Free Kissing Kate by Lauren Myracle

around feeling crappy for one reason or another.
    I decided to take a nap, just to forget about it for a while. I shut my door and turned off the ringer on the phone. Not that I was expecting any calls, but if I were going to try to have a lucid dream, which right then I decided I was, I didn’t want to risk interruptions.
    I looked around my room, which was somewhat messy, but not too bad. I picked up a pair of sweatpants that I’d left on the floor and stuffed them in a drawer. On my dresser were several pairs of earrings, and I swept them into my palm and put them back in the stained-glass box where I kept my jewelry. I straightened a pile of books on my desk.
    When there was nothing left to distract me, I kicked off my shoes and stretched out on my bed. The coolness of the quilt was soothing, but my body felt tight. I changed positions, but it didn’t help. I was too wound up.
    Last night I’d had that dream again, the one about being kidnapped. Only this time it was a girl who was luring me across the parking lot, instead of some strange man. It was a kid I used to know in elementary school, a girl named Cookie Churchill. In my dream it was sunny out, and everything was bright and shiny, and there was Cookie Churchill, smiling widely and beckoning with her hand. “Come on, Lissa,” she said. “Come with me.”
    We walked past rows of parked cars, light glinting off the windows. Then we passed a station wagon, and alone all the way in the back was a little kid. She had her face pressed against the glass, and her expression was forlorn. I slowed down, and Cookie got impatient.
    “Come on, ” she said. “She’s fine. Do you think her mother would have left her if she wasn’t fine?”
    I’d woken up sweaty and disoriented. I hadn’t thought about Cookie for years. Why the hell was I dreaming about her now?
    Cookie and I had been friends in the third grade, although she was the kind of friend who was totally hot and cold. Some days she’d save me a swing and yell at anyone else who tried to take it, while on other days she’d make fun of my clothes, or my barrettes. Back then I wore those plastic ones with little animals on them. Cookie called them “baby barrettes.”
    Our friendship hadn’t lasted long, and in sixth grade Cookie had moved to Chicago. So why, all these years later, was she pushing her way into my brain, especially in that one particular dream?
    So do something about it, I told myself. That’s the point of this whole lucid-dreaming stuff—to quit being so powerless.
    I turned my thoughts to my dream book, recalling its suggestion to try to stay alert as I slipped from wakefulness to sleep. If I could build a bridge between consciousness and unconsciousness, the author said, then I could maintain awareness in my dreams. And once I knew how to maintain awareness, I could explore my dream life in any fashion I chose.
    I closed my eyes and evened out my breathing, and eventually my mind slowed down. The goal now was to go ahead and fall asleep, but in a deliberate, purposeful way, so that I could focus on retaining my conscious awareness.
    I began by tensing and relaxing my different muscle groups, and this time I remembered my stomach. It was still hard for me to actually sense a wave of energy moving through me, but I tried. When I finally got to the top of my head, I realized that I felt longer than I usually did. Not taller, but longer, more stretched out, like a piecrust rolled thinner and thinner. It was weird, but not a bad weird. It made me aware of my body in a different way.
    The exercise was going well—no vibrating yet, but a light humming—so I took it to the next step. I imagined a ball of light moving from my head down to my feet, then around my body and back into my head. I exhaled and the cycle began again. The humming became a whole-body trembling.
    I pushed on the feelings, like I did last time, and out of nowhere a wave of desire pulsed through me. Panic beat in my rib