by Lucy Keating
“Thanks,” I say. “By the way, this is for you.” I set the tiny ecosystem down on her desk and don’t look back as I dash up the stairs, where Petermann is waiting patiently in his office and Max’s leg is jiggling.
“Sorry I’m late! I had a precarious terrarium situation, don’t ask,” I announce, looking at Dr. Petermann. I’m afraid to look at Max after our elevator run-in. I’m not fuming anymore, but I’m still angry. And even though last night was just a dream, I still can’t help but feel hurt by the way he ran from me.
“It’s no trouble, Alice,” Dr. Petermann says, and I’m surprised to see he’s wearing the same heart-shaped glasses Dean Hammer was wearing in my dream.
“Alice?” Petermann says.
I blink.
“Are you all right?”
I blink again, and his glasses look completely normal. “I think so …” Then I look over at Max and notice him smirking as he turns a silver skull paperweight over in his hands.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says, standing up straighter, like he’s been caught, his face going serious again.
“No, tell us,” I say, folding my arms across my chest. “I’m dying to know what’s so funny.”
Max sighs. “You’re just exactly the same.” He shrugs. “Generally forgetful, often late, blowing into the room with your hair all over the place.” He flaps his hands around his head with a goofy smile but then clears his throat and goes serious when he notices the look on my face.
I am shooting daggers at him with my eyes, but I can’t help but notice he seems to be staring at my hair like he wants to reach out and touch it. “Thank you for that observation,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady.
Max gives me a look. “You’re the one who asked for it,” he says. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” We hold each other’s gaze for a minute.
Petermann looks like he couldn’t care less. “I was just telling Max more about the science of dreams, and why we study them. Do you have any idea?”
I think for a moment, about the parrots and the Jenga blocks, how happy I was in that dream with Max even though my rational mind should have known we weren’t together anymore. “I guess because they’re often so weird and disjointed, and they seem to come out of nowhere?” I reply.
Petermann claps his hands together. “Bravo, Alice. That’s very close. Most people just say the first part. But it’s the latter that’s the real fascination. Recorded history tells us that from the very beginning, dreams have been just about the most universally fascinating subject on earth. Poets, philosophers, religious figures, and, of course, scientists have grappled with what dreams mean and why they exist.” Petermann leans back in his chair, looking from me to Max.
“In the most basic terms, we define our dreams as a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. In more specific analysis, Freud asserted that dreams were where we revealed our deepest fears and desires.”
I look over at Max with an expression that says, See? I am your deepest desire.
“Ancient Greeks, for example, believed the dreams of a sick person would communicate what ailed them. But again, to me the real question is, why the obsession in the first place? Why the desire to prove what it all means?”
He pauses as though he is waiting for us to answer, but when I start to speak, he just talks over me. Petermann is in his element. “Turns out, it’s not the content that gets under our skin, so much as the word involuntary in the definition. We don’t like that dreams just happen to us. We don’t accept or want to accept things beyond our control … especially when they come out of our own minds.”
Max is staring at Petermann intently, and I realize that’s the big difference between us. Max is that person. Max is here because he doesn’t like the loss of control, the ambiguity, the disruption of his daily life. I don’t mind what happens in my dreams. I don’t even mind that my dreams are now part of my reality. But Max can’t stand it.
Petermann gets up quickly. “So there you have it! That’s why we’re all here, and today we will begin to try and fix it. Follow me please.” He walks out his office door without looking back.
Max and I reach the door at the same time. We gaze at each other coolly before he steps aside, making an after you kind of motion. I respond by shaking my head and mimicking his motion, extending my hand to gesture toward the door. But as I do, my iPhone goes flying, clattering to the floor with a sound that echoes through the halls.
“You should really get a case for that,” Max says from above as I stoop down to pick it up.
I stand back up, clutching the phone in my fist. I know he’s not teasing; he’s serious. But I really don’t need him butting into my life. “Go,” I say.
“Fine,” Max announces, following Petermann down the black-and-white-tiled corridor.
The walls are lined with paintings. I peer at a picture of a clock that looks like it’s melting into a desert landscape, and then a larger painting of an eyeball with a cloudy blue sky where the iris should be, followed by a portrait of man wearing a large black bowling hat, but his face is obscured by a big green apple. The objects in the paintings are clear and distinctive, but put together, nothing about them seems to add up.
“Why paint someone’s portrait if you are just going to cover their face with a piece of fruit?” I say out loud.
“They’re surrealist,” Max says from up ahead.
“I knew that,” I shoot back. Sort of.
“Why the fascination with surrealism, Dr. Petermann?” Max calls out.
At this, Petermann turns on his heels to face us, arms outstretched. “Because in our dreams, we are all surrealist painters, creating narratives and pictures that are often as beautiful as they are nonsensical.”
Petermann motions us inside a room, where we find Nanao looking bored, holding a clipboard. To her left is a machine that looks like a giant glossy white donut, with a center the size of a manhole.
All I can think is, Nope.
“Will I be expected to get in there?” I ask, my body suddenly frozen where it’s standing.
“I know it’s hardly a hammock on a tropical shoreline, but I need to get a standard read of your brain activity before we begin putting you to sleep and seeing how it changes when you dream,” Petermann explains.
In response I just start nodding quickly, over and over again, unable to form any words.
“Alice is a little claustrophobic,” I hear Max clarify, and when I glance his way, I find him smiling at me. It’s infuriating.
“Is my anxiety humorous to you?” I ask, and feel my face growing hot.
“No,” Max says, in a tone that sounds like he’s giving up. “But you have a small piece of cactus in your hair.”
Horrified, my hand shoots up to my waves, where I find a stowaway from Terrarium Club. I am always getting things stuck in this rat’s nest. “Then maybe you should stop looking at me,” I mumble, and attempt to stealthily pull the leaf out. Max is still sort of smiling, though it looks like he’s fighting it.
“Did you get it?” he asks.
“Shut up,” I say.
“I’ll go first,” Max announces to everyone.
As we watch Max’s long frame retreat into the depths of the evil donut monster from behind a glass partition, Petermann explains to us—over a speaker, so Max can hear, too—exactly what the machine does. A functional MRI maps the blood flow to the brain to show what parts are the most active. In dream mapping they use an fMRI in combination with an EEG. The EEG monitors the electrical activity in the brain, which determines when the subject is in early REM cycle and likely to have the most image-filled dreams. The fMRI then maps what parts light up in the brain, to help us understand how the brain dreams. Then the person is awakened to describe what they saw.
When Max is finished, I pull my phone out of my pocket in a dramatic fashion. “Oh, would you look at that,” I say loudly. “Six
p.m.? We should probably wrap it up soon, right, Dr. Petermann? It’s okay, I can come back another time.”
“You are going to be fine, Alice.” Petermann puts a hand on my shoulder. We’ll be here the whole time, just behind the glass. And you just tell us when you need to come out.”
“Okay,” I say quietly, looking at the machine from five feet away. “I’m ready to come out.”
Petermann gives me a look. “First you have to go in.”
I told myself it would be better once I was lying in the machine, that it would be over and done with before I know it, but it doesn’t feel any better at all. I understand I’m not enclosed, that there’s a hole where my feet are, that I could, theoretically, scootch my butt out of this death trap if the power went off or everyone in the room was suddenly rendered unconscious by a freak accident or alien invasion. But staring up at the roof of the fMRI just makes it feel like it’s closing in on me … which it sort of is.
“Just lie perfectly still, Alice.” Petermann’s voice comes on over the intercom.
“I am,” I say.
“Your left foot is jiggling like there’s a mouse up your pant leg,” I hear Max observe.
“Can you make him leave, please, Dr. Petermann?” I ask.
“This isn’t going to work,” I hear Petermann whisper. “She’s too frightened.”
Despite my suspicion that all the blood had drained from my face long ago, my cheeks still manage to burn. I feel so embarrassed. This test is part of the research I insisted we do, and I can’t even go through with it. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to get the hell out of this thing anyway. My breath is starting to come too quickly and my lungs feel like they are the size of sandwich bags. Am I feeling light-headed, or is that just my imagination?
“Alice?” Max’s voice is like the eye of the storm. The one calm place right in the center of the hurricane, breaking through all the noise of my mind. “Are you still with us?”
“Yeah,” I manage. My voice comes out so quiet it scares me even more.
“What’s the one place in the world you would like to go but have never been, in a dream or otherwise?” Max asks.
I take a shallow breath and focus. Easy question. I can do this. “Pig Beach,” I say.
I hear a chuckle from Petermann. “Did I hear that correctly?”
Max explains, “Pig Beach is an island in the Bahamas, filled with clear blue ocean and palm trees, but inhabited entirely by giant, fuzzy, friendly … pigs. It’s Alice’s favorite place in the world, but she’s never been. She talks about it all the time.”
He’s right. Most people fantasize about a vacation in a tropical destination, and so do I. It’s just that my tropical island also has a bunch of fat jolly pigs on it. And it really exists! But my dad refuses to take me, dismissing it as an obvious tourist trap, not to mention unquestionably filthy.
“Legend has it the pigs were dropped off on the island by a group of sailors who intended to come back and cook them, but never made it,” Max says soothingly. “Or that they survived a shipwreck and somehow swam to shore. Either way, they survived something and now have a happy ending, fed by tourists and locals.”
My body relaxes as I listen to the lull of Max’s voice describe my happy place.
“How remarkable,” Petermann says. “How did you know all this?”
“She told me once in a dream … we were in Thailand … and Alice turned to me and just said, ‘I wish there were pigs here.’” Max lets out a low laugh, like he can’t help himself. I smile.
“Looks like we’ve got all we need,” Petermann says over the speaker. “You can come out now, Alice. Next session we will start putting you guys to sleep.”
I want to thank Max for stepping in to calm me down, but he leaves while Nanao is still unhooking me from all the wires. When I come back down the stairs to the main hall of CDD, I expect to find my terrarium in the trash, or right where I left it. Instead, Lillian has made a special place for it on the bookshelf behind her desk, nestled in among some tiny cacti pots and a photo of a handsome guy with a man-bun.
Lillian doesn’t say thank you for the terrarium, but she does say, “Your boyfriend left his phone here.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” I turn around.
“I couldn’t honestly care less what dysfunctional scenario the two of you are carrying out.” Lillian looks back down at her paperwork. “But I imagine he’ll need it.” She hands the phone out, still not looking at me.
“I don’t even know where he lives,” I whine.
“You go to the same high school,” Lillian says. “I’m sure you can figure it out.”
15
Attack of the Pekingese
“ALICE IS ONE of the most forgetful people I have ever met,” I say out loud to nobody. My Max impression sounds more Neanderthal than teenage boy (if there’s a difference). “Who’s forgetful now, Max?” But when I look down at his phone in my hand, I see that unlike mine, his has a case. And it looks like the same material that the Batmobile is made out of. Indestructible. “How responsible,” I observe.
It’s eight p.m. and I’m standing on the stoop of Max’s house. It’s a lot like mine, four stories high with a black doorway and shutters (Doesn’t anyone have any creativity around here? What I would give to see just one door painted blue …), but Max’s house has a curved façade, as though the building ate too much for dinner. I half expect the front door to come popping off like a button from the strain.
Without warning, Max’s front door opens, and it startles me. I haven’t even pressed the doorbell yet.
“Alice, what are you doing here?” Max asks, furrowing his brows together while he stands a few steps above me. He has on a charcoal-gray collared shirt, untucked, and green khakis. It must be nice to wake up in the morning and just look great in whatever you put on.
“How did you know I was here?” I ask, ignoring his less-than-welcoming welcome. Dream Max loves surprises, but Real Max probably hates them.
“I heard voices,” he replies, and looks around while I cringe. “Or … voice.”
“How come nobody ever paints their door blue?” I ask, nodding behind me to the other houses on the street. But Max has already started walking inside, back down the hallway.
“Historic preservation,” he calls out. “It’s basically illegal to change the exterior of your house at all.” Then he turns back and gives me a look like I’m a puppy who needs training. “Come on,” he says with a small motion, and I follow.
Soon I’m seated on a stool in Max’s gorgeously renovated kitchen, while he rummages in a drawer for something. The exterior of the house may look like any other on the hill, but the interior is all modern fixtures and clean design. Nothing is out of place. Not the white throw on the cream-colored couch, not the architecture books on the coffee table, not even the spice drawer I just pulled open. Who has a clean spice drawer? I think, before shutting it. In our house, you’re lucky if your cinnamon pancakes don’t accidentally taste like cumin.
Max reveals a wine opener and pulls a bottle of something white and crisp out of the fridge. The cork gives a swift pop, followed by silence, and I suddenly feel very awkward, standing in Max’s house with nobody else around.
“Oh, no wine for me, thanks,” I say, putting out a hand as if to stop him.
“Good, because it isn’t for you,” Max says, and raises an eyebrow at me. “I’ll be right back.” Without explanation, he exits the room and I hear the sounds of voices and forks scraping plates increase and then decrease in volume as he opens and shuts a door.
Finding myself unsupervised, I use the opportunity to take in my surroundings, which, apart from the tasteful décor, mostly consists of photographs. They are everywhere: lining the mantel in polished silver frames, hanging from the walls in perfectly curated rows. The images are mostly of a woman I assume to be Max’s mother, because of her brown hair and large almond-shaped eyes, with some people I know (government figures, a few celebrities),
and a lot of people I don’t know. There are also a lot of Max—one in his soccer jersey, sweaty after a game, a man I assume is his dad with a hand on his shoulder. One looking dirty but happy on the side of a mountain with some Nepalese guides, and one proudly brandishing a silver plaque that must be some kind of honor or award.
“Bet he didn’t get that for hula-hooping,” I say.
Then I’m glancing at the lushly carpeted staircase out in the front hall, and before I can help it, I’m wondering what Max’s bedroom looks like. I bet it’s classic and adult, with dark wood furniture and a well-organized closet. An immaculate desk with his textbooks on one side and a smudgeless computer on the other. Max is not the kind of guy who still has his old racecar bed. The idea of being inside it makes me even more nervous than I feel right now. A space that’s wholly his, where everything is all Max. I shiver.
“Are you cold?” Max asks, walking back into the room, looking confused. “You still have your coat on.”
“Nope,” I say, quickly changing the subject. I turn to the first thing I see, a silver and black device set into the wall with a glass pane at the center, displaying a keypad. “Is this your intercom?” I ask. “We have one in our house, too! I just learned how to use it.”
“That’s the alarm system,” Max replies from across the room, hands in his pockets. His face twitches as though he wants to smile, but is being polite about it.
“Oh,” I say, pursing my lips together seriously. “Did you know that in ancient China, an emperor’s last line of defense against an intruder was a tiny Pekingese dog hidden up the sleeve of his kimono? Maybe you should get one of those.” I read about that the other day on one of my animal-lover blogs, designed solely for weirdos like me. “You know, if you’re worried about security …” I trail off.
Max shakes his head, but now he finally does smile, and I breathe a sigh of relief. “I didn’t know that,” he replies. “But I’m not surprised that you do.”