Dreamland

“Did you have any trouble?” she asked. She was dying to sit up, to stretch out her legs, but she didn’t want to move, not until they’d packed miles between the car and the station.

Co

“Co

He sighed. When he spoke, he suddenly sounded much, much older.

“It’s your turn to talk,” he said.

EIGHTEEN

Co

She told him everything: how she had learned to walk dreams, how her mother had taught her, how she got sick when she didn’t walk for a while. She told him some of the basic rules, how birds were harbingers and dreamers unconsciously responded to intruders and worlds fell apart when the dream was ending. How if you weren’t careful, you might become trapped.

She told him she believed that’s what had happened to her mom: she had become trapped, somehow, in one of Co

It was the only explanation that made any kind of sense. Dea’s mom was with Co

But Dea wasn’t ready to tell Co

After she ran out of story, he was quiet for a bit. The only sound was the gentle shush of the highway under the tires. It was completely dark—she couldn’t tell where the road ended and the fields began, and didn’t even know where they were headed—except for intermittent and unexpected bursts of civilization, a sudden cluster of lights off in the distance, or a billboard rearing out of the dark, featuring some plastic-looking girl with fat lips and fake boobs perching on six-inch heels, or an advertisement for a family-pla

“I knew it,” he said at last. “You were there. I knew I wasn’t just dreaming you. It felt different. . . .” He went silent again. Dea didn’t want to say anything. She was so relieved that he didn’t sound angry—or worse, disgusted—she was afraid to ruin it by making a sound. “And you’ve always . . . been this way? You’ve always walked?”

She nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see her. “Yeah.”

“So what changed? Why did everything go to shit all of a sudden?”

You, she almost said. As soon as she thought it, she knew it was true. Things had gone to hell because when she met Co

Because she was in love with him. She knew that was true, too—all at once, with total clarity. She was in love with him because of the almost-dimple in his chin and the way he could make everyone, even strangers, laugh; she loved him because of how soft his T-shirts were and the fact that he pronounced her name as if it were a lyric in a song he knew by heart. Because he was loyal and fu

And now she was going to have to ask him to go through hell again, and he would have every right to hate her.

She said, “I broke the rules.”

They were coming up on a town—Wapachee Falls, according to the sign. Dea had never heard of it, but she’d never heard of any of the towns they’d passed so far. From the highway, Dea could make out a blur of gas stations and motels, a sudden blaze of neon signage against the night.

She was surprised when Co

“What are you doing?” she said.

“I’m tired,” he said. “Hungry, too.”

She looked at the dashboard clock and realized they’d been driving for almost three hours. It was after eleven. She was exhausted, and weak, and hungry. But she was worried about stopping.

“Do you think it’s safe?” she said.

“There must be five hundred motels between here and Fielding,” he said. “It’s safe. At least for tonight.”

“For tonight?” Dea repeated. “Don’t you have to go home?”

“God, Dea.” Co

But he didn’t say it meanly, and she let it drop. She was just glad she didn’t have to say good-bye yet.

Wapachee Falls was even smaller than downtown Fielding, but it consisted entirely of chains: McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell. Motel 6, Holiday I

At the Burger King drive-through she moved into the front seat. Co

They ate in the parking lot, the bags pooling with grease resting on their thighs. Dea was so hungry, she barely tasted the food, burning her fingers and tongue. She’d been on hospital food for more than a week. She licked the salt and grease off her fingers and swallowed her burger in three bites. By the time she stopped eating, her stomach was cramping and she was nauseous. But it was better than being hungry. She had money. She was with Co

They scouted the motels next, looking for the darkest, dingiest, and least likely-looking place. They settled on a no-name motel on the very end of the commercial strip, painted a bleak shade of gray that looked more suited to an internment camp. Half the letters on the neon sign were burnt out, so it read simply: VAC CY.

“This looks like a place where people go to die,” Dea said.

Co

Through a narrow gap in the curtains, Dea caught a quick glimpse of naked skin—a man and woman together. She looked quickly away, her face burning. It hadn’t fully occurred to Dea until she and Co

But no. Their relationship had changed. She’d ruined everything. He hadn’t looked at her that way again—it had probably been temporary insanity.

For the briefest second, she thought of the vision she’d seen in the gap between the curtains and wondered what it would be like. With Co