My name is Dream. At least, that’s what the people in my city call me. No one knows my true identity. I like it like that. I work alone. I am an alien. When I was 14 years old, my home planet died. My parents, like many of the other parents on my planet sent me away. We were all supposed to be sent to our neighboring planet, but my pod got hit by an asteroid and knocked off course. I landed on this planet. Now I am earth’s protector. I look like a human, so I was able to fit into normal human life. The closest thing I have to family are my friends. Even though I am able to fit into normal human life I still feel left out sometimes. My powers give me the ability to see how people feel. They also give me loads of other abilities including, teleportation, flying, and super strength. The humans have brought me nothing but kindness, so I return the favor by protecting them. I am still afraid, though, that a human might at some point figure out who I am. I am afraid they won’t like me for how different I am. I have thought of telling my friends before, but I decided against it. I care about my friends and I want to make sure I don’t lose them. My friends know me as Stella Brown. That was my name on my planet. On my planet, I had never wanted to be a warrior. I never thought I would be. On this planet, I own my own private investigations office. I help people who the police can’t. My friend, Mike helps me with cases sometimes. Mike had made his feelings clear. He loves me. I do love him, but I don’t want to tell him the truth. That I am Dream, so I tell him that I don’t love him. It breaks my heart every time. So today I’m going to tell him.

…

We’ve finished game night at my house and everyone is leaving. I ask Mike to stay. When everyone is gone, I tell him to sit down. I walk into my bedroom and take my clothes off, so that the suit underneath is visible. I slowly put the mask on, and walk into the living room. When Mike sees me his eyes get wide. “Your dream!” He exclaims. “I’m so sorry I lied to you”, I said. “All those things I forgot to do, all those last minute dates”. “Yes”, I said, “those were lies. “Why are you telling me this now”, he said. “Because, Mike, that’s not the only thing I’m lying about. All those times you told me you loved me and I said I didn’t love you back. It broke my heart every single time!” I got closer to him until we were almost touching. I slowly pulled off my mask, and I leaned in closer. He did too. All of the sudden, the TV that I had forgotten to turn off showed reports of a theft at the bank. I quickly put my mask on and said,”I have to go”. I ran and flew out of the open window to where the robbery was taking place. I went inside, ready to get this over with. The robbers had guns, but they had no effect on me. I approached and knocked the first guy out, when all of a sudden I felt pain. I have felt pain before, but never like this. It was agony. I fell to the ground and reached up to my shoulder where a knife was sticking out. No knife had ever pierced my skin. Something on the knife had weakened me. I tried to stand up, but the pain was too much. I was finally able to stand, but I was fighting the blackness at the corner of my eyes from taking over. I was only barely aware that the robbers were escaping. I heard police cars in the distance, and then it was too much to fight and everything went black. The last thing I heard was an ambulance siren coming this way.

…

I woke up just a few minutes later in an ambulance. My mask was still on, and I could tell that the ambulance wasn’t moving. I heard someone yell, she’s awake, and suddenly I realized what was going on. I felt someone try to take my mask off, but pulled away. I quickly stood up, my vision still blurry, and flew away. I flew to my friends house. I knew that she would be able to fix me. I flew and knocked on her window. She was watching TV on the couch, and quickly got up to open the window. I fell into her house and she said, “Dream?”. “No”, I said, “Stella”, and I took off my mask. Her eyes got wide, and they got even wider at the knife in my shoulder. “We need to get that out”, she said. She ran into the other room and grabbed an armload of towels, a bottle of peroxide, and a whole box of gauze bandages. She put her hand on the knife and said “this is going to really hurt”, and pulled. I screamed, and then everything went black. When I woke up I had my mask on. I looked around and saw that all of my friends were sitting in the living room. I looked at my friend, and she whispered, “it’s your secret to tell”. I looked over at Mike and he nodded. “I have something to tell you all”, I said. I pulled off my mask for the third time today and said, “I am Dream”.

…

After we were done, I invite Mike over to my house. “ We’re free”, I said. “Yes”, he said. I walked closer to him and took off my mask. I leaned forward and my lips touched his, and it was the best feeling in the world.