I don't remember what sleep is like anymore.

Remembering Christmas Lights

I think I dreamt about the stars last night but I’m not sure. Whatever it was, it felt like flying. Lately I’ve been thinking about the stars a lot. I think about them all the time. I don’t know why.

I’m a freshman in college. Ever since I’ve gotten here, nothing has been the same. I stepped into a new life. Sometimes it’s the best feeling in the entire world. Sometimes I miss my old life. But my old life was just another new life, another era.

The course of my entire existence changed completely over the course of five minutes when I was sixteen year old. It was the first day of my junior year, and my weird fetish for English led me to sign up for Advanced Placement English Language and Composition. Let’s just say on that first day, I did not feel like I belonged. I had fallen victim to the high school kiss of death. That is, I was placed in a class in which none of my friends were enrolled.

So, I found myself seated next to Hannah Martins. I’d known this person since my freshman year of high school and our relationship basically consisted of me annoying her, whether on purpose or by accident. The second I sat down I could feel her tense up with silent trepidation. A hard worker and mild perfectionist in nature, Hannah had to watch me slack off every day in Honors Geometry and complain about my thirty percent. Plus I just tend to get a little bit loud and mildly obnoxious…on occasion.

Naturally, when Mrs. Eaton, a tall, short-haired, rather intense woman said “Make sure you love your seat because it’s yours for the rest of the year,” Hannah shot out of her seat immediately. I swear it must have been on fire with the prospect of the future irritations that flashed through her mind in that split second. She got up that fast. I really didn’t take it personally, but it bummed me out when I realized that I now sat completely alone.

This did not fly with me. I awkwardly tried to look around the room for a seat possibility, trying to appear casual, when I saw him. A tall guy I had never seen before sat at a desk with a single empty seat next to it. The desks were a lone pair in the center of the room and my only option. Seeing no other way out of my predicament, I grabbed all my stuff and did the walk of shame over to this kid, plopped my stuff down, and said “Hey”. He looked at me with an unreadable look of mild surprise and responded with a “Hey” of his own. I didn’t know it at the time, but the next two years of my life turned upside down and exploded right then and there. Nothing ever stays the same. And that’s how I met Dan Whelden. It didn't take long for his effect to set in.

"Claire...Claire...Claire...CLAIRE!" Each eager repetition of my name was punctuated by a sharp poke to my right shoulder, but my attention was focused on the road in front of me, illuminated by the loyal headlights of my red Volvo 740. Yet it swam slightly as a result of my mind’s disloyalty to reality. Yet, at the moment, this was fine.

"Claire...Claire...Claire..." The assault on my shoulder increased in
persistence and obnoxiousness to the point where my attention snapped and I wrenched my eyes away from the shimmering black river that was Braeburn Road. I gave the occupant of the passenger's seat my full attention, while mildly acknowledging the raucous laughter of Rassah and John as they shared an apparent moment of hilarity in the backseat. The sound of their laughter was muffled by a mountainous pile of blankets protecting them from the suffocating cold in a way that Bob's broken heating system could not.


"What?!?" I yelled with exasperation accompanied by a steady, thrilling sense of exhilaration, but Dan wasn't even looking at me, his eyes transfixed on the passing scenery shrouded in the early darkness. It characterized the heavy onset of Winter. He was utterly captivated, and the moment I came to the realization that I was utterly captivated by his captivation, Dan turned away from the car window and met my baffled expression with one of his own.

"The Christmas lights...they're inviting me..." he stated with a mixture of overwhelming awe along with startling trepidation, then returned to staring in shocked disbelief at the pinpricks of light. Some took on the form of trees that blurred past in the night air outside our moving vessel. I was the captain.

I followed Dan's gaze this time and felt the lights flow through me, a sensation most certainly produced by nothing other than sheer magic. They filled my vision with a vibrancy I had never noticed before. Not once. In that second, I knew I couldn't look away even if I tried, though I somehow maintained control over the still-moving vehicle. The Christmas lights were inviting us into a powerful current driven by some invisible force, the origin of which we couldn't be less concerned about. I felt the pull and hesitated for a brief moment. Then the Christmas lights swept me away.