Dreamland

“Nothing,” she said quickly. “I like it.”

“Thank you.” Co

“I should probably go home, though,” she said, and then didn’t know why she’d said it: because there was a pause that went on a fraction of a second too long; because she didn’t know whether to keep standing or sit on the bed. Because she wished she could slip into his dream and move around in safety and write a new note: I want to kiss you.

“Really?” Co

“A movie?”

“Yeah.” Co

“All right.” Dea thought about her mom, who would probably be pacing the house, peeking out the windows, waiting for Dea to return. Pla

“Awesome.” Co

“How chivalrous,” she said. “But I’m a modern girl. We can go dutch.”

They watched an action film, sitting side by side on the couch, their thighs just pressing together. She couldn’t understand one of the leads, who had an Irish accent, and couldn’t follow the plotline—but she decided it was the best movie she’d ever seen. When Co

Before she left, she pretended to get lost on the way to the bathroom and pocketed one of Co

SEVEN

She had two friends now. It was a new reality; it was as though gravity had lessened and everything had become easier, lighter.

Instead of waiting with Gollum at the bus stop for Morgan Devoe or Hailey Madison to peg them with empty soda cans, Dea and Gollum were riding to school in Co

They went to the homecoming pep rally together, all three of them, and sat together on the bleachers huddled under an enormous blanket that Gollum had found in the horse barn (it still smelled like hay). They ignored the game, and instead pretended to be sociologists witnessing alien social groups and arcane mating rituals. By group consensus, they vetoed the dance and instead drove Co

Co

Co

She was happy. She didn’t worry too much about it. She didn’t wonder why Will Briggs almost seemed afraid to meet Co

She didn’t hear the rumors about Co

She didn’t hear any of it. How would she? Co

PART TWO

Once upon a time, there was a pregnant woman who dreamed of a woman, also with child. The woman who dreamed was very sick. The doctors said she was dying. She hadn’t woken in two whole days, hadn’t spoken or stirred.

But only dreamed, and dreamed, and dreamed.

And as she lay in her hospital bed, sheathed in sheets as cold as a thick layer of ice, she dreamed of the other woman, belly taut and round as a bowl, lying in the middle of a field of snow. But the snow drifted like feathers, and warmed, too, and the dream woman was laughing, her mouth open to the sky, her pink tongue exposed.

And the real woman could feel the tickle of the snow, the drumming of the dream-woman’s heart, the stirring of the dream-child in the dream-world of snow as soft as kisses.

“I’ll save you,” the dream-woman said, opening her eyes, and sliding a hand inside her coat, onto her swollen belly, where a tiny dream-heart drummed and drummed. “We’ll save you. Just let us in.”

Then the snow became a river of plastic, sliding down her throat, and the snow broke apart into white walls, and the whole world became a scream.

Two screams.

Then the woman who was supposed to have died woke up, and found she had given birth to a beautiful child, with eyes the blue of new ice and skin the color of snow.

EIGHT

In the weeks since Dea and Co

Each time she entered his dreams, she found them softer, more pliable, more responsive to her. The overstructure was crumbling.

The second time she walked, she arrived in the middle of a crowded wharf in what looked like the 1920s, except that the deckhands were checking off lists of passengers by administering math homework. The third time, she ended up above an old racetrack that Co

The fourth time she walked, she found herself in a set of high bleachers bordering an indoor pool. The air stunk of chlorine, and people were cheering. Above them, a cracked-glass ceiling was webbed with condensation. Co