Simone

I had a dream the other night that my best friend was parallel parking my car at a party, and while doing so, scraped the car of a very cute boy. (Note: Both my best friend and the very cute boy are real people I interact with on a daily to almost-daily basis.) In the aforementioned dream, I walked out of the party to discover my car stopped in the middle of the street—with a line of paint missing from its right hand side, and a matching absence on the car of the very cute boy.

My best friend remained in the driver’s seat, too shocked and embarrassed to exit the car. It almost annoyed me she felt this way, because I wasn’t mad at all. The scratches didn’t seem severe, in fact I could barely make them out. But then the boy exited his car, yelling, and cursing, out of character for him, and indicative of a serious offense. And suddenly a streetlight became brighter, revealing deep dents in both cars, ruined doors, thousands of dollars worth of damage. I apologized to the boy profusely, but the only condolence that came to mind was “I’m sorry for who did this.” In my head, I needed to keep reminding him of that: my car, but not me. Not me, but my best friend. Blame her. We yelled at her together. We screamed and cursed. She started crying, she kept apologizing. Pique consumed me.

There was a three or four week period during which I stopped remembering my dreams completely, and savored their reentry so desperately that I promised to document every single one, and analyze them for meaning, maybe flesh out their content to write short stories. I thought if I respected my dreams, it would make them arrive with more frequency and depth.

I don’t even want to think about what this dream means. Am I gross social climber who prioritizes the opinions of boys over the feelings of her friends? Does some form of social division exist between me and the person I’m closest to? Do I perpetuate it? Does she know that, and resent me for it?

I do know that when I woke up, I ran to the window facing the driveway to check for scratches on my car. ♦