Chapter 4

It was a stormy Tuesday morning, one of those perfect days to relax on your couch and watch a movie. Unfortunately Liam could not do that. He was stuck in school listening to his teacher talk about books that meant nothing to him. As the teacher proceeded to talk about Gatsby and his love for Daisy, Liam found strength to lift his head from the hard wooden desk and say  “Why do we need to read these dumb stories? They are made up stories by people like you and me, so why do we read them?”

Mr. Dormino laughed and with a mocking smile said “ I think this might be the reason why you are failing this class Mr. Mezza”.

Liam thought this comment to be funny and had many things to say about it, but rather he put his head back down and quickly changed his thoughts to something else. Liam was not happy with his life although he didn’t know why. Everything in his life was pretty much perfect, and that’s how things should be after the Revolutionary World War eighty-three years ago. But the only thing that he looked forward to was falling asleep. Whenever he would fall asleep he would dream that he was in a world filled with violence and evil, but somehow he really liked that. It was such a rush to him to somewhat experience the thrill of doing something bad, or see something horrible happening in front of him mainly because he had never seen that before in his world. However his dreams were not normal, it was weird because he felt like he could control himself in his dreams.

“Where is it?” a guy yelled at him.

Liam not knowing what was going on desperately tried to get away from the strong hold the man had on him. The man asked again “Where is it?”.

This time, right before Liam was about to start yelling for help, he realized that this was not real, he was just dreaming. Upon realizing this Liam quickly was able to control his emotions and contain his fear just enough to think of a way out of the situation. He remembered how he would get away from his brother’s chokeholds when he was little, and so decided to try that with the guy who obviously did not want to listen to him. As the man continued to hold him down by the neck, Liam quickly used his free hands to unbuckle his belt and take off his pants. Of course the man holding him was completely weirded out and let go of him. The second that happened Liam with a little smirk ran out of the alleyway into the street butt naked.

Luckily the street that he was walking down was not crowded at all. The only person that saw him naked was a young boy, about his age, who tried hard not to look, but looked as if he was having difficulty doing so. Liam saw this and although he was naked, he had no shame to stare straight at the kid. It didn’t even matter at all, it’s not like it was real what was happening to him, it was just a dream. As he passed the boy he saw a clothing store around the corner. And although he had no shame walking around naked, he much rather preferred wearing clothes. And so he walked in the store, nose to the ceiling, and proudly asked the cashier “I ordered some clothes here, can you check if they came in?”

The cashier completely astonished said “Sir you are mistaken, we don’t order clothes like that, all we have is what’s in the store.”

Liam quickly responded “I am not mistaken! Check the back, a bag of clothes will be there and they are mine. I have already paid for them and I spoke personally to the manager this morning. So can you go do your job and go check?”

The cashier quickly did what he was told after apologizing. As he did so, Liam grabbed himself a pair of pants and ran out of the store.

              He had never ran that fast before. He felt a wave of adrenaline running through his body that he had never felt before. It was amazing and although he would never do that in real life, he definitely loved the feeling of doing something bad like that. It made him feel alive, something he never felt in the real world. And as he was thinking of how boring his real life is, with a feeling as if he was falling he woke up in Mr. Dormino’s class. As he lifted his head to look at what was going on, the bell ring and it was time for lunch.

             At lunch he sat down next to his best friend Benny. Benny was one of the only people who actually was fun according to Liam. They had been friends since first grade and this was mainly because Benny could make Liam laugh like no one else, and Liam was always there for Benny. However, Benny realized that there was something off about Liam that day when he made a joke about Kait McFarlin’s huge rack (she actually was carrying a rack out of the lunchroom into a teacher’s room). Upon realizing this, he asked Liam what was wrong, and Liam finally decided to tell someone about his vivid dreams. As Liam proceed to explain to Benny what was going on, Principle Cunningham walked in the lunchroom and yelled “Kids settle down!”.  

And as he gestured to his right he said “This is Thomas, he is a new student here and it’s his first day. Please be nice and make him feel welcomed.”

And as Liam turned around, to his astonishment, he realized that this kid, Thomas, was the kid in his dream that saw him naked.

As Liam’s jaw dropped to the floor, Benny was having doubts about believing what his friend had just told him. And as he started to question Liam, he realized that he was completely out of it. And halfway through his interrogation, Liam said “It’s him!”

Benny not knowing what he was talking about said “What are you saying? Are you messing with me?”

Liam intensively starred at Benny and said “I am absolutely sure I had never seen that kid before in my life, and yet he was the kid in my dream that saw me naked like I told you. I know you don’t believe me but I promise you I am not making this up. I need to talk to him!”

Benny obviously  thought it was a coincidence, or that his best friend was going crazy, but yet he went along with it just to see how exactly Liam was going to embarrass himself.

             As the two were talking, a loud “boom!” came from the front of the lunchroom, with screams following it. Both of the boys looked up and saw Thomas standing up, fist clenched, and a boy on the floor with a bloody nose. The whole lunchroom was silent, this was something that know one had seen ever before. Even the security guards were astonished when they came to the lunchroom to take Thomas to room 139. As everyone looked at the situation with fear, Liam looked at the situation as it being an opportunity for him to converse to Thomas. And so he gets up from his seat, stands up on the lunchroom table and throws the apple he was eating straight at the security guard. He knew it was enough to get him into room 139, hopefully it wasn’t enough to get him executed.