I’m in a world only possible in my dreams.  I have everything I could ever want. I see a school, a really cute boy that keeps looking at me, a modest sized house, and a decent Ford Fusion parked out front.  But one thing isn’t quite right.  I see this building.  It’s old, and made of red bricks.  It seems important so I walk inside.  I see huge weights with cobwebs engulfing them.  They must not have been used in ages.  Even though it seems to be abandoned, the structure still stands tall and firm.
I wake up in a cold sweat, not exactly sure why, and I’m breathing hard too.  I stand up and put my feet on the icy hard wood floor.  I go down the hall to the kitchen to get a glass of water and try to figure out what is going on and what that dream meant.  I’m not sure why I woke up in a cold sweat if it was just a dream, not a nightmare.  How puzzling.
***
I walk into the lunch room and I see my friends already sitting at the table.  We all look quite a bit alike.  Blond or brunette hair color, all rather slim, however, firm from playing sports.  Everyone has quite a bit of money, except for me.  My parents don’t make a lot of money, but we make it work.  I do my signature hair flip and wave to them.  However, I don’t see my boyfriend Todd.  He comes up and hugs me from behind.  Smiling, I lean into him and ask if he wants to stand in the lunch line with me.
“I’d love to,” he says grinning from ear to ear.
We talk about how our days are going while we wait in line. I tell him I’ve been thinking.  However, that’s as far as our conversation got because I could feel all of the ears listening in.  I told Todd that I’d tell him tonight. 
“Hey guys,” I say to everyone as I sit down.
“Dang Brittney you are looking fine today,” one of the guys say.  I giggle while Todd stares daggers into him.
“What can I say?  I’m like a sweater. I have a light personality, fluffy attitude, and I’m hot,” I wink at him as everyone cracks up.  Well, except for Todd. I just grab his hand and smile at him so he knows that I appreciate him.  I love joking around with my friends.  They all know I’m not that stuck up; we are just having fun.
Once we’ve gotten our food we go to sit at the table our friends are at.  They are discussing a math test that we had just gotten back that morning.
“What’d you get Brittney?” one of my more annoying “friends” asked.
“Oh, you know, an F,” I said.  I enjoy the fact that you can change how others see you just by the way you act.  You get to choose how people view you, only you know who you actually are as in your personality.
“That’s too bad. I got a B+,” she told me rather snobbily.
Of course you did, I thought.  You want to be better than me in every way possible, and since the only thing that you think you’re better than me at is school, you rub it in every chance you get.  I just wish I could tell you how I’m actually way smarter than you and get A’s on all my tests, I thought.  But it is my choice for everyone to perceive me as dumb; I’m just not too sure about that choice anymore.  I just don’t want everyone to think I’m a nerd.  I want them to see me as the girl who’s always smiling and happy because I’m not stressed about my grades.  The thing is, I am, and I’m not just stressed about grades.  There’s a lot more to it than that.
***
All of a sudden I hear yelling, I have no idea what’s going on but I sprint downstairs.  My boyfriend Todd is lying on the floor.  Oh no is he dead?  Then I hear laughing.  It was all a joke.  “D---, that scared me!” I yelled at Todd.  He can’t stop laughing, that a------.  We walk back upstairs.  He was getting a snack before the whole “dying” episode.  He eats while I work on my mountain of homework.  I try to get at least a little done when we hang out, although I could get twenty times more done on my own.  But I enjoy his company.  After he is done eating an entire bag of Cheetos, puffs of course, he starts to work on his homework, which means I won’t be able to get anymore of mine done. 
We start on math, his worst subject, so he needs all the help he can get.  I have to help him with every single problem.  What would he do without me?  It’s so amusing for me to watch him try to do it.  Todd furrows his eyebrows, as he is stuck on yet another math problem.  I can’t help but smile, and then I lean over and help him work through the problem.
Todd is the only one who knows the real me.  He knows how smart I really am.  He knows that I get straight A’s.  He also knows that I don’t even have to try to get them, which is why he always has me help him with his homework. 
“Todd?” I ask.  He just looks at me.  “I don’t like everyone treating me like I’m an idiot.”
“You were the one who chose to act that way making others think that’s who you are,” he tells me.
“I know, but I think I want them to know that I’m actually smart.  Everything is weird right now.   I’ve been having this weird scary dream, nightmare kind of thing just about every night.  It’s all just bothering me, it’s like my whole life is a lie,” I say.  He asks what happens in my nightmare and so I tell him.  He ponders it for a while.
“Maybe your dream has something to do with your problem deciding how you want people to perceive you as.”
“I don’t know…” I say.
“Britt, everything is going to be okay, I’ll help you come up with a plan to tell our friends.”
We begin to develop a plan.  Well it isn’t even that much of a plan.  This decision is going to change how everyone looks at me.  I won’t know whether it’s for better or worse until after I go through with it and can’t turn back.  Our plan is that tomorrow at lunch I will say that I have something important to tell everyone.  Then I will tell them that I am actually smart and that I was lying when I was acting incompetent.  But we’ve thought of everything.  If they don’t believe me I will bring the test that everyone was talking about today, and I’ll show them that I actually got an A on it.  But if they still don’t believe me, I will pull up my grades on my phone and show them that I have all A’s and then they’ll have to believe me.  I’m really nervous.
***
It’s lunchtime and Todd and I are ready to put our plan into action.  But first we need some food.
So we grab our food and go and sit down at our table.  My hands are sweaty and I’m having trouble breathing normally, let alone talk.  Lucky me however, Todd starts off the plan since I can’t.  Yay… not.
“Hey guys, Brit has something to tell you and wants all of you to hear,” Todd says.  Everyone quiets down and all eyes are on me.
“Um, yeah, I uh, I’m actually smart.  I was just pretending that I wasn’t,” I rush the words out of my mouth as fast as possible.  It was quiet for a moment and then everyone bursts out laughing.
“Good one Brittney!” I hear someone yell.
“No guys I’m serious!  See I have the test everyone was talking about yesterday.  I didn’t get an F, I got an A.”  The laughing is dying down some and they are asking to see the test.
“This could be someone else’s test that you took and put your name on it,” suggested one of the girls, still not believing me.
“I thought you might think that, so let me show you my grades that they post online.”  I grab out my iPhone.  “Look, A, A, A, they are all A’s.”
“Wait, those aren’t your grades, they are your sister’s, stop lying! You aren’t actually smart you’re just lying,” I heard someone say, I’m not sure who.
“Why would you pretend to be dumb?  It doesn’t make sense, you should be happy that you’re smart; proud of it too, but I guess you must not be,” I heard someone else say.
“Wait, so you don’t believe me?” I ask.  That’s not how this is supposed to work, they are supposed to believe me.  “Todd, tell them how I’m actually smart,” I tell Todd.
“Yeah guys, Brit is actually smart,” he says. 
“Yeah yeah okay whatever,” and everyone gets up and leaves.  Well at least I tried, I think to myself. I didn’t want them to know that I was smart at first, and now that I do they don’t believe me.  Well f***.
I realize that the nightmare that I had actually meant something.  The dream world was my life, in a way, except a nicer house and car, but there was meaning in all of it.  The weight room and the weird feeling I got about the place was the weight that I had on myself of not telling my friends who the real me was.  It was keeping me from being completely happy and living an awesome life.  The really heavy weights were all the weight bearing down on me from not telling the truth.  Now that I told everyone I can picture my dream world, and the weight room is gone.  Even if they don’t believe me, at least I’m not living a lie anymore.  I tried and sometimes that’s all you can do.