Elsewhere(5)

Liz starts to panic. Tears form in her eyes; she furiously brushes them away with her hand.

I am fifteen years old, a mature person with a learner’s permit, three months away from an actual driver’s license, she thinks. I am too old to be having nightmares.

She screws her eyes shut and screams, “MOM! MOM! I’M HAVING A NIGHTMARE!” Liz waits for her mother to wake her up.

Any moment.

Any moment, Liz’s mother should arrive at her bedside with a comforting glass of water.

Any moment.

Liz opens one eye. She is still on the ship’s main deck, where people have begun to stare.

“Young lady,” says an old man with horn-rimmed glasses and the air of a substitute teacher, “you are being disruptive.”

Liz sits down by the railing and buries her head in her hands. She takes a deep breath and tells herself to calm down. She decides that the best strategy will be to try to remember as many details of the dream as possible so she can tell her mother about it in the morning.

But how had the dream started? Liz racks her brain. It is odd to try to recall a dream while one is still having the dream. Oh yes! Liz remembers now.

The dream began at her house on Carroll Drive.

She was riding her bike to the Cambridgeside Galleria. She was supposed to meet her best friend, Zooey, who needed to buy a dress for the prom. (Liz herself had not been invited yet.) Liz could remember arriving at the intersection by the mall, across the street from the bicycle racks. Out of nowhere, a taxicab came speeding toward her.

She could remember the sensation of flying through the air, which seemed to last an eternity. She could remember feeling reckless, happy, and doomed, all at the same time. She could remember thinking, I am above gravity.

Liz sighs. Looking at it objectively, she supposes she died in the dream. Liz wonders what it means when you die in your dreams, and she resolves to ask her mom in the morning. All at once, she wonders if going to sleep again is the answer. Maybe if she can just manage to fall asleep, the next time she wakes up, everything will be back to normal. She feels grateful to Thandi for making her memorize their cabin number.

As Liz walks briskly back across the deck, she notices an SS Nile life preserver. Liz smiles at the ship’s name. The week before, she had been studying ancient Egypt in Mrs. Early’s world history class. While the lesson was entertaining enough (war, pestilence, plague, murder), Liz considered the whole pyramid thing a real waste of time and resources. In Liz’s opinion, a pyramid was really the same as a pine box or a Quaker oats container; by the time pharaoh got to enjoy his pyramid, he’d be dead anyway. Liz thought the Egyptians should have lived in the pyramids and been buried in their huts (or wherever it was that ancient Egyptian people had lived).

At the end of the unit, Mrs. Early read a poem about Egypt which began, “I met a traveler from an antique land.” For some reason, the line gave Liz chills, the pleasurable kind, and she kept repeating it to herself all day: “I met a traveler from an antique land; I met a traveler from an antique land.” Liz supposes Mrs. Early’s lesson is the reason she dreams of a ship called the SS Nile.

In Memory of Elizabeth Marie Hall

N ight after night, Liz goes to sleep, but she never wakes up in Medford; time passes, but she doesn't know how much. Despite a thorough search of the boat, neither she nor Thandi can unearth a single calendar, television, telephone, computer, or even radio. The only thing Liz knows for sure is that she is no longer bald a quarter inch of hair covers her entire head. How long, she wonders, does hair take to grow? How long does a dream have to last before it's just life?

Liz is lying in her bed, staring at the upper bunk, when she notices the sound of Thandi sobbing.

"Thandi," Liz asks, craning her neck upward, "are you all right?"

Thandi's crying intensifies. Finally, she is able to speak. "I m-m-miss my boyfriend."

Liz hands Thandi a tissue. Although the Nile lacks modern electronic devices, tissue abounds.

"What's his name?"

"Reginald Christopher Doral Monmount Harris the Third," Thandi says, "but I call him Slim even though he's anything but. You have a guy, Liz?"

Liz takes a moment to contemplate this question. Her romantic life has been sadly lacking to this point. When she was in second grade, Raphael Annuncio brought her a box of conversational hearts on Valentine's Day. Although it seemed a promising gesture, Raphael asked her to return the candy the next morning. It was too late: she had already eaten all but one of the hearts (U R 2

SWEET).

And then in eighth grade, she invented a boyfriend to make herself appear more worldly to the popular girls in school. Liz claimed she met Steve Detroit (that was what she called him!) when she was visiting her cousin at Andover. Steve Detroit may have been a fictional boy, but Liz made him a real bastard. He cheated on Liz, called her fat, made her do his homework, and even borrowed ten dollars without paying it back.

In the summer before ninth grade, Liz met a boy at camp. A counselor named Josh, who once sort of held her elbow at a bonfire, a move which Liz found inexplicably delightful and astonishing.

Upon returning home, Liz wrote him a passionate letter, but sadly he did not respond. Later, Liz would wonder if Josh had even realized he was holding her elbow. Maybe he had just thought the elbow was part of the armrest?

To date, her most serious relationship was with Edward, a cross-country runner. They were in the same math class. Liz had ended the relationship in January, before the start of the spring season.