Dreaming Anastasia

by Joy Preble

  “Something annoying, maybe.”

  “You mean it? You didn’t find him, like, way attractive?”

  “I didn’t find him not attractive. But it’s not like he’s going to keep me up nights. Like I said—all that staring. And his posture. He was so—I don’t know, straight. So formal or something.”

  “Huh,” Tess says. “Hadn’t thought about that. But you’re right. He was standing up pretty straight. Geez, Michaelson, give me a break. No wonder you ended things with Adam Green three months ago and haven’t replaced him with anyone. You are seriously too picky.”

  “First, it’s not like I’m ever going to see this guy again. And second, I ended things with Adam because all he was interested in doing was feeling me up and hoping I’d let him do more. Which, let me say, is not what I consider even slightly romantic.”

  “Someone’s standards are awfully high.”

  “Ha, ha.” I reach into the pocket of the jeans I’d changed into once we got back from downtown and pull out my cell phone. “Should I get Neal on the phone? Tell him you’ve changed your level of expectation?”

  Neal Patterson is Tess’s ex. If she had her way, he’d be ex to the entire world as well. Their breakup was, in a word, legendary.

  “Whatever,” she says. “But the guy at the theater was cute. And he’s got that whole mystery man thing going for him. That’s gotta count for something.”

  “Only if he drops back out of the sky and starts stalking you next time.”

  “It could happen.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I tell her. “I’m sure. You want to study some more before my dad gets back and drives you home?”

  “If we have to,” Tess says.

  “Thought you bombed that last quiz. That one on all the royal families?”

  “Who can remember all that crap? Plus it’s sort of sick that they were all, like, intermarried to each other. That was one small royal family tree they had going there in Europe.”

  “Nothing like keeping it in the family,” I tell her. And then we get back to work.

  Chicago,

  The Present

  Tuesday, 5:55 am

  Anne

  “Anne.” My father bends over my bed, gently shaking my shoulder until I open my eyes. He’s turned on the lamp on my nightstand, and I can see that he hasn’t combed his hair yet, so it’s standing up all spiky. He’s still in a T-shirt and the plaid Old Navy sleep pants my mother bought him so he wouldn’t wander around in his boxers and make us both uncomfortable, even though with all the jogging and avoiding wheat, he’s in decent shape.

  “You were screaming,” he says. “You must have been dreaming.”

  “Don’t know,” I tell him. “I don’t remember.”

  My father studies me, but he doesn’t push the issue. “I’m going to shower,” he says eventually. He gives my arm a rub, lets his hand rest there for a bit. “And your alarm is about to ring, so you might as well get up. You sure you’re okay?”

  “Absolutely,” I tell him. I sit up and give him my best smile. And then I keep smiling until he walks out of my room and back down the hall. Until I hear him turn on the shower in the master bath and hear the TV click on in my parents’ bedroom, which means my mother is watching the news or whatever while she gets dressed.

  And then I stop smiling and concentrate on getting my heart to stop racing in my chest and my pulse to stop doing the cha-cha in my veins.

  But I know that’s not going to happen anytime soon. It never does. Not when I have the dream—the same dream I had Sunday night after Tess went home. The same one I’ve had too many nights to count in the past three years since I first had it, right after we found out David was sick—which doesn’t even make much sense, since it’s not a dream about him.

  Truth is, I’ve always had strange dreams. Particularly because sometimes—a lot of the time, actually—when I dream, I’m not me. It’s like watching a movie through someone else’s eyes or something. While I’m saying stuff and doing stuff, I’m pretty clear that in the dream, I’m this other person, not myself.

  Once, I even dreamed as a guy—not that I woke up with any stunning insights about the male psyche or anything, which certainly doesn’t surprise me. Tess says with guys, it all comes down to three things—sports, sex, and food. Not necessarily in that order. For example in junior high, I was trying to write a short story, and I asked my brother David what he and his friends said when they thought a girl was hot. His response was, “I’d do her.” Then he grabbed the bag of Cheetos, snagged the remote, and flipped between ESPN and ESPN 2 for the next thirty minutes.

  But these past few nights, I’ve just been her. The girl who haunts my dreams but whose face I never see. The one who refuses to leave me alone.

  As always, I was trapped in this little cabin. That’s the way it goes in these dreams. A pattern I’ve grown used to—like how I know Adam Green can never carry on a conversation with a girl without his eyes straying to her chest, or how my father simply cannot make it through dinner without checking his Treo, as though his law firm will simply curl up and die during the time it takes him to eat a plate of meat loaf.

  And as always, I felt like I’d been there a while—days, maybe longer. I knew every inch of the room: tiny little windows, wooden floor, huge stone fireplace with a massive rocking chair next to it, and, tucked into the far corner, a bed with a quilt, a pillow, and a little wooden doll with red painted lips. Same stuff I always saw. The same feeling of watching it through a stranger’s eyes.

  She’s so damn lonely. That’s what I felt when I was her—this emptiness inside me, like someone’s fist had burrowed its way into me and left a gaping hole. Like I’d done something—or had something done to me—that was so brutal and so awful I couldn’t even think about it. I just felt sad. And sometimes, when I dreamed I was her, I woke up with my face wet with tears.

  Normally, that’s pretty much it. Which is probably why I’ve never told anyone about it. I mean, what would I say? That I keep dreaming I’m some girl I can’t really see and I’m trapped somewhere and I feel sad? Yeah, right.

  But this time, the dream changed. This time, she was doing the dreaming. And it was a dream she was struggling not to have. But let me say, she was spectacularly unsuccessful at stopping it. And so was I.

  I was in a bigger room then, packed with people—adults and children. All talking a mile a minute in a language I couldn’t understand. All clearly frightened out of their minds. And there was this one girl in particular, with long, brown hair and a white dress. She was my age, I think, sixteen or seventeen, or something close. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Or rather, the girl I am when I have this dream—she couldn’t. Because she knew she was looking at herself. That whatever was about to happen to the brown-haired girl and all these other frightened people actually happened to her , and now she was dreaming about it, even though she’d clearly rather not. And honestly, neither would I. But I did.

  My pulse quickened, and my heart started to beat so fast that I thought it was going to hammer up my throat and out my mouth. And then the shooting began. Men—some in uniforms, some in regular clothes—were shooting and shooting, and the people—they were screaming and falling. And there was blood everywhere—rivers of it running slick over the floor.

  I kept watching the girl in the white dress, knowing it was me I was watching, even as a part of me knew I was dreaming as someone else. She screamed, then tried to run, only she saw she had nowhere to go. Nowhere, that is, but into—and this is the part that still has me feeling like I was sucked into a Stephen King novel or something—a giant pair of hands that swooped down out of a black cloud and scooped her up and out of the room.

  Normally, this would be where I’d wake up. Or where the dream would finally change, and I’d be eating Thai food with Adam and he’d refuse to let us order extra spring rolls. Or I’d be making out with Johnny Depp in the frozen-foods aisle while my mother asked him to pass her the Lean Cuisine sesame chicken,
because the sign said they’re five for ten dollars.

  But this time, I just kept on dreaming.

  And things shifted back to the tiny little cabin.

  There was an old woman sitting by that huge stone fireplace. She was rocking and sipping something from a mug. Her skin was brown and wrinkled, and she was wearing a long, brown dress that brushed the wooden floor as she rocked. She had some kind of red kerchief thing tied around her head and a black cat curled up in her lap. And compared to the room where everyone was getting shot, this seemed rather tame. The girl whose head I just couldn’t exit seemed to know the woman. She wasn’t exactly happy to see her, but she didn’t seem frightened anymore either.

  And that’s when it happened. When the old woman in the rocker looked up. And suddenly, dream girl and I separated. I wasn’t dreaming as her anymore. I was me, and she was standing next to me. But I didn’t have time to look at her, because I was too busy looking at the woman in the rocker, who was now staring straight at me, her dark eyes burning, each pupil a tiny skull.

  She smiled. Her teeth were metal—iron maybe, or silver. And then her mouth sort of dropped down and unhinged. Opened wider and wider, those metal teeth gleaming, until, just as I was sure she was going to swallow me whole, I finally woke up.

  Which is why I’m sitting here in my bed, my heart still flopping around in my chest like a hooked fish and my T-shirt plastered to my back with sweat.

  I’d like to blame it on the sushi we ate last night at that new place on Central Avenue.

  But I can’t.

  So I do what I’ve done before. I get out of bed, pick out some clothes, and start getting ready for school.

  And then I head into my bathroom, close the door, strip off my sweat-dampened T-shirt and underwear, climb into my shower, and hope that eventually the hot water will take the chill off my skin.

  My dearest Alexei—

  I am putting these words to paper to prove that beyond all reason and beyond all understanding, I am still here. I am still alive. I have pieced together what has become of me and why. And in telling each of you, my family, my dear ones, I will help myself understand—or, at least, that is my hope.

  You will note, by the way, little brother, that I am writing in English, even if this sometimes makes my words clumsier than I would like. It is a tribute to our dear mama, who made sure we learned that language, and although this first entry is for you, the words honor her too, and let her live on in that way. She was at times a foolish woman, but her heart was good. And as our blood goes back on her side to the English and Queen Victoria, it seems fitting.

  Blood, my Alexei, is of course no laughing matter to you. And certainly, there was more than enough of that at the end, but I’m certain I do not need to remind you of that. It is why Mama trusted Father Grigory—the one the people called Rasputin—because he promised that he would cure you. And it is, I realize now, the blessing and the curse of your birth, because, as we learned, hemophilia is passed down from mother to son. So it happened with you and Mama, even though she had prayed and hoped for a boy to join us girls and had finally gotten her wish.

  But I digress. Or rather, I have yet to get to my true point. There is still more to say about blood—not yours, Alexei, and not mine—and I will try to say it here. And as we should with all good stories, I will attempt to start this one at the beginning.

  The first memory I have of him was when I was about five. You were just a little, little boy then, two years old and toddling around after me. Father and I were walking in the park that afternoon, and this young man—a boy still, really, although I suppose at fourteen, most boys think they are men—with his dark hair and dark eyes came up to us.

  “Hello,” he said to me, and he reached out to shake my hand.

  “Hello,” I told him back, and I remember that suddenly I felt very shy, which, as you know, is not like me at all but really more like you. Remember how we always said that sometimes you just seemed to know things? Well, that was how I felt then—that this boy was important, even if I didn’t understand how. I tucked myself behind Papa and clung to his legs and waited to see why this boy was here.

  “Hello, sir,” the boy said to Papa, and he held out his hand to him as well.

  But Papa wouldn’t shake it. “You cannot be here,” Papa told him. “You simply cannot.”

  “I am strong,” the boy said. “And I’m smart.”

  “Even so,” Papa told him, “it does not matter.”

  “She sends you her love,” the boy said then. “She knows you have another son now. And she’s heard he is ill. She wishes you only the best. And the boy too.”

  “And she sent you as her messenger?”

  “So you could see me,” the boy said to Papa. “So you could remember that I am here also.”

  “You do not exist,” Papa told him. Then he took my hand, and we walked across the park, back to the Imperial Palace.

  “Who was that?” I asked our father.

  “No one,” Papa said. “It was no one, Anastasia. That is all you need to know.”

  But of course, that was not the truth. And although many things have passed from my memory, that day has not. “Another son,” the boy told our father. Another son. And I think if I am honest with myself, those two words were truly the beginning of the end.

  But I do not want to get ahead of my tale, Alexei. And I want to write to the others as well. So I will close this for now and leave you what I have left, which is just that I remain

  Your loving sister,

  Anastasia

  Tuesday, 10:45 am

  Anne

  “Skin, Anne, skin.” Mrs. Kaplan, my freshman-year biology teacher, who’s four-foot-eleven and so old she probably debated the theory of evolution with Darwin himself, jabs a bony, formaldehyde-smelling finger at my midsection. Actually, what she does is poke me in the belly button—which, by the way, is completely covered by my sweater—but I let it go since, let’s face it, anyone who has supervised the dissection of so many frogs is probably a little loony at this point.

  It’s passing period between third and fourth, and I’m trying to get to chemistry. I still can’t get the stupid dream out of my head, which is not like me since, as I say, I always dream weird stuff, and normally, it doesn’t particularly bother me. But right now it’s like I’ve hit a mental repeat button or something, and the images just won’t leave me alone—the girl in the white dress and the old woman with the metal teeth. That jaw unhinging and trying to swallow me whole…

  Maybe that’s why I have no patience for Mrs. Kaplan freaking over my belly area just because there’s a miniscule gap between the bottom of my new J. Crew caramel-colored sweater and the top of my honestly-not-so-very-low jeans.

  Or maybe it’s because I just spent thirty minutes listening to Coach Wicker attempt to explain the political complexities of Colombia and the sugarcane-ethanol industry—which, let me say, he is totally incapable of doing—followed by another ten minutes of copying the gross national products of South American countries off the overhead, the charm of which wears thin after, oh, three-and-a-half seconds. Why the administration would allow someone to teach honors world history who mispronounces Bogotá and can’t find Tierra del Fuego on a map because he thinks it’s in Peru is a mystery to me.

  “Skin,” Mrs. Kaplan says again as I dodge out of range of her finger. “Pull that sweater down, dear.”

  “Okay,” I tell her. I give the sweater a little tug, and when I realize she’s still frowning at me, I tug at it again—and see, to my dismay, that the right side now hangs lower than the left.

  “That’s better.” Kaplan smiles. “Thanks, dear.”

  I don’t smile back, but at least she’s no longer jabbing me in the navel, and I’m able to snake my way a little farther down the hallway.

  The chemistry and physics labs sit in a row around the corner from the biology classrooms. Their positions used to be reversed until last spring when Kelly Owens tried to create he
r own death ray in AP physics, and the ensuing explosion caused the science folks to rethink classroom placement. Now, the labs are closer to the courtyard at the center of the building, allowing a hasty mass exit should someone try to blow up a classroom again.

  “Hey, Michaelson!” The voice belongs to Adam Green, who’s walked up next to me—he of the blond hair and brown eyes I used to find absurdly attractive until I realized that his conversational skills were a little less honed than his ability to unhook my bra with one hand while still holding his bottle of Corona with the other. Not that I didn’t appreciate the dexterity or anything—just that he never seemed to want to do anything else, and after a while, the novelty had worn thin.

  “Do you know your sweater’s a little crooked?” He grins at me so I know he’s just seen my one-on-one with Kaplan.

  “Funny,” I tell him. “You are so hilarious.”

  “Knew you missed me,” he says. He flashes me another grin.

  “Not that much,” I tell him. “But thanks for the info about the sweater.”

  “You coming to the game Friday?” he asks. Adam is nothing if not persistent. He also plays cornerback on the Kennedy High football team. We’ve had a mixed season so far, but Adam’s been playing well, which I have to give him credit for, even though last week, he made sure to put the moves on Brittany Selby—the cheerleader fly girl the other ones fling into the air when they do those basket tosses—in front of me while we were all standing around right after the game.

  “Maybe,” I say. “Not sure yet.”

  “They’re doing that tribute thing,” he says then.

  “Like I said,” I tell him as my stomach does a little clenching number that I’m not particularly happy about. “I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know. But you do good out there, okay?”

  I realize I do mean that last part. As for the rest of it, I’m a little less certain. Once a year, the Kennedy High Warriors do a pre-game salute to the best of the past players. We used to do it at Homecoming, but added to crowning the king and queen and the special band performance, halftime got too long. So someone decided to move it earlier in the season.