The Love That Split the World(21)

“Rachel’s going to eat all my bacon,” I whine, running my hand over my face.

“No one wants to see that happen. Please get up.”

“I left,” I tell her.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it happened again. First, the school disappeared and I was lying in a field. Then the school was back, but everyone else was gone, and I left. I went for a run, and I saw Beau down at the stadium.”

“Oh my God. Natalie Cleary is dreaming about a boy who isn’t Matt Kincaid. I’m so happy I think might explode.”

I shake my head. “It wasn’t a dream. Beau was one hundred percent real. And the other stuff, it was like the other times, like when I see Grandmother. I can’t really explain it.”

“That’s so weird.” Megan sits down beside me. “So . . . did anything happen? With Beau, I mean.”

“He invited me over.”

“In what way?”

“There are multiple ways someone can come over?”

“So many ways,” Megan assures me.

“Are these ways, like, the front door, the back door, the bedroom window, et cetera?”

“Sometimes,” she says. “What was his energy like?”

I bury my face in my hands because I know exactly what she means, and I know the answer, and I don’t want to tell her. “Please don’t make me say these words aloud.”

She breaks into giggles and lies down beside me. “What does he look like?”

“Well, his biceps are roughly the size of my head, and his eyes look like summer incarnate, and he has two little dark freckles on the side of his nose, and a mouth that somehow manages to look like a shy kid’s one minute and a virile Greek god’s the next. So I guess you could say, pretty decent.”

“Oh my God,” Megan says. “I’m shaking I’m so giddy right now. I feel like this is happening to me. Where did he come from?”

“No idea,” I say.

“You’re going to make out with him,” she says knowingly.

I roll over and bury my face in my pillow. “What if you just jinxed me?”

“No way. I love you too much. My psychic energy is literally incapable of jinxing you. If anything, I’m willing you into this make-out.”

“Hey, perhaps you’d like to react to the fact that an entire building and the many people within it vanished before my eyes too? Or no, not really of much interest to you?”

“Of quite a bit of interest,” she says. “Slightly less interest than your incomparably soft and beautiful heart opening like a flower to Beau, but yes, I’m interested.” Her smile fades, and she squeezes my hand. “You know, I like to think of myself as somewhat of an expert on my best friend, but the truth is I have no idea how to help with all of this. So tell me, okay? Tell me what you need, and tell me every single time you need it, and I’ll be there.”

I squeeze her hand back and swallow a lump. “You are the best person,” I tell her. “But I don’t know what I need either.”



But by the time the last Spirit Week activity, the Seeing Off, is over, and we’ve walked through the halls saying goodbyes and giving out hugs to teachers and underclassmen, I’ve figured out the only thing I really can do.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Megan asks as we walk out to our cars. “I can make sure Dr. Chan knows you’re not crazy.”

“Good thinking. I’ll just bring a friend to see a psychologist I don’t have an appointment with, and you can open with ‘She’s not crazy!’ So she’ll know I’m not crazy.”

“I can wait in the car.”

“No, you can wait at Steak ’n Shake with the soccer team, where I know you were planning on going before I sprung this on you.”

She sighs. “Call me after the Cleary Family Celebration Dinner and let me know how things went?”

“Sure. Or maybe, like, while I’m still on Dr. Chan’s couch. If she questions my sanity, I can demand we conference you in.”

“Sounds good. I’ll put you on speaker with the soccer team. We can have them vote on whether they think you’re crazy.”

“Perfect. Thank you.”

We exchange a parting hug and climb into our cars. A few minutes later, I’m cruising on 275 East, a wide and rarely congested highway that winds out from the suburbs through a scrubby, rural valley occasionally punctuated by towns even slower and smaller than Union, pretty much until you get to the college. Though I’ve driven to NKU a couple of times for friends’ games and friends of friends’ parties, once I make it to campus, it takes me a while of aimlessly circling until I spot the psychology building: an enormous, gray-brown cement block with tiny windows grouped in twos that remind me of coin slots in an arcade game, and a faded red roof slanting up from the three narrow towers separating the two wings. The parking lot’s mostly empty, and I take a spot near the front and slip inside.

The building is chilly, if out of date and poorly lit, and I find Dr. Chan’s name posted outside a yellowed wooden door at the end of a narrow corridor. The door is cracked open but I knock anyway.

When I hear no reply, I push the door open, and it whines on its hinges. The little office is packed. A chocolate-brown desk and a whiteboard are wedged between two bookshelves, an office chair just barely squeezes in between the desk and the window beyond, which overlooks a long yellow lawn and a little blue pond. On my side of the desk, there’s another chair and a small couch, both of which are completely covered in stacks of stuffed filing folders and loose papers and books.