that would have pissed me off, because I mean, I’m not some freak show. But right then I really didn’t care because I was just glad to see him alive.

Even if, you know, this all turned out to be a dream.

“God, you’re weird,” he finally muttered, rolling his eyes again.

At that moment I was torn between slapping him in the face for being so mean or tackling him in a furiously tight hug. I couldn’t really decide which one would have been more satisfying.

Now, don’t get me wrong - I was more than embarrassed by the fact that the guy I was supposed to be “saving” and I hadn’t really gotten off on the right foot. He thought I was a lunatic and now I was beginning to think he was a jerk.

But it wasn’t as if I could just throw my hands up in the air already and give up. No way in hell was I going to do that. Somehow by the grace of God…or, well, whoever ruled the universe out there, I was going to do this the right way.

I was going to do this.

So, taking a deep breath, I tried to force a somewhat pleasant look on my face and act as polite as possible before saying, “Help me catch a cab?”

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