Blue Is for Nightmares by Laurie Faria Stolarz Page A

make the horrible thing seem less horrible, less powerful and controlling in my life, I need to face it and tell it to others. As horrible as the memory is, I know it's so much worse just festering inside my head. I take a deep breath in, exhale for three full beats, and then finally say it. -Maura was killed."
    "What? How?" Amber asks.
    I feel the tears drip down the creases of my face. -They found her body in a tool shed just two blocks from our neighborhood. It was this psycho guy who did it. They caught him pretty quickly. People had seen him around. Apparently he used to watch her every morning when her mother walked her to school."
    -Yeah, but it wasn't your fault," Amber pipes. -You couldn't have known. I mean, how many people take their dreams that seriously? Plus, you said you saw her in some shed. You didn't see who took her. Or where the shed was exactly. It probably wouldn't even have helped."
    I made up excuses like that when it happened, but excuses don't take away anything, especially blame. I wasn't the one to make those kinds of judgments, to say that my dreams probably wouldn't have helped.
    Maybe they would have saved Maura's life.
    'Anyway" I breathe, -now I'm having nightmares about Drea."
    "So, is Chad still gonna ask me out someplace and then cancel?"
    I nod and wipe at my face. "Probably the next time you talk to him."
    Amber rests a hand on Drea's back to comfort her. I can tell Drea's scared. I'm scared too. Scared for Drea. Scared that history will repeat itself. I mean, sure, my mother was there to comfort me after Maura's death, was there to wrap her arms around my shoulders and try and make the shaking stop, but she just didn't understand the way Gram would have. She didn't understand the nightmares or guilt.
    Or why, being her daughter, I was so much like Gram in the first place.
    I take a deep breath, unscrew the bottle of lavender oil, and pour two drops into the mixing pot.
    "To purity and to clarity" I say. "This spell is to help make my dreams more clear, so I can predict the future before it happens." I unclasp the sterling silver chain from around my neck and dip it into the oil. With a finger, I spiral it around the bottom of the pot three times, making sure it gets fully submerged.
    "What does that do?" Amber asks.
    -The color silver will help give me insight as I travel in the astral."
    "Sounds kinky" Amber says.
    "The astral is our dreams." I close my eyes and concentrate on it. "Silver chain, as each link binds the next and forms a string around my neck, so may the links of my psychic dreams bind to unify the visions of my subconscious mind." I open my eyes and, with the yellow crayon, write the question WHAT ARE MY NIGHTMARES TRYING TO WARN ME? across Drea's diary page. "Yellow is for clarity of thought," I say, folding the page up into a palm sized square and slipping it into the pencil case that I use for a dream bag. I glance a moment at Drea, at the dark, grayish aura that cloaks her hair and shoulders.
    "What's that?" Amber asks, pointing at the branch of rosemary.
    I pick up the sprig, its fresh, pointed needles like a Christmas tree branch. "This will help purify the energy around me so I can remember." I pluck twenty-eight needles from the branch, the number of days in a moon's full cycle, and sprinkle them into the pot. "Rosemary, hold strong my dreams all full of wonder, as I lay me down to slumber."
    I concentrate on the mixture and then pull the silver necklace from the pot. "Will you help me?" I hand the necklace to Drea and gesture for her to fasten it. The chain hangs around my neck at the collarbones, the lavender oil drooling down my skin, a few stray rosemary needles at my throat.
    "So, are we done?" Amber asks.
    -Not quite," I say, diffusing the candle with a snuffer. "Why don't you blow it out?" Amber asks.
    "Because that would confuse the energies and cause a negative backlash."
    "Oh, yeah, right," Amber says, rolling her eyes.
    I mix the oil and rosemary in the