Dreamology (20 page)

“Here's a good
one,” I say, leaning over to hold the slide viewer in front of Max's eyeball. We're back on the crew docks at school and it's twilight, the most perfect time of day. In front of us the Charles River rolls by, bright turquoise. I've got a pile of slides in my lap and am sifting through them, placing them one at a time into the antique wooden viewer and holding it up to my face, before passing it on to Max, who is lying on his back, holding a book over his face with one arm, while the other rests behind his head.

He closes his other eye, dramatically scrunching up his entire face as though it helps him see better. I know he isn't that interested; he'd rather be reading. He's just doing it to make me happy.

“Ooooh, that
is
a good one.” Max nods in agreement. “Put it in the keep pile.”

To the right of my knee is a neat stack of slides, the ones we have decided to save. For what reason, I'm not sure.

I lift another slide up to my eye, making a face of my own at what appears to be a professional portrait of someone's obese cat, and then replace it with another. The next one is a succulent wall, looking green and glossy and very much alive, but I don't show that one to Max because it reminds me of Celeste. And then I get to a yurt made of sunset red canvas, on the edge of a snowy ledge, facing what looks like the Alps. Two sets of skis are stuck into the snow, and you can just make out a fire glowing from behind the flaps.

“This,” I say, holding it up for Max, “is absolutely perfect.”

“I'll be the judge of that,” Max says, holding his book aside and readying himself for the slide viewer again. As he examines the photo, I examine his face. The crease between his eyebrows when he's really focusing on something, the curve of his jaw, the slight dimple in his right cheek. Then I watch his eyebrows rise. “Wow,” is all Max says. Then he moves the viewer away from his eyes so he can look directly into mine.

When I finally look away, I see we're no longer on the dock. We're in the snow. I have a puffer jacket on and hot-purple ski pants, and Max has the same, but his parka and pants are shades of blue. About twenty feet away and glowing with light is our sunset yurt.

Max is giving me a look I know well. A look that makes me say, “Please don't.” But he keeps smiling mischievously.
“Please don't,”
I try again, this time louder, but he doesn't listen. He throws a snowball right at my face.

I glare at him. “What are you, five?” I ask.

“Yup,” he says with a grin. And then he leaps up and tackles me to the ground. The snow is incredibly soft, cushioning me as I fall backward.

Max wipes at some of the snow on my cheek, but leaves a little bit. “How could I have done such a horrible thing?” he says dramatically. “Here, let me help.” He leans in and slowly kisses my bottom lip, taking some snow with him. Then his eyes go wide.

“I know, I know. I'm a really good kisser,” I say.

Max rolls his eyes. “Here. Open wide.” He picks up a bit of snow and sprinkles it in my mouth. It tastes like lemon shave ice.

“Yum,” I say, and bite my lip.

“Yum,” Max says, and kisses me again.

DON'T MOVE.

That is the first thing I think when I open my eyes. Because there is a heavy arm draped over my waist, a Max arm, and I am terrified of it sliding away. His other arm is scooped beneath the pillow below my head, and the fingertips are peeking out on the other side, past my face.

Don't move.

Because really, Max is the fuzzy fish, the species we discovered deep in the Amazon in our dream when we were kids, never before seen by the world. We had to tread lightly as we approached it, so it wouldn't get scared and swim away.

Max is definitely the fish. But then Max moves. Just a little bit, just a stir. I hear his breath intake slowly from behind me,
and my throat catches. I don't know why I expect him to leap from the bed and go running out the door, never to return, but I just do. I can't help it.

Slowly, I roll over to face him. The sight of his eyes so close, open and looking back at me, turns my stomach inside out and my bones to jelly.

Max doesn't say anything. He just watches me intently, his eyes a little sleepy. I wonder if I didn't just dream about the slides and the yurt—maybe I dreamed it all. The whole thing with Max last night. Maybe I started earlier in this room. Maybe nothing even happened. It's all so unclear these days.

Then Max swallows, and as if it's the most casual thing in the world, he uses both arms to pull me to him, kissing me as my whole body melts into his.

I don't know if we're kissing, or just breathing each other in, but the point is that I cannot get enough Max.

“I was afraid you would swim away.” I pull away just long enough to tell him.

“What?” he mutters between kisses.

“I was afraid you would swim away like the fuzzy fish.”

“Less talking, more kissing,” Max demands, and I giggle and oblige. Until I catch sight of something over the top of his shoulder. Outside the window giant fluffy snowflakes are falling.

“Snow?” I jump out of bed and run to the glass. But outside there's no snow at all. Of course there isn't.

“Could you come back here, please?” Max calls. “Lying here was much more enjoyable about thirty seconds ago.”

“I swear I just saw snowflakes out the window, but when I looked, there was nothing there . . .” I explain as I climb back in beside Max and tuck my back into his chest. Soon enough Max's arms are fully wrapped around my body again and my head is in the crook of his neck.

“You have cocooned me,” I declare.

Max's voice comes out in his
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
voice again, deep and robotic. “She-has-been-cocooned,” he says. And after a brief moment of silence, I start giggling hysterically.

“
God
, you are weird,” I say. But I keep laughing.

That's when Oliver bursts in and cries, “Sophie and I are getting married!”

“Excuse me?” I say, sitting up. Max just buries his head under a pillow.

“You heard me,” Oliver says. “Sophie and I are getting married, and you are all invited.”

Sophie saunters in behind Max, wearing big sunglasses and looking a little worse for wear. “Actually, we made out when I was drunk,” she mutters. “And also, we found Margaret Yang.”

I GUESS IF
I'm being truly honest, I had pictured Margaret Yang as looking like she walked out of a Marvel action movie, wearing some slick suit and a pair of five-inch stiletto heels. She'd pop open a briefcase and punch in a bunch of numbers, then zap us between the eyes with a minuscule metal stun gun, and we'd be all fixed and ready to roll.

Instead, the Margaret Yang we find seated at the Blue Cow diner on the corner of Main and Milk Streets, just off the Wells campus, is clad in a thick gray cable-knit sweater and Crocs with wool socks, her hair pinned in a loose bun at the back of her head.

“Professor Yang?” I say quietly as I stand over her booth, on top of which she has spread out about six different newspapers,
coffee, waffles, eggs, and bacon. So much food for such a small woman. She's clearly been here for hours, because she was here earlier when Sophie and Oliver came to get coffee and overheard her talking to a student.

In response, Margaret Yang silently holds her left hand up to my face, while her right hand skims the last lines of an article she is reading. I am tempted to order a coffee while we wait, and Max is definitely eyeing her bacon like he hasn't eaten in days.

“Done,” she says, still not looking up, and instead pausing to take a sip of coffee. “You may sit.”

Carefully, Max and I take a seat across the booth from her.

“You may present your topic,” Margaret starts to say as she pours some more cream in her mug. But then she looks at us for the first time. “Oh,” is all she says.

“Hi,” I say, with a small hand wave.

“You aren't in my Neuro 260 class,” she observes.

Max and I shake our heads.

“So you are not here to present your research topics for next semester,” she says.

We shake our heads again.

Margaret Yang stares at us as she slowly stirs her coffee. “So, tell me, then,” she says as she looks down to set her spoon on her plate, her face breaking into a warm smile. “How is Jerry the dog?”

“So, let me make sure I've got this right,” Margaret says, now on her third cup. I am gratefully clutching my own mug and have nearly matched her in refills, while Max is chowing down on a fruit-covered waffle. We've told her everything. About the dreams, and finding each other again. About our work with Petermann and his arrest and the road trip. “You are seeing odd things pop up in your reality that you know shouldn't be.”

“Yesterday I saw my dog drive by on a motorcycle,” is all I can think to say in response.

“And Petermann told you he believes it's dream bleeding,” Margaret says.

“Do you think he could be wrong?” I say, sitting up a bit straighter, and I notice Max stops chewing.
Please let him be wrong
, I want to say.

“It is certainly a first, but in this case, unfortunately, I believe he's right,” Margaret says, signaling for the check. “Are you aware of what a transitional object is?”

I recall a lecture we had with Levy a month or so ago, after discussing attachment theory in children.

“It's basically a teddy bear, right?” I say.

“Very impressive,” Margaret says. “That's right. Transitional objects are given to young children as something they can attach themselves to, besides the caregiver, to make them feel safer when they are exploring the world, or when they sleep at night.”

I think back to my mother leaving, to what brought us to CDD in the first place. “I don't think I had one of those,” I say.

“Yes, you did.” Margaret Yang gives a confident nod.

“What was it, then?” I ask. “Jerry?”

In response, Margaret just looks pointedly at Max.

“I don't get it.” I frown.

“Me?” Max says.

“Yes.” Margaret places her hands on the table, one on top of the other. “You have to understand, when I met the two of you, my heart broke. I was young, just starting out. At that point in my treatment I'd run into a few adults with insomnia, some stressed-out college kids at most. I'd never seen children your age before. You'd both suffered these unbelievably hard experiences, death and desertion, and you were so small and so alone. You needed something to make you feel safe, and nothing was doing the trick. That's when it hit me. You could have each other.”

Max and I share another look, but this time we hold it. I think about the story he told me with the chocolate Legos. “I never really expected it to work,” Margaret says. “But I was adventurous and trying to make a name for myself. And somehow, you connected. You found each other. I expected that, like all kids do with their blankies and teddy bears, you would simply outgrow it. But apparently you never did.”

I finally look away from Max to Margaret. It all makes so
much sense. “Then maybe we never need to?” I say hopefully.

“I wish that were the case, Alice. But I think we have enough evidence to the contrary, now that you've met in real life. Not if you want to tell the difference between sleeping and waking. We have to get you out of each other's dreams as soon as possible.”

Max and I are listening to Margaret Yang when I feel his hand grip mine under the table.

“Are you sure?” I ask. “There's no other way?”

Margaret Yang simply shakes her head.

Half an hour later Max and I are still holding hands as we lie on Margaret Yang's bed back at her faculty apartment, where she places EEG caps on our heads and then a small metal object the size of a cell phone battery at the base of our necks.

“We're going to be okay, Alice,” Max says as our eyes begin to close. “No matter what, we have each other.”

I have never been so scared in my entire life, but I put on a brave face. If I can make Max think I believe him, maybe I actually will. “Would you like me to tell you a story?” I ask.

“Yes, please,” Max says.

“Okay,” I say. “One day a nine-year-old girl is walking around the Museum of Modern Art. It's totally empty. There aren't even any guards. But she doesn't really mind, because it gives her more time to look around.” I rub my thumb along the knuckle of his forefinger, and I can feel him start to relax. “Then
suddenly, all the paintings started to disappear. Or rather, the images on the paintings, and eventually the canvases are all white. She hears a noise and realizes she isn't alone in the gallery after all. There's a boy there, and he's holding out a giant box of felt tip markers, in every shade.” I chuckle out loud, thinking of the memory. “And they spend the rest of the day coloring in the paintings with whatever they want, and then they fall asleep on the roof in the sunshine. And even though when she wakes up he's gone, and she's back in her apartment, she somehow feels better. Stronger. Like someone was there to save her.”

“Was that the first dream you remember having about me?” Max asks softly, and I nod in reply. “I remember it, too,” Max says. “It was such a great day.”

“I'll see you soon, Max,” I say, squeezing his hand tight.

“I'll see you soon,” Max whispers.

Max and I
are curled up back on the dock at the Charles River, this time on a bundle of pillows, and I am dangling the slide viewer in front of our faces again.

“None of these are good enough,” I say impatiently, looking at an image of a vegetable garden. But then I replace it with another and stop. “Wait. I found one.”

It's a photo of some beautiful cliffs in Ireland. I pass the viewer to Max and he just says, “Sold.” And suddenly I am there, walking among the thick grass as it ruffles in a heavy wind. Max is up ahead, holding a sweet-looking Shetland pony wearing a Shetland sweater, and I start to run to meet them. But I trip and fall on the uneven field, and when I get up again, the pony is there, but Max isn't, and the rope he was holding just dangles in the wind.

“Max?” I yell. “Where are you?” I am spinning around and around, but all I see is green, and this time he doesn't pop up like he did between the foam Jenga blocks.

“This isn't going to work,” I say to myself, and I start running back down the hill where I came from, before I trip and fall again.

When I land, I'm back on the dock, but Max isn't there, either, so I quickly pick up another slide. It's of the Golden Gate Bridge.

“This'll do,” I say, because it could be a photo of Siberia and I'd still take it if it got me to Max. And suddenly I'm at the top of a steep San Francisco hill, in one of the little yellow cars they rent to tourists, and Max is up ahead, laughing in his stupid helmet.

“You look ridiculous,” I call out.

“Safety first!” Max cries. “Race you to the bridge!” And he's off. I follow him through the city, racing around trolleys until we are cruising over the Golden Gate. But as we come to the end, he turns abruptly off the road, and when I finally get there, a dusty spot overlooking the bay, he's gone again. I sigh and gently rest my head on the little steering wheel. No. No-no-no-no-no. When I lift my head, I see a chocolate Lego on the dashboard. I pop it in my mouth and desperately chew.

Back to the dock I go, and this time I'm more specific. I toss the slides aside, one by one, until I find an image of a beautiful, clean wooden raft, resting atop calm ocean water with a pair of thick striped beach towels laid out on top.

“How far can you run from me here?” I say, and just like that I am there, lying on the towel, feeling warm and happy in the sun.

I take a deep breath, and next thing I know there is water dripping all over me.

“What kind of dive should I do?” Max asks with a mischievous grin, soaking wet as he shakes his wet hair over my body, and I squeal.

“Don't dive!” I try to suggest as casually as possible. “Just lie down here with me for a minute.”

“I'll be right back, Alice,” he says.

“No, you won't,” I say. “You won't be right back. Please just stay here with me.”

“Alice.” Max looks at me like I'm nuts. “Where could I go?” He motions around us and he seems to have a point, because we're in the middle of the ocean, with nothing around for miles and miles. But it doesn't make me feel any better.

“Max, don't.” My voice begins to come more frantic.

“Cannonnnnballlllll,” Max calls, flying out over the water, and before I can stop myself, I have leaped in after him.

The water is so blue it's practically neon, and I can't tell if I can see miles ahead or not at all because there is nothing to see. There is no Max. Then suddenly a foot kicks out in front of me out of nowhere and I try and grab onto it, hoping he'll drag me wherever he goes. But the foot escapes my fingers and is gone as quickly as it came.

But then it appears again, this time a little farther away. I swim and swim and swim, pulling my arms and kicking my legs over and over until a short stepladder comes into view underwater, and I
take it. Despite all the swimming I'm still not tired. I'm just desperate for anything that might lead me to him.

When I pull my body over the edge, though, I'm not back on the raft, I'm back on the dock at school again, and this time I scream in frustration. My hand shaking, I snatch another slide off the wood and stuff it in the viewer once more, not even bothering to look at what it is until I'm suddenly there, among the shelves of a vast library.

I am just about to cry his name when I hear him call out first. “Alice?” He sounds just as scared as I do.

“Max?” I cry.

“Where are you?” he asks. “Why can't I get there?”

“I'm right here!” I cry. But this time there's no response. “Max?” I try again, and nothing. I want to push over all the stacks to see around them, but I don't want to risk hurting him. So I just start shoving books off the shelves, trying to see through to the other side. I call his name over and over and over, waiting to hear him call out to me again.

But he doesn't.

He is gone.