The damp cold grips me as I run up the gravel drive. My feet pound the crushed stone, sending loud crunching noises through the oppressively quiet night. It mixes with the wind whistling through the needles of the pine trees populating this side of the mountain. The air is thinner, colder here than down below in Geneva proper. The still wet evergreens send out mossy pine scents as they stand tall and fuzzy in the dark, clouded night. No moon and no stars to be seen.
My breathing is jagged and the piney air pinches my lungs. It was three miles up this mountain. My legs burn from the twisting climb up the little mountain road. Sweat drips down my back, the heat of my skin chilling in the night air.
Dang it!
What the heck is going on?
Frankly, I have no idea. I only know I pulled on the first thing I found in Henry’s chest of drawers—a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt—and then by the door I found a pair of well-worn running shoes. I refused to go to the bathroom because, as everyone knows, if you go to the bathroom in a dream you pee the bed, so . . . yeah.
Every jarring step running up this dang mountain made me want to wet myself. However, I’ve persevered. I’m not going to the bathroom until I wake up.
However, in case this isn’t a dream, I’m . . . look, I’m going to find out, aren’t I?
And my first (coherent) thought was, if I’m Henry, is Henry me?
I ran a mile through the deserted cobblestone streets to my apartment and pounded on the door. No one answered, although I could hear Purrk meowing behind the thick wood. My neighbors—a couple who fervently believe all wars will stop once humanity embraces veganism—poked their heads out of their apartment and glared at me. Their faces were fuzzy and out-of-focus, but I think when they saw my (somewhat) crazed expression, my towering height, and my fist pounding the door, they decided I must eat a lot of steak, pork chops, and burgers and therefore embrace senseless violence, and they promptly shut and bolted their door.
Regardless, I/Henry/Serena-Henry wasn’t home. The door stayed shut.
So then I ran down the stairs, not trusting my death-trap elevator, back onto the dark, stony streets of Geneva, and asked myself, what do you do when you need help desperately?
What do you do?
Easy. You go find your best friend since childhood, your fellow trekker, your soul-mate-sister, your best friend in the whole wide world.
Jillian lives with her husband Daniel above Geneva in a modern, trendy exhibitionist’s dream house where almost the entire wall overlooking the city is made of glass. I’m pretty sure Daniel likes to do it full-tilt against the floor-to-ceiling windows—at least, every time I joke about it Jillian blushes—but hey, you can’t really blame the guy. It’s a gorgeous view.
Regardless, Jillian’s here. If it’s a dream, she’ll wake me up. If it’s not a dream . . .
I stop at the front door, hit the unlock code (474747, which any Star Trek fan would immediately guess, and I keep telling Jillian this, but she doesn’t listen) and the electronic lock clicks free.
It’s three in the morning now. The house is dark except for the under-cupboard lights shining in the kitchen. It smells like chocolate chip cookies and vanilla, and the wood floors creak under my feet as I slowly and quietly close the door.
Daniel’s in Rome this week at a big fashion event—I know because I spent Monday and Tuesday night here watching a Deep Space Nine marathon while eating dozens of Fran’s (Jillian’s surrogate mother) cookies and buckets of her homemade caramel ice cream while Jillian complained pregnancy was making her ankles swell, and would I massage her feet like Daniel does? Which I did, obviously.
I tiptoe through the house, not wanting to wake Fran, a sweet sixty-year-old Long Islander who is very partial to animal prints and loves Jillian to pieces. I don’t think she’d understand my predicament even in a dream, so . . .
The shadows of the hallway lengthen as I leave the sparse light of the kitchen behind. My heart rate has slowed, the thuds evening to a steady beat. I lick my dry lips, the taste of salt and sweat heavy. The floor creaks again and I pause, listening to my own breathing.
No sounds greet me.
No one wakes.
A shiver of uncertainty scrapes over me, trailing goose bumps over my skin. There have been plenty of nights that I’ve slept next to Jillian—slumber parties, sleepovers, shared rooms at conventions—so there isn’t anything unusual about me waking her up in the middle of the night. I’ve done it a thousand times to discuss a theory I can’t get out of my head or to talk about childhood/adulthood/peoplehood.
But—
No. I shake my head. No buts.
I grip the cold metal knob of her bedroom door and twist.
“Jillian?” I whisper, stepping into the cool of her bedroom. It’s a large, open space with a wall of windows and minimalist furniture. “Jillian, wake up. It’s me, Serena.”
Then, suddenly, I realize the faint pocket of light falling across the bed shows a pile of blankets, but no Jillian.
I frown and turn back to the door, only to find the glint of an aluminum bat crashing toward my skull.
“Get out!” Jillian yells.
I throw up my hands, ducking as the bat whizzes over my head.
Jeez! “Jillian, it’s me. Serena!”
She’s blurry, but I can tell she’s in a Star Fleet T-shirt and sleep shorts. Her curly dark hair is wild, and she looks like a warrior as she charges at me, swinging again. The air whooshes over my head as the bat almost connects with my skull.
Crap!
I duck, dodge, and roll across the bed, frantically avoiding the swinging bat. When I come to my feet, I hold out my hands.
“It’s me. Serena,” I say, my voice deep and raspy with the adrenaline crashing through me. “Serena, your best friend! Jillian, stop!”
She lunges at me, swinging the bat. I jump across the bed again, landing on the other side. I back toward the door as she stalks around the bed.
“What did you do to Serena?” she hisses, gripping the bat. “What did you do, you raving psychopath? Tell me!”
“No,” I say, holding up my hands. I keep the bed between us, edging away as Jillian stalks closer. “Jillian.”
“I’ll kill you!”
Jeez, dream Jillian is fierce. Then again, I seem to remember her saying she took a swing at Daniel when she first met him too. But this—this is not going at all like I anticipated.
Jillian lunges across the bedroom swinging like the slugger I know her dad always wanted her to be, and instead of dodging, I grab the bat midair.
I flinch at the cracking sting of the cold metal. Crap, that hurt.
Things don’t hurt so much in a dream, do they?
Your heart doesn’t pound so much, does it?
You can’t smell cookies or evergreen, can you?
Jillian’s face is red, her hands trembling as she tries to wrest the bat from my grip. She’s scared. She’s scared of me, and she’s scared for me.
Suddenly I’m scared too because it’s patently, abundantly clear that no matter how much I wish otherwise, this is not a dream.
My stance relaxes, my grip loosens on the bat, and shock flushes through me, cold and icy.
Then Jillian does something completely unexpected. She lets go of the bat, grabs my shirt, tugs me close, and knees me. Right in Henry’s balls.
Fiery, wrenching pain shoots through me, radiating out and branching through every nerve ending in my entire body. Red sparks bust in my vision, my lungs seize, and I drop to the floor.
Holy. Ever. Loving. All that is holy. Why didn’t anyone ever say how much this freaking hurts! I thought men were just exaggerating, being babies.
I roll to my side, hitting my fist against the wood floor.
Not a dream, not a dream, definitely not a dream.
My balls are screaming and I have to pee. I have to pee so freaking bad the pain is excruciating and I can’t breathe and—
Jillian sprints across the room, grabs something off the dresser, and heaves it at me. A sharp metal object hits me in the chest, and as it rebounds loudly against the wood, I see a flash of pewter and know exactly what it is.
“Jillian! Not your Franklin Mint Enterprise! What the heck is wrong with you? Why are you always throwing it? Jeez!”
She’s grabbed something else. Her arm is back, ready to throw, but she stops half-cocked. “What did you say?”
I slide upright, eyeing her warily, rub my chest, and pull my legs up to protect a certain sensitive area. I give my best friend a hurt look. “I said stop throwing your Enterprise. It was bad enough you threw it at Daniel—do you have to throw it at me too?”
“Did Serena tell you that?” She looks toward the bat lying on the floor.
I look at it too.
“I am Serena,” I say, and when she starts to scoff and lunge toward the bat I say as quickly as I can, “We met as kids at a Star Trek convention where we got Wil Wheaton’s autograph. My favorite number is 437. I lost my virginity to Bernie Berger and you told me I should’ve waited until I found someone named Horatio Hotdog because then I maybe would’ve orgasmed.”
Jillian edges closer to the bat so I talk faster.
"I have a cat named Purrk. You couldn’t talk to men until you met Daniel, he was a ghost—”
“Who told you that?” she asks, stopping midstride.
“You did. You tell me everything. Well, you still haven’t told me whether or not you do it against the windows, but everything else.” I hold my hand up in the “live long and prosper” sign.
Jillian shakes her head, her voice trembling, “What did you do to Serena to make her tell you these things?”
For crying out loud.
It looks like I’m going to have to pull out the big guns.
“You remember when we snuck into the Anaheim Star Trek Convention for my fourteenth birthday? I didn’t want to come—I was prepping for my Quantum Mechanics exam. And you cursed ‘qaStaH nuq jay’1 and then you raised your fist in the air and shouted, ‘tlhIngan maH!’2”
Jillian’s eyes widen. No one knows this story. Just us. There isn’t any reason for a stranger to know it.
“And then you said—”
“‘qoSlIj DatIvjaj,’”3 we say together, her voice high and shaking, mine low and insistent.
“Then I closed my textbook, certain I’d fail but okay with it since you were there, and I said, ‘Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam.’”
Today is a good day to die.
That is what we always say to each other when we’re in a fix and taking the less-traveled route.
“Serena?” Jillian asks tentatively, her eyes widening. She stares at me as if she doesn’t want to believe the conclusion she’s come to, but she can’t deny it any longer.
Guess what? Neither can I.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I say, slowly standing, the pain of the ball kick finally passed.
Then the door to the bedroom bursts open, slams against the wall, and I hear a shout of rage. I turn and throw my hands up, but not in time.
Fran leaps into the room and—hardcore, street-smart Long Islander that she is (I’m taking away that sweet, kindly sixty-year-old bit)—she slams her fist into my eye, knocking me back. I trip and fall onto the bed, clutching a hand over my throbbing, sure-to-be-swelling-soon eye. Man, she’s got a killer right hook.
“Got ’em, Jilly!” Fran shouts proudly. “I called the police! This psycho’s going to jail!”