"I don't want to go to school! I'm too tired." Penelope complained. She laid across her bed with her head stuck under the black pillow.



"Sweetheart, you can't be missing school just because you didn't get a good night's sleep." Her mother sat down on the end of the bed, looking at her daughter's lazy figure. Penelope's mother was a beautiful woman at the age of 43, with her jet-black wavy hair and olive colored skin. She had a way about her that made her seem young and her age showed in her wisdom.



"Just this once?" Her daughter begged her, pulling off the pillow from her face. Mary Ella Chavez looked at her daughter's tired face. In seeing her, she worried about the nightmares her daughter used to have.



"Did you have an unpleasant dream?" She asked Penelope. Penelope looked at her with confused green eyes.



"I don't dream..."



"Not even good dreams?"



"No, I'm not able to fall enough into a deep sleep to dream." Penelope answered. "I never have any good dreams or bad."



"None, at all?" Mary Ella asked.



"Nothing."



Mary Ella felt relieved and worried at the same time. The relief came from the fact that her daughter didn't remember the nights of waking up to horrible dreams at a young age. Moving to a new town was the best thing they could have done. The nightmares stopped and Penelope soon forgot about them as she was kept busy enough not to dwell on the horror scenes played in her subconscious.



"You can stay home, but you go tomorrow. I mean it!" She gave in. Penelope hugged her mother. Mary Ella kissed Penelope on the forehead before leaving the modern black and white bedroom to let her daughter rest.



Mrs. Chavez walked down the stairs and into the kitchen where her husband was reading the newspaper in front of a bowl of oatmeal.



"She's not going to school today." She told him, heading for the white stove.



"Why not?" Mr. Chavez asked. He looked at his wife with the same green eyes as their daughter. "She didn't have another nightmare, did she?"



"No, in fact, she said that she doesn't dream or sleep well at night."



"At least the dreams are gone." He replied. His wife sat across from him at the table.



"I'm worried about her health." She confessed.



"If you think it'll help, we can bring her to a sleep study." Her husband offered. Mary Ella was worried that they would tell her that their daughter was abnormal. She didn't want to hear those words from anyone. She loved her daughter and did everything for her. Keeping the dreams a secret was for her benefit.



"You're not worried about what they might find?"



"They might say she has insomnia..."



"I don't want to take her to a sleep study." Mary Ella answered the original question.



That was the end of the conversation for now. They both wanted Penelope to lead as much as a normal life as possible. If told about the dreams, what would she do?



The young woman from five years ago proved them to be more than dreams. They were what became reality. The time that it would occur was not something Penelope's parents were sure of. They didn't want their daughter to be special in the way she was. She was supposed to be a normal child, not odd with death dreams while she wasn't at least bit disturbed. When the dreams had stopped, they were given hope. Now, they were waiting for the day the dreams might come back.



In her room, Penelope laid restless in bed. She had tried going to sleep, but it just didn't work. So instead, she tried thinking on when her non-capability of sleep started.



As much as she could remember led to the conclusion that she always had trouble sleeping. No dreams made her wake up smiling or crying. She would ask her parents, but they would shun the topic as if it frightened them. Only one comment would ever be brought up and that would be the occasional "Did you have an unpleasant dream?" from her mom.



Not being able to sleep, Penelope rolled off her bed and looked through her drawers. She threw on a pair of jeans and a bright green top, which brought out the color of her eyes. She walked downstairs after putting ten dollars, house keys, and her cell phone in her pocket.



"Mom? Dad?" She called out. There was no reply back and she figured that they were most likely off to work. Penelope walked into the kitchen and made herself a slice of buttered toast.



Holding the toast in her mouth, she took down the notepad on the fridge and wrote she went out to clear her head. Placing it back on the fridge, she grabbed her buttered toast and walked out the door.

Penelope walked down the street. Birds were chirping in the neighborhood and there were several friendly faces. The reason why the family moved here was because her father thought nothing bad happened in a gated community. To Penelope, it seemed as if he was hiding from something.



She went to the small community park and sat on a swing. Swinging slightly, she closed her eyes. Her hand shot up to her neck as she felt a quick sharp pain.



"Ouch." her eyes started feeling heavy and her hand went slack. Penelope stopped swinging and tried blinking her eye to stay awake.



She closed her eyes one last time and fell off the swing, onto the ground. Sleep had overtaken her.





*

"This is the Dreamer?" a gruff man's voice asked. A beautiful woman with flaming red hair and green eyes looked down at Penelope. She knelt on the ground and pushed Penelope's black hair out of her face.



"It's her, now let's go." the woman ordered. She stood up and walked to the awaiting van. The man picked up Penelope and followed. He looked down at the pretty girl who was mumbling something but without sound.



"She's dreaming." the woman said as he placed her on the floor of the van. The woman took out a pen and clipboard and started writing fiercely.





*

Penelope was in front of her house. She didn't know how she got there, when just a minute ago, she was at the park.



She walked inside the house to find her mother in the kitchen putting groceries away, humming to herself.



"Hey mom."her mother ignored her greeting. "Mom... mom!" Penelope tried getting her attention. She marched in front of her mother, waving her arms wildly.



Hey mother just turned around to grab a pot. When she turned back, Penelope was shocked. Her mother just walked through her and Penelope was now on the other side of the kitchen, beside the stove. She felt nothing and it seemed that her mother didn't notice Penelope, let alone that she walked through her.



"Mom?" Penelope asked. She grew scared with fear, not knowing what was happening to her.



There was the sound of the front door closing and Penelope left the kitchen.



"Dad! There's something wrong with me. Mom can't see or hear me!" Her father took off his coat and placed his keys on the hallway table.



"Honey, is that you?" her father called out.



"in the kitchen!" her mom called out. Penelope followed her father back into the kitchen, almost lost in her thoughts.



'Maybe this is what they called a dream...'



The feeling was odd to her; she had never been ignored by her parents. Maybe this was a fear? Penelope did remember once reading that dreams can reveal fears and wishes.



"The gas stove isn't working." her mother said, snapping Penelope out of her thoughts. She watched her father take out a match from the cabinet and walk over to the stove.



Last thing Penelope saw was her father place the match down and a bright flash accompanied by a loud sound.





*

"NO!" the yell ripped out from Penelope's throat. She sat up and almost immediately felt a pair of hands on her shoulders.



"Miss Chavez, you must lay down."



Penelope looked at the young woman next to her. She had on a nurses top with her brown hair in a ponytail.



"What happened? Where am I?" Penelope asked as the nurse laid her back down.



"You fainted in the school playground and one of the staff members found you. I'm Nancy."



Penelope didn't understand. "Why am I in a school?"



"Your parents sent you here, silly. Don't you remember?"



Penelope shook her head.



"That must have been quite some fall." The nurse Nancy said.



"Where are my parents?"



"At home, we had to call and inform them of your little accident. You really should sleep more."



"So, they are safe?" she asked.



"Of course, you can e-mail them later if you'd like." the nurse said, handing Penelope two pills and a cup of water. She took the pills and drank the water. "Now, try to rest."



The nurse closed the curtain around her bed and Penelope waited till she left.



Penelope spit out the pills. She never took any unknown medication and she wasn't about to start now. Penelope got up from the little bed and made her way to the window. Throwing out the pills, she saw kids playing on a playground across the yard.



They looked so happy, running around carefree and excited for everything. Several older kids were there, though not as many.



A couple other buildings surrounded the playground. Penelope figured that the building on the far right must be dorm rooms and the bigger building in the middle was the main building where classes were taken.



She looked back in the park and a guy caught her eyes.



Penelope was too far away to tell anything other than his black hair. He turned towards her window and Penelope's eyes widened. He locked eye with her and smirked.



'Better control your dreams.' a taunting voice said in her mind.