Dreamology(22)

Is he going to kiss me? I consider how dry my lips are for a second, then realize I’m biting them and wonder if he knows what I’m thinking about, and am instantly mortified.

“Alice,” Max says, tilting his head to the side and leaning it against the headrest as he watches me.

“Hmm?” is all I say, because I don’t trust myself to form sentences or, for that matter, even whole words right now. But when does the kiss part happen? I want to ask.

“I don’t think I can do this,” Max says instead. And then all the air gets pushed out of my body.

“I don’t understand . . .” I start to say.

Max shifts his jaw back and forth, as he tries to find the words. “Alice, there is so much about me you don’t know,” he says. “What we had, what we have, is awesome, but it existed in our dreams. What about everything we missed when we were awake?”

“So tell me,” I say, putting a hand on his knee. “I want to hear it all, Max. Whatever I missed. Whatever I need to know.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Max shakes his head, shifting so he’s facing forward again, and letting his right arm rest on the back of my seat. “I mean for so long, you were the only good thing in my life. You were what I looked forward to every single day.”

I lean toward him. “It was the same for me.”

“No, you don’t get it,” Max says, his tone taking on an edge. “I mean the dreams were all I had. I wanted so badly for you to be real, and it just got so hard. Especially on those nights I didn’t dream about you . . . It was like I’d become addicted. To the dreams, the world, and you. One day I woke up and I just knew I had to give it up. Maybe I couldn’t stop the dreams—and I didn’t want them to stop—but I could work to make my reality better. And I did. I worked harder in school, I got more involved in sports, I met . . . new people.” He looks away and a feeling of panic begins to creep slowly into my chest.

“You mean Celeste,” I say, so low it’s practically a whisper.

“I mean Celeste,” Max admits. He pauses like he’s waiting for me to say something, but I don’t know what to say. We’ve switched places now. Max has turned to me, pleading, trying to make me understand, while I stare straight ahead, unable to look anywhere but the changing traffic light up ahead.

“Alice, you were the girl of my dreams,” Max says. “But Celeste was with me in reality. She saw all the hard stuff. She saw a quiet kid who kept to himself, and she opened me up, opened up a whole new world to me. She introduced me to her friends and had me over to her house for family movie night and got me out on the weekends. And somehow I became a fully functioning teenager. I owe her so much for that.”

“You owe me for some of that, too,” I say, stung. “And just because I only saw the good, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have seen you through the bad.”

“I know,” Max says. “But you weren’t there for the bad, and she was.”

At this point I would rather be dangling on a rope from the Empire State Building completely naked than listen to Max talk about Celeste anymore, so I shove open the door of his car and head for my house. Jerry is scratching madly from behind my front door, so I open it, but he bypasses me and scoots right to Max, who has just unloaded my bike, sniffing his ankles.

“Hey, Jer,” Max says, leaning down and giving Jerry a pat. Jerry plops directly at his feet. “I missed you.”

Max looks up at me then, and I hate it, because now when he looks at me like that, all I can see is Celeste’s face beside him.

“I’m sorry.” He steps forward like he wants to touch me, but stops himself. “I can’t go back to living in my dreams, Alice. I’ve worked too hard for my reality.”

“Even if your dreams are standing right here?” I ask, my voice coming out all broken and squeaky, moments from collapsing into tears.

Max just shakes his head.

I don’t say anything. I lean down and scratch the top of Jerry’s head, so Max can’t see the tears welling up in my eyes. This must be what breakups feel like. For normal people in normal relationships.

Max seems to get it, because he doesn’t wait for a reply. “I’ll see you,” he says, before getting back in his car.

It hurts all over again when I realize he doesn’t say “soon.”





SEPTEMBER 17th




I am wiggling my toes in the grass of a lush green lawn, gazing up at a wooden tower, several stories high. As I look closer, I notice it’s made entirely of Jenga blocks.

“Your turn, my dear!” Petermann cries. He’s reclining behind me on a chaise with ease, sipping a cocktail with a giant pink flower floating in it. Far in the background appears to be the palace of Versailles, but its fa?ade is inset with giant gemstones, like a family of My Little Ponies bought it and just finished renovating.

“But how do I get high enough?” I ask, eyeing the perfect move—a loose block about twenty feet up.

“Sergio will help you, of course!” Petermann replies.

Just then Sergio comes whizzing around the side of the tower, his blue feathers looking nearly electric in the afternoon glow. But it’s not the Sergio I remember. This Sergio is the size of a teenage dragon, and he’s wearing a beautiful Italian wool scarf around his neck.