Darkness. Smoke engulfs me and presses in from all sides. I can't breath, I can't see anything, I can't- I can't feel. I gasp for air, trying to claw at my throat, but I can't find it. I'm trapped in oblivion, in an endless nightmare of nothingness.

Wait, that's it! It's a Dream, Tag. Okay, it isn't real. Okay. This smoke isn't hindering me, it's lifting me up. It's beautiful, it's a featureless yet intricate landscape. I can breath. I can see.

The smoke around me fades into small wisps of gray until the feeling of falling turns to flying. How did I do that? I've never been able to change Dreams before, so how is this different? I shake my head and get an idea.

The smoke further thins around me at my will. Before I can question it too much, I'm looking up at a teenage boy standing above me. I'm sitting on a wisp of gray, holding a notebook and pencil, as the boy looks down at me.

"I'll go see what she wants," a female voice sighs, the sound coming from me. The boy walks away, but as the girl - as I start to stand up, my view suddenly becomes that of someone staring at the boy from the opposite direction. The girl is gone from the scene.

What is this? None of it makes sense. The world is still pure gray, besides the boy. It's like what I used to imagine sitting in a cloud would be like. The boy walks past me, and my point of view changes once more. I'm watching lower to what I assume would be the ground, sitting again. The boy sits down next to me, and a notebook appears in his hands on top of the smoke.

"What are you drawing?" The young voice of whomever I'm inhabiting asks. The boy drops the pencil that I didn't see before and slowly lifts the notebook, angling it in my direction. Slowly, a pattern fills in the blank page. A sudden feeling of uneasiness takes hold of me as the scribbling stops. It spells one word.

Soon

"W-what does it mean?" My voice asks. When the boy doesn't reply, I stop studying the page and look up. I immediately jump back. The boy's eyes- or where they should be.

Gray.

|_/>-<\_|

Same Dream as Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The notebook still says the same word, but it continues to get darker each time.

I close my laptop and push my chair away from the desk.

"TAG! Tagtagtagtagtagtagtag!

My eyes widen as someone sprints up the stairs.

"Taggidy Tag, Taggidy Tag, Taggidy Tag, Tag Tag Tag!"

What- who- why?

"TAG!" Max bursts through my bedroom door. Jumping a little, I raise an eyebrow. He's doubled over, gasping for breath, with papers clenched in his fist. When he finally regains his breath, he's jumping up and down.

"Tag! OmiTag, I can't even Tag right nao, how does one simply Tag, such Tag, many Tag-"

"Dude, calm down. What's the matter- wait, how did you even get in here?"

"Oh, I was let in."

"But my parents are gone," I insist.

"The unlocked window let me in," Max casually explains with a wave of his hand. "You should really work on that, by the way. Some crazy guy could break in or something."

While I hide my face in my hands, he apparently remembers why he's here.

"Eep, Tag! Look," he squeals and chunks the papers at me.

It's a letter-

"It's a letter from some law people saying that apparently I had some rich relative that died and since I don't have any sisters or cousins or anything like that I get the money and holy snap Tag I'm rich."

Nah, he's over-exaggerating. How much money could it possibly be-

"Sweet Author on a banjo! Is that even a real number?!"

"Sweet author. On a banjo." Max stares at me. He has no right to stare at me.

"Don't judge me; I do what I want. And so do you, with this much money. Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Doesn't this seem a bit weird to you? Like, this 'rich-uncle-leaves-you-a-huge-inheritance' deal comes straight out of TV."

"So what? To get the inheritance, all I have to do is visit his creepy, old, abandoned mansion! Seems pretty reasonable, right?"

|_/>-<\_|

"Got it?"

"How could I forget a plan that textbook?" I huff. "Seriously, does none of this seem at least a little strange to you? Not just the whole rich uncle thing; you want to sneak out late at night by climbing through a window and down a ladder, just to drive to some old mansion, which you have very little idea about the location of or what it's like."

"Pretty much!" Max agrees cheerfully, patting me on the back. "But you forgot the wearing black ski masks part. Now, who else should come?"

Groaning, I start to reply, before he continues on to answer his question.

"I'm thinking Molly probably wouldn't mind coming, and Chloe would enjoy it. Ooh, and maybe Drake from band? 'Can't forget Tish, obviously. And, uh... Nah, we probably shouldn't get anyone else in our rebellious teenagery schemes."

"Chloe is out of town. Molly hates me. Everyone from band hates me. Tish isn't allowed to see me, and I don't want her 'dad' finding out that she disobeyed an order, even if he doesn't care what it's about."

"Oh," Max looks at the ground, eyebrows furrowed. "We can bring my dog," he suggests halfheartedly.

Mocking his usual cheerful, energetic stance, I grin widely.

"He hates me, too!"

Once Max leaves, reminding me to be on the sidewalk at midnight, I fall onto my bed and try to think of what I could possibly do all day. I hate most of the shows on TV. The Internet is out today. Like Max so wonderfully reminded me, just about all of my good friends either hate me or are out of reach. I'm not supposed to leave the house without permission from my parents, and Mom's still mad at me, (and when Mom isn't happy, nobody's happy, so Dad isn't on my side either) so I doubt I'll be able to go out.

I guess I could... read? I've never been a big reader, like Max or Chloe are, but I do have a love of high fantasy stories. I glance at the tiny bookshelf. Standing in front of it now, I run my fingers across the dusted spines of the few novels I own. I sigh in defeat as I realize I've read them all multiple times and none of them are really catching my eye before something does just that. There's a book I've never seen before sitting on the far end, leaning against the others in its blue-gray cover. My fingers drift over to it.

Feeling like the room is unusually, I don't know, unusual, I slide the hardback off the shelf into my hands. Why are my hands tingling? They obviously didn't fall asleep or anything. My heart speeds up and I flip the bare-covered book around to see one word blandly imprinted on the front. Despite how boring the font of the title is, it manages to stir a sense of unexplained dread inside of me. I- I've seen that word. I know I've seen it.

Then it clicks. I saw the book on the desk of the gray-eyed boy. I never thought of it, but I'm sure that's it. It was right there on the smoke desk thing, right next to the notebook where he's always writing the word. This book, this thing I've never owned before or seen in this world, is in my hands, in my room, in my house, in Stroy. It was in the Dream, and now it's here.

I hold the book as far away from my body as possible and read the title one more time.

Olphire.

|_/>-<\_|

Buzz. Buzz.

My phone slides off the nightstand and thuds onto the floor, waking me with a start. I drowsily grope for it from my bed, reaching far enough that I, too, thud onto the floor. Groaning, I grasp the phone with slow fingers and squint at the painfully bright screen.

DUDE
GET OUT HERE

What?

ARE YOU ASLEEP?

My phone vibrates again.

YOU'RE ASLEEP, AREN'T YOU?

I blink a few times before remembering that I'm supposed to meet Max outside for his "rebellious teenagery schemes" at 12:00. It's 12:04.

AGH WHY ARE YOU TAKING SO LONG

THAT'S IT
I'M GONNA WAKE YOU UP THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY

That's plenty enough to fully wake me out of my stupor. I slide over to the window that faces the street and fumble for the latch. I see Max kneeling at the end of the gravel driveway. I finally open the latch and slide the window up. Not in time to stop Max from trying to throw rocks up to my window, of course.

Luckily, Max has a terrible throwing arm.

Unluckily, the rock that fails to hit my second-story window succeeds in hitting the first-story window of my parents' bedroom.