Amber

Chapter 32

April 15, 2015

Dear Journal,

Hannah keeps talking about her dreams. Not dreams in the Martin Luther King sense of the word. (I think he wrote journals too, so we're in good company.) Not the types of dreams she used to have. Not about Broadway or acting or how she would fill up the covers of magazines, and I would proudly bat my lashes and tell strangers on the street all about how my sister grew wings and flew away like she always wanted.

Not those dreams.

Actual dreams she has at night while sleeping ... or ... trying to sleep. She'll come wake me and describe the dreams and ask me to interpret them (a fun game we've always played). And then she'll get mad when my interpretation is something like: "Hannah, I think the scorpion chasing you is the stinging desire you have to return to theater and the stage."

She hasn't wanted to talk about any of that. It's as if her life never existed before the last six months or however long it's been now that Hannah is "liberated from the world's eye," as she phrases it. She doesn't mention old boyfriends or friends—some of whom still call daily even though Hannah ignores them. All of her new friends are online living thousands of miles away.

Even Mom and I have been pushed away. Hannah craves distance and thrives on isolation. When she gets into full-on privacy mode, there's no breaking through that barrier. That's why I cherish what have become nightly rounds of dream interpretation. I can't wait for that moment well before sunrise when Hannah shakes me awake, sweating and wide-eyed to tell me her latest adventure. But it's also sad. Tragic, really. I know her mind is trying to compensate. Trying desperately to create themes of art and spirit and imagination within a girl who used to be so overflowing with all of them that she spilled color onto the world.

Every dream is nearly the same. Something is always chasing her. A scorpion. A spider. A snake. A fireball. Sometimes even herself.

"It's a sign," she said last night. "A sign that I shouldn't keep running. I should let it catch me."

I wanted to know what would happen if she stopped running. I wanted to pull her into bed next to me so that we could both fall asleep and face it together. So that whatever caught her would catch me too.

I've started to have dreams too, but nothing ever chases me in them. I almost wish something were. It would be far more exciting than my dreams. In my dreams I'm always standing still. Always waiting. Waiting for something to be worth telling once I wake up. My dreams are dark and empty. Empty of meaning. Empty of excitement. Empty of everything.

My dreams are far stretches of black, filled in with shadow and covered in shade. I dream of what it's like to be nowhere. To be trapped in the color of Hannah's eyes.

Hannah.

Maybe she's the one chasing me, but I stay standing still because nothing could ever make me want to run from her.