Dreamology(30)

“I know,” Max says.

“And what about her, by the way?” I’m starting to lose my cool, which is exactly what I promised myself I wouldn’t do. “Because she’s great. I genuinely like her. But what would she do if she knew that when you go to sleep at night, you’re basically just switching girlfriends?”

“I know,” Max says again. The fact that he sounds remorseful only makes me angrier.

“Do you mean to?” I ask softly. “In our dreams. Do you mean to act the way you do in our dreams, like nothing has changed, when during the day I’m barely allowed to look at you?”

“I can’t help it,” Max says quietly. He meets my eyes, this time not through the mirror but in person, tilting his head slightly to the side to gaze down at me. “I know what’s right, and what I should want, but when I’m in the dreams, I can’t control it. The way I act, it just happens. You know that as well as I do. What happens in the dreams isn’t our choice.”

I break away from his gaze and stare at a corner of the floor, where I won’t have to meet his eyes again. I know he’s basically right, but it’s also not good enough. We ride in silence for a while, before Max finally speaks.

“You look different tonight,” Max says, even though he’s not looking at me. He’s looking at the elevator buttons. “You did something to your eyes. It’s pretty.”

By now the doors have opened, and we’ve reached the ground floor, and my face is burning with rage. “Just because we can’t help the way we act in the dreams doesn’t mean what happens in the dreams doesn’t matter,” I say coldly as I walk out. “Especially to me.”

“I know,” Max says one final time as the doors close again.





SEPTEMBER 23rd




It’s a gorgeous day at the flea market, and I am gazing into a cracked antique mirror, trying on a neon alpaca poncho.

“It looks great on you,” the vendor says, and when I turn, I realize it’s Kate Moss.

“Would you wear it?” I ask.

“Darling, of course,” she coos in her sexy British accent.

I pull at the yellow fringe, unsure. “I want to know what Max thinks. Do you know where he went?”

“I think I saw him heading toward the books section,” she replies, straightening some vintage lace dresses.

I wander off, still wearing the poncho. Up ahead I spot Max striding away from me among the brightly colored tents. I yell his name, but he doesn’t turn. It’s busy today, and I am dodging shoppers left and right. Eventually I lose him.

I make it to the book vendors and Max isn’t there. But Dean Hammer is.

“Have you seen Max?” I ask.

“He said he wanted to grab some ice cream,” the dean replies. “What do you think of these?” He turns to face me, wearing red, heart-shaped sunglasses.

“Love them!” I cry. And this time I don’t walk, I run. I can feel panic rising up within me. I look by the food trucks, the smell of fresh Nutella crepes following me. I sift through a wall of colorful scarves, scrambling to get to the other side. Everywhere I go, he seems to have just left.

“You just missed him,” my grandmother says in the jewelry section. She is standing at the stall next to me in a pink Chanel suit, trying on a diamond brooch with gigantic peacock feathers. Jerry is on a leash by her side in a velvet bow tie.

“Where did he go?” I plead.

“He seemed unhappy,” Nan says. “Did you get in a fight?”

“Nanny, listen to me.” I put a hand on her small, fragile shoulder. “Where did Max go?”

“I think he said he wanted to take a swim.” Nan smiles, her mind somewhere else already.

I run out of the market and down Vanderbilt Avenue until I reach the Navy Yard, somehow knowing exactly where to go. He’s waiting for you, like he always is, I tell myself as I sprint out onto the docks. But when I reach the end, breathless, there is still no Max. Just endless water. When I turn back the way I came, I find water there too, gray and unwelcoming. There is no way back, no way forward, and, worst of all, no one here to tell me everything will be all right.

I am utterly alone.





14


We Are All Surrealists




IT’S NOT LIKE I don’t know what a bad dream is. And I know, of course, that I’ve had them before, because bad dreams are why I went to CDD in the first place. It’s just that I’ve never been able to remember any. It’s as though all that CDD did, the magical worlds they created, didn’t just give me something new and something better, they wiped away all the bad, too. Until now.

The entire day after the flea market dream I feel off, like I’m coming down with something. Like someone slipped something weird into my coffee or, worse, like someone has been slipping something in there all along, something to make me happy, and today they decided to stop. And nothing is making it better. Not the three coffees I’ve had since breakfast, not the bike ride to school in the brisk fall morning under a piercing blue sky. Not the A I got on my English paper or the fact that in Terrarium Club I actually managed to build an arrangement with nobody’s instructions. It’s not like I’m depressed or anything, I’m just not right. Which makes me all the more eager to get to CDD today and start to fix it.