In My Dreams I Hold a Knife

by Ashley Winstead

College: a freedom so profound the joy of it didn’t wear off the entire four years.

“He’s hot,” Heather said, speaking at an alarmingly normal volume. “In a one-time, get-the-bad-boy-out-of-your-system kind of way. I’ve moved on to nice boys. But every girl has to go through it. Rite of passage.”

Today, something starts that will never end.

Terror and anticipation: the world’s most potent chemical cocktail.

He lifted his head, catching my eyes, and my body burst into a thousand sparks, leaking into the night like fireflies. This was the old magic. The pull and draw of him, the gravitational force.

Heather’s death had been a dark chasm ripped through our lives, breeding misery. I wanted things to be normal again, good and upright. I wanted to live in the sunlight.

“‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,’”

“I don’t trust anyone.” “That sounds lonely. You have to let people in. Let them love you for who you are, the good and the ugly. Then you know it’s real.”

It was my home.

I’m scared college was the last time I was really alive, the way you’re supposed to be, and I’ll never get it back.” “Of course college felt extreme,” Coop said. “You had infinite freedom and almost no responsibility. Nothing was fixed—you had your whole life ahead of you, and it could go anywhere. You had best friends you spent every minute with, so you were never alone. And you were in love. Real love.”

What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? I had no idea.

“But Tiny’s right.” Mint slid his sunglasses over his eyes in full movie-star mode. “We should get out of here, daddy-os. Go burn some rubber before the fuzz shows up.”

It’s funny how the world reshapes itself according to your desires, if you demand it.

Wanting is dangerous. The less you want, the safer you’ll be.

Freedom. Wild, delicious, profound freedom, the whole world uncircumscribed, my whole life ahead of me, newly unfixed. It could be anything.

I hoped I’d never get what I deserved.