Sleeper

by MacKenzie Cadenhead

  Like I said, we’ve all got our things.

  “Stupid Pete.” Tessa sighs. “What is he, JV center? She’ll drop him for a varsity point guard in a week. See! Chemistry is totally dangerous. Why do I have to know it if I’m planning to be a gossip columnist?”

  I glare at Amber and hope Jenny’s friends know which bathroom to find her in. “You need it so you can understand the chemical reaction that causes nice guy A to dump nice girl B for social climber C, when she’s clearly going to drop him the second something better comes along.”

  “That’s not chemistry,” Tessa explains. “That’s Darwinism. But if you want to talk about that kind of chemistry, what’s up with Sergeant Slacker checking you out from the other end of the hall?”

  I look behind me. There’s Wes, staring me down as if it was high noon and he’s about to draw his pistol. A flock of freshmen girls moving en masse disrupts my sightline, and I strain to see through them. By the time they’ve moved on, Wes is gone too.

  “I don’t know,” I say to Tessa. “I was locked out, and he helped me open the door. That’s all.”

  “Hmm,” Tessa hums. “That’s probably for the best.”

  “What is?” I ask, surprised not to get a sermon on the deliciousness of Wes Nolan.

  “Well, after Dudley Dropout came to your rescue yesterday, I did a little more digging.”

  “Tessa,” I chide.

  “He’s clearly curious about you, and I wasn’t about to let my best friend get whisked away by a psycho.”

  “And?” I ask, despite myself.

  “Looks like he might actually be a psycho. I nicked his folder from Linkler’s desk during work study—don’t judge,” she says before I can voice my disapproval. “The last three schools he got kicked out of were for truancy, fighting, and, no joke, setting a fire in the equipment room.”

  “What?” I gape, though I still have no reason to be shocked. It’s not like this guy and my dream Wes are one and the same. Still, the fact that the real Wes can’t hold a candle to my subconscious’s version of him is a bummer. “Well, that sucks,” is the best I can articulate. “But there’s no need to worry about me.”

  “No?” Tessa asks. “He’s not the reason you missed chem? Good girl gone bad after just one encounter with Wes Nolan?”

  “Har har,” I say, waving her away. We start down the hallway. “No, just running late from clinic.”

  “Oh yeah! How’d it go?”

  “Pretty good,” I say, glad to think about something other than what a total bust the real Wes has turned out to be. “I mean, really good, I guess. Seems like they might have actually found a drug that will stop me from beating the crap out of myself and everyone else while I sleep.”

  Tessa stops walking. “Oh my God, Sarah. Are you serious? That is amazing!” She throws her arms around me.

  I smile. “Yeah,” I say as I disentangle myself from her embrace. “It’s good, I know. It’s just…”

  “Just what? Another side effect?” she asks, concerned.

  “I don’t know. Not exactly. I had this totally weird dream that sort of freaked me out last night, that’s all. It was scary realistic.”

  Tessa asks, “Did you scratch your arms until they bled?”

  “No.”

  “Did you run into your dresser and gash your forehead?”

  “No.”

  “Did you break your boyfriend’s nose or try to smother him with a pillow?”

  “Not this time,” I reply, grimacing.

  “Then what on earth are you freaking out about?” she demands. She takes my hands in hers. “Sarah, be happy. This is great! You deserve good news for once.”

  “You know what?” I say with determination. “You’re right. This is great.”

  Tessa links her arm through mine, and we continue down the hall to our next class. “Speaking of dreams,” she says brightly. “I had the best one last night! It was summer; I was on the beach. I was playing…something. I can’t remember what. Point is, the weather was so nice. I am totally jumping ship for the West Coast as soon we graduate. I am done with this New England bull—”

  “Volleyball,” I say quietly. “You were playing volleyball.”

  Tessa squints up at the ceiling. “Yeah, actually. I think I was. Which is so funny, because I’m not any good at it in real life. But, oh wait, I think there was this really cute guy playing against me.”

  As Tessa strains to remember the details of her dream, a chill runs through my body.

  “Tessa,” I say. “I think I had a really similar dream.”

  “That’s strange,” she replies absently. “We must’ve been talking about the beach yesterday. God, I wish it was summer. When is this stupid winter-spring hybrid going to end?”

  I follow Tessa to class and don’t say another word. Of course she’s right. It’s just a coincidence. Anything else would be impossible. Right? I try to focus on Señor Soloway’s lección de la biblioteca, but it’s no use. Between Tessa’s dream and Wes’s bodily embrace, my mental capacity is totally shot.

  Chapter Seven

  “When are they going to make these wireless?” I ask as Ralphie hooks me up to the EEG machine. “It’d make tromping around the room when I’m asleep much less hazardous.”

  “Hey there,” he scolds. “That’s past. You’re a Dexid girl now. No more sleepwalking.”

  “Sleep fighting, sleep screaming, sleep raging,” I interject.

  Ralphie ignores my embellishments and whistles a cheery tune. Nothing’s going to get him down—or me if he has anything to say about it. In truth, I’m feeling a little giddy. Though I’m definitely not looking for a recurrence of my Burner nightmare, I wouldn’t mind running into Wes again. The dream version, of course.

  An orderly enters the room with my meds and a glass of water. He isn’t exceptionally tall, but the way he carries himself—straight back, dropped shoulders, raised chin—catches my eye. His uniform of white jeans and matching polo accentuates his muscular body. The door swings shut behind him, and the sweet, familiar scent of clove wafts in. As he hands me my pill in a little paper cup, he brushes his floppy dark hair away from his eyes and smiles.

  “Josh?” I say, recognizing the wearer of that long-forgotten cologne.

  “Hey, Sarah,” he replies shyly. He glances quickly at Ralphie, who’s frowning at us.

  “You two know each other?” Ralphie asks, folding his arms. I can already tell that the truth is the wrong answer.

  “Sarah was a freshman when I was a senior,” Josh says honestly. I wait to see how he plans to complete the rundown of our brief yet memorable past, but he says nothing more.

  “What’d I tell you, Josh? You’re supposed to flag the file if you know the patient off grounds,” Ralphie scolds. “We’ll switch you with Barry tonight, but if you can’t follow protocol…”

  “No, no. I can,” Josh promises. “Come on, Ralph. You know I need this job. Mom’ll kill me if I lose another one. I didn’t think.”

  “You never do.” Ralphie sighs. He looks simultaneously tense and defeated. “Rules are rules, and it doesn’t just reflect badly on you if you don’t follow them. I did this as a favor to your mother, but I can’t have my job—”

  “We really didn’t know each other that well,” I lie. “Josh probably didn’t even realize who I was until he saw me in here.”

  Josh nods vigorously. “I didn’t,” he says. “I mean I knew her vaguely as a lax scrub back in the day, but really only by sight. That’s why her name didn’t mean anything to me.”

  Though I’m lying to get Ralphie out of whatever bind Josh’s blunder is clearly about to land him in, I’m not sure Josh needs to be quite so dismissive. It’s true we didn’t spend a lot of time together, but the one night my freshman year that we did hang out resulted in my first kiss. Though the soccer stud was back with
his on-again, off-again girlfriend by the following weekend (and, in more recent history, has become one of Gigi’s occasional booty calls), I’ve always held that kiss as a good memory.

  Ralphie eyes the two of us skeptically. Finally, he gestures to Josh and says, “Give her the Dexid, then go switch with Barry. And don’t let this happen again.” He turns to me and forces a smile. “Now let’s have another good night, shall we, Miss Reyes?”

  I beam back at him, probably overdoing my cheeriness, but I’m relieved that no one’s getting into trouble on my account. “Yes, sir!”

  As Josh hands me the little white cup with the Dexid, he mouths, “Thank you,” and flashes a toothy white smile. My irritation with him vanishes. What is it about some guys that always makes you gooey? I tip my head.

  I swallow the Dexid and lie down on the cot.

  Ralphie watches us from the doorway. He holds the door open for Josh and shoots him a warning glance as the orderly hurries past, his cocksure posture replaced with stooped shoulders and a hanging head. When he’s out of sight, Ralphie says, “My sister’s kid. He’s had a rough time of it lately, but still. Total pain in the butt. He won’t be in here again though. Sorry about that.”

  “It’s okay,” I say, yawning. I’m suddenly too exhausted to engage any further in Ralphie’s family drama.

  He smiles at me with genuine warmth. “Sweet dreams,” he says and closes the door behind him.

  Within seconds, I’m out.

  • • •

  Flip. Flap. Flip. Flap.

  I stand beneath the departure board, watching the flap panels flip over, revealing train destinations and time changes. I catch a flicker of movement against the uniform shuffle of the commuters.

  Wes?

  I turn, expectant, giddy with the sensation of butterflies doing acrobatics in my stomach. But it isn’t my dream guy who’s fallen out of line.

  A short, pasty, ginger-haired guy in ankle-length khakis and a blue button-down sways among the commuters. Just like Mr. Houston the night before, it isn’t a huge movement, and he never fully breaks rank, but he stands out. One of these kids is not like the others and all that.

  But the closer I look, I realize I actually know him too. It’s Grady Butchowski, genius little brother of Jamie’s dumb jock of a best friend, the proudly self-nicknamed Meat. But while Mr. Houston’s appearance last night made some sense—I’d just seen him at the clinic—I can’t for the life of me think why Grady would be running around my subconscious.

  So I follow him.

  I follow Grady to track 32 and watch him stumble onto the third car of an idling passenger train. Though I’m curious to see where he’s going, I don’t jump on the train just yet. One final look for Wes.

  The train revs its engine, and the trail of commuters wandering toward it begins to thin. I feel a tickle at the back of my mind.

  I don’t want to go without him.

  I begin to sag into a full-body pout when the sound of quick footsteps straightens my spine. I turn just as a figure comes upon me. As he breezes by, Wes grabs my hand.

  “Hey,” he says and pulls me down the ramp.

  I lace my fingers through his, and he tightens his grip. He glances back at me and smiles sweetly, shyly even. I squeeze his hand. He begins to lead me to the nearest car, but I pull back and say, “No, third.”

  He’s surprised by my command, but his shrugging grin tells me it’s not in a bad way. We hop onto the train, and the doors shut behind us. I lean against the glass partition that separates the vestibule from the rows of commuter seats. Wes’s unblinking eyes smile at mine as he continues to hold my hand.

  “Why the third car?” he asks.

  “I recognized one of them.” I point to Grady, who pitches to one side in his seat. “His name’s Grady. Sophomore. Crazy smart. He’s moving differently from everyone else, just like the man last night. Are they the only two you’ve ever seen do something like that?”

  Before Wes can answer, Grady gets to his feet and stumbles forward. The sliding doors opposite him open, and he leans over the edge of empty blackness. Without a word between us, Wes and I flank him on either side. Standing on the precipice of that same black hole that I had fallen into the night before, my heart thumps. I look across at Wes, whose own accelerated pulse twitches in the hollow of his cheek. He grins. If Wes is remotely afraid, I can’t sense it.

  Suddenly…

  A traveling carnival fills the doorframe.

  Grady leans forward.

  Wes and I do too.

  We all take a step.

  The cool air flutters against my face as I lean out of the train car. Though my eyes see cotton candy and Skee-Ball, I can hear only the wind and the chug of the train’s engine. My right foot travels forward along with Grady’s, leaving the cold steel of the train behind in search of solid, natural ground. The moment I find it…

  FWAM!

  The carnival world takes over. Organ music rings out through tinny speakers. The smell of freshly popped, butter-rich popcorn clogs my nostrils. Multicolored string lights that frame every game booth and concession stand flash in 2/4 time. My mouth waters in anticipation of the sticky, sugary awesomeness of the pink cotton candy twisting on itself just a few feet away.

  I am fully inside the oversaturated carnival dream that appeared in the train door.

  “Whoa.”

  I spin around to see where I’ve come from, but nothing is there. No train. No tracks. I glance over at Wes, and he seems as overstimulated as I am. He looks at me with those mischievous, sparkling eyes, and my heart rate manages to speed up even more. It’s not just that he is beautiful in the glow of the garish carnival light. It’s that he’s with me; he’s like me. It doesn’t matter that he’s a part of my subconscious, because I feel his presence fully. For once, I am not the only one. There is no difference between imagined and real. In this moment, I am finally not alone.

  The only thing standing between us is Grady.

  As I start toward my singular companion, past the teetering red-headed obstacle in my way, Grady loses his footing and angles sideways. Instinctively, I reach out to catch him.

  And that’s when things go really crazy.

  Chapter Eight

  Whoosh.

  My senses stop.

  Silence.

  Dry mouth.

  Blindness.

  The odorlessness of oxygen.

  Then…

  Pop.

  All is quiet and dark. But it isn’t the silent black void from my dreams. The carnival sounds have been replaced by the white noise of a fan on low. My eyes adjust to the darkness, and I take in the contents of the room I’m suddenly in.

  I am seated at a desk. It’s cluttered with textbooks and graph paper. There’s a laptop and an unmarked orange prescription bottle. Just beyond the desk hangs a poster of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue, and there’s a standing lamp that doubles as a clothes horse, covered in button-down shirts and woolly sweaters. I turn my head to continue my survey of the room, but it’s an effort, and to my surprise, after I look over my right shoulder, I have to take a break. But while my muscles are slow to respond, my eyes have free rein, and they dart around their field of vision, taking anything and everything in at warp speed. There’s a bed just beside me, a closet next to that. Books are piled high on the floor. A half moon shines through the window.

  I push the chair backward to stand, but it’s hard to control my legs. So I turn my face back to center instead and look down at the desk. That’s when I see my hands.

  My hands, but not mine.

  I stare, transfixed, at the impossibility of what’s before me.

  My hands are literally not mine.

  In my lap are two chunky palms with meaty fingers and fat knuckles. There’s a writer’s bump on the right ring finger, which wouldn’t be
the weirdest thing, except I’m left-handed. And then there’s the dizzying fact that they’re pasty white.

  My hands, but not mine.

  I want to hide them, shove them under my legs, and count to ten so that when I pull them back, hey presto, it’ll be me again. But I don’t, because it’s also really…interesting. I focus my energy on the right pointer finger and wiggle it up and down. I can feel the tension against the palm—my palm?—as the ball of the digit lifts and lowers in its socket. I tilt my head forward to get a better look. But as my face closes in on the darkened computer screen, I freeze. My eyes widen as I catch sight of the impossible reflection that greets me.

  Screw the hands. The face I’m staring at isn’t mine.

  Though all my senses are intact and my very own insane thoughts are furious and frantic in my head, I most certainly am not the person looking back from the computer screen. I lift one of the hands to the face I’m wearing. I feel its touch against my own skin, though neither are mine.

  They belong to Grady.

  Slowly, laboriously, I explore the rest of my host’s visage. I am simultaneously a sculptor and his clay as I poke, squeeze, and mold this second skin. I trace the rim of Grady’s glasses and marvel at the shift between sharp lines and blurred as I raise the lenses up and down. I pinch the skin above his cheekbone as hard as I can and can’t believe how much it hurts. Running my tongue under his lips, I taste the furriness of unbrushed teeth. I open his mouth wide and close it again. I blink and blink and blink, but every time, it’s Grady in my reflection.

  This is the weirdest dream I’ve ever had. I giggle suddenly at the absurdity of it and hear an unfamiliar guffaw instead. I watch as my shock registers on his face. I am fascinated and frightened, anxious and awestruck. I lift my hand to his short, greasy hair and watch as it slips through my fingers with a speed and smoothness I am unaccustomed to with my own thick locks.

  And then there’s the buzz. Every movement I make in his body takes effort and tingles. His skin hums, his muscles crackle. It’s like static electricity emanates from the surface of his every pore. It reminds me of being a kid and rubbing a balloon on my head until my hair stood on end and my scalp fizzed. And yet, I no longer feel like I’m in a dream. This feels real-real, like I’m really inside Grady’s room and actually inside Grady.