Into the Aether_Part One(12)

Lara looked downward. “Greg, I’m sorry I didn’t help you before,” she said softly. He gave her a bemused look. “I mean, not helping you when you were being hurt by that guy in reality.”

Greg looked away for a moment and then back at her. “I wouldn’t have wanted you to. He was on a rampage. The only reason the teachers could stop him was because there were three of them.”

Lara nodded her head. “You did save me from the floating inkblot!”

“I don’t know about that. I gave it everything I had with the chair, and well, you saw what it did. I might as well have been a fly. By the way, what was that thing?” he asked, now starting to eat his own sandwich.

“I don’t know.” She thought for a moment, absently rubbing the palm of her left hand.

“I think your inkblot metaphor is right. But I’d call it a Rorschach test.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I’m a geek,” he replied with a small smile. “I'm a comic book fan.”

“Alright...” she said, not understanding the connection. “Do they often put comic book fans through psychological testing?”

Greg laughed. “No, he’s a character in a comic—” A glazed look spread over Lara’s face. “Never mind,” he finished. Greg reached into his bag and grabbed a juice box, which he shook gently before stabbing the straw into the top. A few seconds passed until Greg, staring at Lara, said: “So, did you want to talk about the whole dream thing?”

“I thought we were,” she responded, finishing the first half of her sandwich. She was now eyeing the Diet Coke on the table.

“I mean, how you were in my dream,” he retorted. Lara thought his voice sounded too flat, as if he were trying hard to keep it as level as possible.

“I—” she started. “I don’t know that we should talk about that.” Lara crossed her arms and sat back in her seat, moving her gaze to the window.

“I don’t think it’s weird,” he said. She shot her eyes back to him, a look of disbelief crossing her face.

“I think it’s actually pretty cool!”

“Really,” she said, unconvinced.

“Yeah! I bet you see all kinds of neat things.” He looked off into the distance.

Maybe he was imagining what it would be like to jump in and out of other people’s dreams. She had to give him credit: His enthusiasm was infectious. “It is kind of cool...” she conceded with a half smile.

“Have you always been able to do it?” Lara was again reluctant. “I’m sorry, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” Greg took a large bite of his sandwich and gazed at her like a puppy waiting for a bone.

“Greg, I’ve really never talked about it with anyone.”

“Not even your parents?”

“No. Well, it’s just my mom,” she said, trying to gently open her drink. It fizzed violently and she quickly turned the cap closed and placed the bottle back on the table. “My dad is not in the picture anymore. He died when I was three.”

“Really?” he asked, his eyebrows raised. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, so am I.”

“When did you first start doing the whole dream surfing thing?” he asked after a few moments.

“I’m not sure. I think I could always do it, I just didn’t realize it,” she said, rubbing her hand absently again. “The first time I knew that I was, well, different, was just after I turned nine years old. I remember a horrible dream with my mom. I dreamt that she was in some old house. It was really old, like out of the eighties or something.” In one quick move, Lara opened the soda bottle and slurped up the fizzing drink.

“The house had somehow caught on fire and she was stuck in a bedroom. I just remember seeing her there, flames all around. She was petrified. I tried to help her, but I couldn’t.”

“What happened next?” Greg asked.

“I woke up to her doing dishes at five in the morning. I went in and she said she’d had a bad dream. I told her that I’d had a nightmare of her in a fire. She dropped a dish in the sink and turned to look at me.” Lara rubbed her ribs through her shirt. “I’ll never forget that look on her face. She looked so scared. She told me to go back to my room, and I remember hearing her crying in the kitchen. I must have fallen back asleep, because when I looked at the alarm clock again, it was 8:30 am. She was tidying up the living room. Later, Mom told me that I must have overheard her talking about the house she grew up in burning to the ground. She had been trapped in her bedroom and only just escaped when a firefighter broke through the door.”

Lara took another sip of her drink. “She never told me about the fire, and she’s never talked about it again. She does have the same nightmare all the time, though,” Lara said.

“So can you control it, then?”

“No. Well, I have a pretty good idea if someone's asleep. I haven’t tried to jump in someone’s dream. It just… seems to happen.”

Greg started to speak but faltered. “Can you, uh, do anything cool in your dreams?”

“Anything cool?”

“Yeah, like…” He looked off into the distance again, rubbing the back of his head with his hand. “Flying, shooting lasers out of your eyes, turning into Godzilla and biting the head off Courtney Rathbone. Y’know, anything cool?” A smile spread across his face.