The light drizzle that greets me as I leave the clinic gives way to thunderstorms and horizontal sheets of rain. Though I’ve made it to school on time this morning, the Quad is virtually empty. I pass a pair of girls huddled together under a Monet umbrella and clock a sprinter holding his backpack over his head. Other than them, no one’s around to note my suspicious dismissal of the closer main entrance in favor of the West Gate.
Huddled inside the semiprotectiveness of a hooded parka, I jog around the perimeter of my school. As I round the science hall, my pulse quickens, and I pick up the pace, racing to the covered portico.
Wes is waiting for me.
I pull off my hood. I’m still dripping, streams of raindrops cascading down my face, but I don’t wipe them away. Instead, I hard-charge Wes, my finger jabbing the air that surrounds his chest. “What the hell is going on?” I blurt, my voice sharp and full of displaced anger.
He says nothing, just holds out his palm—and a folded piece of paper. I snatch it from him and read.
Ginger kid. Carnival dream. Chased by Burners through funhouse. Captured in maze of mirrors. Paralysis lockdown for at least two hours.
I look from the paper to Wes, my hands shaking.
“Same dream?” he asks steadily.
All the intensity in my voice dissipates, leaving only a whisper. “You were trapped between two Burners in the fair games.”
“I was hiding—”
“In the dime pitch.”
We watch each other, speechless, the beating rain on the roof only serving to highlight the silence. It’s one thing to quietly wonder if your reality has turned on its head, but it’s something else entirely to have your absurd suspicions confirmed. Suddenly, I’m tired. Exhausted. I slump against the building and slide down the damp concrete.
“Is it possible? Are we really sharing the same dream?” I ask, staring at the wet ground.
“Seems like it,” he replies and squats beside me.
I sense his eyes heavy on me but can’t bring myself to look up at his face. “You’ve known…”
“Since you mentioned Gigi and the deer.”
His voice lacks any intonation that might give me a clue as to how he’s handling this glitch in the matrix. I, on the other hand, feel exposed, barely stitched together by my skin. His poise feels like a direct challenge.
“And you didn’t think it was a good idea to mention it then?” I glare up at him. “Maybe we could have told someone, stopped this from happening.”
Wes shakes his head. “Told them what? That we’re sharing the same consciousness when we sleep? That’s sure to keep us out of the mental asylum.”
“But the techs, the doctors.”
“Will think we’re nuts. And that’s if we’re lucky. If they actually did believe what we were saying?” He scoffs, the sound both cruel and condescending. “Best case scenario, they’d ask our parents’ permission before they started experimenting on us.” His hands clench in white-knuckled fists. “I, for one, am done with that.”
Despite his height and prowess, Wes suddenly looks small. He takes a deep breath, shakes out his hands, and runs his palms across his forehead. Then he says, barely loud enough for me to hear over the rain, “I didn’t say anything because I was afraid you’d tell.”
He falls silent. It’s a considered quiet, the kind you don’t interrupt. So I wait. After a while, he looks at me and says, “I was eleven when I started acting out my dreams while I slept. My mother’s super religious and couldn’t handle life with the demon that was possessing her son. I’d smash all her plates at two in the morning or open all the windows in the middle of January because I dreamt I was a fireman evacuating a building. So my stepfather started sending me anywhere that would study me. By the time I was thirteen, I’d already been in a handful of studies at clinics across the country.” He takes a deep breath before adding, “It was trial number five that sent me into a coma.”
“What?” I gasp.
“Experimental drug called Sonambulum. I was unconscious for two hundred and seventy-eight days.” He laughs humorlessly. “Ironically, my body didn’t move once when I was in that coma, but I remember it.”
“You were awake?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Not exactly. Sometimes, I felt aware that people were around me, but I could never make contact with them. Never touch them or speak to them.”
I think of the temporary locked-in syndrome I’d experienced the night before and shudder. “Was it like with the Burners?” I ask.
“No,” he says definitively. “I’d take the Burners any day to this. At least I know that ends. The coma was just a void. I was alone, with only the occasional hint of other people around.” His mouth tightens into a frown. “Do you know what it’s like to be alone? I don’t mean lonely but actually without anyone?”
I look down at the pavement.
“It sucks, like, for real,” he says. “So when I woke up, I did everything I could to not be alone ever again. I tried to have a good relationship with my parents, to do well in school, whatever it took.”
This part of the story I know all too well. Equilibrium is only ever tenuous for our kind. I regard the angsty loner before me and ask, “And how’d that work out for you?”
Wes smiles. “For about two months, I was okay. Then one night, I woke up standing over the stove, gas burners on high, flames out. One week later, I was enrolled in a boarding school that just happened to be a mile away from a sleep clinic where I’d get to spend the night whenever the doctors wanted.”
“So all the schools you went to?”
“I’d get myself kicked out, hoping dear old stepdad would run out of trials to sign me up for. But he’d always find another school willing to take his money—and another clinic nearby.”
“Wes, I am so sorry.”
He winces. “I’m not looking for pity. I’m just trying to get you to understand why we can’t tell anyone what’s going on. I’ve been experimented on for a lot of my life. I lost the better part of a year because of some crap drug that never should have been given to anyone, let alone a kid, and I’m still being forced into trials. Now I’ve finally found a drug that works, and I’ve got no intention of missing out on it.”
“Works?” I ask. “Last night, I was paralyzed after some crazy weird, really realistic stuff happened in my dream—a dream I shared with another person. I don’t think I’d classify that as the definition of success.”
Wes cocks an eyebrow. “Crazy weird bad or crazy weird not-actually-so-terrible?”
I stare at him. Is he really ignoring the insane revelation of our shared unconsciousness so he can flirt?
“I’ll grant you the Burner part sucks,” he continues. “But the rest?” He reaches his hand out to tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear. I’m transported to our near kiss at the funhouse, and I blush. “Tell me it wasn’t nice to have someone in your corner for once. To not be so utterly alone. Tell me we didn’t have a good time.”
“Maybe,” I offer as I try and fail to suppress a smile. The wind picks up, and chilly rain sprays onto my face, providing the cold shower I need. “But this isn’t normal,” I declare. “We aren’t meant to be in each other’s dreams.”
“Yeah, well, we aren’t meant to be acting out our dreams when we sleep either. But we do.” He positions himself in front of me and takes my hands in his. “I thought I was alone, Sarah. That no one in the world would ever understand what I was going through. But now there’s you. There’s two of us.” His eyes flicker. “We were made different, and we’ve been punished for it our whole lives, haven’t we? How old were you the first time you physically hurt your parents after you crawled into their bed? How long did it take to figure out they were actually afraid of you?”
His light touch hardens, and he twists my wrists to face up. “When did you start applying makeup to cover the bruises that your restraints left behind? Did you hate summer and short sleeves? Were you relieved every October when your sweatshirts could help you hide the truth?”
I pull my hands back and massage them, trying to rub out the memory we clearly share.
“I don’t mean to upset you,” he says, his voice tight, a forced calm. “I just want you to really think this through. I mean, what if you actually embraced the Dexid? What if you allowed the positive to outweigh the negative? You’ve earned that choice, haven’t you? I think I have. I think we both have.”
“But does it work?” I ask again. “I’m not trying to be difficult, Wes. I mean, yeah, we’ve been through a lot and finally—”
“Finally, our bodies are staying still through the night,” he interrupts.
“Yes, but at what cost?” I think of Gigi’s middle-of-the-night visit for the first time since Wes and I began our dream deconstruction, and my hand goes to the shorter patch of hair hidden underneath. To be that vulnerable, to have no way to protect my sleeping body. Is this an acceptable risk? I prepare to tell him about the nightmare he didn’t witness, but his temper turns out to be quicker than my confession.
“Jesus, Sarah,” he snaps. He pushes back on his heels and crosses his arms. “Nothing’s perfect, but isn’t this close? Yeah, you might have some messed-up dreams, but they’re not reality. Reality is your body won’t freak out while you sleep. Don’t you understand? This is the best we’re ever going to get.” He eyes me through narrowed slits. “Or maybe I’ve got you all wrong. Maybe things haven’t been as tough on you as I’d assumed.”
A tingling fury explodes across my body. It’s one thing to listen to him bemoan his inarguably crappy childhood, but I’ll be damned if Wes is going to accuse mine of being perfect. “I get that the Dexid stills our bodies,” I say. “And believe me, that is not something I’d trade lightly. But it also puts your brain in mine or the other way around or something else totally nuts, and that is way screwed up! Not to mention there are monsters—monsters—that paralyze us if they catch us. So you ask what I want? I just want to be normal! That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Isn’t that what you want?”
“No,” he says. “I want you.”
Like that, my anger evaporates, and I pray I don’t burn from the heat consuming my flesh.
“I’ve always been on my own,” he says. “Not just in the coma, but always, everywhere. Until you showed up at the clearing in the woods. You found me, Sarah. For the first time, I was not alone.”
This time, Wes blushes. “I gave up on normal a long time ago. I’ll take the company and be happy for it. The Burner thing sucks, royally. And I don’t know what to do other than get better at dodging them or look for a way to get rid of them. But that one minus, big as it is, feels like nothing compared to all the fascinating stuff that comes with this.” He moves closer again, returning to my personal space, and rests his hands on the cool pavement on either side of my legs. His dazzling green eyes sparkle even in the gray absence of sunshine. “So let’s keep it to ourselves. At least for a little while. This could be the adventure of our lives.”
He lowers his forehead until it meets mine. Leaning on me, as if for support, this strong, brave, larger-than-life person who’s taken up my plight against Gigi, who’s guided me through our impossibly shared unconsciousness, closes his eyes and whispers, “Please.”
I breathe him in. Wes’s vulnerability makes me feel strong, despite my fears. Maybe he’s right. What’s a fleeting nightmare in exchange for the freedom of a consequence-free consciousness? Could I handle a brief lock-up for a life sentence of peaceful sleep?
“I want to,” I say, matching the intimate whisper of his plea. “But I’m scared.”
“I’ll protect you,” he says.
I feel the heat of his breath on my lips as his mouth moves closer to mine, and I’m lost, desire replacing fear almost completely. I open my mouth to swallow his, when the sound of a toppling garbage can kills the moment.
“Uhhh, whoops. Sorry,” a clipped, nasal voice says.
Wes and I break away instantly, as if we’ve been caught doing something way more intimate. I smooth my hair as he adjusts his jacket.
“Hey, Sarah and guy who isn’t Jamie,” a runty red head says.
“Grady,” I reply, rolling my eyes and waving Meat Butchowski’s little brother away like a gnat.
Then the world stops for the second time that morning. The dream from the night before hits me like a sucker punch. The train, the carnival, the bedroom, the computer.
The computer. Grady’s reflection in the computer.
I lurch at Grady, grabbing him by the arm, and twist him to face me.
“Easy there,” he says, pulling his arm back. “Seems like you’re already spoken for.” His free hand adjusts his glasses, which are taped together at the bridge. A decent-size bandage covers his left temple.
“What happened to your head?” I ask.
Grady frowns. “Let’s just say I was testing out a new product and had a close encounter with the edge of my desk.”
My stomach falls into my feet. Grady is a straight-A student, a member of Mensa, and a drug kingpin. Unlike his brother, Grady can’t expect an athletic scholarship to college, so he came up with a different way to ensure he could afford the Ivy of his choice. Tessa heard that he chooses which drugs to sell to whom based on the side effects. He likes selling Meat anything with hair loss in the fine print, while a hot girl looking to get high is guaranteed the added benefit of an increased sex drive. But to whom do you sell the drug with a side effect of possession?
“What new product?” I demand.
Grady grins. “I thought you were on the straight and narrow, Miss Reyes.” He glances over at Wes. “Guess I had you pegged wrong. But listen, if you’re really interested, I wouldn’t start out with this stuff. A little too potent for a newbie such as yourself. I’d suggest something more—”
“What’s the drug, Grady?” I ask again, my impatience straining my voice.
He shrugs, enjoying his bit of power. “It’s not on the street yet. I really can’t say.”
“Tell her,” Wes growls and moves to tower over the smaller boy.
Determining that an ass-kicking isn’t worth the cover-up, Grady spills. “It’s called Dexidnipam,” he says with a sigh. “But I don’t plan on selling it. The guy I got it from didn’t own up to the fact that it’s not FDA-approved yet, so the side effects aren’t all in. And judging from my not so little fall,” he says, wincing as he touches his forehead, “I’d say there are some serious kinks in the system.”
“Who gave it to you?” I ask.
“Now, Sarah, as I’ve said, this really isn’t the high for you. If you want me to sell you something, you’re going to have to let me recommend it.”
“Who?” I roar as I dig my nails into my own scalp and tug on my hair.
For the first time, Grady looks legitimately nervous. I watch him weigh the pros and cons of revealing his source to this clearly unhinged lunatic. “Fine,” he says finally. “It’s not like I’ll be doing business with him again. You probably know him too. He went here. Do you remember Josh Mowrey?”
Without a word, I turn from Grady and Wes and walk away.