When We Were Lucid

When I was in middle school I had a close friend who realized when she was dreaming, 

We sat on the platform conjoining the monkey bars and the riveted chain planks that lead up to a spiral tube slide. I was sitting cross-legged, and she had her legs stretched out, one dangling off the side and the other leaning against me. The winter fled a month prior, but remnant winds still thrashed. I wore my winter jacket that day. I virtually wore it zipped all the way. I took to licking the middle piece of the collar from the inside. Every time I started a new session on it, the first few licks would taste like pennies. 

I closed in on her and wrapped my fingers around her ankle. 

“Did you do it last night? The dream thing?” 

She bent her knee and my grip came loose. 

“Yes, I think I did but I don’t remember all of it.” 

“Tell me what you remember!” I thrust my head. 

“Okay. Okay—” 

“Was it a continuation of your last dream?”  

“Ya it was—ok—so I was inside of the room and I saw you asleep…” 

Once she would realize she was dreaming she was able to live it through with a clear conscious rendering her the capacity to remember it. She could continue a previous dream if she thought about it the moment before she fell asleep, which is what I implored her to do almost every day.  

She pulled out an article on the ancestor of the modern tablet. The interfaces of online websites were not yet capable of adapting to various monitor resolutions. A strip of black covered the left side of the screen and the article, hosted on a mystical blog with a banner that flashed a waned purplish moon and glowing outlined zodiac constellations, was zoomed out into ineligibility—but the headline was obvious: “Lucid Dreaming: What is It and Why Does It Happen”. I read as she pinched the screen to zoom it in. She attempted to scroll down but couldn’t simultaneously pinch and swipe the screen. I looked it up on my own desktop, the article accurately illustrated her personal phenomena,  

And I guess she was a bona fide Lucid dreamer. 

 She would tell me about her dreams, and she told them so vividly that it should have been obvious they were made up. But they weren’t. If I think about it now, 12 years later, I still believe that she had the ability to lucid dream. Even after sloughing off childish naivety I don’t doubt it. When she spoke of her dreams they seemed like...dreams; Complex and unpredictable. It was not as if she could have conjured it up since she wasn't a very ingenious person. She was casually dull for the exception of this preternatural gift. 

She claimed to have this power ever since she was 5 years old.  

I hadn’t seen her since she left in the middle of 8th grade. She moved to another town. The 15 miles was just enough to terminate our bond.  

---

“…I was inside the room and I saw you asleep...” 

It was her, I believed.  

I woke up and she entered my room. She clamps a hand down on the tip of my bedpost. Her arm stretched up in an uncertain position while peering around the room. I read her face as perplexed and inspective. When she looked at me she said nothing, as if already expecting me to be there but she examines the room like it was fashioned on Mars.  

“Sheila?” 

 My throat was dry in the morning. Throughout the entire day a metallic aftertaste would emanate from the back of it, just like if I’d been swallowing pennies.  

I was reminded of this prior incident while the newscaster rapped on about an inconsequential report. Something about a woman’s cat being found exactly where her psychic told her during one of her readings, the cat was missing for a month. 

“Mom, remember when Sheila came by? Why didn’t you wake me before she came into my room?” 

My mom was loitering by the stove eyeing her three boiling eggs with blaring intensity; a semblance of alertness, but she wasn’t too slumberous as to miss my absurdity. 

“Who?” 

“You know. My friend back in middle school. Sheila.” 

She tightened the edges of her lip. 

“Sheeeila.” I stressed. 

“Sheila… of course. Your middle-school friend, Sheila.” (We knew no others.) “She's the one who lived in that Victorian looking villa inside the Courtbury inner roads.” 

“Yes, that’s her. I think she came sometime in the morning.”  

“This morning?” 

“Recently, I think.” 

“Came here? No...” 

“What are you talking about? Remember when—” 

I tried to find a sequential event to evoke my mom’s remembrance but there wasn't any. I couldn’t attach any other memory to the tangent, like what we did after, or what she said after, or how she left. Suddenly it became clear to me. Everything surrounded that recollection was blank, but I felt the encounter with alarming clarity. Like it actually happened. I was so convinced it was real, but could it possibly be a fragment from my dreams? 

she looked exactly the same as she did 12 years ago. 

Yes, that was right. She came not looking a day over 13. 

“Never mind.”  

---

I was out most of the day working and incessantly thinking of Sheila. It was mostly just recollecting the last things. What was the last thing we said to each other? When was the last time we saw each other? Where were we: the school, her house or mine?  

I remembered Sheila as she was then, lanky and tall; her limbs always floundered unceremonious as if she didn’t quite grow into them yet. She was too quiet during class and she listened to the same songs on repeat for days. I also took to assuming who she would be now. She’s probably married or lives off stipends from the family fortune. Did she still regain consciousness in her dreams, or had she lost touch with it? Would she talk to her contemporary friends about it or did she deem it too childish?  

The doorbell buzzed. My mother lived with me as a roommate but for some reason, she wasn’t home. The security alarm gave a small peal as I opened the door. I found a woman my age standing in between the door frame. I turned my face up to meet her eye.  

“Sheila?” 

She nodded excitedly. She wore a formal type dress and had on white stockings that I couldn’t miss. The contrast from the skin of her bare arms was blazon. She looked professional, I supposed well-off people would dress like this in leisure. Her hair was all down and bushy-straight, possibly blow-dried.  

“Are you visiting me in my dreams?” I asked without forethought.  

When she talked to me her voice was girlish. Her answer eluded me.  

The conversation we had was muffled as if the wavelength equivalent of fog thickened around our voices. I didn’t remember much of it after that. 

I don’t seem to recognize when I’m dreaming. I have memories that never occurred, not in reality. Now I can identify them. I can’t attribute to it a time, a date and a preceding or succeeding experience.  

---

My mom found Sheila on Facebook. 

I only have a couple of social media accounts that I frequent, but I retired from Facebook a very long time ago. My account has been inactive for the past 6 years. When I brought her up the week before my mom dug through Facebook. I’m just surprised she remembers Sheila’s last name. I never thought of searching for Sheila and reconnecting with her. She’s a part of my past. I don’t see a reason for a reunion. It’s been more than a decade, we’ve both grown up and had separate lives. She probably doesn’t remember me much, anyway.  

Regardless, I looked through her profile. Her picture was a glamour photo. Professional. Her head tilted and rested on her shoulder, a white halo around her pupils: the reflection from the studio lights. She smiled closed-mouthed and demurely.  

I noticed that my mom had requested to friend her. 

“Mom why did you request to friend her? She probably doesn’t even remember you.” 

“Why wouldn’t she? You’re one of our mutual friends, look.”  

Sheila had 769 friends and 5 of them were mutually my mother’s.  

“I have my profile on public. She probably added me years ago. I never noticed.”  

I tried to log back into my account but forgot the password. I reset it with the same email I’ve been using ever since.  

I saw that I had an innumerable amount of notifications. I checked out my friend list and searched her name. When I clicked on her profile it was open, I could see everything. She was occasionally active on Facebook with her most recent post dating back a week ago. She posted multiple photos of street views, natal charts and astronomical positioning, a few poems, predictions and affirmations. She became quite the mystic.  

Before I delved into the other pages of her profile, I was distracted by a red bubble denoting that I had four unread messages. I curiously clicked the icon and saw that my most recent message came from Sheila.  

-1/10/19, 4:39 PM 

“Hey Humera, I know this message is completely random and It’s been YEARS but I just found your profile on Facebook. This is the only way I can contact you. If you do see this know I’m open for a hangout! We are way overdue for a reunion.  

P.S. My number is (212) xxx-xxxx feel free to give me a call.” 

Baffled by the sheer coincidence, I gasped loud enough to alert my mom. She looked over my shoulder and read the message.  

“This is a sign!” She exclaimed. “Call her.” 

My eyes probed the table in search of my phone. I grabbed it. The timing was too perfect. She messaged me the day I dreamt about her visiting me. “Area code 212? She must live in the city.” I said while typing in the number.  

The line was picked up. 

“Hello?” 

“Hey Sheila…it’s Humera.” 

---

The train ride to Manhattan took no more than an hour. Living in New York state still grants the city novelty, it was truly a different world.  

I took a taxi to her apartment complex. The traffic was almost insufferable; thankfully she lived only ten minutes away from the station. The drive through the borough was quite marvelous. As a state resident, never visiting the city guilted me. I can now check it off my list. 

The building she lived was industrial-looking: cavernous, pristine and steepled. She asked me to call her when I enter so that she can come down to get me.  

When I saw her walking towards me in the vestibule, I surveyed her appearance. She wore a business-appropriate dress and sheer white leggings. Her hair bounced. I could hear her shoes tapping the floor.  

“Hi!” 

“I believe we've been meeting for quite some time now.” She said while embracing me. I had my mouth open to say something but caught her earring instead as she pulled me in. It tasted like copper.