Dolion

Amalie was outside waiting for the bus, muddled, when she pulled the arm of her so called ‘friend’, and he turned around.

“Okay Dolion. What’s been going on?”

“Nothing. Look, I got to get home, I’ll see you later.” And just like that he was off in the crowd of teenagers waiting to get home.

That week he and Amalie were supposed to work on some school project that Dolion had even seemed excited for, but then the Tuesday after they got the project he started to avoid her and now it was due that Monday coming up.

And how much had they worked on it?

Not a bit.

Amalie got on her usual bus and on the way home she looked at her messages with Dolion. She had still gotten no responses. She had even texted Max, another one of his friends and he hadn’t heard from him either.

Is he okay?

One thing Amalie sometimes couldn’t even admit to herself is that sometimes her ideas got the best of her, and once she decided on something, nothing was gonna stop her from doing it.

Once back in the third grade Amalie tried to get this girl to talk, and not matter what, she couldn’t say a single thing. So Amalie made it her goal to get her to say even one word. Amalie eventually talked so much (too much) and asked so many questions that the girl had finally answered using her words. Amalie doesn’t even remember what the question was, but she thinks the only reason the girl even answered was because she was getting so annoyed.

But who was that girl now?

Vania, Amalie’s best friend.

Amalie and Vania were a bike ride away from each other, which they had only started learning they could do, a few weeks ago. Amalie got home off the bus as usual, and, as long as she got home in time for dinner, biked to Vania’s house. Once she was there she knocked on the door and Vania opened it.

“Hey Amalie, what’s up?” They both made their way to her bedroom.

“Nothing much. Well besides the whole Dolion issue.”

“Ah.” Amalie sat at the desk chair and Vania sat on the edge of her bed.

“And I had an idea. I was wondering if you’d help?”

“Depends.” Vania gave a look at Amalie that Amalie had seen a thousand times from her.

“It’s not way over the head. Look, when we started the project, he said that he’d let me know when I could come over and that when I was ready I would text him.” Amalie grinned like every time she’s had a plan and Vania knew exactly what it meant.

“I guess that means I need my bike?” Amalie nodded.

Amalie and Vania were off on the sidewalk biking their way to Dolion’s house.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this with you.” Vania shook her head and laughed.

“I know. I mean this out first, like, outside of a building adventure.” She made a motion with her hands momentarily letting go of the bike handles. Vania gasped, worried, and Amalie snorted at it.

“You’re gonna kill yourself doing that.” Vania warned her yet still as a friend and less as a parole officer or angry teacher.

“And it’ll be as likely as being raised back from the dead by some kid.”

Finally they had made it to their destination. They both walked up to the door and Amalie knocked on it.

Then it was opened by a lady they both knew. She goes by: Dolion’s mother.

“Hey! I was wondering when you were going to show up!” She welcomed us in and we were greeted by Dolion’s younger brother and sister.

“HI AMA!” Gael a few months older than his younger sister Jayla, rushed past her almost knocking her over.

“Hey Gael.”

“Hey! Don’t push me!” Jayla angrily yet very cutely walked up to us, arms crossed.

“Hi Jayla!” Jayla’s anger tuned instantly to happiness when she saw Vania. Although Dolion had always been good friends with them, Amalie always found it cool that Vania had probably a better relationship with his younger siblings than with him.

“If you want to head up to his room, Dolion is already up there.”

“Oh, thanks.”

Amalie knew that this was it. She was finally going to get answers. She walked up to his bedroom door and without knocking opened it to find him, with his back to the door, on the phone with some old man.

“And don’t tell anyone. We can’t have anyone finding out you’re The Healer.” He hung up and Dolion turned around, immediately looking horrified.

“Uh, I uh, how long have you been there?”

“You could say long enough. Which was roughly 10 seconds.” He then abruptly walked past her and slammed the door shut.

“Look, you can’t tell anyone what you just heard. It could ruin my family’s life.”

“My lips are sealed.” Amalie made a hand motion across her face, trying to lighten the mood.

“No, I need you to leave. You weren’t supposed to know any of that, no one can know any of that.” He nervously scratched the back of his neck.

“I’m not leaving. You have to tell me what’s going on. You’re the Healer?”

“I can’t tell you.” His eyes that were welling with tears and about to pour over suddenly drained like a public pool.

“Oh, so we’re best buddies for six years and suddenly you can’t tell me stuff!” Amalie didn’t know how to react. All she felt was anger, but she knew she should feel bad for Dolion for some reason.

“Just get out! If anyone finds out, they’ll move my family and I to some lab!” Once we was done screaming he took a breath.

“Dolion, I’m-,” Amalie started.

“Don’t talk, just go.”

Amalie stormed out the door ready to leave. She rushed down the stairs, passing a confused Vania, Jayla, and Gael.

Amalie, didn’t know what to do so she got onto her bike with out thinking about it and started to ride top speed out of the driveway. But Amalie was so caught up in her frustrations that she didn’t look both ways and by this time it was traffic hour.

She ran straight out into the road, and the car coming didn’t have time to react, and drove straight for her.

Amalie woke up in her bed, reality coming back to her. She checked her phone, and it was Saturday. She leaned back on her pillow smiling.

It was all a dream.

Usually she’d still be upset by how the dream ended just in general, but she couldn’t find a real reason.

Although, she didn't like that her friendly adventure bike riding was her fatal flaw, if that's what she could even call it.

She decided to call someone and tell them the dream she just had.

“Hey Amalie, whats up?”

“You won’t believe the dream I just had.”

“I’m not sure about that. After what happened Monday, I think I could believe anything.” He genuinely believed that too.

“Well, you know the project we got assigned?”

“And it was a good project this time!”

“Well my dream started on yesterday, and that whole week you had been avoiding your friends, and we hadn’t done the project, so I went to you’re house with Vania-”

“The Vania part makes sense.”

“And when we went in you had a younger brother and sister.”

“How did your head give me a younger brother?”

“I don’t know, but it gets weirder, or awesome-er you could say.”

“Well I’m not, because that’s not a word.”

“Whatever, just listen. I went to your room all by myself, and heard The Old Man call you The Healer.”

“Wow. Sounds like a comic book name. Although, The Old Mans name is too.”

“Hey, The Old Man’s not a bad teacher though. Anyway the rest of the dream was that I got hit by car later and I woke up, lucky me.”

“Well that got dark.”

“Yeah, it did. But what do you think? You and Fire boy could go stop crime or something.”

“Fire boy! Ha! I think he likes the name Max more.” He laughed on the other side of the phone, then stopped creating silence. “You don’t remember what happened last night do you?”

Amalie was confused.

 What had happened last night?

“What do you mean? I came home from school, then sometime I went to bed.”

“What happened before you went to bed?” Then it hit Amalie that she had no idea. She couldn’t remember anything.

“Dolion, what happened?”

“You, Vania, and Max, were gonna come over, but on the way, you… got hit.”

“By the car.”

“Yeah. After that you must’ve made up that whole dream from this whole past week.”

“Wait so, how am I here?”

“Well I do sorta have healing powers.”

“Wait you.. thank you!”

“Anytime, just start listening to Vania about riding a bike correctly.”

Vania was right. I was as likely to die on that bike than some kid going to heal me.

“You got it, Dolion, The Healer.”