Chapter 4

Great Expectations

How is this even possible? Once again, I’m lying in bed with a chest full of someone else’s emotions, wondering where Luke ends and Aliya begins. I’m pretty sure this is not a normal way to dream. There are lots of things to be freaked out about, here, but the one I’m going with is that boy in the bubble. He popped up in Aliya’s dreams and she ignored him—she seems to have a talent for ignoring things—but I know he’s important. It’s the same face I saw just before I got pulled into Aliya’s life. The catalyst for all this weirdness.

Because of him, I’m dreamwalking like Aliya does. Ha! As if that were a real thing. It’s just my subconscious or whatever. Creating a different identity for me. Yeah, let’s not psycho-analyse that one.

Like I’ve been avoiding analysing that edifying episode on the supply closet floor. It won’t happen again. Will it?

Will Aliya be waiting for me again tonight?

I just have to drag myself through the day before I can find out. I have to keep reminding myself that this is my life: get dressed. Eat breakfast. Go to school. Fist-bump from Dean. Cheat off Ravi’s maths homework. None of it feels like enough anymore. It’s not a bad life—but I’m observing it instead of living it.

Then, in English, I’m paired with the new girl.

This is the most awkward experience of my life.

‘Hi,’ she says with a smile. ‘I’m Padma.’

There are so many things I want to ask her. Why did you have panic attacks? How did you get better? Can you fix me, please? Please, please, can you forget you ever saw me before? I ask, ‘Where did you move here from, Padma?’

‘Lamorbey.’

‘Oh. You speak very good English.’

‘That’s in South London, you dork.’

The heat creeps up my cheeks.

We have to read the first chapter of Great Expectations, and Mr Newton’s put us in pairs because there aren’t enough copies to go around. We both hunch over the book. I get to the bottom of the page without taking in a word. I wait for a bit and then say, ‘Can I turn the page now?’

She flushes and mumbles, ‘Yeah, sure.’

It’s obvious she hasn’t finished yet, and I feel bad for embarrassing her. ‘Do you like audiobooks?’ I ask.

Padma gives me a weird look. ‘Yeah… Why?’

‘I could read it aloud if you like, and you could pretend I’m an audiobook.’

She looks both happy and angry at the same time. This is why I don’t talk to girls! I grab the book to hide behind and start reading. I used to read to my sister (before she became the bane of my existence) and so I’m quite good at it. I do different voices and everything. It’s the only way to make this book bearable. Then, just for variety, I try to give one of the characters a Scottish accent, and Padma cracks up.

I blush again and she says, ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have laughed, but my gran is Scottish and I was just imagining the look on her face if she’d have heard that! I was enjoying it. I read kinda slow.’

‘Are you dyslexic?’ I ask.

She scowls. ‘So what if I am?’

‘So, nothing.’ I shrug. ‘Aren’t most geniuses dyslexic, or something? Maybe I’d get all intimidated, so best keep it to yourself.’

She laughs again. This conversation is like a rollercoaster. I guess a lot of people judge her or think she’s stupid, but how could I think that? I mean, Aliya can’t even read or write, but she’s more intelligent than I am. At least, I think she is; when I’m her, my thoughts are freer, more expansive. Or maybe that’s just the relief of not being stuck as me.

Channelling a little bit of Aliya’s courage, I leap back into the conversation. Maybe being me isn’t quite so bad when I get to talk to Padma.

I daydream all the way home. And not about Great Expectations.

Mum has been at a craft fair and bought me a dreamcatcher. That’s either dramatic irony or some sort of cosmic what the hell. It looks like some New Ager on acid had a bad dream about Native Americans. Nothing at all like a real dreamcatcher made by a real shaman, but I don’t tell Mum that. I say, ‘Why would I want it to catch my dreams?’

‘It only catches the bad dreams, honey,’ Mum assures me.

‘But how does it know which dreams are bad ones?’ I ask. ‘I mean, some days are pretty rubbish, so maybe if they were dreams they would have been trapped by that thing.’ I flap my hand a bit dismissively at my present. ‘But what if one of those rubbish things turned out to be important on some other day, and I didn’t know about it? So even though it’s a bad day, I’d rather have it than not have it.’

Mum looks pretty confused. ‘But this only catches dreams, not real life.’

‘But maybe bad dreams are useful, too. I mean, not like that one I had after I watched the second Harry Potter, where I was being chased by giant spiders: that was just creepy. But some of them…’ I think of some of the things I have lived in my dreams lately: sometimes awful, but not something I would miss for the world. I’ll take the bad with the good. I grin at Mum. ‘You’re always telling me to live my dreams.’

She smiles back at me. ‘True, you’ve got me there! Just don’t live that one with the spiders.’

I spin the dreamcatcher idly.

Then, I read about shamanism on Wikipedia. It tells me an awful lot of not very much. Mainly: it’s dead. It used to be practised hundreds—even thousands—of years ago, but modern copycats have a bad rep for taking drugs and calling it spirituality. That definitely doesn’t relate to Aliya’s experience. The original term ‘shaman’ comes from Siberia, but it means different things in different cultures.

What does any of this mean for me? Altered states of consciousness. Trances. Communicating with nature spirits. Divining the future and healing illnesses by mending the soul. Why have I found myself in an alternate dimension where these things are real?