Wes doesn’t say much after his initial horrified reaction to my bandaged ear. And I’m too shell-shocked to speak. So we walk in relative silence back to my house.
Our first time alone together in my room isn’t exactly how I pictured it. Wes perches on my windowsill, staring out at the sunny day that now seems to be mocking us. I lean against the doorframe at the entrance. Even though it’s my space, something about Wes’s demeanor, contemplating so deeply, utterly lost in his own thoughts, makes me feel as though I should wait for an invitation.
“High school sucks,” he says finally, still staring out the window. “And I should know. I’ve been to enough different ones to be considered an expert.”
I relax a bit and move to the edge of my bed.
“Do you remember who you were last week?” he asks.
“Uh, Sarah?” I venture.
“No. You were Gigi.”
My body jerks back as if I’ve been slapped. I begin to protest, but he holds up a hand to silence me. “The first time I saw you wasn’t in a dream. It was a week before at school, when I was doing my paperwork for enrollment. You were strutting down the halls like you owned them. Smiling at everyone you passed, then laughing at whatever remark Gigi made as soon as they were out of earshot.” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry to say it, but in some ways, you were even worse. Because you know what it’s like to be imperfect. Imperfect in a way that trumps any unibrow or lisp.”
“Well, if I’m so terrible,” I say, “why are you hanging out with me?” Though my words are accusatory, it strikes me that I could just as easily be challenging myself as him. It’s not like I don’t get exactly what he’s talking about. In the past few days, I’ve experienced what it’s like to be on the receiving end of Gigi’s ire, and my own culpability in her past cruelties toward others has been creeping on me bad. I’ve been so afraid of slipping from my rung on the high school social ladder that I’ve allowed for too much bad behavior, and it makes me sick. But hearing Wes say it is way worse. Guilt and rage collide inside of me, and I clutch my stomach.
“I’m hanging out with you,” Wes says, “because you’re not that girl anymore. You’ve fallen from your pedestal, but you’re still standing. You’re not knocking innocent people down to build yourself back up, but you’re not being a total pushover either. You, Sarah Reyes, are a force of nature.” A half grin lightens his face. “And if you start using those powers for good—that’s the kind of girl I can get behind.”
“Thanks, I guess.” Though my mumbled retort gives nothing away, inside, I’m relieved to be forgiven by someone, and I thrill at this vision of the new me.
“Tell me something,” he says as he leans forward. “How’d it feel seeing Gigi knocked down a peg today?”
“It didn’t feel great.” I pout, pointing at my ear.
“Fair enough,” he says. “But what she did to you is how you know she’s scared. Tell me you don’t believe that she’ll think twice before messing with someone else.”
I allow a slight smile. Wes’s own grin grows.
“I think you did good,” he says and tips an invisible hat. I continue to thaw. “I’d even say you made up for a few of those ignored victims of Gigi MacDonald’s too.” He places his hands behind his head and leans against the window frame. Surveying my room, he nods. “But what if we could do better?”
“Meaning?”
“Way I see it, we’ve got two great tastes that taste great together: our awesome new abilities that we’ve just scratched the surface of and a duty to do something about the hell that is our high school existence. So why not use the one to work out the other?”
“I still don’t follow,” I say.
Wes clasps his hands together. “It’s a widely accepted fact that high school is the worst, right? Either you’re just finding a way to survive it before moving onto college and a better life, or it’s the pinnacle of your existence, and once you graduate, nothing lives up to your big win at regionals or your Beyoncé hair at prom.
“But what if it didn’t have to be like that? What if there was something between kissing the class ring and getting drenched in pig’s blood? What if you could walk into school like you owned the place without having to make everyone else feel like they couldn’t make rent? We could do that, Sarah. We could bring down the monarchy and let the people eat cake.”
“How?” I laugh. “By terrorizing them in their sleep?”
“Yes,” he says, and the utter lack of humor in his voice shuts me right up.
“No. Come on,” I manage finally. “Even if what I did to Gigi last night scared her, she was also way more antagonistic than I’ve seen her to date.”
“If it starts to become clear that bad behavior has consequence, things will change,” he says. “Don’t those two stooges of hers deserve a little payback? From what I hear, you’re not the only one they’ve messed with.”
I can’t deny that Wes has a point. While there’s absolutely no arguing that Kiara’s a rotten egg, Amber actually feels like the worst of the two. And it’s not just because, unlike Kiara, Amber and I were actually friends. While I know I’ve been guilty of turning a blind eye to many of Gigi’s bad deeds, Amber has consistently participated. She’s like a demented Marcy to Gigi’s Peppermint Patty, all “yes, sirs” with no questions asked. Is she that terrified of a life outside of Gigi’s inner circle? Of returning to those lonely middle school weekends? Probably. But I’m sick of fear justifying cruelty. Just because dating Pete temporarily pacifies the ghost of thirteen-year-old Acne Amber doesn’t mean she isn’t responsible for the damage she leaves in her wake. I imagine Amber being forced to deal with the repercussions of her actions, and I smile.
Wes kneels before me. “We’ve got some serious stuff going on with what we can do in dreams, and we need to keep learning how to control it. So why not here? Why not be all that we can be while making our high school a better place?”
I stop smiling and pull away slightly. “You realize that you’re talking about experimenting on our classmates?”
“Only the shitty ones,” he clarifies.
“Oh, well then,” I say with a snort. “Seriously, this coming from you, Patient Zero?”
He frowns. “That’s not fair, Sarah. One well-deserved karmic nightmare is not the same as being child labor for Big Pharma.”
I flush as he goes on.
“But if you want to go there, okay. The history of scientific breakthrough is full of questionable labs. Would you deny the results just because you’re queasy about the means?”
“Uh, ya, Herr Doctor.” I salute.
“Nice. Go for the Nazi reference,” he says, rolling his eyes. “How about something less obvious. You know, we have the vaccine for tuberculosis because two prison inmates in Colorado were the first human test subjects. They got released for their trouble. Seems like a fair trade to me. And what about the cute and fuzzy animals getting injected with cancer while we keep poisoning our bodies, because soon enough, thanks to Fluffy the rabbit, we’ll be able to cure all the self-inflicted damage? I don’t hear anyone refusing chemo because of that.
“Not to mention if it weren’t for all the testing that’s been done on me, we wouldn’t finally have the one drug that keeps our bodies still at night. I might not be thrilled to have been the rat, but that’s all the more reason I should get to enjoy where I am now.” He rests his hands on my knees. “And I’m not complaining about having found you because of it either.”
I look away, not ready to give in yet but already feeling myself pulled in his direction.
“I’m not talking about doing any real damage,” he says softly. “I’m just suggesting that we take advantage of some teachable moments with the tools at our disposal. On balance, I’d say there’s less harm in that than there is in leaving Gigi and the like to continue their reign of destruction unchecked. Especially now that we know we can do something about it.” He places his fingers on my chin and turns my face to meet his. “You know what they say about great power, right? Don’t you think it’s our responsibility?”
He inserts his body between my legs so that my thighs hug his rib cage. “You’ve been denying a part of yourself in order to avoid being laughed at, or worse. And now that the ‘or worse’ has happened, are you going to run away and hide? Sarah,” he says hotly, his face inching closer to mine. “Tell me you won’t go back to being that half person. Tell me you’re ready to be exactly who you are, all of you. Tell me you’re strong enough to do this. Make it up to everyone you ever let feel the way you’ve felt this past week. Be the girl I know you really are.”
His hands creep up my legs, coil around my waist, and land on my back. Our positions equalize our heights, and his mouth moves forward until it’s nearly touching mine.
Then he waits.
A hungry little grin curls the corners of my mouth. For the first time since I can remember, I’m not being seen as some disorder that needs to be fixed but as someone special with infinite potential. What if the brave new version of me that Wes sees so clearly is the girl who’s been here all along? I’ve been tracing her in every acceptable avenue available to me—school, dating, sports—but I’ve been too scared to follow the unbeaten path that every molecule in my body has been begging to forge. Until now.
A moan of affirmation escapes my lips as they press against Wes’s, and then I’m dragging him down the rabbit hole with me, no longer lost, but exploring, in search of our very own Wonderland. Every kiss, every touch serves as our covenant this afternoon. I will no longer be the girl who’s ashamed. I’ll embrace my power and use it to do better, to be better.
Of course, better is a subjective term. Just like one person’s dream is another one’s nightmare.