Meditating. What’s the point? This is English class, I think, rolling my eyes back at Annie across the room. Everyone else stares at Mr. Carlton in fake, rapt attention. Dan’s picking his nose, flicking the morsels at Stephanie’s back. Hannah’s laying with her head on the table, her cell phone pressed under her cheek, whispering silly nothings to a silly no one. Mr. Carlton doesn’t even notice. Oh, well. Better this than Catcher in the Rye.

“Okay, everyone, sit up straight, put your hands flat on the table, and close your eyes,” Mr. Carlton rumbles in his low, bear-like voice. For a moment, I feel the urge to keep my eyes wide open, but last night’s ridiculous hours spent studying pop into my head. Meditation. A student’s foolproof was of secretly taking a nap.

“You’re in a dark room, alone. Only your own eyes are watching you.” Mr. Carlton’s voice drones through my ears like lullaby. I wonder how I’ll ever be able to stay awake out of courtesy, setting myself to resist the sleep in my eyes. “You see a tiny, delicate archway of light. It isn’t a doorway, or a portal, but you feel drawn to it. You reach it, and you’re at the top of a stairway.”

Strangely, I’m there. I feel my own, slow breathing, and my palms pressed flat against the cold desk. The stairs before me are dark wood, with a broken railing, steep and ancient. My surroundings remind me of a haunted house, and goosebumps rise on my skin.

“There are 10 steps.” Two unwanted slabs of wood fade from my mind. “Each number I say, you take a slow, unrushed breath and a step. There is a door at the bottom, and you want to reach it. Now…” He pauses, but everyone is still, waiting at the top of a stairway. “Ten.” Breathe in. Step. Breathe out. “Nine.” Breathe in. Step. Breathe out. “Eight.” Breath in. Step. Breathe… His voice is fading. I hear it behind me, like the shell of myself I left at the top of the stairs. I feel the numbers more than I hear them, and suddenly I’m at the bottom. The desk has faded from beneath my hands, as has my chair and the classroom, and I’m finally alone. My hand rests on a brass handle. A beam of white light shines through the keyhole. As I wonder what could be behind the door, a whisper echoes through the hall.

“Imagine a place of peace and light beyond this door, and it will be there. Think of anything before you enter, and you will have it. Think of a person you want to spend 10 uninterrupted minutes with, and they will be there. The door knows what you want, even if you do not.” The voice pauses. I leave my mind blank, but scattered images still play across my vision. “Now, open the door.”

I push the handle. As soon as the light spills into the dark, sullen hallway, the room disappears, dissolving like the stars in sunlight. I look around me.

A field of tall yellow wheat stretches as far as the eye can see, from horizon to horizon. I look up at the clear sky, squinting at the light, and see a flock of blackbirds fly across the gigantic, impossible daylight moon, challenging the sun with its presence. The horizon is only broken by the silhouette of a gnarled, wind-bent tree whose green leaves provide a small spot of shade from the comfortable sun beating on my skin. The grass, bent with seeds at the tops, tickles my skin beneath my shorts as I make my way towards the tree, and it is many steps before I lift my smiling face from my hand running across the soft wheat and realizes I am not alone.

Her eyelids flutter with a dream, and the fingers of her free hand stir in her fantasy. Her auburn curls bound over her shoulders, and a lock is caught on the bark of the tree, waving feebly in the wind. She sleeps with her back to it, clad in a loose, white summer dress, her fingers between the pages of a book and a soft smile gracing her lips.

I recognize her, and the book. Annie On My Mind. Apparently so, I muse.

“Annie,” I whisper.

My best friend stirs before me, looking around her in a familiar, sleepily disoriented way. She notices who’s standing above her, and smiles. I feel a rush of affection and… something else, but I ignore it, smiling back at my best friend’s presence. I stick out my hand. “Morning, sleepyhead.” Laying the book on the ground, Annie reaches up and grips my outstretched hand. She’s really here, I think when I feel her skin against my own, and marvel.

“What are you doing here?” Annie asks. I tug on her hand to help her up, but as Annie is lifted off the ground, I misjudged her sleep-laden weight and lose my balance. I stumble forward and feel myself fall against Annie, pinning her against the tree just as she is pulled up.

I pause. I imagine that time must be as strange here as my surroundings, because in a moment, I’m aware of everything. I feel how her body is pressed against my own; how her slender fingers feel in mine; how her free hand is traveling silently up my arm to steady me, her nails leaving thin tracks of fire; how her soft, honey-tinged breath tingles my face with moisture; how her lips purse and break out in a smile. The moment passes, but I’m still caught in the remnants of it, and don’t move.

“Up against a tree, huh?” she whispers playfully. Her face is only inches from my own, and suddenly I can’t resist. I kiss her smile from her lips. Only a few seconds pass, but my hand finds a way out of her soft grip and to the back of her neck, while the other laces around her waist. I can’t help myself. I’m lost with her. She’s kissing me back.

My ears thud with my beating pulse as I kiss my best friend in the shade of the lonely tree, and the wind, waving the field in patterns of the sun, brings pieces of a song I know… And then another sound joins it. It is faint, at first, peaceful but stubborn. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. The words in tones of a baritone strung together by their insistency, I can’t shut my mind to it. Feel her lips on yours, I think. Don’t let go. Don’t let go.

I feel my fingers find flat, smooth wood. Her neck has disappeared from beneath my fingers. Her lips fade, leaving mine enflamed with memories. I’m staring at the door. My hand is on the handle. My heart’s beating a staccato rhythm against my ribs as I push it. Bring me back, let me back, I beg. Annie…

The door opens and my eyes flutter open to reality. Mr. Carlton sits in front of the class, arms crossed and a smug smile on his face. “It looks like it worked for most of you.” He glances at me, and smiles knowingly. “Sam, you look flushed.”

My hands tremble against the table. My breathing’s still ragged. I wonder if my lips are as red and sore with delight as my face seems to feel. I find my voice. “I’m always flushed.” The class utters a small collective laugh of agreement, their eyes still in their world, as mine are. Then I refocus, and she turns in her chair; Annie smiles at me.

Mr. Carlton gets up. “You’re dismissed. The bell rang a minute ago.” I glance at the clock. Half an hour had gone by. Shocked faces around me match my own.

A symphony of chair scraped across the linoleum vibrates through my ears, so different from another sound: that song I heard… I want to walk with you on a cloudy day… in fields where the yellow grass grows knee-high. In a daze, I’m halfway through the hall before Annie catches up to me.

“Morning, sleepyhead. Are you still in your dream?” she banters, as we used to, the banter between best friends and nothing more. But everything has changed. Her smile reminds me of the way she kissed me back, and I turn away.

“Yeah,” I mumble. I wish.

“Me too. Did you meet anyone in yours?”

Did I, indeed. I look into her smiling, innocent face and let my dream die. The confused turmoil within me doesn’t die with it. I whisper the lie. “No. No one.”

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