I had a strange dream the other night. Actually, as far as dreams go it was pretty ordinary, and I realized only when I woke up and thought a little about it that it was strange.

It started out as a standard “oh-my-god-we-have-a-chemistry-test-and-I-haven’t-studied” high school dream. I have those dreams relatively frequently, and it’s always, always a chemistry test that I’m facing unprepared. In this dream, I managed to bluff my way through the test with a passing grade and then I moved on to the rest of my day.

In my next class I met up with my best friend, A (who in reality was someone I got along fine with in high school, but we were never close friends). It turns out we were having some sort of ongoing, adolescent-girl feud with a couple of other girls, B and C (also girls I got along fine with, but again, wasn’t close to). That day A and I were outraged to learn that B and C had manipulated their class schedules to match up exactly with ours, solely for the purpose of taunting us. Then the dream was over.

Later, when I woke up, I started thinking how it was weird that I would have a dream that focused so closely on those three girls, A, B, and C, since each of them played a relatively minor role in my high school life. Then, with a start, I realized that B and C are the only two people from my high school class who have died. Both of them died close to ten years ago, in unrelated circumstances, and I can’t remember the last time I thought consciously of either of them. Now I can’t stop thinking of them, of course.

I wonder that was all about.