Song - Stressed Out

Artist - Twenty One Pilots

"Josh!

I opened my eyes once again, and I was back where I had been, everything was back to normal. I awoke with a start, jerking forward and hitting my hand on the edge of the table in the process.

"Owwww!" I shouted.

"What's with you!? I called your name like fifteen times and all you just swayed back and forth like some drunk guy." Victoria was staring at me, annoyed that I had been ignoring her.

"What...Oh, sorry, I just spaced out there for a sec." I said. I had no time to recover and think about what had happened before I was plunged into another scenario.

"You couldn't have given me one minute, one flipping minute to calm down could you?" I shouted in my head.

"No kidding. It was weird and a bit scary, you kept looking at me with a horrified expression, and mumbling stuff over and over." Victoria went on.

I didn't hear much of what she said after that because I was still recovering from the little episode I just had. What was that? What had happened?

There were so many questions I had, and for the past two days, all I had had was more and more questions with no answers. Those two scenes I had just seen that voice mentioned something about two paths didn't it? One of happiness and despair. Were those two images both my future? Unfortunately, there was no time to stop and think about it because Victoria had leaned over the table, she was about three inches from my face and was looking directly into my eyes.

"Hey, are you listening?" She waved a hand in front of my face.

"Woah!" I bounced back away from her, startled by her quick change in position. "Don't do that so suddenly, are you trying to give me a freaking heart attack!?" I huffed.

"OK, is something up?" She asked suspiciously, resting one elbow on the table while raising an eyebrow. "No actually, something's obviously up," she said.

I sighed heavily. "Yeah, a bit. Just, my brain kind of keeps going into overdrive. Some weird stuff has been happening to me lately, and I'm trying to get a hold of myself." I said calming down a little.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked, and I shook my head.

"Well then whatever it is, I'm sure it will go away soon, and you'll be fine." she gave me her best reassuring smile.

"I doubt that since you're the cause of it in the first place," I muttered, just quiet enough, so she didn't hear me (thank god).

Without breaking eye contact, Victoria took the last bite of her sandwich, chewed it and swallowed it, then took a long drink of water before wiping her mouth with a napkin.

"So, on a more high note." She began sinking back in her chair a little "You have any ideas, about the club thing."

"Well, I don't know," I said shrugging. Victoria's club was the last thing on my mind. There were so many other huge questions I needed to figure out and what the club name was going to be wasn't one of them.

We both sat in silence while we thought about it. Well, Victoria probably did, my mind was still trying to recover from what it had just been put through.

"What about a drama club, I'm pretty sure they don't have one in school yet." Victoria soon spoke up.

"Yeah, and there's a reason for that," I explained. "No one is really into drama, and besides, I can't act to save my life," I said fondling my blazer button.

"What about, football?"

"Taken. I think all the sports have a club now so we can rule out tennis, badminton, swimming, basketball gymnastics, and hockey," I said listing all the names I could think of. "Also, don't take this the wrong way, but I can't see you playing football."

"Well, this is harder than I thought." She exhaled as she rested her chin in the palm of her hand. I had noticed how that was a habit she had, to put her chin in her hand when she was thinking deeply.

"Told you," I smirked.

Ignoring me, she suggested, "How's about debating?"

"Yeah, but what would we debate about?" I asked.

"Politic?"

"Too complicated."

"Celebrity gossip?"

"This is a club, not the 'Celebrity news' section of OK! magazine, and besides I'm a guy, no matter how much you annoy me there is no way I will ever join a club that just sits and talks about celebrities of all things." I was sticking to that decision.

"Well, at least I'm saying stuff, you haven't said a word of input since this conversation started," Victoria complained.

"Fine, then how about a writing club?" I said blurting out the first thing that popped into mind.

Victoria went silent for a moment as if thinking it through. She didn't give a response to what I had said, and I was beginning to believe she was daydreaming until she eventually spoke again. "You know, that just might work! How's about we make it a newspaper club? The school doesn't have its newspaper does it?"

"Funnily enough, it doesn't actually," I said. That was something new. I could have sworn that the school had a club for everything.

I thought about what I had just said for a second, and it wasn't that bad of an idea. In fact, the more I thought about it, the better it sounded. It wasn't too girly and wasn't too active, and if I joined all I'd have to do is write about things at school, which could prove pretty useful if I wanted to make an article about a certain three princes, or even have my own section in it.

"So, is that what we're going for?" Victoria asked.

"Well, are you any good at writing?" I said.

"I'm not bad at it," she replied

"That's good enough for me. That settles it then, the newspaper club it is." I said as I got up out of my seat. "Come on, let's go," I said I just wanted to get the day over and done with. I had had just about enough of school, home, life itself and the mysterious dream girl standing next to me.

We both packed away our stuff and begun to walk out of the dining hall. I was satisfied with the decision we had come up with, but I couldn't help but feel just a bit uneasy. For a second, my mind flashed back to the'vision I had when we first entered the hall, but I quickly shoved it to the back of my head.

"The voice said by midnight today I have to have an answer right? I guess, I'll think about that when the time comes. I shouldn't think about it too much; it was probably nothing anyway, well, I hope it was nothing. For now, I think I'll enjoy the little time I have left. Yeah, that's it." I thought.

"You know, that was easier than expected, but I thought that the school would have a newspaper club or something like that at least," Victoria smiled at me as we were strolling down the dining hall path towards the exit, manoeuvring around crowds of people still finding places to sit and people leaving.

"True, but we can think about that later, right now it's time to get this thing up and running," I said.

"Huh, and here I figured you didn't want to start a club." She grinned.

"I don't, but I just realised I can't seem to say no to you for some reason. Also, there's a certain someone, or rather someone's I'd like to write about," I smiled back.

"That's the power of a girls persuasiveness for you." Victoria giggled.

I laughed "You call me weird, but you're kind of unusual yourself, you start the school all shy and polite, then for some unknown reason you start a club and make me help you saying it's for my own good. Well, whatever, I'm not gonna question it," I said.

I walked out of the dining hall that day with a mixture of satisfaction and an impending sense of doom sort of feeling. That vision I had made me feel a bit anxious to go home and sleep, but I blocked those feeling out (well, tried to at least). I realised I had something to work towards and a friend to help me get there, and I thought to myself for a second, maybe things were about to change.

But was it for better, or worse?

Keep reading for Chapter 7.1

Chapter 7.1: Another Strange Dream!? (part one)