I fell asleep not too long after that experience.

The dreams were unusual for me, in that they were mostly just memories centered around my family.

First to come up was my dad. He's a heavyset Irishman, and he just loved people. I inherited most of my looks from his side of the family, but I have my mother's raven-black hair instead of the wavy red that takes up so many of his old photos of family. I also don't have the slow metabolism that turned him from the strong, thin, and roguishly handsome man in his old high school photos to the 225 pound grizzly I knew for most of my childhood. According to him, "Ye dodged a genetic bullet there, Mary". Despite having grown up in America (or so he claims), he has a pretty heavy accent- so heavy, in fact, that I picked up a little of it (You can't really tell, though, unless I force it or get drunk off my ass). He works as a waiter at Edgar's, a minor comedy club/restaurant with a liquor license. Sometimes, though, when there's no comedian, the band will get him onstage to play the drums or, late at night, the big grand piano in the back. According to him, "Once it gets late enough to bring out the piano, all they wanna hear is 'Piano Man'. I've played the song so many times on request I'm kinda sick of it." And, every time he told me this, I'd try to imagine his deep, accented, smoking-frazzled voice trying to sing a Billy Joel song and laugh.

Now, while he drank, this wasn't actually a major problem- he is actually a really happy drunk, "more the kind to buy you a round than knock you around," as he put it. In fact, I've only ever seen him hit someone once, and he was totally sober.

When I was sixteen, I brought home an older guy who Jennifer warned me was a little shady. Surely enough, he tried to rape me. Now, seventeen-year-old guy forcing himself on your average sixteen-year-old girl? He's gonna get what he wants- at least, until she screams and brings out her big, angry dad, her royally-pissed tae kwon do red-belt best friend, and her butcher-knife-wielding, absolutely infuriated mother  As Jennifer told me afterward, "You know your pretty boy boyfriend? Now he's zero for three."

Then my mind went to Sarah. Whereas I mostly got my dad's looks, except for hair color and a sweet tan, Sarah took after our mom in appearance- deep Latin tan, sharp green eyes, hips to make a dancer jealous- except hair color: she was a redhead just like Dad. She also got lucky enough to stay pretty thin, much to the amazement of Mom and Dad. She had this major complex about letting me get ahead of her in any way, despite me being a little over a year older than her. I got a bike? Sarah wanted one. Dad finally let me have a cell phone? Sarah demanded one.

One way I kinda had to acknowledge her as my equal is that she was really well-liked by the guys. "Everyone wants a Dulhallan sister" became a little phrase that floated around our high school. I was first forced to acknowledge this when she was allowed to date, in the summer after her freshman year.

Jennifer, Sarah, and I were invited to a really sweet pool party, and we heard that news most high schoolers sit with their ear to the ground waiting for- 'parents will be out of town'. When we got there, it was clear that we were attracting quite a few stares (am I a bad person for having assumed it was mostly me at first?), especially once the bathing suits came out. I had tried to be slick and swim up behind a guy I had the hots for at the time, but his eyes were glued to Sarah. For the first time, I was jealous of my little sister. So jealous, in fact, that I had apparently forgotten how to swim, and almost drowned. Pretty much everyone panicked, but Jennifer came to my rescue, saving me with CPR. 

In hindsight, before that first night as a Construct, that time Jennifer performed CPR on me to save my life was the closest she ever got to anything sexual with me- she locked her lips around mine (had she added that tongue, maybe I would've started crushing on her), her hands were between my breasts . . . which is making me think that may be why she learned CPR. Of course, as real medical people will tell you, CPR isn't as clean as the movies make it out to be, and I kinda threw up a little in Jennifer's mouth. Yeah, not exactly the romantic super-technique it's made out to be.

My mind then went to my mom. Straight raven hair, green eyes, one of the darkest skin tones you will ever see in California, and she was where Sarah got her hips from. Admittedly, my mom is just as heavyset as my dad, but you could tell what she came from a little easier. She was really easily angered, and she tended to start this screechy yelling whenever she was mad, so you could often hear screechy yelling almost every time you walked too close to the house. She was a bit of a drunk, like Dad (if anything, she would get drunk more often, if you can believe it), but Mom was the angry drunk. If you saw the bruises on mine or Sarah's arms, I'll forgive you for assuming my dad caused 'em, but they were almost always Mom.

For all her faults, though, it was Mom who introduced me to Jennifer. She needed to make sure someone took care of me, and since Jennifer's mom was stay-at-home, with a daughter around my age (Jennifer's only two weeks older, if you can believe it), so my mom basically left me over at Jennifer's place for hours on end while she worked as a secretary. Every so often since, Mom tried to make up for it by showing me all the good associating with Jennifer did me. "That girl's smart, mija. She knows what she's doing, and she's kept you safe when I couldn't," Mom would always say. "Listen to her when your Dad and I aren't around."

Then, remembering just how homophobic my mother was, I pictured her freaking out if I told her that Jennifer was a lesbian. I imagined her just sort of materializing behind Jennifer, some kind of blunt object in hand, saying "how dare you" or something.

It was because of that image I woke up. My mother probably could seriously hurt Jennifer, and would if she found out about Jennifer's crush.

I found myself lying on a pillow, with a piece of red silk draped over me. I freaked out at first, but it turned out to just be a red silk handkerchief. I looked around in the dark, and saw Jennifer. As I had told her once that "adults sleep naked", she had no clothes on, I could tell that much through the blanket. She was absolutely stunning, as I often got jealous at her for, and was sleeping soundly and nearly silently.

At first, I questioned why I had woken up at the ungodly hour of 3 AM, but I remembered something from when I ordered a Construct- "A Construct, unless otherwise ordered, can only sleep for up to four hours at a time. Take special care to leave something for it to do when it wakes up."

I sat and thought for a little while. It took me a while, but I had an idea.