Dreamer - Savannah Campbell (ready player one ebook txt) 📗

                Geoff walks back into his clinic first. “Goodbye doctor number one.” Hester says before driving her 1967 white Mustang back to the community college. She and Irene make occasional jokes about people they observe on their drive back.

“And goodbye doctoral number one, see I remembered this time that your degrees are different.” She tells her friend as she walks into her office building.

                Irene waves happily back. “Good job, let’s see how long you keep it right. See you later.”

                The rest of the afternoon passes by very quickly and Irene stays very busy. The phone also rings a lot but usually when she identifies herself, the callers realize they are looking for Irene’s supervisor and not her. She also answers multiple emails. The semester is a few months away from completion. While a majority of the interns she oversees are right on schedule to having their first set of clinical hours complete, some have procrastinated. As a result, they are now pleading their respective cases to Irene for her help in getting these hours in any way possible.

                She politely responds to the groveling emails by explaining alternatives the students can follow to get these hours. Irene also explains that it’s not her responsibility to approve the methods they choose to use to get the hours. For this approval, the students need to contact their advisors at their own university. The child and family clinic at Darrington Community College is not the only clinic the students can earn their internship hours at but it is the only free one.

                After Irene hits send on the reply to the last new message in her inbox, she starts to work on shrinking the miniature hills of paperwork strewn about her desk. It being a Friday, she’d prefer to get rid of as much work as possible now, so that during the weekend, she isn’t thinking about all that Monday’s tasks will bring to her.

                Irene succeeds in ridding her desk of the paperwork piles completely, surprising herself. Well that’s a definitely good start to the weekend. She grabs her purse and leaves her office, hitting the light switch to off on her way. She drives out straight home. The house is quiet when she gets there and she sees that the car her parents share is in the garage. Her parents are both home and her mother greets her from the kitchen.

                 “Hi honey, you’re home early, that’s great.  “I didn’t have time to get to the store this week though, so it may just have to be a take-out kind of night.”

                “Yeah I didn’t think I’d finish all my paperwork either. Any choices you prefer for take-out? Pizza sounds pretty good right now but if you or dad wants something different that’s okay too.” Irene says.

                Her mother’s face turns emotionless for a brief moment, Irene only notices due to her honed ability to read her mother. She ignores the look though. Just as quickly as the emotions leave her face, her mother looks at her with a smile again.

                “Oh pizza’s fine. Your father will probably just make himself a sandwich with whatever’s left in the ice box later anyway. He said earlier he has to finish up plans for some new Webby space or something that he’s been asked to help with. I haven’t seen him all day actually.”

                Irene holds back a small laugh. Her mother never really got the appeal of anything computer related. “I think it’s called a Web site mom. Oh well, more food for us then right? You want any special toppings or should I just order our usual half sausage and half banana peppers?”

                Her mom nods. “That’s fine. You’re always so good at remembering and being considerate of my favorites dear. There’s cash in the Anchor jar to pay for dinner.”

                Irene sighs as she dials the number for the pizza place. She knows it’s easier to just accept the money her mom gives her for anything instead of arguing her ability to actually pay for things now that she’s got a job.

                Later that night, Irene dreams—a lot. Most of the night’s images are just brief flashes of pictures related to her day’s activities. She knows this is typical of dreams, they help us process what people when awake. Once she actually enters her first REM stage though, she has a dream that almost seems to have a storyline occurring around the people she sees in it.

                The scene is a disastrous mess and her vision is very fuzzy at first. Then, as things come into focus, Irene can see what she identifies as a huge construction site type of area. She looks around more to see a construction site with everything is being torn apart; sheetrock, iron support rods and other building materials strewn about ready to be used later.

As Irene continues looking around, she realizes that she’s actually only watching things occur. I’m not really an interactive part in this, well, I guess I could call it a deconstruction zone. As she continues to watch, Irene sees the site be torn apart from within by way of an unseen force. Amidst the chaos, she sees a couple come into focus. Irene sees a man and woman who she thinks are around her age. Maybe five year’s difference, but I can’t tell if that’s older or younger.

The man has shaggy dark black hair, cut short enough that it doesn’t cover his charcoal gray eyes. The woman he’s with has auburn hair down to her shoulders and sapphire blue eyes. They are engaged in a romantic embrace that becomes more intense as the deconstruction around them also increases in volume and size. The destruction continues for several minutes, but soon, additional sounds flood the scene. A romantic ballad Irene remembers hearing in third grade blasts over the demolition surrounding the lovers. Bryan Adams’ voice croons about how everything he does is for his beloved. The lovers declare their devotion to each other with passionate kissing.

The scene now reminds Irene of a movie she’s never seen but she feels would be a profitable one for Hollywood. She also feels jealous of the woman. I don’t know why but I want to be more than just a viewer of something like this. I want to be feel as safe as that woman appears. Irene feels her heart ache with the desire. Eventually, the scene is completely torn down, the music fades off, leaving only the lovers safely clasped in each other’s arms in its wake. It’s then that Irene wakes herself up.

She sees through bleary eyes that her nightstand clock has only passed a few hours since she first fell asleep. It’s not even three yet. She shakes her head slightly before turning over to sleep again. Irene enters REM again quickly, soon finding herself in a classroom.

A teacher she doesn’t recognize hands thick packets of hard copy paper to her and the other surrounding students. The educator strictly warns to not turn the packets over until she states to do so. No one dares disobey this warning and instead sits with his or her head looking down at the papers in front of them, Irene included. Irene is very nervous. She feels her whole body grow tense with sweat. She feels unprepared for whatever information is in the packet.

The woman grins with malevolence, “Okay, you may begin. You have twenty minutes.” Irene is scared but she can’t help having a quick mental of the woman with horns on her head and a pitchfork in her hand.

Irene quickly turns her packet over to scan the questions. She discovers that there are over one hundred of them but she didn’t dare try counting all of them for an exact number. She starts reading to see they seem to cover the same topic over and over, repeating multiple times. The topic is fairly simple. She has to figure out the answers to how she’s going to get her license to be an official psychologist in Darrington. The questions though are worded so ambiguously that with each one she finishes, she spends more time reviewing her work than actually writing her answers.

Irene’s whole body shakes with panic as she continues to write with a feverish pace to stay on track and complete her task. She finally reaches the last page and looks up to see the instructor announce the test is over. Irene’s panic from before explodes within her and she wakes herself up again, this time in a cold sweat. She again looks at her clock to see that barely an hour has passed since the last dream. Irene sighs.

What is up with my subconscious tonight? I mean granted I know that having a test over something means you’re worried about being graded on something. I have been worrying about getting licensed. I need to know if I’m doing the right thing. Okay one more dream is all I can handle tonight and I know just what I want to do in it.

Irene lies down on the side of her pillow facing her clock and lulls herself to sleep for what she hopes is the last time. She focuses herself into a dream where she has plans to meet Geoff at Sophia’s. She knows that he’ll question his presence there as he’s not a huge fan of the café. The images start to get clearer. She remembers he’ll remind her with mock anger that he’s got a masculine image to uphold and shouldn’t be there. Once she arrives, he greets her pleasantly with a quick one-armed hug over her shoulders and asks her sit down.

“Okay Geoff, I know you’re busy since you have to go on call later today with your colleague having a family emergency so this will be quick.” Irene says immediately, not wanting to waste any time.

Geoff holds his hand up to pause her quick speaking. “Woah, slow down ‘Ren.  You have to answer something for me first. Why am I the one you so desperately needed to run an idea by instead of Hester? Doesn’t that break some sort of girlie secret pact or something?”

Irene rolls her eyes at Geoff’s idea of ‘girlie secret pacts’ that he’s said he thinks are the basis of all female-female friendships. He probably also thinks that those ‘pacts’ as it were are based in pillow fights we have while dressed in skimpy pajamas which are the only reasons to have the friendships anyway.

“Well, considering I need advice on something concerning my expectations for employment, who would you say is better to talk to—a trust fund artist or a valedictorian turned doctor at a free clinic?” Irene replies.

“I don’t know Ira, are you sure Hester doesn’t know anything about jobs?” Geoff kids her and she reacts with a serious face, her patented way to tell him to cut the joking. “Okay, teasing out of the way. What did you want to ask me?”

Irene brings up the possibility of her becoming a licensed psychologist. She explains that she doesn’t want to quit her great job at the community college. She just wants to make sure she can still work in psychological fields on her own if say the budget doesn’t renew her current position somewhere down the line for example.

Geoff starts to respond but questions how to. “And you want advice on where to do these internship hours? I mean we don’t really have a lot of mental health related things at my clinic but…”

“No, I just want to know if it’s a bad idea to get these hours on my own even if it’ll take years longer than usual since I have a full time job.” Irene says softly, worry tainting her voice.

“Irene,” Geoff says, the shock of his using her name properly brings her to look him directly in the eyes. He continues with a sincere tone to his voice. “Why on earth would