'I was five and he was six

We rode on horses made of sticks

He wore black and I wore white

He would always win the fight'

"Bang bang!" I watched the stain of deep red spread quickly as I kept my fingers on the trigger, aiming the fresh water at the red shirt.

"It's not fair! It's the police that always wins, not the criminals!" Spencer pouted, already coming back to life and sitting up.

"Maybe because they aren't good criminals." I shrugged, showing him proudly my gap-toothed grin, and like always, his matched mine quickly, with just newer front teeth.

It always came first to him: the birthdays, the Tooth Fairy...

"I want the rematch!" He was already checking the load of his water gun, making sure he had enough to shoot my dry pink dress.

"Grandpa says there's no second chance with a gun."

And everyone knew Grandpa was always right.

"But what are we gonna play then?"

My lips pulled to the side as I tried to calculate since how long we'd been here. From the sun peeking through the tall weeping willows, it must have still been early. Mom had said two hours. We'd played ball, hide-and-seek, fed the ducks, and now, we were playing cops and robbers. We definitely had more time.

"Okay, let's do the rematch!"

"I'm the sheriff and you, the criminal?"

"Always!" I gave him back the shiny tiara, which my mom had surely not offered me for this purpose. But it was more fun to try to steal it and avoid the water shots than just wear it and wait for a prince charming like Daisy and her girlfriends did.

"You close your eyes and count to ten."

I nodded, glimpsing his narrowed brown eyes before it became plain black.

"One... Two... Three..." I chanted, my fingers following the numbers impatiently, and I may have sped up towards the end.

"Eight, nine, ten!"

It was only fair because Spencer had taller legs, and after all, criminals broke the rules.

I reopened my eyes and started running before they could even adjust, following my instincts, and I only slowed down when I arrived at a larger path.

Always look for dangers...I squinted my eyes like the cowboys in those movies, pointing my weapon in front of me as I slowly turned around.

My flounced skirt and the bow in my red curls didn't even make me weaken my stance, and the green surroundings were turning into a desert around me. There were the same bushes, just a little bit denser, and the trees would stand as tall canyons. As for the sandy pathway under my feet, it was perfect.

I just had to find the bank, and when I arrived at the lilac bushes – cactus – it was easy. There were distant sounds from the residents around the sandbox, but I headed for the opposite way.

I knew my favorite sheriff, and we liked it better in this shadowy part because there were a lot of hiding spots and... the green hut.

The big shed was standing proudly, and for me, the branches falling above the door were forming the word 'BANK'.

I sucked on my lower lip as I searched for the best attack plan. Every good criminal had one.

The hut only had one door, and one window on the back, but it was so high that it was out of reach and just good to view the town without being seen. Well, I imagined because I was too small to look through it, even when I climbed on the bench that was inside.

So I would have to go for the door, and be fast and discreet, not really my things. But I wouldn't forfeit.

I kneeled down on the humid grass and crawled along the bushes on the side, bunching my skirt the best I could. I understood why outlaws didn't wear dresses. It wasn't practical, and after stumbling three times on it and snagging a flounce, I had already won when I reached the two front steps of the hut, not even making a sound.

I didn't know a lot of outlaws who could have done this!

It was almost strange I hadn't seen Spencer yet. But maybe he was inside, waiting to shoot me.

When I heard a squeaking noise from inside, all my muscles wanted to turn back and run, especially the one inside my chest as I felt it jump to my throat, and it was an impossible effort to reach for the handle and push the door open slowly.

I must have been really caught up in the game because if there was someone I wasn't scared of, it was Spencer. With his soft brown eyes, he looked like a teddy bear, and it had been the reason why I'd chosen to sit beside him on our house-warming party, where I had been lost through a sea of unknown faces, and since then, we'd been inseparable.

My head peeked inside in search of those familiar eyes, but in the dimness, I only found two tall figures, and I blinked, gripping my gun tighter at the deja-vu sensation overwhelming me at first.

"It's not enough. I know the market prices!"

As my eyesight got used to the darkness of the room, and the door gave way fully to the scene, the strange emptiness in my chest vanished, or at least, it was filled with a prickle of curiosity.

"Please! I need more money, it's for my son. He needs food and clothes and..."

I didn't understand everything, surely because it was 'adult matters'. I always overheard those kinds of conversations, and I knew it wasn't polite. Yet I caught clearly the emotions in the woman's hoarse voice, and that was why I didn't move, even if the raucous laugh following sounded too much like the kind of villains that would scare the most reckless outlaws.

"Should've thought about this before spending all your income in nose candy, junkie!"

I took in how imposing the man's figure was with the power emanating from his voice. It muffled the woman's whimpers, just like his large shoulders covered her thin body, and the only things I could see were her red cheeks stained with dark drips of make-up.

This simple detail brought a strength in my voice I hadn't imagined I could have, and the next thing I knew I was interrupting their adult conversation.

"Are you okay, ma'am?"

I didn't like tears. It made my heart hurt, and in those cases, I forgot all the rules.

I didn't even get to process what I'd done that the woman's wide eyes already landed on me, splashing me with blue. It was hard to see, but behind the puffiness, red, and dark colors, there was a clear blue, and it was what caught all my attention. It reminded me of something incredibly familiar, but the more I furrowed my eyebrows, the less I could place it. Maybe it was a crystalline lake I'd already dived in.

Whatever it was, I wished I could go back there.

"Yes, don't worry, kid. Go play somewhere else."

The man dismissed me with a gesture of his hand, which quickly sneaked somewhere too low on the woman's body, and I caught something worse than tears in her gaze.

"I didn't ask you!" My small voice rose, stopping the man – at least, for a second before he turned to me, and my fingers hit the trigger out of reflex at the darkness in his look.

Well, it worked. It made him pinch his eyes closed as I splashed his face, and it even brought a small smile to the woman's lips.

It was like the moment the man's figure wasn't hovering over her, she found back a little of her brightness, and I could even see her body, a lot of her body as she wasn't wearing many clothes. Her black outfit was more revealing than my mom's swimwear. Yet there was something beautiful in her exposed white skin and bony forms. She resembled those dolls we saw in toy stores.

Although I didn't get to admire her because if the man wasn't hiding and sucking her light, his shadows were now reaching me, and the groan rumbling through his chest pulled my attention back to his eyes.

They looked darker with the shadow of his frown, and they too looked quite familiar, like the shiver they sent down my spine by the way.

But everything was blurring in my mind. Why did everything feel familiar and faraway? And how could I remember an emotion I couldn't name?

It wasn't fear, or I would have run away when his voice echoed again.

"I told you to go away."

It wasn't anger even if everything felt unfair in this situation, neither weakness, or I wouldn't have uselessly pulled the trigger and splashed him in the chest again.

"You didn't listen, and you want to meddle in adult matters? Well, you'll learn!"

Powerlessness, it was powerlessness; my small body recognized it as the man's hand lifted in the air.

I saw the roughness and veins on it as it approached me in slow-motion. I saw the strength he was pulling with the movements of his whole upper body even through the fabric of his white shirt. It was a villain's hand, even though he wasn't wearing black or holding a weapon like Mom and Dad described them.

And I was...

"Leave the poor little girl alone!"

I was a poor little powerless girl as I watched the woman pull his hand away with all her thin strength.

She didn't stop him; she diverted his wrath towards herself, while I stayed frozen on spot, and the powerlessness was engulfing me all around from the woman's blurry eyes to my shaky finger still on the trigger.

"Bang bang!"

A cold substance hit me in the back, and the last thing I saw was two soft brown eyes full of lights before my heart stopped, and I opened my eyes with a gasp.

For a long second, with my hand over my chest, I didn't hear my heart, but it quickly broke into erratic bangs as I took in my surroundings.

It was still dark; however, it was the familiar shapes of my bedroom from my nightstand to the closed curtains I still had to get used to. I was alone, and the wetness along my spine was cold sweat.

It had just been a bad dream, or a memory? I'd been my younger, innocent self, and everything had felt so vivid yet faraway.

I held my head between my hands to try to find a little clarity in all this blur, and also to stop the shakes of my hands.

But all I got was a distant echo mixing in so many voices that it sounded like a monster. 'Learn to be an adult...'

I recognized my dad's stern voice from tonight through all of them, and there was also the powerful man from my nightmare.

I didn't dare to close my eyes, yet just glimpsing the baby blue of my nightgown, I could still feel the woman's gaze, even if her features had already vanished. As for the amber reflections in Spencer's eyes, I didn't need anything to remind me, since they were imprinted too deep.

But mostly, what was the most vivid in my whole body was the powerlessness. I could still feel it spread in my veins through freezing shivers.

"It was just a bad dream," I told myself in a voice as soft as if I'd been talking to the poor little girl in my dream.

It was probably the intense mix of emotions of the night with going back to my secret place, all the confessions with Blade, the new experiences, Meteorite's helplessness, and then, coming home to my parents' sermon that had created this in my subconscious and tired mind.

It wasn't real; I wasn't powerless.

'It's not you who decides', a hardening voice echoed in the back of my mind as if to prove me wrong, and this time, it was only my dad in a too-fresh flashback.

I had been flying so high through softness and intensity, all the contrasting emotions of the date. However, I'd quickly crashed down like my smile as soon as I'd passed the front door.

I wouldn't say I hadn't expected it. Yet I'd still hoped it wouldn't have been that bad. I had even asked Blade to drive faster to be home five minutes before the curfew. 

But I'd wished he'd never taken me home when I'd been met with my dad's severe gaze, and I still didn't know what had been worse: my mom's silence – surely because she was still in a state of shock – or the deep creases on my dad's forehead. No, actually, what had been the worst were his words.

'I've never been this disappointed. Sneaking out is one thing, but disrespecting and lying to your mother to go do who knows what with some lowlife.'

My mom had seen Blade, well, his motorcycle and leather jacket, and it had sealed my fate. My arguments that I hadn't sneaked out and they'd known what I was doing – I'd stuck to 'stargazing' – and that they just hadn't asked me how I'd been going and with whom had gone unheard like always.

I'd been grounded until prom – my mom had prepared too much my outfit to let it go to waste. Though mostly, I'd been forbidden to 'ever see whoever lowlife I'd seen tonight', as 'they didn't want their daughter to end up depraved'.

When I'd argued – or maybe shouted – that they didn't even know him and that I was now an adult who could choose whoever I wanted to see, he'd replied that 'as long as I didn't act as an adult, I wouldn't be treated like one', and that 'I had to learn to behave like an adult'.

Yes, I remembered each of his words as they were echoing again and again, threatening to swallow me whole, and I was shriveling under my blankets as if it could block them out.

Even when I'd been scared of the monster under my bed, I'd never been so curled up. In fact, since my 18th birthday, I'd found myself in this position almost every night. I'd never felt so little, so nothing.

Thus, when my ribcage started shrinking little by little, crushing slowly my lungs, I did the same as when I'd been five. I threw the cover away and got up from my bed, grabbing the first item I found next to my pillow: a wooden fidget toy.

I couldn't face my fears like when I'd been little and look under my bed with this weapon, but at least, one thing extended in me: my lips forming a tiny smile. It couldn't reach my chest, though, as I knew that I couldn't see Blade again.

So that was it; being an adult was judging people on appearances and gossips, hiding behind those same things, and pretending everything was perfect even when you were crumpling to nothing inside.

Hide-and-seek, pretend, and costumes, it didn't look much different from the games the kids from my dream were playing.

Was it what my confused and imaginative mind had tried to tell me? It didn't feel like it. Everything had been too real and accurate like a memory that had been dug up out of the darkest corner of my head.

But if it had been real... what had happened after, except that Spencer had won, aiming straight to my heart? Why couldn't I remember? And why was it even important when I already had so many problems in the present?

I should have been looking forward to the future, yet I was stuck in the past and present, stuck inside all those walls, figuratively and literally.

I headed for the window as my ribcage was constricting again, and the worst was that I wasn't going for fresh air with my shaky fingers tugging the curtains open and pulling up the window.

When I caught sight of the dark room on the other side, my hands froze, and the window was left barely open, letting a thin slit of air that I didn't feel through the warm rush of tears climbing behind my eyes.

I could still see those same kids from my dream here, and it was so much clearer. It was what we always did; every time one of us had a nightmare – mostly Spencer after his mom's accident – we would have tapped at the other's window with a cane I still had in the pile of things imprinted with Spencer's mark in my wardrobe, and we would have talked for hours until we felt better again, watching the stars and laughing in silence. When we'd grown up, and the distance had felt too great, we'd even sneaked out to meet in each other's rooms or even downstairs, under our oak tree.

Now, it was as faraway as my dream, and I turned away when a tear slipped down my cheek, wiping it instantly and hiding any trace like an 'adult'.

I should have gone back to sleep, and maybe continue that dream to find out what had happened, but something told me it wasn't a happy ending for the thin woman, and when another shiver ran down my spine, probably because of the fresh night air slipping through my slightly-open window, I knew I couldn't be the adult everyone wanted me to be.

BANG BANG! What will Dorothy do if she isn't going back to sleep? 👀

And mostly, what do you think about this dream? Did you guess who those people could have been? Weren't little Dorothy and Spencer so cute? 🥺

I think we don't even need to talk about Dorothy's punishment and the 'lowlife' comment from her parents... 😒

Anyway, I hope you liked this chapter, and if so, don't forget to vote ⭐ and comment!

I'm always so happy to see all your notifications, and I wanna thank you from the bottom of my little heart for this 🥰💕😘🌠