Senior Year: T.V. or Reality

By Sammantha Blanks

Roxy is like every other high school senior--she loves her friends, her car and hanging on the sidelines of her boyfriend's football games. She lives a picturesque life. But every night her world gets turned upside down--Roxy dreams of a fantastic past she can't remember ever living.

In her dreams, Roxy is a warrior, incredible on the battlefield. But the dreams usually end the same way--a mysterious man not only finds her but kills her, and she wakes up screaming. Who is this man that stalks h

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781628383188

Book preview

Chapter 1

Beep! Beep! Beep! I let my hand crash down on top of my very unwanted wake up call. 6:30 a.m. came sooner than expected on the clear September morning. With summer now at its end, my senior year was now in full swing. I wish I could say that I was ready for it and happy about it, but there was only thing that I was looking forward to: life beyond Titan Valley. My only plan was to survive these last days of my high school career and walk across that stage, like my siblings before me, and to get out of here.

I went into the bathroom praying that I could work a miracle. My long light brown hair had thankfully stayed the plain braided ponytail making it easier to tame and drape across my shoulders exposing the expensive highlights that took most of my summer savings to get. My new contacts were a bitch to put in but it was a lot better than my glasses. I was super proud of myself for not getting carried away with my make up like some of the girls in my school. I put on just enough to define my look a little better. Make up wasn’t really my thing and I thought I looked good without it but since this was a special occasion, last first day of school and all, I figured it wouldn’t hurt. I went to my closet, which was newly foreign to me and tried to pick something out. My best friend since like forever, Melody, had torched my previous wardrobe and gave me the latest fashion out of New York. I grabbed the easiest outfit that I could find and put it on.

My life isn’t perfect but it is mine. I come from a good family and have a group of friends that I would die for. Although my family is one of the richest families in town I never take that into consideration regarding who I hang out with or how I treat people. I look back and can see that I haven’t changed much from the first day of school 13 years ago in kindergarten. I was always that bubbly child that enjoyed the company of others and so it was not difficult to make friends. Luckily, for me, I met Dane, Melody, Sean and Tyler who became some of the greatest friends I have ever had. After junior high, I branched out even more to become well liked by my peers. By the end of my Junior year, I was what people considered popular - but the good side of being popular. It wasn’t about the money that I had; it was that I treated people with respect and in return got that respect back. People looked up to me and I always tried to set a pretty good example. Two weeks ago I had the biggest birthday party of my life. We had it at my house, which is just outside of town. I invited anyone and everyone I knew but there were far more people there. Turning eighteen on the eighteenth was kind of a big deal. The party itself didn’t last long but I wanted it that way. I wanted to be with the ones closest to me. After everyone cleared out, my small group of friends and I moved party to King’s Point, a huge waterfall that is on our land, and had a little camping trip. It was a night that I will never forget.

That, however, is when the dreams started. Dreaming, of course, wasn’t the weird part. I thought that it was my new found obsession with ancient cultures but there was something about that dream that felt, well, more than a dream. I dreamt I was at war. I wish I could pin point when or where but the only thing that I knew was that I was not alone. I was fighting alongside people who I later realized were my friends but we were not amateurs. We were professional warriors, born and bred killers. From what I could tell, we were bad ass fighters. I could feel the adrenaline running through my palms as I cut down each opponent. The massive sword that I wielded in my grip was terrifyingly beautiful. The blade itself was at least two feet long and made of thick iron; it seemed to be made personally for me. I aggressively ripped through skin, but the blade sliced gracefully through the air; its weight seemed to be of no consequence. Anything that I came into contact with tore instantly. I felt powerful. I loved the rush of watching the light cease to exist in my opponent’s eyes as I took the many souls. I was moving so fast, dodging swipes of blades and gorging opponents before they knew what had happened. I was invincible. I had torn nearly four dozen victims and felt like I couldn’t be stopped. I didn’t notice the man running to me until it was too late. I wasn’t quite sure if he was warning me or just another poor fool coming to attempt to take my life, but I woke up just as a sword began to rip through the base of my neck. I sat up quickly, breathing heavily as I reached for my neck. It felt so real; every drop of sweat, the weight of the blade, the smell of the blood. I looked around to my friends but none of them had stirred.

Every night after that I’d had similar dreams. They seemed to take me all across the globe and through time. Last night was no different. The man who I saw running at me in the first dream always appeared to me. He seemed to get closer every time but was never able to reach me. And seconds before I woke, the final blow was always a sword that surprised me from behind. Last night I was in the rain forest near a river. I was fighting, but this time I was trying to retreat into an old temple. I tried to disappear into one the small hallways. I thought that I had lost my assailant in the retreat, but I was wrong and no matter how hard I tried, it didn’t matter. The sword came from behind, killing me once again.

They felt so real. I had no idea what to think of it. They seemed to building to something. In each one I seemed to get just a little farther. Maybe it was some serious issues that I had in my awake state and were trying to work themselves out. But all I experienced was death, every time. Not to mention, I have never been to any of those beautiful places. Heck, I’ve never been out of this cold state. So what did they mean? And what about that guy I saw? I was never able to see his face, but I hoped that he was trying to save me. Was it just my imagination going wonky or was I officially losing my mind? But I didn’t have time to squander on the forever-long list of questions. It was 7:30 a.m. I had to make sure that I left in enough time to pick up Melody and Dane.

Distracted by my thoughts, I tried to finish getting ready for school. My room was never organized which was no help. The keys to my car were under a pile of my clothes by my nightstand while my neatly packed school bag was hanging at the end of my bed. I could never truly get rid of the nerd in me. I moved through my room trying to remember if I had forgotten anything. I usually did, no matter how many times I checked. When I couldn’t think of anything, I headed downstairs. By using the banister, it took me less than three seconds to get down the twenty-seven stairs. When I reached the bottom of the staircase I felt the usual heat begin to form on my hands. Suddenly a wave voices flooded my head. Remember! They shouted. It only lasted a few seconds but it seemed to come out of nowhere. Shaking the early morning strangeness, I noticed my younger brother Brett and mom were calmly finishing up their breakfast. I stopped for a second debating to ask them if they heard anything but I knew I would never make it out the door. So instead, I slipped out the door before my mom had a chance to stop me.

My dad wasn’t around much. He’s a big scout for a big company close to Canada. Why we didn’t move there? That was a great question, one that I had never gotten a clear answer to. When he was home, however, he brought presents to apologize for his time being gone. The bribes didn’t hurt my feelings. The last time he was home he brought me a graduation gift but said I couldn’t open it until the first day of school. So last night, I cheated out a couple hours and opened it. Inside the box was a gold locket with a picture of him and me.

Under the case was a note that read, To my precious honeybee, make this year an adventure. Love, Dad.

I loved my dad, but not only did I have to share his attention with my brothers and sisters but a couple hundred athletes. As of now, he had gone to Cambridge to go scout a new basketball player. My mom was the stay at home rancher. She had an affinity for horses that was impressive, and running the ranch was equivalent to running a company by herself. I knew that was where I got my strong sense of leadership. We had lived on the ranch for as long as I had been alive. This was odd, because my dad was from Boston and my mother from Jamaica. Why on earth they picked such a country, rural place as their resting grounds I will never know.

I reached my car seconds before Brett flew passed me, sprinting as fast as he could to the end of our long driveway. He stood there proudly as he waited at the bus. Brett was fifteen and was a freshman this year. Since we were finally going to be at the same school this year, my mother urged me to take him with me in the morning. But now being in high school, t here were more politics involved and he couldn’t risk it. I knew this, but he used excuses to save crushing my feelings.

No, I like riding the bus, he said. All my friends are on there. And I need to practice my running if I want to make captain the track team. Plus people would figure out that we are related. And I definitely don’t need that to happen.

He did have a point about us being siblings though. He didn’t look like me at all. Actually he didn’t look like any of us. We were tall, dark skinned, and broad; he was tall, skinny with fair skin. Each of us had hazel or blue eyes while his eyes were brown and plain. He had sandy blond hair. This was the strange part because no one that I had met in our family had anything remotely blond hair. He was a cute kid, but was officially declared the milkman’s baby. Dad always laughed at the thought that he wasn’t his. Our father, being Italian, was the closest to being lighter skinned like Brett. On the other side, our mom, with her Jamaican ethnicity, had a seriously dark complexion with bright caramel colored eyes. It made her mad when people would ask if Brett was adopted. It always seemed to amuse me.

Have a good day, my little Angel Fish! My mother shouted from the porch.

I could tell her voice carried all the way to him because he stopped and threw his arms up. Her warm smile shot from ear to ear. I could feel the embarrassment for Brett. He got the nickname when he was four. When we would go to the lake, my mother would act like her and Brett were fish to get him to get in the water. She said that she would never lose him because he glowed like an angelfish. She was definitely the standard mother full of love and mushiness. The bus showed up, saving Brett.

My phone jingled around 7:40 A.M. meaning that it could only be one person: Dane Simons. I opened the message and laughed; I was right.

DANE: DNT 4GET 2 PICK ME UP!!!! HURRY!!!

I smirked and replied.

ROXY: How cld I 4GET???

I shoved my phone in my pocket and threw my bag in the back seat. I loved my car. On my sixteenth birthday, my dad thought he was going to miss it so he got me a fully restored black 1967 Chevrolet Impala. I had been dreaming about it for years. Even though dad always went big on our presents, no one had ever got such an amazingly big present. All my siblings finally declared me as the favorite or that there must have been something really special about me. Out of all my friends, Dane and I were the ones that were excited about my car the most. We both had a love for cars, especially classics. He made sure that I picked him up every day for school. Just before I got in the car I heard the door to the screen door creak open. I turned my attention to my mom glaring at me. The grim smile on her face made me shiver.

You have fun too, Sweetie, she said plainly before heading back into the house.

She had no nickname for me today, she hasn’t for a while. She has been like this towards me for the whole summer. It was like I was a disappointment to her or something. I thought that maybe we were having the whole daughter not taking over the family business kind of situations. She would be civil with me but then after my birthday it got worse. Words were limited between us, but tension was high. Most situations would call for us to talk about it and get it all out in the open. But instead, I peeled out of the driveway knowing it drove her crazy. I wish I could have seen the look on her face. I turned left heading half a mile to Melody’s house. I usually had the radio on, but instead, today I left it off. My mind was still thinking about the dreams. I didn’t think that they would truly bother me that much. But it wasn’t just the dreams.

The night after my party, I began to notice little things. First it was things like my hair growing faster. With my hair down, the length of my hair now reaches the lower part of my back and is extremely thick.

I’m not sure how but my hearing became exquisite. I was able to hear Brett talking to his friend Todd calling me a snitch after I caught him stealing some of mom’s money. I was in my room; he was outside. I had become just a little faster, stronger. I had been working out this summer so that could be the reason. Or maybe it was the way I was eating now. I only had junk food and pop on occasion. But there had to be something else. There was always something else. I never let anything go by as coincidence. Today was going to be nothing but a stressful day. I just hope that nothing else new appeared to make it worse.

When I pulled up to the white hundred year old farmhouse, I saw that Melody was already waiting by the fence. Melody acted more like my sibling than Brett. With the relationship that we had, I felt that we were sisters. She was my first friend in kindergarten. Melody, her older sister Nadia, and their father moved from New York when Melody was four. It was another one of those why on earth move to here questions. Their mom is a big actress on Broadway so she stayed in New York City. That decision hurt the family big time. As we grew older we learned that a few months after they moved here, her mother sent divorce papers. She had fallen in love with a twenty four year old model. The news struck Melody’s father like a hammer. He began to drink more than usual. He became very violent towards Melody saying that it was her fault that her mother left him. Her parents had not wanted