I’m not sure if it’s a dream, but I get the feeling I’m on my way from one life to another. Maybe I died, but I don’t remember.
I find my self in an elevator with two other girls. The blond one looks my age, and she has her hand on the handle of what looks like a janitor’s cart, but it contains no cleaning agents. We all sense that we’re in the same metaphoric boat, which is a comfort unity, but we don’t recognize each other. The blond looks at the other girl, then over at me.
“Well, we have to pick where we’re going,” she said.
“Venus!” suggests the other girl. She seems to understand that we’ve died, that it is feasible to suggest taking an elevator to Venus. After all, we aren’t sure why we’re in this elevator; we may as well test its capabilities to transport us beyond the limits we’ve known on Earth. Whether she chooses Venus as a destination or not, I’m not sure, but the blond girl pushes a button that gets the elevator moving. Almost in a blink the doors open. We let the blond girl push the cart out first, following behind.
The scene is familiar. It appears to be a library. It is decorated in primary colours, which suggests maybe it is in a school or a community center, rather than an older city library with stone walls and silence. We file past the check-out desk. I accept a yellow paper that the lady at the desk hands over her counter. There are lines of black text that dispel instructions that are too detailed for me to understand without knowing more. But written on the line at the bottom is the name Hayley.
There are children that all appear to be around the same age as me, some younger. Some study quietly, some are stacking the shelves, but everyone seems to be working independently. The other girl I’m with tells me that she thinks this place is where people with terminal illnesses go. I look around for visual evidence and find none: No tubes, no wheelchairs, no bald heads or pale faces. But I understand that these people are waiting to die.
We navigate through different sections of the library looking for this girl named Hayley. In an attempt to better understand what this place is, the blond suggests we look into a room off to the right. The door is open, and we peak our heads in. The walls are a navy blue and there are decorated dinner tables everywhere. The people inside are oblivious to our presence. A pouty bride is sulking in the corner and heaving heavy breaths, surrounded by her identically dressed bridesmaids, who look equally disappointed. At an opposite corner, the bride’s cranky mother bosses around serving staff and corrects people’s etiquette faux-pas. I want to tell the mother that she is ruining her daughter’s day, but I hold back, thinking maybe I’m like Ebenezer Scrooge, maybe the actors in this scene can’t hear me. The bride’s face finally lights up, following a discussion with her bridesmaids that I have not heard. The group sashays over to the mother, and introduces her to the groom’s father. I realize they are both single parents. The mother starts dancing with this man, and eventually laughs, smiles and closes her eyes as he leads her in circles. The bride looks quite pleased. Instead of pouting about her mum’s antics, she has helped her mother to find true love, the cure to her crankiness. The other girl I came to this place with, not the blond one, has decided to sit and reflect on what she’s just seen. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine here,” she said.
We proceed on to the back of this first section, unsure of how many more there may be. Sunlight streams through the windows’ white blinds and onto the round tables. More people work independently, flipping through books, making notes. A guy who looks to be just exiting the acne phase of his teenage years sits at a table with no books in front of him. He just looks at the birch finish. He is wearing an enormous navy blue T-shirt that draped his smooth, round body. He looks to be about 400 pounds, I guess, large enough to make fashionable clothes shopping difficult. His hair is greasy and his odour indicates that personal hygiene may not rank high on his list of priorities. He looks up at the blond one, and without saying hello or introducing himself, he starts speaking as if she has asked him what was wrong.
“I just want to be able to wake up, and not think about all the bad memories,” he said. I immediately want to comfort him, and tell him not to worry, that he’ll make new ones, but the blond girl puts her hand on his shoulder. She looked at him and began speaking with him, and I can tell that she relates, presumably plagued by her own troubling memories. I nod to her to tell her I’ll leave her be, but she is looking intently in his eyes, through his unattractive exterior, seeing something I can’t.
I walk a few feet from them, figuring I better get on with finding this Hayley girl, for whatever reason. I look down at the yellow sheet to make sure I have her name right. I ask a redheaded girl on the other side of a bookshelf if she knows anyone named Hayley. Before she can answer, another redheaded girl pops up beside her from a kneeling position.
“I’m Haley,” she said.
“Why don’t you come with me Hayley, I think we have some work to do together,” I said. She exhales deeply and looks away, then returns to looking at my eyes, with a look of annoyance and hesitation.
“OK,” she said, “But first, I have to…” whatever she has to do, her voice has trailed off, or else become to quiet for me to hear. We walk down another corridor between book shelves, not too fast, but with a purpose. We turn left down another corridor and approach a supermarket-style pyramid display of beer cans. As we pass by it, she notices my mischievous smile, or maybe she just felt it pass through to her through our held hands.
“Oh no,” she said. “I don’t do things that get me in trouble.”
I smiled. I remember thinking to myself in eighth grade how easy life would be if I stuck to the rules. No one could get mad at me, I’d surely work hard and get good grades, good scholarships, and I could devote my time to all things good. Being good would inevitably lead to good things. Right? But then I did something bad, and then something else, and looking back now, some of my best memories have been breaking the rules. And I got good grades anyway, right?
I kept walking hand in hand with this girl, preparing to tell her all of this. I knew that I had to teach her how to seize the day, and follow instincts before rules. I felt comfortable, knowing what this was all about now.

What a cuckoo dream! It was so vivid, and followed a logical flow, for a change. I’m not sure what it all means just yet, but I thought it important enough to write down while it was still fresh.