I can't seem to take that dream out of my head, it was so bizarre and felt so... real.

I knocked on Daisy's room, hoping she's ready to go to school. I forgot to wake her early today, because I woke up unusually late. My hand was ready to twist the doorknob, when she suddenly opened the door, and I was glad to see her on her uniform. I guess were ready to go. As I was about to tell her lets go, she suddenly... hugged me. Weird. Daisy is not the teddy bear type.

"Uhm. You okay, what's wrong?" She let go of her bear hug, and stared at me. I know this look, this is the mom-look.

"I was so worried! Your friend Will brought you here last night, unconscious!" She paused and shook her head. "What happened?"

So it wasn't a dream.

I sighed. My head's going numb. This is so confusing, plus, I have no alibi in mind. I can't simply tell her the reason why I fainted. She'll go crazy when she knows she'd just talked to a blood sucking vampire, a handsome one at that.

But 98.9% she'll surely think I'm joking, and force me tell her the truth, which is the one I already told. So I have no choice but to lie. No matter which end of the stick I'll choose, I will still have to lie, emphasis on the still.

"I have anemia." I lied to her with the straightest face I can manage to pull off. "I've been dizzy this past few days. So I went to get a checkup last weekend, to make sure I'm not pregnant. The result showed that I have low blood pressure. I was disappointed though, I already thought of names for the baby."

I know this stuff because my sister has anemia. I have a different sickness and its gastritis, but that won't excuse me for suddenly fainting out of nowhere. Well unless I puke too much, which already happened to me and I got stuck in a hospital for almost a month. But I didn't faint then even though I was super weak.

"Omaygod! You shouldn't have gone out last night! Don't go to school today!" She said and pushed me to my room. I know she was holding in the laughter from the pregnancy joke, and surprisingly took this anemia-lie seriously.

"No. I'm fine. We have an art conference at the theater today. Mr. Paredes will kill me if I'm absent!" She groaned then sighed, obviously had no choice. Daisy understood the situation, she knows very well that Mr. Paredes won't give special treatments.

"Just drink lots of water." She holds me tightly while going down the stairs.

"Yeah, and I will just piss it all out." She laughed. I touched her hand that was secured tightly on my arm. "And Daisy... I'm fine, you can let go of me. I'm not disabled yet."

"We never know. You might suddenly faint again. Then hit your head on the stairs and bleed to death. Then people might accuse me of murder, because I'm the last person with you. I can't let that happen. I still need to go to Paris. I can't live my life in prison." She looked and sounded serious, but I think the whole speech was a joke, so I laughed.

"I'll wear a helmet next time, when I go down the stairs." I winked and she laughed. I love Daisy, she makes my down times happy.

We've reached the line for the shuttle and it was longer than usual. Can't this day get any worse? The two of us sighed. We can't afford to be late in Mr. Paredes class.

I looked at Daisy. "Should we run?" She didn't answer, but just blinked like a doll with overly loosed eyelids.

I sighed again. If we run in six flights of stairs towards Cafa —it's a shortcut route but a deadly one— we'll be out of breath without even reaching the last one, and that last stair is not the last obstacle. We then have to go through a steep road to reach that building. Ugh the thought of running made me sweat mentally.

I looked at my watch, we only have 15 minutes before check attendance. If we wait here in line, we'll waste that 15 minutes by standing only. If we run without stopping, I think we'll reach the theater just in time.

"We don't have a choice. We need to go now." I held her hand and sprinted towards the soccer field. Behind that is the basketball court, and at the back of that finally is the mountain of stairs.

"Your anemia!" Daisy shouted behind me. Were already at the first stair to heaven. She's forcing me to stop, but my adrenaline rush was too strong, so she failed at that.

"I'll face the consequences later. What's important now, is not to be fucking late!" I shouted back. I didn't realize that Daisy was able to snake out of my hold, and she's now running in front of me.

"Okay. You say so. Race you to the top?" She said and I flashed her a wide grin.

"Way ahead of you sister!" I'm now taking two steps at a time. Running in a pencil skirt was much of a challenge than I'd expected, good thing it has a slight slit to the side, and I'm praying that slit won't grow.

Sweat was running like waterfalls on my face. I hate it. I hate exerting physical effort. But this is way beyond the desperate-times line, this is desperatest-times! I think I don't make sense anymore. Sweat drains my wisdom, I need to get there fast, or I'll lose everything, even my stock-up knowledge.

Finally we reached the theater, drenched in sweat. I think my blouse is now see-through, because some boys were weirdly giving me naughty looks. What's worse is that I'm wearing a navy blue bra, so it's pretty obvious with the thin material of our uniform.

Fuck them and their penises! Hope it shrinks to the size of their pinkies.

We walked up the front desk where a set of papers were placed, for us to write our names and signatures. We were panting the whole time, even when we're already inside looking for a seat. The blast of aircon was a gift from heaven to my face. I've never liked air conditioners, but today I definitely have a change of heart. Daisy dragged me to a seat next to our classmates.

There was a vacant seat next to mine and I don't really care who will sit next to me, and smell my sweat. I took out my towel and covered my face, wanting to sleep and try to recover from the exhaustion.

I think I fell asleep just as fast when I closed my eyes. The cold wet feeling on my hand pulled me out of my dreams. I looked and there's a bottle of water pressed to my skin, the person who owns it is obviously doing it on purpose. I was going to release the bitch in me when I realized who my seatmate is.

Tristan?

"I think it's time for you to hear the rest of the long story... that Will started." His face was passive, and his attention was not on me as he's too focused on the person talking on the stage.