Suddenly I wake up. Tears run down my already soaked face. My body is drenched in sweat from the nightmare that seemed so real. The only sound that I can hear in the dark silence is that of my heart pounding. I worry that maybe my dream is a premonition and that something terribly wrong has happened. I roll over and look at the green light coming from my alarm clock. It reads 2:00am.

*****

I live with my father, and have since my parents got divorced when I was in the eighth grade. My sisters live with my mother. I want to call their house and check on Autumn, but I realize that it is too late. I take a few deep breaths to calm myself down, and repeat "It’s just a dream, it’s not real" to myself.

I slowly get out of bed and walk to the kitchen. I think that maybe a drink of water will calm me down, so I pour some cold water out of the pitcher in the refrigerator into a cup and slowly drink it. Eventually, my heart stops pounding, and I return to bed. After lying there for about thirty minutes, I am able to drift back into a deep sleep.

*****

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. The alarm clock blares at 7:30 in the morning. I groggily roll over and realize that I have to get up and begin yet another day. I still feel a little haunted by my dream, which is weird because I’m usually not affected by my dreams. The ache that I felt thinking my sister was dead remains, so I decide to call my mom and make sure that everything is all right. As I dial the number, I feel nervous. What if something really is wrong? The phone rings, and my heart begins pounding once again.

"Hello"

"Mom?"

"Yes, Camilia, is everything all right?" I guess she could hear the fear in my voice.

"I had a dream last night that scared me. I just wanted to make sure that everyone is ok."

"We are all fine."

"Ok, well that’s all. I’ll talk to you later in the week. Bye mom."

"Bye honey." I hang up the phone and begin to feel much better. I finish getting ready for school, and then leave to begin my day. By lunch I had forgotten about the dream altogether.

*****

Around 10:15pm, I’m on my way home from work. I am tired and thinking about all the homework that I have to do as I enter Liberty Hill, the town where I live. I work in Georgetown, about 20 miles east of where I live. When I get to Liberty Hill, I debate whether to drive by my dad’s shop, or just stay on the highway until I get to the road that I live on. Liberty Hill has a 3 or 4 mile loop that goes through downtown and connects to Hwy 29 on both ends. My dad, a self-employed sculptor, has his shop on the loop, about halfway between the two intersections with Hwy 29. I sometimes drive by after I get off work to see if he’s still working, but tonight I realize that I have too much homework to do, and I just want to get home and get started on it. Thus, I just stay on Hwy 29 and don’t drive through town.

I get home at about 10:20. My dad isn’t home, but that really isn’t that unusual. He almost always either works late, or stays late at his AA meeting, so I’m not worried. I go inside and pull out my books to begin my Calculus homework. I live out in the middle of nowhere, so I am surrounded by silence. Usually, I don’t mind the silence, but tonight, it has a sort of eerie feel to it. However, I overlook the nervous feeling that is creeping up inside me and start to focus on the Calculus.

RING. RING. I jump as the telephone interrupts the silence and my thinking. I run to answer it.

"Hello."

"Camilia, is your father there?" a woman’s voice asks. I recognize the voice as my dad’s friend Jackie, but there is a panic in her voice that I am not used to.

"No. Why, what’s wrong?"

"He called me about an hour ago left a message saying that the shop was in ashes." My heart stops when she says that.

"Is he ok? Where is he?" Tears begin to fall.

"I don’t know, like I said, he just left a message," she replies.

"I’m going to town, I have to find him. I’ll tell him to call you." I hang up the phone and grab my keys.

To calm myself down, I light up a cigarette as soon as I get in my car. It’s a habit that I just recently started, and I don’t usually smoke when my parents might see me, but I decide that I really need the tobacco. I start my car and begin the seven-mile drive to town. I get about five blocks when I see my dads truck coming at me. "Oh shit, he’s going to see me smoking" is the first thought that comes into my head. I pull over, as does he, and I ask him if he’s ok. He just tells me to turn around and we will talk about it at home. As soon as he pulls away, I pick my cigarette up off the floorboard where I had just tossed it. I throw it out the window, turn around, and go back home.

*****

I walk inside and see my dad just standing there, stunned. He looks about 20 years older than he had that morning. I immediately hug him, and he hugs me back. Tears begin to run down his already tear-streaked face. I am in shock because I don’t think I’ve ever seen my father cry.

"What happened? Jackie just called, and she said that the shop was in ashes."

"It is. I came home early this evening, and about seven, I got a call telling me to come back to town because my shop was in flames. So I got there in time to watch it burn to the ground. There was nothing I could do."

"Oh my god," is all I can get to come out of my mouth.

"And do you know what the worst part was…" he pauses and takes a deep breath. I just stand there; wishing there was something that I could say to make it all better. "Do you remember the sculpture of Autumn?" I nodded. Of course I remembered that sculpture. When Autumn was about four, she would put her index fingers in her mouth, pull out her cheeks, and stick out her tongue. She did it all the time, and she looked so cute. One day, my dad decided to preserve the memory by making a sculpture of Autumn making her face.

"I got there just in time to watch it explode." He let out a deep sigh. "So, I guess I should call Jackie back." He then walked over to the phone, and I was left alone to think over what he had just said.

Suddenly, my dream came rushing back to me. Of course, it all made sense now. Autumn died in a fire, yet nothing else was burned in my mom’s apartment. Why hadn’t I thought of it sooner? Could I have saved my dad’s shop from disaster if I had made the connection and warned him?

I go over to the couch and sit, weighed down by my guilty feelings. I wish that I had somehow been able to stop the fire that destroyed my father’s shop, and his business. I blame myself for not seeing the dream as a premonition of something bad and warning everyone. I also blame myself for not driving by the shop on my way home from work. I feel as though I should have been able to do something—I should have been able to stop it.

I feel empty as I think of everything that is now gone from my life. My dad has had his shop in the same place for as long as I can remember. I remember being little and walking there after school to visit him before I would go home. I loved that place because it seemed so full of magic. My dad works with mostly limestone, so everything in the shop was covered with a soft white powder. He had finished and unfinished sculptures everywhere you turned. The stone people and animals and abstract works of art would take my breath away whenever I looked at them. I loved to touch them; they were so incredibly smooth and soft. I always imagined them being in my house when I grew up because I loved them so much and didn’t want anyone else to have them. Now they were gone, all of them. Who knew that limestone would burn?

When I first received this assignment, I had no idea what to write about. I thought "I have plenty of stories, just none that I care to share with a class full of people that I don’t really know." For about 3 days, I worried that I would not have anything good enough to write about.

Then, I was sitting on the couch and it hit me. I went to the computer and began to write and about an hour later I had my story. Of course it still had to be edited and whatnot, but it was there in front of me.

I decided to submit this paper to the web because it was the easiest. The story is about me, so I don’t have to worry about misrepresenting someone and then allowing the world access to that paper. I know the details of this story, and I don’t mind sharing them with others…I just hope others enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.