Chapter 2
They were back on tour. Britney had left for
It had been ten days since he last
saw her. He had spent that next day,
after he had woken up from his dream, thinking endlessly. He thought about how to get rid of her. He thought of what Britney would say if he told
her. How would he tell her? The end
result was a migraine so he tried his best to forget about her and indulge in
his girlfriend. He took her out whenever
she wanted, bought her anything, even though she could afford even more than he
could, and one night he even attempted cooking for her. That resulted in calling Domino’s.
He made love to her whenever she’d
let him.
It was like he was trying to push
her out of his mind, out of his memory, with the person who should have been encompassing
all his thoughts. But his thoughts were
still plagued with her.
He hated it. He didn’t even know her name and he felt
pathetic calling her his “dream girl”.
One day he spent an hour contemplating names, trying to find one that
fit that he could refer to her as. He
even tried to remind himself to ask her whenever she visited him in his
sleep. But somehow, he never remembered
to when he saw her.
Disappointment came, eventually,
after laying there for a few minutes, not opening his eyes yet, letting reality
seep into his brain. He had woken up
moments prior and hadn’t yet opened his eyes or moved for that matter. He tried his best not to have a little ache
fill his stomach but it came anyway, and he felt guilty and stupid for being
let down that she didn’t show, again.
He was happy she had stopped
coming, right?
He took in a deep breath, filling
his lungs with a much needed breath and then expelling it as he rolled over on
his stomach and allowed his eyes to squint open.
As soon as he did he felt like he
had been hit with a truck. His head
started to throb, he felt nauseous suddenly very aware of the old highway (in
major need of a pave job) that the bus was bumbling over. He tried to breathe again and his nose,
somehow, miraculously became clogged. He
tried breathing through his mouth and when he exhaled it came as deep,
rumbling, painful, phlegm-filled cough.
He threw the covers off of him,
feeling like he was lying on the sun. He
lay there, still, trying to breath for five minutes.
He wrapped himself in a ball,
completely chilled so much by the air conditioning on the bus that he was
chattering.
Oh, this was not good.
After minutes of waiting in the
darkness, he finally stumbled out of the small space he was crowding and held
on to the wood interior of the bus, praying his light-headedness wouldn’t make
him fall down.
He shuffled out to the front part
of the bus and Chris was there watching TV, sitting in his boxers and t-shirt
and by the look of his hair, he hadn’t woken up too long ago. His eyes lifted up from his mug of some sort
of steaming liquid. “Damn man, you look horrible.”
“I feel horrible.” Justin collapsed into a seat and leaned his
forehead on the cool window, closing his eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
“Everything. Head, stomach, nose, throat, everything.”
Chris gave him a disgusted look
before sipping his drink. “Uh, if you
have the flu, please, don’t get near me.”
The possibility of having the flu
made every ache in his body heighten. He
could not get the flu. He couldn’t even afford to get a sinus
infection, not when they had a show that night and the next night. “Shit.”
“How the hell did you get
sick? We just had a break and we’ve all
be checked out and doped up on Vitamin C lately.”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you been playing in the rain
barefoot again, wittle ju? You know mama told you not to play outside in
the rain.”
His mind was flashed with
memories, if dreams could be considered memories. He thought of her twirling, the white
nightgown sticking to her thin body, becoming see-through with the rain. He thought of how his breath caught feeling
her hands slide against his wet neck, her tongue feeling just as wet as the
rain but warm and inviting, not cool against his skin like the wetness falling
around him. He remembered the slippery
grass beneath his feet. He had been out
in the rain, cold, wet, barefoot. But
it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. “Shut it.”
Chris lifted his hands in
defense. “Whoa, just playin dude. Get some hot tea.”
“I don’t wanna hear it.” He tried moving so he was bent forward, his
hands on his arms which were on his knees.
No matter which way he moved he felt just as bad, if not more so than
before.
“Chill. Go back to bed. I’ll call Johnny and let him know what’s up.”
“Whatever.” He slowly stood up and held on to whatever he
could as he maneuvered his way back to his bunk.
As soon as he curled himself into
the small space he heard Chris call out to him with attitude. “You’re welcome.”
He wanted to go back out there and
slap his bus mate and band mate but decided that would take way too much
effort. All he wanted to do was go to
sleep and forget everything and wake up and feel fine. But of course he knew if he fell asleep, she’d
be there. He was mad at her, if he could
be mad at practically nothing. But she
had made him sick! Ok, so he had no
feasible proof or reason to blame her for his sickness. He hadn’t really gone out in the rain, but
his brain thought he had.
He was confusing himself. Hell, he had been confusing himself for the
past four years. He needed help. He knew it and he knew of only one person to
go to for that. He just hoped he
wouldn’t be laughed off the planet.
----------
A couple days later
It was either now or he’d never
get this out.
He had just gotten over his cold but
still had sneezing fits and times when he seriously thought his lungs were
going to end up on the table after coughing like he had been doing. They hadn’t had to cancel the show but had to
rearrange some things and it had been a pretty stressful past few days. But now it was getting even more stressful
and it was a strange feeling because the person in front of him was the one
person that he never felt stressed with.
He always, always felt laid back with Trace, but now, he had a migraine,
and he was a little bit scared and a whole lot embarrassed.
“Well man, what is it?” They had been sitting in the back of the bus
for a while now, riding from
But Trace was beating him: which
was unusual. Usually Trace was the one
that could beat 1 and 2 like no body’s business. But Justin had mastered number Mario 3. He didn’t even need the whistles.
But his mind had been elsewhere: on his best friend, on the conversation they were about to
have, and especially on her.
“Well, ya know…” Damn fireball from the stupid flower got
him. “…shit man.”
Trace stretched his leg out and
touched the Power button with his socked foot.
He then proceeded to throw his controller down. “So you flew me out here and are making me
miss my grandma’s birthday just so you can babble.”
“Hey, you’re the one that was
happy you didn’t have to go to an old geezer party.” Justin smiled and stretched,
happy he wouldn’t have to just blurt it out.
“That’s not the point, asshole.”
He realized he was still just
going to have to blurt it out. Trace was
staring at him. He knew that he knew
that something was going on. Justin rubbed
his forehead and laid back against the couch. “Shit man, I need a shot before I tell you
this.”
“Let’s go get a drink then.”
“No, no…I don’t even think we have
beer on the bus.”
“That’s tragic!”
It was quiet for a while and Trace
put in Mario 2, after several attempts of blowing and slamming the cartridge
down into the box. He watched Trace’s
Princess, who he swore was the best character to be, pick up a couple plants
and creatures and throw them around, and then he just couldn’t take it
anymore. “What would you do if I told
you I was in love with someone?”
The pause sounded throughout the
backroom. Trace eyed him careful. “I would tell you that this is old news.” Pause went off and the game resumed.
Justin took a deep breath and
slung an arm over his eyes. “What if it
wasn’t Britney?”
He heard the pause again, and slid
his arm up a little to see his best friend giving him an unusual look. He looked like he was really confused. But like normal, Trace cut the seriousness
with a joke. “Are you about to tell me
your gay and in love with me?”
He threw the controlled at
him. “No, dumbass.
Gross.”
Trace leaned around in the small
space, turning off the TV and the Nintendo and then leaned back from where he
was sitting on the couch. He looked to
the floor when he asked, “Are you cheating on B?”
“No, no, God no! Well… Not
technically.”
Trace raised his arms and let them
plop back against his jeans. “What the
hell man? “Not technically!” What the hell is that supposed to mean? You aren’t making sense.”
He couldn’t just blurt it out, so
he whispered it instead. “I’m in love
with someone that’s not real.”
“Like Cameron Diaz? I know you’ve always had a thing for her.”
Justin was getting really tired of
his jokes. He needed his best friend to
just listen to what he had to say and then he could make jokes, because he was
sure he’d have some. Falling in love
with a dream girl? It almost made him
want to laugh. “No, no no. Shut up!
Just…How about I talk and you listen?”
“What was that? You talk?
I listen? Is that Japanese?”
He was getting frustrated beyond
belief. “Shit head!”
“Ok, ok. What the hell is going on
dude?”
“Since like, 1998 I’ve been having
these dreams.”
“Do you see dead people?”
“DAMMIT TRACE!” He sat up and held
his head in his head. It was just like him to do this. Whenever he felt awkward he made jokes and he
was about to get up and choke his best friend to death if he didn’t stop being
so childish.
“Sorry! You’re just… I’ve never seen you be this
way. It’s weird.”
Once again he took a deep breath
and let it out. He raised his head and
met his best friend’s eyes. “I have
these dreams about this girl. Sometimes
I’ll have them about every other night.
Sometimes I won’t have dreams about her for months at a time, but she
always comes back Trace.”
“Is she hot?”
“I’m about ready to kick your
ass.”
“Really man, I
mean, are you sure about this? Are
you…”
“What?” It was rare to find Trace at a loss of
words.
He stared at his best friend, but
Trace didn’t look back at him. “You’re being serious and that’s scaring me.”
“Look, it scares the shit out of
me, too. I’ve been having these fucking
dreams about this beautiful girl I’ve never met in my entire life. Hell, man, I don’t even know her name. She like, haunts me and stuff. And I want them to stop but then every time
she comes back it’s like I want her even more.
And I have a girlfriend. It’s not
like I’m making her up to suppress loneliness or something! And, well, I had one a couple weeks ago--when
Britney and I were at home. And well, see
man…”
“This is heavy. This is way too weird, even for me…”
“I just-- I just kinda thought it
was something that I was just being weird about, ya
know? Maybe I was just a freak
underneath, so I kinda haven’t told anyone until now.”
“I hope to God you don’t go
telling the world about this! You’ll be
in the loony bin faster than, well, a loony!”
The laughter that bubbled up couldn’t
be helped and Justin let it out. “Dorkface.”
“Shitbrains.”
“Penislicker.”
Trace rolled his eyes. “God, we are mature. You’re sitting here talking to me about your
fantasy dream girl and now we’re calling each other names.”
“Well, listen. Ok, you know how I’m sick, right? Well, the only way I could have gotten sick
is like being wet.”
“Or not sleeping enough or
catching it from someone else….”
“But man! In my dream the other night, me and my girl
went out in the rain barefoot.”
Trace stared at him especially
hard and then sighed. “You are a freak.”
Now the anger he had felt moments
before when Trace was not being serious came back up. “You aren’t helping.”
“What the hell am I supposed to
say to this, Justin!?”
He didn’t want Chris waking up and
hearing. That’d be absolute hell. “Shhhh! I don’t know!
Advice?!”
“Go get therapy!”
“Thanks!” He said
sarcastically.
“I’m serious. They have dream therapist and shit.”
“I can’t do that! I’d have to tell the guys and they’ll freak
out and Johnny will freak out, and my mom... Oh God…”
“And Britney…”
Justin said to himself, but it
came out loud. “She wouldn’t
understand.”
“A-and you are in love with this thing?”
“She’s my dream girl.” He sighed and closed his eyes, thinking of
her dark long, sometimes short hair, her huge chocolate eyes, the way she
kissed….the way she…
“God, you are cheesy.”
“Ya
know, I shouldn’t even have said anything.”
He started to get up. He’d let
his damn friend play the stupid Nintendo but he was gonna go to sleep. He didn’t want to bother with this shit. It was too much for him to try and complain
to someone else about or try to explain or anything. How could you explain something when you didn’t
have words to describe it or could barely explain it yourself?
Trace stopped him before he had
time to leave. “Don’t be pissed
bro. What the hell am I supposed to do? What would you do if out of the fucking blue
I came up and was like, ‘Hey Justin! I’m in love with
this girl that’s in my dreams!’ You’d
knock the back side of my head and tell me to shut up and stop being a douche
bag!”
“Yeah.” He laughed,
realizing how crazy he must have sound.
He was glad his friend was there to listen to him, even if it was only to
make fun of him like crazy in return. “Hey,
just don’t tell anyone ok?”
Trace was already turning
everything back on, ready to play. “Don’t
have to worry about it. They wouldn’t
believe me, anyway. I’m a little unsure
whether to believe you myself!”
“Yeah, Let’s
play two person.” Justin was thankful to
get out of that conversation. Hopefully
he’d never had to have it again.
“Ok, can I be Luigi?”
Justin picked up his controlled
and laid back again on the couch. “Not
in your dreams.”