To See If I Can Catch A Dream1

To See If I Can Catch A Dream 1
If All Our Life Is But A Dream, Fantastic Posing Greed…


**Nikki’s POV**

“What should I wear?!” Katy questioned me, as I sat on her bed and watched her dig madly through her cluttered, swollen closet. She pulled out shirt after shirt with no content, as Becky and I observed her franticness.

“Why don’t you wear that one?” Becky asked, sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the room. “I think it will look good.”

“Really? I liked the other one,” I disagreed.

“You’re not helping!” Katy exclaimed, frustrated and wishing she could get a straight answer.

Sympathy overtook a portion of me, propelling my body off of the bed and into the closet with her. I picked up one of the shirts she had discarded in the pile to the left of us, and held it up to her. She looked at me with bright, ecstatic eyes, and a well deserved grin spread across her face.

“Nikki! You’re a GENIUS!” She shouted, pulling the shirt from my hands and climbing out of the overstuffed closet. “Becky! LOOK!”

She rushed to the bathroom to change into her now decided outfit. Upon getting it on, she was back in front of us, sipping a Pepsi Max. She was one of the most unique people I had met; she stood, tall and proud, in black skinny jeans, a dark purple tee shirt with a bright green cartoon dinosaur on it, a studded bet hanging low on her waist, pink Nike Dunks, messy dark brown that appeared black, a hair clip with a pink bow on it, some necklaces that had random items hanging from them, and thick eye make up.

I sat there, cross legged on her bed, sipping a half full can of Red Bull. Becky stood and turned her Panic at the Disco CD on, full blast, probably damaging my ear drums for the rest of my life. But, like we were prompted to by authority, we all got up and danced to the music, singing at the top of our lungs and cherishing every moment together. No body could restrain us; we were who we wanted to be, nothing more and nothing less, and we loved it.

We were lost souls who had found each other, after searching for years to find someone to relate with. Our past lives hadn’t been very blissful, and being together took us out of our misery and sorrow. And now, being the best friends that we are, we decided we would attend the Panic at the Disco concert a while back. They were at the top of our list for priorities, as they clearly dominated our lives. But neither Katy nor I had money to buy the tickets with, so we had Becky buy them for us.

When I said we never had good previous lives, I meant me and Katy. Becky had everything that we could have wished for, except for one thing we held close to our hearts; ability to be original, to create your own way of living and stand by it. She was a poser, in ways, as she was constantly imitating Katy and I, pretending to be a person that she was obviously not.

I found a new band, she found it immediately after. Katy wore red skinny jeans, she wore them the next day. And, if she was lucky, she might have guessed well enough to match her that day. Once in a while, we had our fights as friends, throwing words out at each other like knives or bullets, but knowing that we were friends and we would always forgive one another, we waited a few days and always said sorry.

If I wanted to apologize to Katy, Becky would want to as well.

We danced and sang like nothing mattered, like our pasts had never tortured us to the point of insanity, like there was nothing else to do. We let our laughs breach the protection of our vocal chords, flying away in their freedom and floating along with us.

“Go on…” I sang loudly.

“Grab your hat and fetch a camera!” Becky finished the lyric.

“Film the world before it happens!” Katy chimed in, spinning in a circle.

We were connecting with each other as we had never before, although we had never been the closest of friends with Becky. I had joined their friendship was after she had met Katy, and we argued about how I may have been pushing her out of this picture from then on. And maybe I had been, maybe these past few years I had been shedding my light and blinding her from both of our eyes, but there was something about me that just wanted Katy’s attention more . There was a fire burning within my relatively quiet natured soul, inflamed with hopes that maybe one day I would be noticed and have attention from somebody. I’ve always wanted to just be noticed, for someone, anyone, to realize I’m here, and finally, these two girls had.

Sure, I was unique, but I was unique like everybody else. Everybody here was trying to find themselves in their teenage years, as were we, but I was relatively following some similar trends that were popular. I don’t know what it was in me, but I needed to fit in at least in a minor way. I hated that about myself.

“Can we go now…?” Becc whined, cradling her knees in her fragile arms as she sat in one of Katy’s chairs. “Pretty please?”

“Yeah!...Just in case there’s traffic and everything,” I agreed, pulling my keys from my pocket. “To the car!” I exclaimed, running from her room, down the stairs, and out the front door.

“PANIC!!” Katy shouted from behind me, as our heavy footsteps echoed on the wooden stairs.

“Yay!” Becc pursued in the wake of us.

We threw the front door open in all of our eager and haste, in a frantic mad dash to reach my car. I would be driving, although I didn’t particularly enjoy it. I placed myself in the driver’s seat, thrust my key in the ignition, and listened in satisfactory as the machine roared to life, as if it were angry that it had been woken from a deep slumber. I backed out of her driveway quite speedily to say the least, and began down the road.

The concert wasn’t too far away, as we lived in Vegas and they were playing a small, local show. Only a few hundred tickets were on sale, and being the fanatics that we were, we were among the first to buy them. We didn’t care about the cost at all; all we cared about was seeing our favorite band in real life, to feel what no other experiences, to meet them even. It would fulfill our almost beyond repairable excuses for lies, our hours on end dreaming about how incredible it would be to finally know that they exist, in a weird way, I noticed, upon thinking about it.

And, quite predictably, as we drove we switched the CD player on and continued listening to our favorite band. Our favorite people on the whole world besides each other.

“I know it’s sad, that I never gave a damn about the weather…” I half yelled over the beautiful music filling the car.

“And it never gave a damn about me!!” We continued in unison as we drove down the slightly curving roads, only a few more minutes away from the venue. It was in a small field down the street from the trees that we passed in a blur of colors and a faint drift of scents, as they wanted it to be secret and had never announced it on their website. There were a few posters up around the city, the suburban part of Vegas that we all just happened to live in, and we might as well have been watching them put them up. Our eyes became ecstatic for once in a long time, happier than we probably ever would be, and quickly handed over our money for the tickets.

And then we were there.

To our surprise, my car was the only one in the part of the field intended for parking. Our jaws dropped, most likely from disappointment or confusion, as I turned the key and the engine stopped. Without saying a word to one another, we retreated to the grassy pasture and walked over to the small entrance booth, where no one stood. We looked at each other in uncertainty, and Katy decided she would lead us through without permission into the area where guests were planned to watch. The stage was smaller than most arena shows, and as it sat there, I already felt closer to them than ever before.

I pulled the huge, blocky square glasses from my eyes to aid my vision. The sun was behind us and everything appeared darker when I had them on. I hadn’t noticed, but my Red Bull was still in my hand, unfinished, from Katy’s house. I sipped it, and watched as some small figures appeared from behind the stage; probably management coming to tell us that the show had been cancelled or postponed for some unspecified reason. We all assumed they were coming to ruin our fun gaping at the stage and anxiously awaiting our moment to finally see them in person. Pictures leaked out onto the internet all the time, but nothing was the same. We all knew that we felt the same way; silently praying please don’t be cancelled. Please don’t kick us out. We need to meet them. Please.

Desperation filled our faces, but as the shadowy figures continued towards us, we realized we must have really drank too much at a party last night. So much that we didn’t realize that we went to one. So much that our hangover caused us to believe that the four members of Panic were standing in front of us, smiles and grins on their perfectly created faces, shaven and young.

“Nikki…” Becc began. “Did you take us to a party last night and let us have too many drinks?” She wondered. They chuckled, moderately under their breath.

“What? Why me? I wouldn’t…” I began.

“I was just going to ask the same thing, Becc,” Katy agreed.

“You’re not hallucinating. You didn’t get tipsy last night. Calm down and stop turning on each other,” The hallucination that appeared to be Jon explained. “Really.”

“Really?” I asked him, hoping for him to just end this horrid day dream that I was really meeting them. It was a torture device; from the time that this band had released their first album, appeared at their first concert, we had longer and yearned so desperately that we knew them. They would take all of us out of our misery and show us good times like we never had before, and there they were, outlines of their real selves, taunting us with their kind words.

“Really,” Ryan answered us.

Becky fainted. I dropped my Red Bull. Katy nearly jumped on them.

“So you’re the real Panic? No alcohol or drinks at all?” She asked, calmly but excitedly nonetheless.

“You guessed it,” Brendon replied to her.

And then I realized that dreams might just come true if you wish hard enough.