CHAPTER SEVEN

IMAGINING OR DREAMING, a person's favorite pastime activity. Whether it be dreaming about the future love of their lives, their future job that brings home the big bucks, or how on earth they got dragged into a world that revolved around Venus Wilson and the mysterious way she died. It's hard not dreaming, one could even claim it keeps many people sane. It keeps prisoners with a small flame of hope ignited in their hearts, when they dream of returning home to their family. It keeps a person sane knowing that when they sleep at night they'll be able to float into an abyss of dreams and impractical realities created by their subconscious.

Countless scientists have referred dreams as an alternate reality, maybe only to explain why humans do dream. No one truly knows why dreaming is a byproduct of sleep, some things don't need explaining.

Trevor Brown didn't know whether he was a part of an all too realistic dream his subconscious had created when he found himself climbing up the drainpipe that led to Venus' room that night. Though after failed attempts, a gash on his palm, and jeans that were once clean he came to a conclusion that this was a reality. Trevor didn't know why he decided to go over to Venus' house, all it did was bring back terrible memories he only wished he could erase away from his brain.

Yet just like reoccurring dreams, the average human has; the nightmare like memories came back to haunt him every single night. Slowly Trevor started to change because of those certain memories. He became afraid of the dark. He became afraid of the nighttime because that would mean he would have to be forced to dream about the night Venus Wilson ruined his life, again, and again, and again.

Maybe that was why he refused to shut his eyes at night without the aid of sleeping pills he would slyly retrieve from his mother's medicine cabinet. And maybe that was why he went to Venus' house the night of her Halloween Bash. He only ever wanted to stop the bad memories from coming uninvited.

He didn't want to be a part of this. But when he started recording what was happening in her room, he didn't know how to stop. Shock. It was so simple to label what Trevor was experiencing in that moment. But he couldn't figure out why his arm wasn't listening to his brain that was only screaming: YOU IDIOT, DO SOMETHING! All Trevor's body did in that moment was drop the phone down the balcony merely missing three drunk freshmen. The noise was loud enough for him to realize that his body reacted far too late, and far too stupidly because the person behind the devil's mask seemed to have noticed a sound coming from outside.

Trevor waited for the masked person to come outside and do what they did to Venus but all they did was run. And then slowly he saw a hand come out from under the bed, resulting in a shriek on his behalf.

That night he watched as Lily Tran, the girl that sat in front of him in Canadian History lunged at Venus Wilson's body, checking for her pulse. He watched as another girl, Kate, slither out of the closet to get a closer look at Venus, and then another boy — Raj.

Trevor knew Raj, Venus' little puppet— was Venus' little puppet.

"Why don't you guys do something!"

"We have to leave..."

And it was at that very moment Trevor made the biggest mistake of his life. He walked right into the same spider's web he had escaped once before.

+ + +

     There was something about the night of the Halloween Bash that had created some sort of bond between Lily and Trevor. They had always been acquaintances since the beginning of junior year, but there was something about saving a person from being framed for the murder of one of the youngest socialites in Ontario that created an unbreakable connection. If he was to come across Lily Tran two years ago it would've been a different story of course.

But that was then, and this is now. And all he knew now was that Lily Tran was the only one in that room that genuinely tried to save Venus that night. He just needed to know why. Why was she under Venus' bed, why Kate was in the closet, and why Raj was there. He was sure they had the same questions.

Since that night, no one dared to look at each other in the eyes when they passed one another in the halls at school. This wasn't a movie, and they weren't the richest of students to be meeting and discussing what had happened that night. They couldn't afford anyone wondering why Trevor Brown suddenly found a liking towards hanging out with Raj and Kate, the two that helped in the damnation of his name and reputation.

However, he couldn't lie to himself, there was something good that came out of that night. The nightmares stopped, and the bags under his eyes disappeared. Slowly—besides a couple of rude awakening and calls from Lily needing reassurance that she was not going crazy—he found himself in a blissful slumber.

He didn't need to dream anymore, he didn't know whether his mind was capable of that anymore, to be frank. All he needed was the white void he imagined every night after kissing his mother, as she headed out for her night shift at the town hospital.

     Trevor knew his mother had taken notice of the sleeping pills that stopped disappearing, just two days after the Halloween Bash and he knew she was thankful that he had worked out his problems. That was probably the only reason she allowed him to go to Venus' funeral too. All he wanted to do was sink into the wall and watch everyone lie during her funeral, he wanted to see everyone cry over a phony, but more importantly, he wanted to see if Lily was stupid enough to show up and try to apologize for that night.

That night there was a silent agreement between the three, that keeping Lily quiet would be his job. Though Trevor didn't know he would be signing up for the hardest job. Despite having to follow Lily around, praying that she wouldn't confess where she was that night, he found out why she might have been there that night.

It's ironic how the same name that was behind his nightmares was the reason for her blissful daydreams, Tyler Meyers. Sometimes Trevor found himself wanting to show Lily how 'amazing' of a guy Tyler really was. But how on earth could Lily understand what had happened sophomore year at Centennial Secondary School when she wasn't even in the picture yet?

All Trevor wanted to do was keep Lily quiet. So when he heard her cry out, he knew it was time for him to step into the picture she was so gracefully painting. Too bad someone else beat him to it. This time instead of hanging back watching her break down in tears once again, he grew shaky, his palms began to sweat — he was scared. The rapidity of the conversation that was taking place just a couple of feet ahead of him was making his heart beat faster. Despite the cold wind that hit his bare skin, he felt nothing but flames dancing on his skin — guilt.

It was the third time during that conversation that she finally succumbed to the sobs she was holding in and he took the paintbrush from her hand and painted himself into the picture. It was no surprise that Trevor expected her to be scared to see him so he tried ever so slightly to ease her out of the conversation but Lily seemed to be more adamant than ever. It was obvious that she was about to come clean to Principal Foster, so he said what he had to shut her up.

"If we go down, we bring you down with us."

Enough for her to start crying again and for him to easily drag her away from the scene.

Now he sat across the console that separated the driver's seat from the passenger's seat and waited for her to finally stop crying. She always seemed to be crying. Even in Canadian History, he didn't fail to hear sniffles come from her desk. He wondered what she looked like when she smiled, not because he wanted to write a poem about it, but because seeing her cry all the time put a damper on his parade

"I wasn't..." she hiccuped between sobs, trying to prove him wrong. But the two already knew that what Trevor was thinking was, in fact, the truth and that he couldn't trust Lily. "I'm fine now." She concluded, dabbing the tissue upon her red-eye bags.

Trevor didn't reply to her. He didn't know how to. Instead, he stuffed his hands deeper into the pockets of his jacket.

"You can say something," Lily murmured as she played with the ends of the tissue that contained streaks of her mascara. " — I should go check up on Tyler."

"It's true Coach, I was there that night, I saw Trevor forcing himself onto her."

Trevor's reaction to Tyler's name did not go unnoticed by Lily, who seemed to realize that it was time to put her seat belt on. He didn't know whether he wanted her to know that he didn't like Tyler, or to leave her in the dark about himself.

"Reporters are flocking outside if they get a single picture of me I'm screwed," he muttered to make it seem that his decision to drive away from the funeral home wasn't because she mentioned Tyler.

"Why?" Lily asked, earning a scoff.

"Because, Lily," he started off, and caught himself.

Lily wasn't here sophomore year.

She didn't know anything. And that was how he wanted to keep things.

"You can trust me, Trevor, I won't tell." That remark earned her a hearty chuckle from him.

"Yeah. Right."

     With a lot of head shakes and nods, Trevor had finally made it to Lily's house and waited for her to exit out of his car so he could take a sigh of relief. Though she didn't move, instead she stayed still the second she felt him roll onto her driveway. Trevor knew something was wrong by the way she was fidgeting with her fingers, and he didn't have time to deal with it. He wondered whether or not it'd be rude to ask her to get out of his car — he already knew the answer, so he waited. It was obvious to him that she was itching to ask questions, maybe about what he was doing at the funeral, how he showed up right when she was about to tell Principal Foster everything, or what he was doing at the Halloween Bash.

It doesn't take weeks at Centennial Secondary School for rumors to die... it took years. And when a new, little birdie came flying into that dreaded high school it didn't even take a whole school day for them to know all the latest gossip. At one point Trevor was the hottest news at Centennial Secondary School, even teachers knew what he had allegedly done at the party. And of course, everyone believed the rich white girl.

"I knew Trevor was trouble since the second I met him, he was always so mean and cold. Poor Venus was only trying to help him and this is what she gets in return!"

"I heard that he put something in her drink and that's why she couldn't do anything."

"If it wasn't for Tyler, God only knows what would have happened to Venus!"

"What can you expect to happen when you befriend a guy outside of your race! — they're just 'programmed' differently."

But Trevor was an exception, the rumors may have felt like years to him, but they only lasted for months — Kate's scandalous pictures had replaced him. He knew that Lily knew about those pictures, he also knew that she didn't know anything about him. It was obvious to him, after all, she was the only person at school that ever tried to initiate a conversation with him since that night.

"I came in here to talk to her... and now she's dead."

"Breathe for me Lily, I'm going to take you home and I want you not to tell anyone about what you saw tonight. Can you do that for me, Lily?"

"Trevor, are you okay?" One. Two. Three. Four. Five, "Trevor?"

"You'll be fine, Lily," six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

"I'm asking if you're fine, Trevor,"

"—It's true Coach, I was there that night, I saw Trevor forcing himself onto her."

     There's this thing about dreaming that Trevor used to love, it was the quickest escape to reality, for as long as he ever wanted. Sometimes he would sleep for the whole night and day, and some nights he wouldn't even catch a wink of it. Nightmares were something he had grown accustomed to, the easiest fix to that was sleeping pill. But there was something more appealing about sleep to Trevor after the Halloween Bash. He felt nothing when he slept, he didn't hear any rumors, he didn't see the way all the students and faculty, and parents stared at the big, black, angry boy.

He was just numb, it was as if he was dead.

Just at the thought of death, his eyes shot open. He let out a small hiss — Lily's parents hadn't shoveled yet and the sun's rays were bouncing off the white blankets, irritating his eyes. Despite the interruption, his gaze went straight to the glove compartment of the car, Lily let her hand fall from his upper-arm, he didn't know when she had placed it there. Her touch was far too gentle for him to have noticed. Now both of them stared at whatever was behind the locked glove compartment, neither of them dared to speak up.

It was Lily who first broke and reached out for the handle.

"—Don't," was all he had to say and she retracted.

"We'll get through this together," Lily whispered in such a quiet tone Trevor almost missed the statement.

It was humorous to him that she said what so many people in the past had told him right before they left him to fend for himself.

Though, for a moment he decided to believe her because he wanted to.