Dreamland

She left the towel hanging over the mirror and returned to the bedroom. At first she thought Co

“I won’t be able to fall asleep if you’re just going to be, like, staring at me.”

The sheets were very cold. A radiator was spitting ineffectually in the corner, but the wind still came through underneath the door, and vibrated the windowpanes. “I’m not going to stare at you,” she said. “I’m going to close my eyes.”

“Still.” He was quiet for a minute. Then: “Come here.”

She was sure she’d misheard. “What?”

“You said it would be easier if you had an object. A doorway object. Or if we were touching.” He had rolled over so his back was to her. In the fine line of moonlight coming through a gap in the curtains, his shoulders were just outlined in silver.

“Easier,” she said carefully. She had told him about doorway objects in the car, and how they could substitute for closeness. “But—but I don’t need to.”

“I want you to,” he said, and she felt the impact of the words—I want you to—everywhere, all through her body, as if she were swimming, as if she were absorbing them through her skin. “I’m letting you into my dreams, Dea. It’s weird that you’re halfway across the room. Besides, I’m cold.”

She couldn’t think of any other excuses. She stood up. Her body, dressed in strange clothing, walking through the dark of an unfamiliar room toward a boy’s bed, felt alien. Her heart was opening and closing, opening and closing, like a hand grasping for something just out of reach.

She slipped into bed beside him. She was acutely, painfully, ridiculously aware of his body next to hers, of the rise and fall of his breathing and the smell of his skin. His bare shoulders and chest. The dark shadow of his hair against the white pillow. She was afraid to move or even breathe. She lay on her back, staring at the patterns of moonlight on the ceiling, and the occasional illumination of passing headlights. Their feet were only a few inches apart.

After a minute, he rolled over onto his back too, so their shoulders were touching. She felt his hand skim her thigh and she stopped breathing. A mistake, she was sure.

“Your hair’s soaking,” he said quietly. “Aren’t you cold?”

“I’m all right.” She wanted to say: she was burning. Her whole body was on fire, was alive at the awareness of Co

What if he didn’t?

They lay there for a while, breathing hard, fast, as though they were ru

“Roll over,” Co

“Which way?”

He put a hand on her waist—solid, gentle—and rolled her over, so that her back was against his chest. She wanted to die. She wanted to be reborn in the space beneath his hand.

Spooning. The expression came to her—she’d heard about spooning, read about it. It was all wrong, she decided, while Co

She felt calmer, warmer, happier than she had in weeks. She was drifting, breaking apart on soft, insistent waves of darkness. She fought against the sensation of sleep, tu

“Co

He didn’t answer, and she knew he had fallen asleep. It was time.

I’m sorry, she mouthed silently. She closed her eyes. She felt the velvet pressure of Co

The blackness dispersed.

She was in.

NINETEEN

It was different, much different, walking Co

“Chicago,” she said out loud, into the empty hallway, even as she began to jog toward the glowing exit sign. Her voice echoed back to her. “Bring me back to Chicago.”

She felt the dream shifting, the way that sand shifted underfoot on a beach. Co

This time, there was no snow. It was blazingly su

She started walking, then quickly drew back, sucking in a breath, into the shadow of a nearby alcove.

Co

She cast a quick, instinctive glance up toward Co

Her mother was here—somewhere in this world of concrete and heat, of buildings that shifted in the flat light, grew new planes and angles or rubbed away into nothing as Co