BurrisM1213

"//Don't be afraid//," he whispered in my ear. "//I'm right here, just do it. You won't regret it."//

"No I can't, I won't. Who are you, what do you want?!"

"Alaska! Alaska! Wake up baby it's just a dream!"

I woke up to my step mom grabbing my shoulders, hair in curlers and a cigaret in the corner of her mouth. I was drenched in cold sweat and my covers are thrown off the bed. Her face was worried sick, which is not normal for her. Not one ounce of sympathy has ever come out of that womans mouth.

"I'm fine Diana. It was just a dream I know."

"Gosh girl, you be screamin' like somone was pullin' your arms off! You need to try and control that I need some sleep too!" Diana said taking a drag of her cigaret.

"It's not like I can help it. And what time is it anyways?" I get up to retrive my blankets and glance at my clock, the green letters showed 2:27 a.m.

"I know, I know," she sighed. "I'm going back to bed, your father is already at work. The crazy man just doesn't stop working." She mumbled to herself as she closed my door. My dad, Clay is a FBI agent and has to be at work whenever they need him, which includes 2:30 in the morning.

I look around my room, taking in the dark purple walls, the old posters of boy bands, ripped and re-glued pictures of friends, ex-friends and lost family members. Diana and Clay are the only two people left in my life. My biological mother, Marian died almost ten years ago, when I was only six years old. My father, has never been the same since that day. He doesn't laugh, he doesn't smile and he doesn't eat from what I can tell. He's never at home and when he is, he's upstairs in the attic scanning finger prints. I used to wonder if he would ever come back to the world, or even me. Then he married Diana. I don't understand why he did it. I guess he thought I needed a "motherly figure" but Diana is far from motherly. They were married on Arpil 27th in a small little chuch. It was me, my distant aunt and her husband and the two of them and the pastor. It wasn't much at all. Really, it wasn't anything. No cake, no decorations, no nothing. But none the less, it seemed to make my dad relax, if you can say that, to have a wife and a mother for his only child.

Sleeping didn't seem like an option for me anymore tonight. The voice of the man in my dream was still ringing in my head and the stench of cigaret had invaded my nose. I got up and tiptoed down stairs and flipped on the t.v. Nothing was on, but to no suprise because it was just four in the morning. I finally drifted to sleep on the couch and woke up to someone sitting beside me. I squinted my eyes open to see my dad sitting there at my feet, in a coat and a tie, eating a microwaved burrito.

"Goodmorning Alaska. May I ask, why are you here on the couch asleep instead of in your bed?" He asked while still watching the t.v.

"I, uhh, I couldn't sleep last night. It was too hot upstairs so I came down here." I was sitting up criss-cross apple sause facing him now, stunned that he was here.

"What are you looking at?" He asked in mid-bite of his burrito.

"Nothing," I said peeling my eyes from him to watch the t.v. "How was work? Diana said that you had left pretty early to go tot he office."

"Yeah I had to go in just to answer some questions about a case study that I'm working on. But i have the rest of the day off so I'm going to go up and poke around in my office." And like that, he was gone. Burrito and all.

The rest of the day was quiet. Diana slept most of the day, I figured because she had to wake me up in the middle of the night, and my dad stayed up in the attic for the whole day, every once in a while, coming down to get a drink. Saturdays are always easy days for me. I usually hang around the house, watch t.v and talk to friends on the phone. For dinner, Diana came down and cooked noodles and cheese for the three of us and left a bowl of if on the bottom of the stairs for my dad. It was just past evleven o'clock when I went upstairs to go to bed. I snuggled up in my blankets and put in my earbuds and floated off to sleep on my music.

"//Jump Alaska, jump. It will be fun, you can't stop it now. Go ahead and jump, it's not too far."//

"No. No, don't push me. Plese help me. I have to save her." I was standing on a ledge, water several hundred feet below me. There was a little girl swimming in the water. She looked to be six or seven. The water was getting too rough for her to stay on top of the water, she was going to drown if someone didn't help her soon.

//"You better save her Alaska. Save her so she doesn't end up like you. Alone, no one will save you Alaska. No one."// "I have to save her, she //will// end up like me. But wait, she won't end up like me, she will be dead."

"//Exactly."//