You went to bed a few minutes after 2 AM. It was only the first day after winter break and already you had a backbreaking amount of homework to tend to. Otherwise, the day had flown by without major incident. You could hardly remember your wish from that morning, but the feeling that spurred it still lingered as you took off your jeans and t-shirt, falling into bed with only your boxers on. College was just around the corner--you'd applied to a handful of schools. Most of them hadn't gotten back to you yet, and the two that did put you on their waiting list. Everything about your life felt uncertain. Your sister had just entered her freshman year of high school, and already, she seemed primed to succeed in every field she applied herself to. When Mom talked about her prospects, she mentioned Harvard and Yale, Brown and Princeton. Around you, Mom didn't talk about college. Whatever she said around your father or Jill, you doubted it amounted to much more than, "Jason will end up wherever he will end up." Perhaps she thought that you'd go to community college and muck around for two years, before getting your shit together and getting into a halfway-decent school. And maybe she was right.
But damn it, it'd be hard when all of your friends were going off to different parts of the country. You could keep in touch through Facebook, but somehow, you knew that as soon as they left, their lives would travel in different directions from yours and you'd never be able to recreate the brotherhood and camaraderie that carried you through high school. And where would you be? At the end of summer, would you be attending a university? Or would you be stuck in your hometown, working at a gas station and taking beginning math courses at the nearest community college, with no friends except the classmates you worked on projects with?
This was the fear that stuck with you as you fell asleep... for a second, you also thought of Sandra Wong, who had announced in first period class that she'd been accepted into UCLA. "Lucky bitch," you'd thought. The anger you felt toward her surprised you, but then again, she was a cheerleader. She had scholarships to do dance routines and cheer on footballers--she didn't even need to worry about her high school GPA. Who wouldn't envy her?
There were no dreams that night. You slept restfully, from 2 AM until your alarm clock went off. Upon waking, you felt like something was different. Something about you had changed: physically, mentally, you couldn't say. But straightaway, you noticed how strong you felt, flexible, agile. You sprung from bed with a lithe step and crossed the room toward your closet, but halfway there you stopped yourself. "What's going on?" you thought. And then you looked down...
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