Dreamology(71)

Max keeps talking. “I’ve been thinking about it all, too, about what I said. The thing is, you’ve always lived in the dreamworld. And it’s one of the most incredible things about you. I don’t want to take that away from you, but it seems like I do. Maybe we worked in the dreams, but in reality . . . maybe it’s just not meant to be.”

I stand there for a moment, frozen. “But I fixed it,” I try again. “I’m in an elevator.”

“I know,” Max says. “And right now we need to get you out of one, before you lose it.”

Slowly, he presses the Stop button again, and when the doors open this time, we find Jeremiah, Celeste, and Dean Hammer waiting for us.

“We had to call security,” Dean Hammer fumes. “Are you two all right? And who is responsible for this reptile?”

Without a word, I hand Socrates to Jeremiah and leave Max to explain while tears begin to slide down my cheeks.





NOVEMBER 1st




Somewhere out there, it sounds like Darth Vader is chuckling. This makes zero sense, since he was arguably the most serious man in the entire solar system, in the history of time. But there it is again, deep and sinister: Ho-ho-ho.

“What is that terrible noise?” I ask, sticking my head out of the safari tent and rubbing my eyes.

“Hippos.” Max looks up from his reading at the breakfast table. He gives a nod to the left. “We’re camped next to the river, and they seem to have a lot to say this morning.”

“I can’t tell if they are laughing at us or plotting our demise,” I say, grimacing as the strange bellows echo over the camp. “What?” I ask Max, who is giving me a look.

“Nothing!” He shrugs his shoulders good-naturedly. “You’ve just never been a morning person.”

I shuffle over to the folding camp table and take a grateful sip of coffee from his mug as I sit down.

“Get your own,” he protests. But he knows I won’t, so he pours himself a new cup. “Come on,” he says then, standing up and extending a hand to me. “Time to go and see the lions.” His brown hair falls softly in his eyes, and the sun shines from behind his face, making him look almost otherworldly.

“Are there baby ones?” I ask hopefully.

“Of course,” he answers.

“How will we get there?” I ask.

“Did you sleep okay?” Max looks concerned. “The answer is hot air balloon, like always.”

Before I know it, the balloon is touching down among the lion pride, who watch us carefully from where they lie in the long grass, and my fingers go a little numb. But Max pulls a fluffy green tennis ball the size of a grapefruit from his back pocket.

“Ready? Ready?” he shouts, “Go get it!” and hurls the ball across the plains. The mother lion runs and grabs it like a giant golden retriever, then drops it panting at our feet and purrs as we scratch behind her ears.

“Looks like we’re in.” Max laughs.

I want to laugh, too, except I am struck by one terrible thought: This isn’t Max.

He looks like Max and he smiles like Max, he’s sweet and kind like Max. But he’s not my Max. He’s like a Max decoy. A standin. He isn’t him, and we aren’t us. This isn’t something we will each wake up in our beds tomorrow and share, one moment in time the rest of the world will never know about except Max and me. This is just a regular dream. I can’t explain it. I just know.

“Can we go now?” I ask Fake Dream Max.

“But we just got here!” Max cries.

“I really wanna go home,” I say, a little frantically now.

Fake Dream Max looks at me, confused, tilting his head to one side. “Okay, Alice,” he says with a nod. “We can go home now.”





35


Sparkly




I CAN’T HELP but feel that it’s rather rude of Jerry to keep barking incessantly in the front hall when some of us have better things to do, like lie in our beds hating everything.

That isn’t true, though, and I know it. Anytime I’m upset, my father will always ask me to think about everything good I have going on. I’m doing well in school, and I joined a few more clubs—BARA, the Bennett Animal Rescue Association, and the Photography Club, and I started my own weekly music podcast. I’ve even begun picking out potential schools I’d like to go to after Bennett. Now that we’ve talked about my mom, my dad and I are better than ever. I have a lot to be happy about.

I just don’t have Max.

Jerry barks again and I storm over to the intercom, pressing the button for the kitchen. “Dad?” I call. “Will you please let Jerry out? I’m sleeping.” It’s only when he doesn’t answer that I remember he left early this morning for a conference in St. Louis. I am alone, and Jerry needs to go to the bathroom.

I pull on a sweater and some boots and jog down the stairs, throwing on a gray wool coat.

“Jer?” I call. “Where are you?”

When I hear his bark from outside, I throw the door open, annoyed. “How on earth did you get out here?” I ask before noticing that something is very different, and I wonder if I haven’t actually woken up yet.

As usual, the front walk is covered in fallen leaves. But instead of reds and blues and browns, the leaves are neon pink.