Sweat poured from my brow as I shot up. The morning sun spilled through the window, entering my eyes at a light too bright for six am. Mom looked at me, hands on her hips, and a barely suppressed smile on her face. It took me a long moment of staring at her before I realized where I was.

“You’re going to be late for the first day of school. Go on, take a quick shower and come down to eat something.” I numbly nodded as she smoothed out my hair and pressed a kiss to my temple. My mom’s first day of school ritual since I started preschool.

It was easy to dismiss the past day as a dream, but when I looked down I could see the Marigold was still in my hand. Despite having fallen asleep with it under a layer of blankets too warm for early September, it hadn’t wilted in any capacity. I stared at it in wonder, looking for any flaws or damage, but it was as fine as it was when I picked it. When I looked back up, my mom had already disappeared, probably to go wake Papi up as well.

Carefully, I picked myself up out of bed and placed the Marigold on my desk. I’d need to grab a vase for it later. For now, I grabbed my uniform and headed into the bathroom, my body on autopilot as I tried to figure out everything I’d experienced in the last twenty four hours.

When I was finished, I headed into the living room. Papi was watching the news, and I skimmed over the headlines, recognizing them as ones I’ve seen before. The familiarity swirled in my brain, warring against the still-present insistence maybe everything had been a dream. A long, strange dream.

Except there’d been a flower in my hand when I’d woken up and the news playing was one that had played before. I felt the hands wrap around me a moment too late, so stuck in my head.

“Morning Sleeping Beauty.” I yelped, Abigail’s hair tickling my face. She’d always get to my house early on the first day of school. She lived in the same neighborhood and she’d always walk to school with me as often as she could. I’d already lived through this, so I’d forgotten to expect her.

Now her arms were trying to break my ribcage, “Good morning…! Please let me go so I can breathe.”

Her giggles couldn’t come off as more mischievous, “Sorry for showing up super early. I didn’t feel like making breakfast, and your mom always make the best food.”

“I think I make the best food in the house personally,” Papi said, having finally noticed me. His hands, worn down from years in the service industry, were currently fiddling with his tie. He normally worked evenings, but he’d take up extra shifts from time to time in the mornings.

“I’m going to have to agree with that.” I managed to disentangle myself from Abigail and I could hear mom protesting from where she was in the kitchen. “You’re food’s great too mom!”

Abigail pulled me to the table, and we sat in our usual seats across from each other. Not hungry, I grabbed some toast and lathered it in peanut butter and honey. Abigail was taking everything she could from the table. I couldn’t help but watch her, tracing the features of her face. No cuts or bruises, not a hair out of place.

She raised an eyebrow, “Is something wrong? You’ve been staring at me all morning.”

“No! Sorry, sorry.” Her disbelieving look was marked with the pop of opening a syrup bottle. “It’s really silly. I just had a bad dream is all. Involving you. I’m glad you’re ok.”

Maybe a part of me wondered if she’d remember like I did. I waited a beat to see if any kind of recognition entered her eyes, but there was nothing. My shoulders slumped, and she set the bottle of syrup down, “Why don’t you tell me about it? That usually makes you feel better after a bad dream, doesn’t it?”

“…Does it?”

“You’ve always had wild dreams. I remember when we were kids you were always telling me about them. And hey, I’ve been reading through a dream interpretation book, maybe I can tell you what your dream meant.” She offered an exaggerated wink and I took a bite of my toast to think about it.

If I told her what happened, that would be the clearest indication she truly didn’t remember. It would leave me with the question of why I could, and what they’d been talking about when they said I was disrupting the flow of things. There was no reason to hesitate, and it wasn’t like I was told I couldn’t talk about what was going on.

Abigail listened as I went through everything to the best of my ability. From her being hurt, to hiding something from me, to the strangeness of Fox and Fable and the Headmaster. When I ended on my actual dream, the one about the strange masquerade, her eyes were glowing with fascination.

“Wow, you really did have an entire dreaming experience, huh?” There was still no spark of recognition in her eyes. My stomach turned, and I put down my half-finished toast, unable to even finish that much. Her eyes followed the movement, and her smile scooted to concern. “Hey, it was just a dream. And it’s not like anything in there really made sense, did it?”

“You’re the one apparently reading up on dream interpretations. You tell me.”

“How about you come over after school today, and we’ll decode it together. Oh, and I know I’ve said this before, but you really should keep a dream journal. I’m sure it’d be fun to have. Now hurry and eat, we’ll be late meeting up with Nia.” Her foot nudged at my leg and I forced myself to down the rest of the food.

It was a rock in my stomach I pretended to ignore as me and Abigail headed out. Her energy was overflowing, and while it wasn’t any more than usual, I was exhausted. I wondered how much of today would change. At the very least, I wouldn’t meet Abigail after class and find her the way I had. Headmaster Gnight had promised me that much. I wasn’t going to let her get hurt again.

As we walked, it was easy to descend into the illusion everything was as it always was. Abigail jumped from topic to topic, keeping up the conversation eighty percent of the time, and me added on when needed. We lived only a few blocks from school, and the morning air held a faint chill to it.

We arrived at the school gates to find Nia waiting for us. She was bundled in her red jacket like it was the middle of winter and not the end of summer. When she noticed us, she raised her hand in greeting, her sleeves allowing only the tips of her fingers to be seen.

Abigail crashed into her with the same kind of hug she gave me this morning, “Hey bestie, cough up your class schedule.”

I already knew what our classes would be, and the illusion was broken. The main office stood across from the entrance and courtyard, and I stared at the top windows. It was hard to tell from this far away, but the blinds looked like they were drawn. All the questions I still had felt more and more like a mountain. I didn’t know if I cared to cross it.

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“Cough up yours first,” Nia laughed, shoving Abigail away easier than I could ever hope. She pulled it out from her bag and handed it over. I didn’t have any classes with Abigail this year, and I had one with Nia. Nia also had a class with Abigail as well. At the very least, I could still see the both of them at lunch.

“We only have art, huh? Cinder you should have taken art, we could have all had it together.”

“I have no artistic talent and we all know it.” Abigail and Nia were good at it to varying degrees. Abigail took it seriously while Nia used it as a hobby. A break from her endless basketball practices, especially when it was almost time for the new season.

“What about you Cinder?”

“We have fourth period English.”

“How’d you know, you didn’t even look.”

“I can see from here.” I dropped my gaze as they both looked at me. Even still, I could catch the glint of Abigail’s smile as she handed the schedule back to her. Her arm linked itself through mine, and I squeaked out a protest.

“Also, me and Cinder are going to have a little dream interpretation day at my place. You should come too.” Nia wouldn’t be able to come.

Brushing her braids aside, Nia sighed, “I’d love to, but I can’t. Gram’s visiting today so it’s family day. What was the dream?”

We slipped through campus and I ran through my dream again. I tried not to keep glancing at the main office, knowing I’d find nothing. My eyes kept scanning the students, too, trying to find the face of either Fox or Fable, but there was nothing. Like this, it was easy to think that everything was normal. I tried to keep my eyes up, and force them not to stray.

//

Fox was here. I stared at him a beat too long before I forced myself to sit. He hadn’t been here on the first day last time. As I set my things down on my desk, I heard the smile in his voice as he spoke, “You’ve been taking this all in stride, haven’t you?”

I kept myself quiet, organizing my things as though there was much to do at this point. He didn’t seem to mind, “If you have any questions you may as well ask me. You’re going to be a little too busy today to pay a visit, aren’t you?”

At this point I was certain he was keeping tabs on me, “The flowers. What was with the flowers?”

He blinked, as I turned towards him a smile growing on his face, “You looked at me. Nice to see you today.”

“I…”

“It’s fine. I don’t care either way.” He moved on from one thing to the next so quickly, it felt hard to keep up. “The flowers? You mean the one in Headmaster Gnight’s office? Those are…the ideas that he’s been wanting to grow. Each one you pick represents an idea, and also represents different people who are meant to play the ‘prince’ to your main character.”

“So who did I…”

“Can’t answer anything about who or what the story is about. That’s on you to figure out remember? No outside influences and all. I wouldn’t want to get in trouble.”

“Ok, then. Is it possible to go through all of them?”

“You mean what happens if you fail to get a happy ending after going through all of them?”

“I suppose.”

He tilted his head, as though trying to think of the possibility, “Well, that is one way to meet the requirement, actually. But there’s a lot of people there, isn’t there? Or rather, a lot of different types of flowers. It’d be years before you’d be able to get through them all. At least, years for you. Time will reset to this day every time you fail. So you’d be forced to redo Junior year for as long as it takes.”

I swallowed, trying my best to conceive of such a thing. The last thing I wanted was to be in high school for more years than necessary, “Have you…relieved the same time over and over again?”

The sharpness was back in his eyes, and the teacher cleared his throat. I spun back around, now hyper aware of his gaze on my back once more. Although there was no real need to concentrate, following along was a way to keep myself busy. It was better than having to pay attention to him.

When class ended, he followed me, just as I expected he would. I said nothing as I gathered what I needed for the day and shoved the rest into my locker. He leaned his shoulder in the space next to me, his eyes looking at everyone passing us.

I clicked my locker shut, “Are you looking for Fable?”

“No. I have no interest in whatever he’s doing.” He tilted his head at me. “Are you looking for him?”

“I…want to stay away from him as best I can.”

“Shouldn’t be hard. He has no interest in you. I’m sure he’s just waiting for you to fail as soon as the story kicks off. He’ll probably start showing up the longer you stick to it. I’ll try to help you as much as I can through this first story though.”

“I’m expected to fail.”

“Don’t take it personally, most people do.” He glanced at the space behind me. “Take today easy. Hang out with Abigail. Things will start tomorrow.”

He waved his hand, a simple goodbye, and slipped back into the crowd. I looked behind me, wondering what he was looking at, only to find nothing. A sea of students. Maybe one of them was one of the characters it this story I was supposed to play. I should have asked him more of the specifics of these stories while he was here.

For now, I casted it aside and went to meet Abigail.

//

“You’re worried about hidden intentions.” Abigail was strewn on her bed, out of her uniform and in a baggy shirt and sweats. A book was open in front of her and she’d been flipping through it to try to fish out any meaning from my “dreams.” I’d told her to focus on the part that was actually a dream; the strange masquerade.

I hugged one of her plushies to my chest, Mr. Hopper, an old bunny she’d had since she was born. It’d become my comfort plush of choice over the years, “I…guess so.”

“And you’re aware that people are pretending around you. Since you didn’t participate in the masquerade yourself, that means you’re remaining true to yourself.” Her finger followed along the lines in the book. All the words were crammed together into tiny little lines. I hadn’t stopped feeling relieved since we met up and she’d been fine.

“So if we go by that books logic, they wanted the boy to hide himself? Or to pretend?”

“And you were trying to stop that, so they tried to stop you.”

“And I was trying to figure out that Masked One’s real intentions.”

She rolled over from her stomach from her back. Her shoulder bumped my knee and she stared up at me, “Wow, you’re really getting into this. Normally you just nod along and listen.”

Her hand brushed away my bangs from my eyes, and I frowned, “I’m just not really knowledgeable on this kind of stuff, is all. I prefer to listen to you instead.”

“I like when you talk though, you know? Nothing’s nicer than someone engaging with what I’m saying.” She tapped my nose as I started to protest and I winced. “I’m not saying it’s bad your quiet, I’m just saying it’s also nice when you talk to me.”

“I’m glad it is.” She beamed up at me, and I could hear her suddenly, ringing in my ears. Her proclamation she’d found her way to a happy ending. For a moment, we were not in her room, decorated in fairy lights and bookshelves, but in the school’s back gardens. She was over the moon despite her wounds. She hadn’t even seen me because of it.

“Cinder?”

“Speaking of my dreams…would you want to be hurt over and over again, to reach a happy ending?”

Her eyes always looked the bluest in her room somehow. Under all the lights, they reflected it all back, and turned into polished sapphires. When they fixed on me with such grave seriousness, it was impossible to look away, “I suppose that depends on how I’d be hurt. And besides, aren’t there all sorts of happy endings out there? Why would I need to bank on the one with the hardest path?”

Why would she? Another question to add to the list, but one I knew I wouldn’t get an answer to now that the world had reset. I wonder if Fox knew and would tell me what the conditions had been. Her joy and wariness had gone hand-in-hand, and I needed to know what she was offered, if on the same day she made her choice, she was still saying such a thing.

I clutched the plushie a little tighter, “What if…it was impossible for you to be happy any other way?”

“Then I guess the pain wouldn’t matter then. Because if that’s true, my only path then would be misery right?” Before I could stop her, she pulled me down and I crashed down into the space beside her. I turned my head towards her, and could only focus on the pinch of her eyebrows. “We’re only on the path of misery if we refuse to take a different path though.”

Was that really true, “I…I think you’ll find that ending you want.”

“Of course, we promised didn’t we.” We did. Of all the promises made, it was the one I intended to keep the most. Whatever happened next, it was all for this one thing.