Some Faraway Place

by Lauren Shippen

  “Doing Thanksgiving prep already?” he asked and I nodded and gave a vague hum. My body had immediately tensed when he walked in, clenching even further when I saw him looking at what I was doing, bracing for a conversation I didn’t want to have.

  I was so afraid he was going to say something about how he’d have to sit out on the helping this year because he might accidentally chop off his hand or put sugar in something when it was supposed to be salt or how we better make most of this Thanksgiving because we don’t know how many he’ll have left, or some other casual-sounding but actually really sad comment. That would be so like my dad, to make a joke of his disease, to pretend like it’s no big deal while simultaneously trying to be honest with me about something that was hard.

  But none of that came. Instead, he just nodded and said, “Good, good, as long as you’ve got your pecan pumpkin pie in there, that’s my only request,” before turning and leaving the kitchen.

  I wanted him to ask for more, for me to get a chance to get words around the lump that forms in my throat every time I see him now. I wanted the chance to tell him that I wasn’t ignoring him, that the reason I nodded and hummed instead of saying actual words was that it’s just so hard to speak the moment I hear his voice.

  I know it’s unfair, but I need him to be the brave one. Because I don’t think I have it in me.

  community/TheUnusuals post by n/thatsahumanperson

  I always knew on some level how strange and scary it must be for people when I—or anyone else—reads their thoughts, but I have a better appreciation now for the emotional toll of being on the other side of that dynamic.

  My sister has walked into my dreams a few times, but it’s always been pretty innocuous. That is, the dreams that she’s seen and the interactions we’ve had have been pretty innocuous—mostly just boring anxiety dreams or brief conversations where we just remark on how strange it is that we can both exist in my subconscious and have a conversation.

  That’s the piece of this that we haven’t totally figured out—I remember the conversations we have in my dreams. I’ve asked my parents if they remember Rose appearing in their dreams—well, I asked my mom anyway. I don’t want to put pressure on my dad about anything, especially something like his dreams, which most perfectly healthy people don’t remember anyway. But my mom said that she doesn’t have any recollection of Rose appearing in her dreams, that she assumed the dream that I had where Rose and I spoke—the dream that sent Rose to That Place—was the one time that Rose had gone dreamdiving in the house. And I guess it’s possible that Rose has only been walking in my dreams, but I find that extremely unlikely.

  Anyway, I usually remember when she’s there, when she walks into my head. I think it might be because I’m telepathic—she’s walking in my subconscious and forming memories herself about that experience and I’m simultaneously reading her mind.

  I think I had a dream last night that she was in, but I didn’t see or talk to her so I’m not sure. And when I ran into her in the kitchen this afternoon, she acted like everything was totally normal, giving me absolutely no indication that she’d been in my head. That’s the other thing, I was in the kitchen just grabbing water at, like, three o’clock in the afternoon, and my sister was grabbing breakfast. She’s been sleeping so much the past week or so and I don’t think it’s because of the narcolepsy. Unlike before That Place, I’m not finding her randomly passed out on the couch or at the kitchen table. She’s just been up in her room, completely unconscious for these enormous stretches of time. Everyone in my family is pretty sympathetic to it—I think we all remember how hard it was when our abilities first manifested. I, for one, barely left my room for a month and communicated with my family almost entirely over text while they sat downstairs, just out of reach. But it’s something I want to keep an eye on. Then again, I’m not my sister’s keeper—she’s an adult, she can take care of herself.

  But this dream … okay, so, probably unsurprisingly, it was about my dad. And, without going into details, this was definitely a nightmare. It wasn’t like there was some big monster or horrifying imagery … it was just that, well, I’m scared. Obviously. Fucking terrified. And that manifested itself in one of those dreams where you’re really trying to do something, and it’s urgent, you know in your bones that if you aren’t able to do this thing, and fast, something will drag you away by its claws and eviscerate your insides? No? Just me? So, yeah, it was one of those dreams. My dad was there and I couldn’t help him, no matter what I did, I couldn’t go fast enough and then, suddenly, I was at Fenway Park.

  Just like that. Blinding, dire terror instantly transformed to the smell of peanuts and the crack of a bat hitting a ball, sending the crowd into a roaring cheer.

  My dad used to take the whole family to Fenway during the summer. Someone he works with has season tickets and he would give my dad a few whenever my dad would offer to cover a shift for him. None of us are huge baseball fans—or team sports in general—but we would love sitting out in the hot, humid air, us with the rare soda that we weren’t usually allowed to have, my mom and dad with the beers that they only ever seem to drink in the summertime, just enjoying the intensity of the fans and the sound of the announcer ringing through the stadium. That was where I was—suddenly ten years old, my eight-year-old sister sitting next to me, my young, healthy parents handing us some popcorn to share. Like night and day—a nightmare one second, a beautiful memory in a dream the next.

  I think it must have been my sister. It had to have been. But even when she was with me at the baseball stadium, it was kid-her, not current-her, and she didn’t seem to think that she was in a dream. I don’t think I realized I was in a dream.

  Maybe I’m being paranoid. Maybe my brain did me a solid and pulled me out of the festering pit of anxiety I was sinking into and dropped me into something peaceful and sweet. But there’s just this feeling I have, in the back of my skull, that I wasn’t alone there.

  onmyown

  Have you thought about confronting your sister about it? Asking her if she went into your dream? Changed it? Wait, can she change dreams?

  thatsahumanperson

  I’m not sure, tbh. We haven’t talked about the ins and outs of her power very much. I was hoping to, when she got back from the hospital, because I think her power is really interesting and cool and, I don’t know, I guess I was hoping we’d have an easier time connecting after finding out that we were both Unusual, but we never got the chance. My dad was diagnosed the same day that she finished the program, and since being home, she’s mostly been hanging out with her new girlfriend (? not sure what their status is), going to work, and sleeping. Lately, mostly sleeping. So we haven’t had a chance to talk about how it all works. The first dream she visited of mine, I think she did make all the other people in the dream vanish? Or maybe that was me? Or the dream itself? She wasn’t aware of what she could do yet, so I don’t think, if it was her, that she was consciously trying to control it. Ugh. I guess I could just ask, but … that’s never been easy for me.

  tacotacotaco

  From everything you’ve written about your sister, it sounds like it’s not easy for her either. Eventually one of you has to take the leap.

  NOVEMBER 18TH, 2016

  I think I figured it out. This whole dreamdiving thing.

  I’ve been trying more to fall asleep on command and instantly dreamdive and that really clicked when I went into Aaron’s dream the other night. He was having a nightmare, a nightmare I really don’t want to talk about, and there’s honestly no point in writing it down because, trust me, I am NOT going to have a hard time remembering it, but the important thing is that I changed it. The right way.

  I was watching Aaron struggle, fight against the fog that overwhelmed him, and I just wanted it to stop, but I couldn’t grab hold of the fog to change it. I tried to swat it away with my hands and it was like the whole dream glitched, the picture flickering, like the connection was bad. I knew I was close to succeedi
ng, could feel the fog fighting back, so I gathered as much air in my lungs as I could, breathing in deeply, inflating like a balloon, my lungs impossibly full, and then blew out, pushing the fog apart and away and sending both Aaron and me hurtling through the dark.

  Then, all at once, I was eight years old, in a memory, and the dreamworld that had molded around us felt like the old times. It made my heart feel warmer and more at peace than it has in months.

  And it hasn’t stopped there. I’ve been going into dreams for most of the past few days and it’s extraordinary. I keep unlocking new levels of this ability and with each one comes a new rush of adrenaline, a renewed feeling of belonging and rightness. I think I’ve even been in my family’s waking subconscious, a thorny and unpredictable place that I seem unable to control, sometimes staticky and hard to see, like when I went into Emily’s head in the urgent care. But otherwise, I’m able to make a dreamworld in my own vision—the fluffy, cotton-candy clouds of the dream with the airplane I went into at the AM; the sunny bright skies above Fenway Park; a stretching, red-orange canyon that I can skate over like a weightless bird; tall, ancient trees that branch above my head, blanketing my entire field of vision in shimmering leaves.

  I’m fully through the looking glass now, not in Kansas anymore, whatever you want to call it. There’s a whole wide world out there, changeable and unpredictable, vast and beautiful, and it’s all mine. I can even travel back to that strange little void space, which now has a door I can always open, if I get overwhelmed. That’s the inside of my own head, I think, a blank canvas for me to build on. But without the materials of someone else’s dreams, the canvas stays blank, like trying to cook a dish without ingredients. I want to eventually figure out how to dive deep into my own head, like Dr. Bright has said some people do, but she ghosted me this week for a “family emergency” so I’m on my own.

  I never knew it could be like this. That sleeping could be so much better than waking life. Emily has been doing a Shakespeare unit in one of her classes this semester and has been analyzing the “to be or not to be” speech and, I’ll be honest, I didn’t get most of what she was talking about except “to sleep, perchance to dream.” Hamlet wanted to sink into dreams, except the long sleep he was contemplating doesn’t come with a guarantee of dreaming. We don’t dream when we’re dead. But there is no “perchance” when it comes to me, because when I sleep, I know I’ll dream. I know I’ll dream and it will be better than being awake and turning over life’s big questions in monologue. Maybe if Hamlet could dreamdive, he wouldn’t have worried so much.

  NOVEMBER 24TH, 2016

  I have always operated under the belief that good food makes everything better—it comforts people, brings them together, gives me a purpose, a role in my family—and I’m happy to say that, while that belief was battered and bruised today, it came out on the other side of Thanksgiving still intact.

  To say that I was nervous about Emily coming is a HUGE understatement. I was completely fucking terrified. I’m not sure I would have even invited her if I hadn’t dived into a dream she had about missing her family. I know having dinner with your girlfriend’s family isn’t the same, but I wanted to give her something to make her feel better. It’s not like I could just say, “hey, I went into your brain the other day while we were napping and saw you making food with your sisters—yams and tamales and some kind of wild rice that I would definitely ask the recipe for if I could tell you about this stuff—and I could feel the longing that sits in your chest because along with diving into dreams and witnessing them, I also sometimes feel them very very deeply, hope that doesn’t freak you out, anyway, how can I help?”

  I know Dr. Bright has said that I should tell Emily whenever I want—that there’s no rule book to follow—but I’m not ready. I’m just starting to get used to dreamdiving myself, without having to deal with yet another person’s opinion on it. And I know that if I tell Emily about the dreamdiving, I’ll tell her about my dad too and I’m … I’m definitely not ready for that conversation.

  Neither is anyone in my family.

  “All right, so does everyone understand the plan?” my mom asked this morning as she, my dad, and Aaron stood around the kitchen island drinking coffee while I scrambled to stuff and get the turkey in the oven.

  “Mom, we’re having someone over for dinner, not pulling a heist,” Aaron said, and I could hear the eye roll even though my head was halfway inside a dead bird.

  “It’s been a long time since we had anyone over,” my mom pointed out.

  “Yeah, but it’s not like we forgot how to be—Dad!”

  My head snapped up at Aaron’s shout to see my Dad reaching out to grab Aaron’s coffee cup out of the air and taking a sip.

  “What?” My dad shrugged, a smile on his face. “I thought you were done.”

  “You could just make more coffee,” Aaron said.

  “Yeah, but this is more fun.” My dad winked and Aaron shook his head, but couldn’t keep the smile off his face.

  “See, this is exactly what I mean,” my mom said, sounding exasperated. “You can’t go levitating coffee mugs when Emily is here.”

  “Yeah, and you can’t steal my stuff,” Aaron said, snatching the mug out of our dad’s hands.

  “No, you can still do that, just don’t use your powers to do it.” My mom smiled at my dad, who burst out laughing, before turning on her heel to go upstairs.

  “Oh, and Emily’s going to be early!” she called back from the stairs.

  “Shit,” I mumbled, looking at the state of myself. Getting together a dozen dishes and looking cute all in the span of, like, six hours is the hardest thing I have ever pulled off.

  But I think I did pull it off—Emily was early and when I opened the door, she took in my nice pants and knit sweater and smiled, color blooming on her cheeks. We went through all the extremely awkward introductions that were made a lot less awkward by Emily being her unbelievably charismatic self and making everyone comfortable. Which of course was immediately undercut by Aaron jumping in, totally unprompted, with:

  “Don’t worry, no intense traditions or weird fetishization of colonizers in this house,” he said lightly. “And no football. This is strictly a food holiday for us, especially with this one around.”

  He gave me an affectionate push on the shoulder—something he has literally never done in his life—and smiled, completely oblivious to the way that Emily had gone still, her eyes widening. Like she was caught out—like she had just been thinking about the real, dirty history of this holiday and worrying how this white family might celebrate it. After a second, Aaron caught on to her expression and froze too. YEP, guess she had been thinking that and Aaron somehow decided it would be a good idea to respond to her thoughts five seconds after she stepped through the door.

  “I just mean,” he started, stumbling, “that’s something I think a lot about. Don’t know if you do too.”

  I winced at the awkward cover, but Emily relaxed.

  “Oh yeah, totally,” she said, nodding and pushing her cropped hair behind her ear in a nervous tic I’ve grown to love. “I mean, it’s hard to find any American holiday that doesn’t have some truly problematic roots, but at least this one has great food.”

  “Speaking of!” I jumped in, taking Emily’s hand. “Let me show you what I’ve been cooking up.”

  I pulled her into the kitchen and we seemed to be over the first—and I had hoped, only—Atypical slipup. Emily helped me finish out the dishes (by which I mean, she put marshmallows on top of the yams, the only assignment I’ll cede control over when it comes to Thanksgiving) while my mom asked about her poetry. And it was different than when she interrogates me about my work or my future—my mom seemed genuinely interested and supportive of a less traditional career. Jealousy and happiness fought it out inside of me the entire time I was plating things, but eventually gratitude that my mom was making an effort won out. A Thanksgiving miracle.

  Another miracle? The fact that E
mily didn’t catch on to the weirdness of my family when MY DAD LEVITATED THE FREAKIN’ PEPPER MILL ACROSS THE TABLE.

  Aaron noticed it before anyone else did—I wonder if he could read something in my dad’s thoughts that gave him a heads-up he was about to use his telekinesis. The pepper mill started floating on the table before spinning toward the other end where my dad was casually eating like nothing was strange. Aaron snatched it out of the air just as Emily looked up. Her eyes narrowed but there’s no way she saw anything. There’s no way. She would have said something if she saw a pepper mill move on its own, right?

  “Here you go, Dad,” Aaron said pointedly. My dad looked up at Aaron’s outstretched hand and immediately paled, realizing what he’d done. He silently took the pepper mill, with his actual hand, and my mom jumped in with a funny story about work that took up enough oxygen in the room to cover up what had just happened.

  I’m not mad at him. I’m really not. He explained everything after Emily left—

  “I forgot, Rose,” he said, sadness in his eyes. “I completely forgot that she didn’t know. I wasn’t thinking, I’m so sorry—”

  “Dad, really, it’s fine,” I assured him. “It’s not your fault. And I don’t think Emily saw anything, so we’re all good.”

  “Not that your brother’s outburst was much help either,” my mom muttered.

  “I was nervous!” Aaron said, “I didn’t mean to listen but her anxieties jumped out!”

  “Guys, really, it’s okay,” I said, placating everyone as I got up to get another piece of pie. “Emily had a good time and nothing terrible happened.”

  And that’s true—the whole dinner actually went really well. It was the after-dinner conversation that’s left me with a slightly sour taste in my mouth. My family loved Emily. After the finger-pointing portion was over, they went on and on about how interesting she was, how clever, how charismatic. All the things that unaccomplished, laser-focused, friendless Rose is not. I think my mother would have adopted Emily on the spot and by the end of dinner, Emily and Aaron were halfway to having their own inside jokes.