"Seriously? All this time, and I've never once seen you?"

"Yep. Surprised me too," I answer with a smile, and I turn and kiss him on the cheek. His face is as cold as ice, but I enjoy it anyway. His bashful smile only makes me want to kiss him again.

Tina and Craig are chatting happily with two pints of beer when we come in the front door, and she waves happily to Owen, leaps up, and gives him a hug. She babbles enthusiastically at him and drags him over to the table to talk, and I head to the kitchen to make cocoa.

"So what are you two up to?" asks Craig.

Owen and I glance at each other, and then in unison answer, "Just talking."

Tina's smile is so wide that I fear she might pull a muscle in her face. She knows me well enough that I don't have to say anything else. For all I know, she can read my mind and already knows everything.

She leaps up from the table, grabs another beer, and then scoots her chair closer to Craig and snuggles up next to him with her head on his shoulder as he puts his arm around her.

"Oh really now! I thought you told me you weren't into Craig like that?" I tease, and she rolls her eyes at me before turning and kissing him softly on the cheek. He turns red and Owen laughs.

"What can I say? People change," she answers with a wide, proud smile-a smile that I know is just for me.

Friday, March 8 7:30 AM.

Owen.

I close my door, sit down at my desk, and try to pretend I'm working on my homework. I'm staring at numbers scrawled near-illegibly in my physics notebook, but they don't mean anything to me right now. My mind is still hiding in terror behind the couch downstairs.

I can hear the fight making its way toward the stairs. Their voices echo through the heating vent and the aluminum ductwork distorts Dad's cold, hate-filled voice into something out of a bad movie.

My mother is running up the stairs, trying break free from the fight, but Dad's boots stomp up the stairs right behind her.

Mom starts crying, and I shudder at the sound of fist against flesh right outside my door. It hurts me even though I'm not the one being hit. He's done it to me plenty of times before, though.

A new voice cuts through my thoughts and I bolt upright in my chair.

"Stop that! Stop hitting her!" screams Maria.

Maria? What is she doing here?

The nightmare shudders around me as if it's about to break apart and let me wake up, but then it pulls itself back together and the torture continues.

I can see Maria's beautiful green eyes in my mind. They're wide and dark with fear, but she's still braver than I am. Samantha stood up to Dad, now Maria, but I'm still hiding in my room and pretending I'm not here.

I close my eyes and bite my lip as I hear my father's hand connect with Maria's face, followed by her gasping in pain.

"Get up, Owen. You didn't protect Samantha, and now Maria needs you!"

The door slams down the hall as Mom locks herself in the bedroom. Why wouldn't she? She wouldn't protect her own daughter, and Maria means nothing to her.

"He'll kill me!" my mind screams as I reach for the doork.n.o.b.

I can't let the nightmare win again. I don't want to see Maria in Samantha's place.

G.o.d... please don't do this to me. Don't let this nightmare play out like it always does.

I clench my teeth in anger and despair as my body turns away from the bedroom door on its own. It's as if the nightmare knows I have someone special in my life now, and it's using her to hurt me even worse.

The walls shake as Dad slams Maria against the door, and I hear the photograph fall off the wall behind me. Gla.s.s shatters the way it always does and I look down at that stupid f.u.c.king photograph. We were all smiling back them.

I showed Maria this exact picture when I was hopped up on Vicodin; why did I take it to college with me in the first place? I hate that photograph.

Maria whimpers outside the door, her voice full of fear and pain, and I race for the door.

I throw the door open just in time to hear Maria's scream as she tumbles down the stairs and to see Dad's triumphant smile.

No... that never happened. He never smiled. He was as pale as a ghost when he killed my sister. What's wrong with the nightmare? Why is it doing this?

The house seems to shake around me as if it's about to tumble apart, but it stabilizes as I look down the staircase. Maria is lying on the floor against the wall with her neck contorted in an impossible way. Her green eyes stare blankly back up at me.

The green trickles out of her eyes as I stare down at her in horror, and soon only lifeless gray remains-Samantha's sad gray eyes trapped in Maria's body.

"Wake up," growls Dad from behind me, and suddenly the house shatters around me.

I bolt upright in bed, panting and covered in sweat. My heart is racing and I can't catch my breath.

What on earth just happened? Why was Maria in my nightmare?

n.o.body else has ever come into my nightmares before, and now I'm terrified. Why would my brain do that to me? It's bad enough losing Samantha over and over and over with no hope of ever bringing her back-why do I have to watch myself fail Maria too? It never happened!

The alarm clock rings, and I do my best to compose myself in the shower before heading out to cla.s.s.

Shower, clothes, toothbrush, cinnamon raisin bagel. Now I can start my day.

Toasty bagel in hand, I walk out the door without looking and almost trample Maria. She dodges out of my way, and instead I trip over my feet and drop my bagel in the snow. So much for that.

"Oh no! Are you okay?" she gasps as she helps me up. I nod to her and look for my bagel as she tries to dust the snow off my coat. My breakfast is nowhere to be found.

"I'm okay. Sorry about running you over."

"Don't worry about it," she answers, smiling radiantly as she walks beside me up the long staircase to the top of the hill. It's warmer today and most of the ice has melted.

"I didn't expect to see you today," I say, puffing as I climb the unnecessarily steep stairs. Whoever designed this apartment complex must have hated students.

"Of course you didn't," she quips, hooking her elbow around mine and kissing me on the cheek. "If I told you, it wouldn't have been a surprise!"

I can feel the warmth of her lips on my skin even through the cold air, and it almost makes up for the nightmare this morning.

"You taking the bus?" she asks, and I shake my head.

"Nah, I prefer to walk," I lie. The truth is that I can't afford a bus pa.s.s.

"Well, I'll walk with you then," pipes Maria happily, grinning at me, and I smile weakly back at her.

"Are you okay?" she asks after two blocks of silence, elbowing me gently. "Is something wrong?"

"I'm okay," I respond, my voice low and quiet. "I... I just had a nightmare last night and it's still bothering me. I'm fine now."

"Was it your dad?"

As I nod back to her, she wraps her arms around me and hugs me, stopping me in my tracks.

"I'm so sorry," she whispers in my ear. I put my arms around her and hug her back.

"It's over now," I lie again. Maria's lifeless green eyes keep staring up at me from the bottom of the staircase, and I can't shake the image from my mind.

Maria throws conversation after conversation at me as we fight our way up the hill to campus. Cla.s.ses for the day, homework, test schedules, papers to grade, how my hand feels... everything under the sun, and I can't help but love her for it. She's trying to drag me out of my dark place and back into the light.

She's too good for me.

"Yeah, I have less grading to do now," I say, trying to catch up as she bombards me with questions. "My professor's cutting way down on it until after my hand is better."

"How long is that going to be again?" she asks, stopping as we finally make it up to the base of the clock tower.

"I have a follow-up appointment in two weeks, but it's probably going to be four to six until it's healed."

The chimes start to play the alma mater over head, and Maria groans.

"G.o.d, I hate that song so much," she complains in disgust, and I laugh.

"I'm going down to the engineering library to work on my thesis," I tell her. "Which way are you headed?"

"Oh, I'm heading back home," she says, pointing down the hill. "I don't have cla.s.s until noon today, and then after that, I'm teaching some of the freshman researchers at my lab."

I stare at her in disbelief. She came all the way up that atrocious hill for nothing?

"Then why'd you walk all the way up here?"

"I wanted to be with you for a bit," she answers, looking shyly up at me but smiling brightly.

Her beautiful smile and glittering eyes warm my heart and make my knees weak. I feel my face get hot as I fail miserably at finding words to tell her what I'm feeling.

"See you later?" she whispers, her eyes wide, and I nod back to her excitedly.

She waves to me as she heads back down the hill, and I stand where I am and grin like an idiot as I watch her go. See her later? I can't wait!

Friday, March 8 5:00PM.

Maria.

My phone rings and interrupts my thoughts for the third time in as many minutes. I don't care who it is-I'm busy! If I didn't answer the first two times, I'm not going to answer the third time either!

"Okay, now that you've got the slide stained and prepared," I tell the wide-eyed freshman as she scrambles to take notes, "grab some fluorescent pictures and let me know what you see, alright?"

"Wait... how do I do that?" she squeaks nervously, twirling a strand of her blond hair around her fingers as she writes feverishly. Her lab coat is so big on her that the sleeves keep falling down over her hands.

"The fluorescent microscope is in the darkroom behind you."

She stares at it as if she's never seen a microscope before, and I sigh and try not to get frustrated with her. Was I this mind-bogglingly stupid when I was eighteen?

"Okay, I'll show you how to use the microscope," I tell her, and I wave for her to follow me. This is what I get for finishing my senior research project so early-I get to teach freshmen for the rest of the year.

My phone rings again from inside my jeans pocket beneath my lab-coat. This is getting ridiculous.

A faint, unearthly blue glow illuminates the room as I turn on the microscope and start calibrating the camera. My juvenile a.s.sistant hovers nervously until I've finally had enough of her and tell her to go get her slides.

"Put the slide on the stand, and now add one drop of oil," I quietly instruct her. I'm almost certain I knew how to use a microscope when I was a freshman.

Her hands shake as she works, and she nearly jumps as my phone rings yet again. I reach under my coat to see who keeps calling me, and in the two seconds I'm not looking, the girl manages to break everything.

My head snaps up at the sound of crunching gla.s.s, and my idiotic freshman trainee is gaping at the microscope in abject horror with her hands over her mouth. Her slide is broken into dozens of pieces.

"Oh no! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to," eeps out the tiny girl. She looks like she's about to cry.

I sigh and point to the waste-bin. I've had enough.

"That's it for the night," I groan. "Clean up your mess, make a new slide, and we'll do more on Monday, alright?"

"I'm sorry!" she stammers again. "I was just trying to focus in and I hit the macro and not the..."

"It's okay," I interrupt. "Just... don't touch anything next time, alright?"

I excuse myself and head out into the hall to check my phone again. It's Owen.

My heart skips a beat and a smile spreads across my face. Never in my life did I expect that someday I'd grow up to be a romantic, but I'm happy that I was wrong.

I immediately race out into the hall to call him back, and phone rings and rings and rings as I wait impatiently.

"Oh come on," I mutter. "You called me five times, and now you don't answer?"

The phone clicks as he finally picks up, and I suddenly don't know what to say.