Penny’s Time as Jane Doe
Penny had awoken from a dream, she had an odd feeling about it. This dream was special. Something felt.. different. She just didn’t know why. Well, maybe she did. In this dream she wasn’t Penny Lamb, but Jane Doe. The unidentified body of ‘The Cyclone Accident’ to which she and her newly found fellow choir members died in.
The dream didn’t scare her, she was intrigued by what it had meant. All of the St Cassian Choir had sung songs about their dreams, but Penny, who wasn’t herself. She was doll-like. She had lost her head during the accident, causing it to be replaced with a doll's head in the afterlife. Strange, but interesting. Poor doll.
The afterlife was nothing like she had imagined, it was a warehouse, and there was a novelty “fortune-telling” machine giving one person from the choir a chance to live again. Shockingingly, her, Jane Doe, Penny Lamb, had been chosen to come back to life. Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg had decided that, who would’ve thought?
Ocean treated Jane Doe like a monster. Everyone did, except Ricky. Penny already was close with Ricky, they understood each other. She was the only one who knew sign language well enough to understand Ricky, and Ricky was the only one to not completely judge Penny for being ‘weird’.
Ricky was just as creative as he was in real life. Ricky was funny and smart. In the dream Ricky was the real him, not what Ocean or the rest of this shitty town saw when they looked at Ricky. He was a kid with a mind out of this world. A mind that Penny admired.
Penny felt empathetic for Jane Doe. Jane wasn’t Penny, but she felt like a part of her. The part that was misunderstood and misjudged. Penny was often seen as a weirdo, and Jane was seen as a monster. There were parallels.
Jane had parts of Penny in her, like her love for lions. Penny wondered why her dream had decided to keep that aspect of Penny’s identity, even though Jane wasn’t truly her.
Her choir mates were somewhat different from how they were in real life, how they were perceived.
Mainly Mischa, he wasn’t just constantly on his phone. He started to care for the choir in this dream. He showed he had a soft side, he put down his act and was just him. Penny figured Mischa had more to him than ‘tough gangsta boy’, so it was curious that Penny’s dream had included that.
Mischa’s second song was beautiful, probably the most beautiful song Penny had ever heard. She wondered if Mischa was this romantic in real life, if he would sing something like that to his fiancé if he ever had the chance.
Penny closed her eyes, the darkness allowing her to recall the dream better. There was one moment in the dream that really connected with her. After the choir had sang Jane happy birthday she spoke with Ricky. Ricky gave her a name, Savannah. It felt perfect. Penny felt attached to the name, it felt right, she wasn’t Penny Lamb. Deep down, she knew she never had been. She was Savannah Lamb. It was like this dream had changed who she was, how she viewed herself. She wasn’t Penny Lamb or Jane Doe but an entirely new person, Savannah. This was right. She knew she had to tell the choir, or at least Ricky.
It was disappointing to know that the relationship the choir had in the dream was fabricated. The choir didn’t really get along, it felt like no one was on the same wavelength. Savannah was lucky that her and Ricky were close, cause if they weren’t, she’d be alone. Just like Jane Doe.
She got up and went into the bathroom to start her morning routine. She washed her face like she did every morning. After drying the water off her face she looked in the mirror and saw her eye colour was this piercing green.
“Savannah, with the greenest eyes.” She said to herself, startled by the voice that she was once so used too.
In this moment she was certain when she had awoken from this dream, somehow, Penny Lamb was a person of the past; there was only Savannah Lamb now.