9 - The Price of a Dream//Lea

Lea had always believed that she understood dreams; and how you could make your own dreams come true. Simply put; everybody in the world, big or small, had a dream. However, very few had ever managed to achieve it. Luckily for her, both of her parents had been living their dreams for almost her entire life.

They were part of a touring company with one of the world's most prominent musical theatre productions. Her father was a costume designer. He turned who turned the fanciful descriptions from a script into physical manifestations of a story. Her mother, on the other hand, was always a step ahead of the curve, weaving together a whole show as a stage manager.

Each of them always had an inspiring anecdote about the difficulties they'd faced to reach their dream, and Lea always looked forward to their long chats in the living room when they were on break from touring.

Lea had her own dream, too. She wanted to become a songwriter; somebody who made words and sounds come alive in the form of music that could touch people's hearts. Be it cutting edge or cheesy, music had the power to completely alter somebody's mood. If she trusted in the butterfly effect, it could even change their whole life.

At first, she'd wanted to become a Europop star. She'd been devastated when she'd learned that the Europop boom ended before she was even born. Even after that, she didn't reject dreams outright. There was always something out there, her parents had taught her.

They tried to coax her into becoming a performer in another genre, but the romance of standing on stage was lost as soon as Europop was off the table. Now, she wanted to help lots of different artists find their own sound, and she was working hard every day at school to make it into an elite music college. Somewhere like the Gnáth International College.

Aside from her own nascent dream and the dreams her parents were living, she also had a dream-in-progress to look to for guidance on her own journey. Inspired by her parents, her brother Waco had become enamored by the stage and resolved to become an actor. He had the talent for it too; his voice was a marvelous countertenor, and he could dance with the best of them.

With all of that information, Lea believed she truly understood dreams.

Until a dream she'd admired for longer than she could remember fell apart. It was something Lea had never even imagined being a possibility.

It became impossible.

It had started with a few whispered conversations between their parents last spring, which evolved into heated arguments over their summer break. Lea and Waco both chose to ignore it at first; hoping it was just some professional squabble. Then, as summer approached, it finally happened.

Their father had come home unannounced in the weeks approaching summer vacation. He'd arrived in the dead of night, his loud incessant knocking waking them at around midnight. Immediately, it was as if some circuit in their minds had finally been completed. Lea could remember the look in her brother's eyes.

"I know what you know," it said. "It's finally time."

He'd gathered a small bag without saying much, before devolving into a rushed ramble about how he wouldn't be able to see them for a while. Waco had taken it hard; grabbing onto him and insisting on an explanation. Lea stood on the sidelines, unable to bring herself to say or do anything.

Eventually, her father agreed to let Waco drive him to the bus station on the other side of town. Feeling like she had no other choice, Lea jumped into the car with them.

At first, she didn't even notice the police lights. Though they were uncommon in Paradox City, where crime was limited to the mysterious thefts by the masked thieves known only as the 'Heist Phantoms', she assumed they were for somebody else.

Waco sped up, and her father urged him to go even faster. Lea felt as if she were in a dream as she screaming at them to tell her what was going on.

Finally, when a wrong turn had crashed their car into a telephone pole, Lea understood. As her father apologized again and again. As she watched him be taken away by police officers. As she spent the night on a police station bench beside her brother; she finally understood.

Her father had been stealing the expensive costume pieces he made for the troupes productions and selling them off to black market collectors, and he'd finally been caught.

That was the first time Lea had seen the light in a dream die out. Dreams had dimmed before, like when Waco had broken his leg and spent five months in physical therapy, but he'd recovered from that. It was all part of their journey. Even now that the fracture was back because of the car crash, she didn't want to doubt that it wasn't going to be okay.

But she did.

Because her father could never go back to his troupe, and he was going to be spending the next five years of his life in prison.