July 19

by Lori Cohen

  I woke up late and was so thankful that I had a decent night’s sleep. If I had any dreams, I didn’t recall. My first thought when I opened my eyes was of Owen. Whatever was happening with us was complicated — from our intense initial attraction, to our shared dreams. I sensed that from this point on, our lives were somehow entangled.

  I grabbed my phone and saw a message from Owen. “Did you get any sleep?” He had sent the text at 6 a.m.

  “I did! But I see you were up early :( ,” I replied.

  “Yeah, well...I had some stuff on my mind ;-p ,” he joked.

  “Some stuff, huh? Like having the same dreams as me!” I tried to make light of the whole situation.

  “Yeah that. When I woke up this morning, I actually thought I dreamt that!” he replied.

  “No such luck,” I wrote back.

  “Wow,” he wrote.

  I could feel the weight of our new reality.

  “On another note, can I pick you up at noon to bring you here?” he wrote again.

  “Yep. thanks. See you then,” I replied.

  My phone vibrated again with a text from Dani asking how I was. I let her know that I was doing okay and that things were fine with me and Owen. I didn’t have the strength to get into the bigger truth that was facing me.

  The clock struck noon as Owen knocked on the front door. We quickly headed over to his house to talk to Amy and Michael. They were both waiting, arms folded on the kitchen table, when we walked in. The concern hung in the air like a thick cloud.

  “Holy shit!” Amy said after we told her what had happened. She just sat there stunned. “Owen, I know you told me you were having weird dreams, but honestly, I just thought it had to do with your parents’ passing and everything you were dealing with. But if that’s the case, why is Aria having similar dreams?”

  Then Michael offered, “Well, I’m with your Dad, Aria, I think what he said is the only possible conclusion. You guys both saw the same movie when you were younger. Maybe too young to actually remember it. But something in both of your minds held on to the details.”

  Owen immediately replied, “Yeah, I get why you would think that Michael, but how can you explain that we both spontaneously started having these dreams when I moved here last summer?”

  “I can’t explain any of this,” Michael replied, “but at this moment I can’t think of any other reasonable explanation, except that you both saw the same movie, but you just don’t remember it.”

  We all sat there for a moment considering the idea that we saw a movie that we have been both magically dreaming about for months at a time, at exactly the same time in our lives. I felt confident that Owen didn’t buy that as much as I didn’t.

  “Well, there are also some other things that come into question,” Owen said, “like why did the dreams start at the exact same time? Why do we see the same things? Why did I meet Aria, the one other person having the same dreams as me? Why do we have a connection that can’t be described using words? Oh, and if that’s not enough, how is it that we share the same birthday?”

  “You share the same birthday?” Amy looked up, wide-eyed.

  “Yes, I didn’t tell you that?” Owen seemed surprised at his omission.

  “No, but this is getting stranger by the second,” Amy said, shutting her eyes and shaking her head.

  “Yes, it is.” Owen resumed his new favorite position, head in his hands. He was exasperated.

  Finally, I offered, “I think Owen and I have a lot of work to do. We should explore just how similar our dreams are. We should go back to the gallery and start there.” After a moment I asked, “We can’t be the first two people to experience this, right?”

  “Right,” everyone said in unison, equally unconvinced.

  Owen and I got up, hugged Amy and Michael and drove back to the gallery in silence. There was a sense of wonder and of dread on that car ride. Arriving at the gallery, I unlocked the door with the keys my mom had given me. We walked in slowly, like we were returning to the scene of a crime. The gallery felt creepy, almost haunted with evidence of what started this whole mysterious discovery. As I flicked on the lights, I watched Owen’s eyes darting across the walls. I could see how hard this was for him.

  “I’m sorry Aria, this is just really spooky for me. I’m sitting here wondering how you see into my mind...into my dreams. How is that possible?”

  “Wait a second,” I said, taken aback, “Why do you assume I am seeing your dreams, and that you are not seeing my dreams!?”

  “Good point,” he said considering that. “I guess I just know them as my dreams. They are so real to me.”

  “Believe me when I say, they are very real to me too. So much so that part of me thinks I have a split personality.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” he said looking at me in disbelief that any of this was happening, and then continued, “So here’s the thing. These images are not exactly my dreams. You see how there’s a boy here walking towards you on the beach holding a frisbee?” He walked directly over and pointed to the boy in my dreams who I had come to know and love. “In my dream, I am holding a frisbee and walking over to a beautiful girl - a girl who is in every single one of my dreams! You have not painted her, but the beach...the people you have painted around here,” he said pointing, “I recognize all of them from my dreams.”

  “I haven’t painted her, because I AM HER! I actually have no idea what your ‘beautiful girl’ looks like, because I’ve never seen her. It is me! I only see the boy.”

  “And I only see the girl. In my dreams, it is me walking with the frisbee towards my girl. But the boy you painted is not me. But Aria, it is ME! I was playing frisbee with my friends and when I stopped, I held the frisbee and started walking toward you and your friends...”

  “So then tell me, what did you do after this — after you walked toward me, what did you do right after that in your dream???” I begged him to tell me. I needed to know if he was in fact on that beach with me in my dreams.

  We both stood there, realizing that this was a moment of truth. Were we actually having the same dreams? Were we in fact the people in these dreams?

  Just then, he gently pushed me down to a sitting position, so I was sitting on the floor of the gallery. He turned away from me and walked toward the door. I was so confused. Was he leaving? Did he have enough of this? Suddenly he turned around and the look in his eyes changed. He started walking toward me and just as he was getting close, he dropped down to his knees and crawled toward me, looking straight into my eyes. When he got close enough, he kissed me perfectly on my lips and then said, “Thanks, I needed that.”

  Exactly how it happened in my dreams.

  Tears poured down my face. “How did you know?” I asked rhetorically.

  “Aria, what does this mean?” He wrapped his arms around me, as if trying to protect me.

  “I feel scared,” I whispered.

  “Me too,” he said back.

  Chapter 14

  After we gathered ourselves, we went through the gallery doing the same thing for every painting. We filled in the missing pieces easily for everything that came before and after each image. It was unreal to experience my dreams with another person. To feel that he was there with me in my mind.

  “So, the next logical question...,” I hesitated, realizing how crazy it was to apply logic to any of this, so I re-stated it, “Okay, my next question is, who are we seeing in our dreams? And where are we?”

  “I’ve been thinking about this. If this place is a real place and not just a magical, fictitious place, we can look for clues and try to figure it out. That way if your Dad and Michael are right, it will lead us to the movie. If they aren’t right, it will be part of unfolding our mystery.” It seemed that Owen was starting to enjoy solving this mystery.

  “First, I should ask you, do you recognize any of it from your real life? Any of the West coast beaches? roads? signs? People?” I knew that if he recognized any of it, he would have said.
It was rhetorical, but it still needed to be asked.

  “Not at all. Nothing familiar,” he said shaking his head. “And believe me, I’ve been racking my brain!”

  “Okay, let’s make a list, going through each painting,” I put on my best private investigator look and walked over with my clipboard and pen to the first painting. “See this place we went for ice cream and hung out with our friends. It has a big porch and a little painted wooden sign on the screen door that says Ice Cream Patch. If this is a real place, maybe we can find it. Let’s go through each painting doing this...”

  Owen followed, and we spent the next hour writing down all of the details of the locations we could recall.

  We went back to my house and went right to work. I was struck by how much detail we could remember. It was obvious how vivid the dreams were to us.

  “I think I struck gold!” Owen said, not looking up from his laptop.

  “What?! Tell me!” I walked over and stood behind his chair looking over his shoulder.

  “See,” he said, pointing the screen. “The Ice Cream Patch. There are two references. I eliminated the first one in New York because the pictures look nothing like our place. But there was another Ice Cream Patch. It closed about 10 years ago. Someone mentioned in this blog that it was their favorite hang-out on Cape Cod and they were bummed when it closed down!”

  “Ten years ago? Is there a picture? How do we know it’s the same place? It’s a cute name. There could be a zillion places with that name,” I asked.

  “We don’t know. But I haven’t found a zillion places with that name, and we are looking for clues, so let’s keep looking. I will bookmark this blog and keep going,” he said.

  “Okay, let’s google ‘Ice Cream Patch’ and ‘Cape Cod’ and then hit ‘Images’,” I said. Owen typed exactly what I was saying, and just like that, it was there on the screen in front of us: a quaint cottage with a big front porch. On one side of the porch was a big wooden triple scoop ice cream cone sign standing beside a rickety bench. On the other side of the porch was the screen door with a hanging hand-painted sign that read, “The Ice Cream Patch”.

  Owen’s head fell into his hands. As he sat there rubbing his face, he kept repeating, “This is crazy. This is crazy.”

  I stood there numb.

  After many deep breaths, we carried on. We clicked on the image, which took us to another old blog of the Top 10 Best Ice Cream places on Cape Cod in 2000. The Ice Cream Patch was an “Honorable Mention”, not making the “Top 3” list. The only other information listed along with the photo was “Popponesset, Cape Cod”.

  Neither of us had ever heard of this place. A few keystrokes later and there we sat looking at images of familiar, beautiful Popponesset. The place in our dreams finally had a name.

  My mom called us down for dinner and we were both appreciative of the summons back to reality. Over dinner, we shared what we had discovered with my family. I’m not sure if it was disbelief or shock, but everyone was mostly quiet, lost in their own thoughts, trying to figure out what this all meant.

  After dinner Owen stood and thanked my mom for a delicious meal and turned to me and said, “I think I’d just like to go get some rest now.”

  I felt relieved and replied, “I’m exhausted too. Let me walk you out.” I got up and took Owen’s hand as we walked to his Jeep.

  “Thanks for understanding. It’s not that I don’t want to do more research, it’s just that...well, I guess I don’t want to do more research right now. It’s kind of hurting my brain.”

  I laughed. “I know what you mean. I’m happy to take the night off and do something else. We’re in this together.”

  “You’re amazing.” He looked straight into my eyes and tucked my hair behind my ear. “See you tomorrow,” he said as he got into the car.

  When I got back inside, Sarah was all packed up and ready to head back to school for her final couple of weeks. “Good luck on your exams. I’ll miss ya,” I said.

  Sarah hugged me and said, “Thanks. I’m looking forward to being done and giving my head a break from the books. Keep me posted on your research. I’ll be thinking about you, honey.”

  “Want to come for a ride? I’m dropping Sarah off,” my dad asked.

  “Normally you know I would say yes, but honestly, I just want to go upstairs and listen to some music. I also have an assignment that I need to finish for tomorrow,” I replied. I gave hugs and went up to my room. It was going to be difficult to concentrate on my school work. I was already doing everything in my power not to let myself continue doing research on what Owen and I had discovered.

  After a couple of hours of working, I was exhausted. I don’t think I’d ever been so tired in my whole life. I said goodnight to my parents and collapsed into bed. I sent a quick text to Owen saying, “Goodnight! Love you. xo.”

  After waiting five minutes for a reply and not getting one, I muted my phone and closed my eyes.

  When I woke the next morning, Owen had replied with a text that read, “Sorry I missed you last night. I crashed when I got home and fell asleep for the night. I’ll meet you at your locker at lunch. Xo.”

  Owen, he’s the one I felt so badly for when I heard about his story back in September. It wasn’t until months later that I finally met him and now, he was one of the most important people in my life. This felt crazy to me. It was some kind of strange destiny. We ended up in the same World Religion class working on a project together. A project that he hoped would help him find comfort after having lost his parents — and I was going help him do that. Who could have imagined this wild turn of events?

  The next morning at school breezed by and before I knew it, Owen was beside me, kissing my cheek. “I missed you,” he said.

  “I missed you too. How do you feel today?” I asked.

  “I’m better thanks. Still totally overwhelmed and confused though. We have so much to figure out. Between this and finals, we are going to be busy!” he said, as if he was summoning the energy for it all.

  We decided to be sociable and join everyone under the stairs for lunch. We all talked about our summer plans. Most of my friends were working as counselors at summer camps. I shared that after being a swim instructor last summer, I was ready for something else. I convinced my mom to let me work at her gallery this summer. Owen said he’d be working for his uncle’s landscaping business.

  I met Owen at the side door after school and from there we could head over to my house. We’d worked on our project during class, so we decided to spend some more time on our dream research. When we got to his car he said, “I have a song I want to play for you.” His face looked serious. I wondered what he was going to play for me. He didn’t take his eyes off of me. The Goo Goo Dolls’ song, “Name” was coming out of the speakers.

  My eyes widened. “Owen…no,” was all I could say, shaking my head.

  “You know it from your dreams, right?” he asked.

  He knew the answer. He didn’t need to see me nodding my head.

  When we got back to my house, we sat down on the couch beside each other with our laptops and watched music videos of the songs in our dreams. All of the dreams went through my head as I listened to the songs. I looked at Owen. His eyes were closed. I knew he was seeing the dreams in his mind too.

  He opened his eyes and said, “I feel so connected to you, like I do to the girl in those dreams. It’s like my dreams have come true,” he said softly. He stroked my face in the most loving way and I felt his beautiful eyes burning into mine.

  “I feel exactly the same,” I said as we began to kiss each other with a quiet desperation.

  Reluctantly, we untangled from each other’s embrace, remembering that we were supposed to be meeting Amy and Michael at Emilio’s restaurant to celebrate Michael’s birthday.

  “Can I leave you down here with the research while I run upstairs to get cleaned up and change my clothes?” I asked.

  “You look great! You don’t need to change,” he s
aid. “Thanks, but I want to put on something a little nicer. I won’t be long.” I ran upstairs to get ready.

  “Thanks for including me tonight! Happy birthday Michael!” I said when we met Amy and Michael at the restaurant.

  “We’re so happy you could join us!” Michael replied.

  Once we sat down, Amy was quick to ask how we were both doing. I could see she was genuinely concerned about our well-being.

  “I think we’re doing pretty well considering…” I said.

  “Yeah I do too. Even though everything is super weird, I told Aria today that my dreams are basically coming true, which is pretty cool,” Owen said. He squeezed my knee and smiled.

  “Well yes, it sure is the strangest thing ever and just amazing that you found each other,” Amy said.

  We ordered dinner and then Michael asked if we’d uncovered anything else in our research.

  “We realized today that we’ve both heard the same songs in our dreams,” Owen said.

  “Oh wow, now it’s definitely sounding like a movie!” Michael exclaimed.

  “I guess we could check if the songs have been used for a soundtrack in a movie,” Owen said.

  “What are the songs?” Michael asked. Owen listed off the songs for him. “Those are songs I used to listen to in my 20s! You know, in the late ‘90s,” he said.

  “I remember those too!” Amy added.

  “Huh! Well that sounds like something to definitely look into!” Michael said, trying to be helpful.

  After dinner, Amy asked if we could possibly go by the gallery some time to see my art.

  “Well if you guys want, we can go now. I have the keys with me.” I patted my bag.

  “Let’s go now then!” Amy said excitedly.

  They signaled to the waiter to bring the check, and a few minutes later we were on our way. Their excitement was apparent on the car ride over to the gallery. I knew they wanted to understand the mysterious dreams and the unexplained connection. I knew that no one but Owen and I could truly understand what the paintings communicated beyond fun-filled, colorful images. But to us, the paintings were a window into our minds.