Dreamland

One day, Dea sat behind him at a schoolwide assembly. She hadn’t pla

Getting into his dream was easy. His mind barely put up defenses at all—just a series of curtains, many of them torn, fluttering as though in a breeze. Just beyond the line of flimsy fabric was a patchy yard and a cheap, aboveground pool. It was the kind of sunlight that exists only in dreams: it came from every direction at once, so it felt like being on the wrong side of a magnifying glass.

He was in the pool, not more than two feet away from Dea, shirtless. She could have threaded her hand past the curtains and touched his shoulders or run her fingers through his hair. She could have climbed into the pool with him. She could have leaned over and pressed her lips to his, like she’d seen Mishti Barns and Mark Spencer do every morning before homeroom. She wanted to, desperately.

But it was against the rules.

The water broke and Hillary Davis surfaced soundlessly, looking even better than she did in real life. Her skin was golden and her teeth were the white of bleached bone. Her hair shimmered in the sun and her boobs floated like overturned cups on the water.

Then they were kissing. Dea stood there, not two feet away, mesmerized. She could hear the suction sound of their lips and the lapping of their tongues and the whisper of his fingers on her back and shoulders. She stayed there until the curtains became iron walls and she knew Brody was waking up. She had just enough time to slip out of the dream before she felt a sudden, jolting pressure in her chest and she was back in her room, in her body, touching her lips with one cold hand.

Still, to this day, Dea had never been kissed.

FOUR

The Donahue house was a good seven miles outside the commercial center of Fielding. On the way toward town, Dea spotted Gollum riding her ancient Schwi

“Thanks for the warning,” he said. But he laughed.

“Sorry,” Dea said. Gollum spotted Dea’s car and came to a stop by dragging her feet, kicking up a cloud of pale dust. She didn’t get off her bike but stood up, straddling it, gripping the handlebars.

Gollum was dressed in her typical style: an assortment of clothes no doubt inherited from one of her older brothers, which she’d tucked and pi

“Co

Gollum stooped down to peer past Dea. Her mouth opened, and then closed. Dea had never seen Gollum speechless before.

Luckily, Co

“Thanks,” she said, still staring at him. “Cool . . . face.”

Co

“Sorry,” she said. “My mouth isn’t always hooked up to my brain.”

Dea reached out and squeezed Gollum’s hand. She was filled with a sudden sense of warmth. She was driving in the car with a boy who had a cool face, and her friend—they were friends, even if they didn’t really hang out outside of school—was standing there, blushing, and the whole scene felt like it could have been lifted straight out of any teen movie.

Which made her, Dea, the star.

“That’s okay,” Co

Once again, Dea had a momentary suspicion that Co

“Want a ride somewhere?” Dea asked. “You can throw your bike in the back.”

Gollum made a face. “I gotta go home. Besides, the Beast would never fit.” She patted the handlebars.

“I’m getting the grand tour of Fielding,” Co

Gollum’s face had returned to its normal color. She shoved her glasses up the bridge of her nose with a thumb. “Should be the most mediocre five minutes of your life,” she said, and thumped Dea’s door. “Have fun. Don’t forget to swing by the dump. It’s one of Fielding’s most scenic attractions.” When Co

Now Dea was the one blushing.

Gollum wasn’t exaggerating: It took approximately four minutes to get from one end of Fielding to the other. The commercial district was just two intersecting roads and a heap of buildings in various stages of decay. On Main Street there were two gas stations, a church, a liquor store, a hair salon, a fried chicken spot, a mini-mart, and a mega-mart. On Center Street was a diner, a pharmacy (now shuttered), a 7-Eleven, another liquor store, and Mack’s, the only bar in town, which everyone always referred to by its full name, Mack’s Center Street, as if there were another somewhere else. Two miles past Center Street, after a quick patchwork of fields and farms and houses that were falling slowly into the dirt, was the Fielding School, serving grades kindergarten to dropout.

They didn’t even have a Walmart. For that, you had to drive all the way to Bloomington.

“Voilà,” she said to Co

“I think the mega-mart was my favorite,” Co

“I told you there was nothing to see,” Dea said.

“Depends on your perspective,” Co

“So. Anything I should know about F.S.? Trade secrets? Words of warning?” he asked.

“All schools are pretty much the same,” Dea said. “Don’t backtalk the teacher. Don’t touch the hot lunch. Try to stay awake during history.”

He laughed. He had a great laugh—just like his smile, it made him about a thousand times more attractive. “You been to a lot of schools?”

“Half a dozen.” Actually, she’d been enrolled at ten different schools, and lived in twelve different states. But no point in launching into a monologue about it. “My mom likes to move around,” she added, when he made a face. “How about you?”