by Lucy Keating
Max smirks and shields his eyes with his hand as he looks at me. “So, okay, I remember.”
“Remember what, exactly?” I ask, playing dumb.
“I remember the dreams, Alice!” he says, exasperated. But he’s smiling, like he can’t help it. “Happy?”
I am happy. Deliriously so. But I can’t let him see that yet. “Can you elaborate please, Mr. Wolfe?” I ask, doing my best Levy impression.
“Fine.” Max pulls his sweater off and leans back, stuffing it behind his head so he can stretch out on the dock. I catch just the glimpse of his stomach and forget what we are talking about for a moment, before he continues. “I remembered you the second I saw you. You started popping up in my dreams when I was little. You looked different back then. You had that funny bowl cut and Jerry was always following you around.” The corner of his mouth twitches, which causes mine to break into a full-on smile.
“Blame the hair on a single dad,” I reply fondly. “He couldn’t figure out how to braid it, so he just chopped it all off.”
“I didn’t care about the hair,” Max says. His eyes are closed. “I just thought you were the coolest. I still do.”
I let his words sink in, my face feeling warm. Then I lie down next to him, propping my head on my bag. “I thought you were okay,” I say. “Truthfully, I was just using you to get close to Horatio.”
“May he rest in peace,” Max replies. “He was the best box turtle this side of the Mason-Dixon line.”
We lie there in silence for a little while, feeling the sun on our faces. If this were a dream, I’d flip over on my stomach and twirl pieces of his thick brown hair around my fingers. Or flick his earlobes playfully. When we dream, we are always connected. But this is not a dream. I wonder if he misses it the way I do. A time when there wasn’t this distance between us.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch a few pieces of trash float down the river: a newspaper and then, more peculiarly, an athletic sock, followed by a lime-green bra. But what comes next is really odd—a rubber ducky. I am about to point it out to Max, but when I glance back, it’s so far away, it looks more like a juice box or can of soda.
Instead, I tell him about the birthday cards from CDD, the peacocks, and Dr. Petermann’s cycling outfit. I’m rambling, I know, but I can’t stop. Being with him, knowing he’s just lying here listening to me and only me—it’s invigorating. I could talk forever. But there are more important things to discuss … like why any of this is happening at all. “Ever heard of it?” I ask hopefully. “The Center for Dream Discovery?”
Max doesn’t say anything, so I glance over to find him just staring at me, his mouth slightly agape.
“Are you being serious?” he asks.
“About which part?” I ask, genuinely confused. “The peacocks?”
“You went to CDD, too.” He says it like he’s getting used to the notion. Like he can’t even believe it.
“That’s what I just said …” I start to say. “Wait, too?”
Max looks back up at the sky and shakes his head. “This just keeps getting weirder and weirder.”
“You went to CDD, too!” I nearly shriek. This is even better than I was hoping for. If Max and I dream about each other, and we both went to the same place to have our dreams monitored as kids, CDD must hold the answers to our questions.
“I did,” Max affirms. “I had pretty bad nightmares when I was a kid, and my mom heard about the CDD from my pediatrician. But I didn’t save the birthday cards. Unlike some people I know …” He opens one eye and smirks.
“My grandma saved them!” I reach out to give him a shove, but Max catches my hand before it is actually able to make contact with his shoulder and holds it for a moment. I swallow, and my heart starts to flutter at the feeling of my hand in his, somehow warm and cool at the same time, before he gently places it back along the dock.
“How’d you know I was going to do that?” I ask.
“Come on, give me some credit,” Max says. “You always hit me when I tease you. Over the years a guy learns to protect himself.” I wish there was a casual way to dunk my entire head in the river to make me stop blushing.
We hear some noise behind us and see that a few members of the crew team have already begun to arrive for afternoon practice.
“That means I’m already late for soccer.” Max winces, hopping up. “I better go.”
“Wait,” I say. “Can we meet back here afterward? I was thinking you could come with me to CDD.”
“But I thought you already went?” Max looks confused as he loops his backpack over his shoulder.
“I did, and I’m going back,” I say, standing up and swatting some dried leaves off my butt. “Tonight.”
“I thought you said Petermann wouldn’t see you?” Max asks, his tone a warning.
“I did say that …” I hesitate, studying a leaf as I break it into tiny pieces. “He doesn’t exactly know I’m going to be there.”
Max tilts his head to one side. “What did you do, Alice?”
“Why do you assume I did something?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “You are terrible at taking no for an answer. How exactly do you plan to get in?”
“I may have stolen a key card?” I raise my hands on either side of my shoulders like, whoops.
Max just sighs.
“Come on,” I plead. “Don’t make me go alone. All of this affects you, too.”
Max turns and starts walking away toward practice. “I’ll think about it,” he calls back.
“Fine,” I call after him. “But just remember, if you don’t come with me, who else is going to keep me out of trouble?”
Max turns and walks backward on his heels. “Maybe you should consider not getting into trouble in the first place.” He smiles. He looks like a heartthrob in an eighties high school movie.
“Why would I consider that?” I yell after him. But he’s already gone, around the side of the boathouse, and I am left grinning, awake and happy for the first time in weeks.
9
We’re Looking for Us
“MY LIFE IS basically lying in a pile in the corner with a pair of dirty socks on top,” Sophie says when she answers the phone.
“Do you ever just say hello?” I ask.
“Rarely,” she replies. “Anyway, I failed my Spanish test and Zeke Davis is apparently dating Marla Martinelli. I see no other option but to move to Iceland. Or Greenland. Wait—which one is actually green? And why are you whispering?”
“Because,” I hiss, holding my phone between my chin and shoulder as I clip my bike lock on. “I am sneaking into CDD tonight, potentially by myself, so if I get arrested or murdered, you will need to tell my dad what happened.”
“You are really hard-up for friends, huh?”
“There’s nobody I’ve quite reached the breaking-and-entering level with,” I say. Well, I bet Oliver would be up for it, but we’re really starting to become friends now. No need to ruin it by convincing him I’m insane.
“Alice, I have been your best friend for a very long time, so I know the chances of you listening to me right now are basically a negative percentage, but are you sure you want to do this?”
“I have to, Soph. Petermann is hiding something, and I’ve got to figure out what. Especially now that I know Max remembers, too.” I can just make out the CDD building squatting in the distance, all dark except for blinking red alarm lights along its circular perimeter. It looks like an alien spacecraft, if the aliens had been turn-of-the-century architects. Or a giant statue of R2D2, the robot from Star Wars. I zip up my hoodie a little tighter.
“I still can’t believe he’s not coming with you,” Sophie says. “Also that he’s … you know. Real. Still pretty weirded out by that fact, if that’s okay.”
“He didn’t say he wasn’t coming,” I reply defensively. “He just didn’t say he was. Anyway, he’s not totally like the guy in my dreams. Although lately the guy in my dreams isn’t totally like the guy in my
dreams either …” I think about Max’s color-changing eyes. His face separated from mine by the glass of an iPad.
“You’re giving me a headache,” Sophie says. “Sometimes when I get off the phone with you, I realize I’ve lost all sense of reality.”
“Try being me,” I tell her. I arrive at the front double doors of CDD and pull out Lillian’s ID, swiping it through a box to the right of the door handle. This is too easy. I feel like a Bond girl.
Except nothing happens.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say.
“What’s happening?” Sophie asks.
“I stole an ID from the girl at the front desk when I was here on Monday, but it isn’t scanning. She must have deactivated it already.” I continue running the ID over and over again. Nothing nothing nothing.
“Try flipping it over,” another voice suggests, and I turn to see Max standing behind me. “You’re scanning the wrong side.”
“Call you later, Soph,” I say, and hang up.
“Tell me what we’re looking for exactly?” Max asks. We’ve ascended the double staircase behind the front desk and are searching the research office, having risked turning one desk lamp on. I’m rifling through some drawers in the hopes of discovering a Post-it with a computer login, and Max is sorting through a giant wall of green metal filing cabinets.
“Us,” I say. “We are looking for us.”
“But we’re right here,” Max says with a quizzical frown, and I chuckle. He’s so literal. We are right here. And he showed up tonight. And it all feels sort of surreal.
“You know what I mean,” I say. “Our files. Names, dates we attended CDD, that sort of thing.”
Max opens a cabinet and a bunch of papers go flying to the ground. “Not the most organized institution,” he observes critically, picking up the papers and giving them a quick once-over before filing them again.
“Which makes me all the more certain Petermann was lying before about the computer updates. Why invest in something like that when you can’t be bothered to file anything in the first place?” I look to Max for his response and notice he is doing more shuffling of papers than he is reading.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Refiling,” Max says, frowning as he pulls files out and rearranges them on top of the cabinet. “These folders are all messed up. I can’t put the F back in its proper place if the E and G aren’t even where they are supposed to be.”
“Yes you can,” I warn. “And you have to, or Petermann will know we were here.”
Max looks over at me and sighs. “Fine,” he says, shoving the files back in the drawer sheepishly and opening another. Papers come flying out again, but strangely this time they don’t fall right away. They actually seem to fly up toward the ceiling, like doves that have just been let loose from a cage, before eventually floating to the ground.
Max nearly jumps. “Did you just see that?” he asks.
“Um, yes …” I manage, my throat a little dry. Max glances warily at the cabinets, then opens another drawer and it happens again. Like an invisible person is tossing the paper out from inside the cabinet. I watch Max peer inside and know he must be thinking the same thing. He tries a third door, but this time, nothing happens. No whirlwind of falling sheets. Just another poorly organized drawer.
“I don’t get it,” Max says.
I shiver a little. “Me either.”
“No, Alice,” Max says again, as though I haven’t understood him. “I don’t get it. Papers just flew upward toward the ceiling, and I want to know why.”
I shrug. “This place is nuts.”
But Max just stands there, his look of disbelief forming into an incredulous grin.
“What?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I don’t think it’s this place, I think it’s you,” he says.
“Me? No way.” I laugh, walking over to the scattered papers.
Max thinks for a second. “Then maybe it’s us.” Our eyes meet, and we hold each other’s gaze for a moment. His hair has been blown a little out of place from the file cabinet gust, all fluffy like a baby chick, and I can’t help but think that even imperfect looks perfect on him. I reach out and run my hands through the front piece, smoothing it down against his head, suddenly very aware of the way Max is breathing, his chest heaving in and out. But then I think about Celeste’s hair, falling over his face as she kissed him on the bench at school, and I stop myself.
“This could take a while,” I say, clearing my throat and kneeling down on the paper-covered floor. “Why don’t you keep looking in some of the other rooms while I try and get this organized?”
“Are you sure?” Max asks, kneeling next to me to begin gathering documents of his own. We accidentally grab the same stack, and when I look up at him, he’s so close I can smell him. I want to make a pillow out of his sweater.
“I’m sure,” I say.
Max replies with a nod, before getting up and strolling into the next room. I’m creating piles by last name when I hear him whisper-shout my name from the next room. I find him standing in the circular space below the old observatory dome. The opening for the telescope has been permanently removed and replaced with glass, so you can see the stars above.
“Wow,” I say as the sky sparkles down on us. “This is just like—”
“The Met,” Max finishes my sentence. We look at each other. I can almost hear the symphony music in the background, and suddenly I’m craving Oreos. “You looked good that night,” Max says slowly, subtle emphasis on the good, and even though his words send me into a state of sheer bliss, I still roll my eyes.
“You’ve always sucked at taking a compliment,” he observes, trying not to smile.
“I know,” is all I can think to say, because he’s right.
Max puts his hands in his pockets. “I went there once. To the Met. We took a train down from Boston as a family. I dared my sister to touch a Rothko and she actually did it.” He laughs. “Needless to say, it was a short trip to the museum.”
Sister? I open my mouth to ask—she’s never been in any of our dreams—but Dr. Petermann’s voice rings out instead of mine, and the overhead lights flick on.
“What is this?” Petermann asks. He’s standing in the doorway in shockingly small white athletic shorts with a canvas duffel bag slung over one shoulder and a sweatband in his hair.
“Dr. Petermann.” I falter. “What are you doing here?”
“I have squash doubles on Wednesday nights, and saw the light on as I was heading home,” he says. “And now I’m calling security.” Miraculously, he manages to pull a cell phone out of his tiny shorts.
“Go ahead,” I say. “But it will be a complete waste of your time. I’ll just keep coming back.” I can feel my nerves start to stand on end and a flush rise to my cheeks. He can’t take this away from me. Not when we are so close.
“I don’t appreciate your tone, Alice,” Petermann says.
“And I don’t care.” I’m trying to control the level of my voice, but it’s not going well. This always happens when I feel cornered. All my manners go right out the window. “I’m not giving up. If I have to set up camp outside the building or burn this whole operation to the ground.” I don’t mean it, of course. I just get carried away sometimes, the words come out before I have a chance to think about what they mean.
“Hang on,” Max jumps in. “Nobody is burning anything.”
“Speak for yourself,” I tell him.
Max ignores me. “Dr. Petermann, please excuse Alice. She gets fired up sometimes. My name is Max Wolfe.” He walks over to Petermann and extends a hand, which Petermann shakes reluctantly. “I’m not sure if you’d remember, but I was a patient at CDD about ten years ago, at the same time as Alice. I promise we aren’t looking to complicate things. We’re just looking for answers, about what happened to us, and why we dream the way we do—of each other.” I don’t know how he does it. So self-assured and charming. It’s impossible to say no to h
im.
Nevertheless, Petermann looks stunned. “You really dream about each other?” The smoothest person on Earth couldn’t soften the news that two of his former patients know each other from their subconscious. He slowly returns the phone to his pocket, glances from one of us to the other, and his mind seems to go elsewhere. “It was a very long time ago,” he says, lost in thought. “But I might have an idea. Come … have a seat.”
As we follow Petermann to his office, I mutter in Max’s ear. “Of course he listens to you.”
10
For Normal People
“GROUP ATHLETICS ARE a great way to meet people,” Petermann explains when I ask about the trophies.
There’s a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf spanning an entire wall of his office, filled with equal parts books and awards, like tiny gold figurines of people about to hit a tennis ball or dive into a nonexistent swimming pool. “As you can imagine, it takes quite a bit of funding to keep an operation like this afloat. Connections are good for business.” He gives his signature smile, and I almost expect one of his teeth to sparkle like a toothpaste ad. Ding!
Behind Petermann’s desk hangs a giant photograph of an enlarged brain scan. He sits directly in front of it and kicks up his white sneakers. He opens his mouth to speak, but the words come out in Italian.
“Idiota!”
“Did you just call me an idiot?” I ask.
Petermann shakes his head. “Sergio.” He points to a large birdcage in the back corner of the room by the doorway, where two giant blue parrots sit side by side, staring at us intently.
“And the one on the left is Brunilda. Aren’t they gorgeous?” Petermann asks. “They only speak Italian, from the last person they lived with, an orthodontist in the North End. I’m trying to learn, but you know how it goes, busy-busy.” He sighs dramatically. We don’t really know how it goes, though. I’ve never seen any other patients in the building.
“Quest’uomo non è uno scienziato. Lui è un pagliaccio!” one of the birds cries, and what little Italian I learned during a summer my dad and I spent in Rome at a neuroscience conference tells me that it just called Petermann a clown.