Dreamology(3)

I study the envelope, feeling a mix of confusion and an odd kind of relief. It’s the first sign that I am actually meant to be here. Carefully, I spill its contents out on the marble surface of the table. Out fall a bunch of postcards printed on flimsy brown cardboard paper. I pick one up. On one side is a simple image of a trio of balloons, floating into the sky. On the other side, in thick typewriter font, is written:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALICE!

FROM GUSTAVE L. PETERMANN AND ALL YOUR FRIENDS

AT THE CENTER FOR DREAM DISCOVERY (CDD)

I frown at the card, drop it, and pick up another. It says the exact same thing. And so does the next. There are nine postcards, all with balloons on one side, all with the same strange birthday wishes on the back. I check the postmarks and realize one has been sent every year since I’ve been away, on the day of my birthday. I think of the appointment reminders my dentist’s office always sent me in New York—a tooth with a face, wearing makeup. What kind of tooth wears blush?

At the bottom of the stack is a note, written on light turquoise paper, delicate between my fingertips:

Dear Alice—

Who knows if these will be of any use to you, but I simply couldn’t bear to throw any of them away.

With Love,

Nan

I smile and shake my head. It’s exactly Nan. Simple, elegant, to the point. At least in writing, which was mostly how I knew her. My father had never wanted to come back to Boston after we’d left, always coming up with an excuse. I’d seen Nan a handful of times over the years when she would pilgrimage to New York for the opening of a Broadway play or a show at the Guggenheim. Her hair was always perfectly done, her clothes freshly pressed. I wondered, did everyone just become immaculate in old age, or would I be eighty and still wearing sweaters with holes in the cuffs that I can stick my thumbs through?

Just then my phone buzzes.

“I thought you were dead,” Sophie says when I answer. “Too busy pahking the cah in Hahvahd Yahd to answer any of my texts?”

I am already laughing. “So, do you miss me, or what?” I ask.

“Nope!” she quips.

“How come?” I whine.

“Because I have your clone, duh. I’m with her now. She’s kind of pissed I’m talking to you, actually. She wants to know what you can offer that she can’t.” Sophie was my first friend in New York and my best friend ever since. We have an old inside joke that we secretly made clones of each other to keep us company when the other isn’t around. Nobody gets it, and we prefer it that way.

“Well, I miss you,” I say.

“What’s wrong?” Sophie’s tone is suddenly serious. She can always tell when something is up. It is totally annoying, for the most part.

“It’s just weird here,” I say. “You should see the house, Soph. It’s like a museum.”

“But you love museums!” Sophie exclaims. She wouldn’t understand anyway, because she lives on Park Avenue in an apartment so spotless I was always afraid my mere presence would stain it. Sophie’s parents sell art for a living. Big modern art, like giant spheres made of Astroturf, and videos of strangers swimming that they project onto the walls of their living room. “Really, Alice, if you went missing, the first place I’d tell the sexy NYPD detective who showed up at my door to look for you would be the Met or MoMA.”

“I like to visit museums, not live in them,” I say, rolling my eyes. “It’s just not a home.”

“It’ll get there,” she reassures me. “You’re just tired from the drive.

“Actually, I slept most of the way . . .” I trail off, thinking about falling asleep on Max’s chest. I tell Sophie about the night at the Met, and she says it sounds really romantic. But her tone says otherwise.

“I know I’m crazy to keep thinking about him like this,” I say. “You don’t have to tell me.” We’ve had this conversation a million times before.

Sophie sighs. “It’s just that you have a fresh start here, Al. Maybe it would be smart to, you know . . . date a guy you can actually, like, be with?”

“It feels like we’re together . . .” I say.

“You know what I mean, Alice,” Sophie says, sounding ever so slightly impatient. “Someone you can actually have. And introduce to your friends. And make out with behind a bush on field trips. Someone who is . . . like . . . real.”

Real. The last word hangs there between us, and I shake my head, embarrassed. She’s right. No matter how I feel about Max, there is still one problem. The night at the Met was a dream. Every night with Max, for as long as I can remember, has been a dream. Because Max is the boy of my dreams . . . and only my dreams.

Because he doesn’t actually exist.





2


Venom of the Beaked Sea Snake




I AM OBVIOUSLY entirely aware that it sounds one hundred percent nuts to be in love with someone I’ve never met, who isn’t even real. But since I can’t remember a time when I haven’t dreamed about Max, it can be hard to tell the difference. The locations change and so do the stories, but Max is the constant, greeting me each dream with his mischievous grin and big heart. He is my soul mate.

I know it can’t last forever, though. So just to be safe, I write it all down in my notebook. Sophie once called it my dream journal, which sounds like something you’d find next to the incense section in a gift shop. It goes with me everywhere, and right now it’s riding in my I ? NEW YORK tote bag, in the wicker basket of a rusty old Schwinn I found in the garden behind Nan’s house. I named the bike Frank, short for Frankenstein, since I essentially brought him back from the dead.