Paivi woke in a tangle of blankets, soaked in sweat and gasping for air. She jumped out of bed and lunged for the light switch. The room was instantly bathed in light. Paivi looked around wildly, not knowing what to do. She sat down on the bed, shaking her head. What did this mean? Clearly, something horrible was going to happen. But when? And why? She rubbed her face with her hands. She wanted to run in and wake her parents up. She wanted to tell them everything she had seen. But what good would that do? She had no answers.
Hey, Mom and Dad, I saw Mom in my dream and she was in some camp near some mountains. She looked half dead.
She pictured the conversation and it just seemed ridiculous.
Remembering the score of the football game that she would need to give Christian in the morning, she grabbed a pen and jotted down 21-14 Chicago on a notepad.
She turned off the light and returned to bed. The alarm clock numbers glowed in the darkness. She lay there, watching them slowly change until she fell into a restless sleep.
The next morning, she opened her eyes slowly, feeling like she hadn’t slept at all. She saw herself in the bathroom mirror and made a face. She touched the huge dark circles under her eyes. Thankfully, Coach Espinosa had given them the day off after their big win the night before. She didn’t feel up to practice today.
Last night seemed like years away now. She went down to breakfast. It was late, past ten, and Mr. and Mrs. Anderson had already left to do some shopping.
‘Good Morning Sunshine!’ read a sticky note attached to a pile of newspapers. ‘Hope you got some rest! Enjoy the papers! Love, Mom and Dad.
Torsten came stumbling down the stairs, rubbing his eyes as Paivi looked through the stack of papers. The St. Andrew Herald, the Tartan Times, and the Tribune all had her picture on the front page, stealing the ball from number 15. The headline above read ‘Tartans Take Tournament.’ The caption under her picture read ‘St. Andrew High School’s center, Paivi Anderson, saves the day. See Sports for the full report.’
“Mom and Dad gone already?” mumbled Torsten through a yawn.
“Yeah,” she answered, shuffling through the papers, looking for the Sports sections. The back page had the headline ‘Anderson stops West: Leads SAHS to Victory’ above a picture of her guarding Brooke West.
She couldn’t even muster enough energy to get excited about seeing her name in the paper. She had cheated. And after her dream, she didn’t really care much about any of it any more. What did it matter if she did well in a basketball game when she had seen her mother in some horrible camp, looking half dead? She pushed the papers aside and headed to the pantry. She grabbed her favorite cereal, Fruity Puffs, along with a bowl and a spoon, setting it all on the table. She dumped out a heap of cereal and grabbed some milk from the fridge to add to it. She pulled the comics page out from the pile of papers and began to read them as she ate her breakfast.
“What, don’t you want to read all the glorious articles about the wonder and magnificent Paivi Anderson?”
“No,” she answered curtly, hoping he would take a hint.
“Well, I don’t know about you,” Torsten pulled out a chair across from Paivi, sitting down with a giant stack of microwave pancakes and two jars, one of peanut butter and one of jelly, “but I would love to have someone put my picture all over the papers.”
Paivi said nothing and shoveled another spoonful of Fruity Puffs into her mouth. How could he even begin to understand this?
“What, now you’re too good to talk to me?” Torsten struggled to get the words around a mouthful of peanut butter and jelly pancakes.
“Look, just leave me alone.” She glared at him across the table. He shrank at the sharpness of her voice. He snatched the sports section from the pile and put it up so Paivi couldn’t see his face.
They spent the rest of breakfast in silence. After she finished eating, she called Christian’s house. The answering machine picked up, so she left a message. She called Jason and told him she was sick and couldn’t make it to a movie. He did sound extremely disappointed and promised to take her another time when she was feeling better. Not feeling like doing much else, she went back up to her room. She wanted to be alone. Her bed looked so warm and inviting. She was so tired and wanted to try to make herself see more of the images of her mother at the camp to try and figure out how she got there, but she just couldn’t muster the energy.
Paivi crawled back under her covers and closed her eyes.
No more dreams, she told herself, as she drifted off into a deep sleep.