Authors: Lucy Keating
“I know,” Max says.
“And what about her, by the way?”
I'm starting to lose my cool, which is exactly what I promised myself I wouldn't do. “Because she's great. I genuinely like her. But what would she do if she knew that when you go to sleep at night, you're basically just switching girlfriends?”
“I know,” Max says again. The fact that he sounds remorseful only makes me angrier.
“Do you mean to?” I ask softly. “In our dreams. Do you mean to act the way you do in our dreams, like nothing has changed, when during the day I'm barely allowed to look at you?”
“I can't help it,” Max says quietly. He meets my eyes, this time not through the mirror but in person, tilting his head slightly to the side to gaze down at me. “I know what's right, and what I should want, but when I'm in the dreams, I can't control it. The way I act, it just happens. You know that as well as I do. What happens in the dreams isn't our choice.”
I break away from his gaze and stare at a corner of the floor, where I won't have to meet his eyes again. I know he's basically
right, but it's also not good enough. We ride in silence for a while, before Max finally speaks.
“You look different tonight,” Max says, even though he's not looking at me. He's looking at the elevator buttons. “You did something to your eyes. It's pretty.”
By now the doors have opened, and we've reached the ground floor, and my face is burning with rage. “Just because we can't help the way we act in the dreams doesn't mean what happens in the dreams doesn't matter,” I say coldly as I walk out. “Especially to me.”
“I know,” Max says one final time as the doors close again.
It's a gorgeous
day at the flea market, and I am gazing into a cracked antique mirror, trying on a neon alpaca poncho.
“It looks great on you,” the vendor says, and when I turn, I realize it's Kate Moss.
“Would you wear it?” I ask.
“Darling, of course,” she coos in her sexy British accent.
I pull at the yellow fringe, unsure. “I want to know what Max thinks. Do you know where he went?”
“I think I saw him heading toward the books section,” she replies, straightening some vintage lace dresses.
I wander off, still wearing the poncho. Up ahead I spot Max striding away from me among the brightly colored tents. I yell his
name, but he doesn't turn. It's busy today, and I am dodging shoppers left and right. Eventually I lose him.
I make it to the book vendors and Max isn't there. But Dean Hammer is.
“Have you seen Max?” I ask.
“He said he wanted to grab some ice cream,” the dean replies. “What do you think of these?” He turns to face me, wearing red, heart-shaped sunglasses.
“Love them!” I cry. And this time I don't walk, I run. I can feel panic rising up within me. I look by the food trucks, the smell of fresh Nutella crepes following me. I sift through a wall of colorful scarves, scrambling to get to the other side. Everywhere I go, he seems to have just left.
“You just missed him,” my grandmother says in the jewelry section. She is standing at the stall next to me in a pink Chanel suit, trying on a diamond brooch with gigantic peacock feathers. Jerry is on a leash by her side in a velvet bow tie.
“Where did he go?” I plead.
“He seemed unhappy,” Nan says. “Did you get in a fight?”
“Nanny, listen to me.” I put a hand on her small, fragile shoulder. “Where did Max go?”
“I think he said he wanted to take a swim.” Nan smiles, her mind somewhere else already.
I run out of the market and down Vanderbilt Avenue until I reach the Navy Yard, somehow knowing exactly where to go.
He's
waiting for you, like he always is
, I tell myself as I sprint out onto the docks. But when I reach the end, breathless, there is still no Max. Just endless water. When I turn back the way I came, I find water there too, gray and unwelcoming. There is no way back, no way forward, and, worst of all, no one here to tell me everything will be all right.
I am utterly alone.
IT'S NOT LIKE
I don't know what a bad dream is. And I know, of course, that I've had them before, because bad dreams are why I went to CDD in the first place. It's just that I've never been able to
remember
any. It's as though all that CDD did, the magical worlds they created, didn't just give me something new and something better, they wiped away all the bad, too. Until now.
The entire day after the flea market dream I feel off, like I'm coming down with something. Like someone slipped something weird into my coffee or, worse, like someone has been slipping something in there all along, something to make me happy, and today they decided to stop. And nothing is making it better. Not the three coffees I've had since breakfast, not the
bike ride to school in the brisk fall morning under a piercing blue sky. Not the A I got on my English paper or the fact that in Terrarium Club I actually managed to build an arrangement with nobody's instructions. It's not like I'm depressed or anything, I'm just not right. Which makes me all the more eager to get to CDD today and start to fix it.
“Upstairs.” Lillian just points to the ceiling when I dash through the door of CDD. I realized when I arrived at Frank after Terrarium Club clutching my newest orb that I had nothing to store it in safely, and I had to rest it carefully in Frank's basket as I walked him the two miles from Bennett to MIT.
“Thanks,” I say. “By the way, this is for you.” I set the tiny ecosystem down on her desk and don't look back as I dash up the stairs, where Petermann is waiting patiently in his office and Max's leg is jiggling.
“Sorry I'm late! I had a precarious terrarium situation, don't ask,” I announce, looking at Dr. Petermann. I'm afraid to look at Max after our elevator run-in. I'm not fuming anymore, but I'm still angry. And even though last night was just a dream, I still can't help but feel hurt by the way he ran from me.
“It's no trouble, Alice,” Dr. Petermann says, and I'm surprised to see he's wearing the same heart-shaped glasses Dean Hammer was wearing in my dream.
“Alice?” Petermann says.
I blink.
“Are you all right?”
I blink again, and his glasses look completely normal. “I think so . . .” Then I look over at Max and notice him smirking as he turns a silver skull paperweight over in his hands.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says, standing up straighter, like he's been caught, his face going serious again.
“No, tell us,” I say, folding my arms across my chest. “I'm dying to know what's so funny.”
Max sighs. “You're just exactly the same.” He shrugs. “Generally forgetful, often late, blowing into the room with your hair all over the place.” He flaps his hands around his head with a goofy smile but then clears his throat and goes serious when he notices the look on my face.
I am shooting daggers at him with my eyes, but I can't help but notice he seems to be staring at my hair like he wants to reach out and touch it. “Thank you for that observation,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady.
Max gives me a look. “You're the one who asked for it,” he says. “I didn't mean to upset you.” We hold each other's gaze for a minute.
Petermann looks like he couldn't care less. “I was just telling Max more about the science of dreams, and why we study them. Do you have any idea?”
I think for a moment, about the parrots and the Jenga blocks, how happy I was in that dream with Max even though my rational mind should have known we weren't together
anymore. “I guess because they're often so weird and disjointed, and they seem to come out of nowhere?” I reply.
Petermann claps his hands together. “Bravo, Alice. That's very close. Most people just say the first part. But it's the latter that's the real fascination. Recorded history tells us that from the very beginning, dreams have been just about the most universally fascinating subject on earth. Poets, philosophers, religious figures, and, of course, scientists have grappled with what dreams mean and why they exist.” Petermann leans back in his chair, looking from me to Max.
“In the most basic terms, we define our dreams as a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. In more specific analysis, Freud asserted that dreams were where we revealed our deepest fears and desires.”
I look over at Max with an expression that says,
See? I am your deepest desire.
“Ancient Greeks, for example, believed the dreams of a sick person would communicate what ailed them. But again, to me the real question is, why the obsession in the first place? Why the desire to prove what it all means?”
He pauses as though he is waiting for us to answer, but when I start to speak, he just talks over me. Petermann is in his element. “Turns out, it's not the content that gets under our skin, so much as the word
involuntary
in the definition. We don't like that dreams just happen to us. We don't accept or
want to accept things beyond our control . . . especially when they come out of our own minds.”
Max is staring at Petermann intently, and I realize that's the big difference between us. Max is that person. Max is here because he doesn't like the loss of control, the ambiguity, the disruption of his daily life. I don't mind what happens in my dreams. I don't even mind that my dreams are now part of my reality. But Max can't stand it.
Petermann gets up quickly. “So there you have it! That's why we're all here, and today we will begin to try and fix it. Follow me please.” He walks out his office door without looking back.
Max and I reach the door at the same time. We gaze at each other coolly before he steps aside, making an
after you
kind of motion. I respond by shaking my head and mimicking his motion, extending my hand to gesture toward the door. But as I do, my iPhone goes flying, clattering to the floor with a sound that echoes through the halls.
“You should really get a case for that,” Max says from above as I stoop down to pick it up.
I stand back up, clutching the phone in my fist. I know he's not teasing; he's serious. But I really don't need him butting into my life. “
Go
,” I say.
“Fine,” Max announces, following Petermann down the black-and-white-tiled corridor.
The walls are lined with paintings. I peer at a picture of a clock that looks like it's melting into a desert landscape,
and then a larger painting of an eyeball with a cloudy blue sky where the iris should be, followed by a portrait of man wearing a large black bowling hat, but his face is obscured by a big green apple. The objects in the paintings are clear and distinctive, but put together, nothing about them seems to add up.
“Why paint someone's portrait if you are just going to cover their face with a piece of fruit?” I say out loud.
“They're surrealist,” Max says from up ahead.
“I knew that,” I shoot back.
Sort of.
“Why the fascination with surrealism, Dr. Petermann?” Max calls out.
At this, Petermann turns on his heels to face us, arms outstretched. “Because in our dreams, we are all surrealist painters, creating narratives and pictures that are often as beautiful as they are nonsensical.”
Petermann motions us inside a room, where we find Nanao looking bored, holding a clipboard. To her left is a machine that looks like a giant glossy white donut, with a center the size of a manhole.
All I can think is,
Nope
.
“Will I be expected to get in there?” I ask, my body suddenly frozen where it's standing.
“I know it's hardly a hammock on a tropical shoreline, but I need to get a standard read of your brain activity before we begin putting you to sleep and seeing how it changes when
you dream,” Petermann explains.
In response I just start nodding quickly, over and over again, unable to form any words.
“Alice is a little claustrophobic,” I hear Max clarify, and when I glance his way, I find him smiling at me. It's infuriating.
“Is my anxiety humorous to you?” I ask, and feel my face growing hot.
“No,” Max says, in a tone that sounds like he's giving up. “But you have a small piece of cactus in your hair.”
Horrified, my hand shoots up to my waves, where I find a stowaway from Terrarium Club. I am always getting things stuck in this rat's nest. “Then maybe you should stop
looking
at me,” I mumble, and attempt to stealthily pull the leaf out. Max is still sort of smiling, though it looks like he's fighting it.
“Did you get it?” he asks.
“Shut up,” I say.
“I'll go first,” Max announces to everyone.
As we watch Max's long frame retreat into the depths of the evil donut monster from behind a glass partition, Petermann explains to usâover a speaker, so Max can hear, tooâexactly what the machine does. A functional MRI maps the blood flow to the brain to show what parts are the most active. In dream mapping they use an fMRI in combination with an EEG. The EEG monitors the electrical activity in the brain, which determines when the subject is in early REM cycle and likely to
have the most image-filled dreams. The fMRI then maps what parts light up in the brain, to help us understand how the brain dreams. Then the person is awakened to describe what they saw.
When Max is finished, I pull my phone out of my pocket in a dramatic fashion. “Oh, would you look at that,” I say loudly. “Six p.m.? We should probably wrap it up soon, right, Dr. Petermann? It's okay, I can come back another time.”
“You are going to be fine, Alice.” Petermann puts a hand on my shoulder. We'll be here the whole time, just behind the glass. And you just tell us when you need to come out.”
“Okay,” I say quietly, looking at the machine from five feet away. “I'm ready to come out.”
Petermann gives me a look. “First you have to go
in
.”
I told myself it would be better once I was lying in the machine, that it would be over and done with before I know it, but it doesn't feel any better at all. I understand I'm not enclosed, that there's a hole where my feet are, that I could, theoretically, scootch my butt out of this death trap if the power went off or everyone in the room was suddenly rendered unconscious by a freak accident or alien invasion. But staring up at the roof of the fMRI just makes it feel like it's closing in on me . . . which it sort of is.
“Just lie perfectly still, Alice.” Petermann's voice comes on over the intercom.
“I am,” I say.
“Your left foot is jiggling like there's a mouse up your pant leg,” I hear Max observe.
“Can you make him leave, please, Dr. Petermann?” I ask.
“This isn't going to work,” I hear Petermann whisper. “She's too frightened.”
Despite my suspicion that all the blood had drained from my face long ago, my cheeks still manage to burn. I feel so embarrassed. This test is part of the research I insisted we do, and I can't even go through with it. But that doesn't stop me from wanting to get the hell out of this thing anyway. My breath is starting to come too quickly and my lungs feel like they are the size of sandwich bags. Am I feeling light-headed, or is that just my imagination?
“Alice?” Max's voice is like the eye of the storm. The one calm place right in the center of the hurricane, breaking through all the noise of my mind. “Are you still with us?”
“Yeah,” I manage. My voice comes out so quiet it scares me even more.
“What's the one place in the world you would like to go but have never been, in a dream or otherwise?” Max asks.
I take a shallow breath and focus. Easy question. I can do this. “Pig Beach,” I say.
I hear a chuckle from Petermann. “Did I hear that correctly?”
Max explains, “Pig Beach is an island in the Bahamas, filled with clear blue ocean and palm trees, but inhabited entirely
by giant, fuzzy, friendly . . . pigs. It's Alice's favorite place in the world, but she's never been. She talks about it all the time.”
He's right. Most people fantasize about a vacation in a tropical destination, and so do I. It's just that my tropical island also has a bunch of fat jolly pigs on it. And it really exists! But my dad refuses to take me, dismissing it as an obvious tourist trap, not to mention unquestionably filthy.
“Legend has it the pigs were dropped off on the island by a group of sailors who intended to come back and cook them, but never made it,” Max says soothingly. “Or that they survived a shipwreck and somehow swam to shore. Either way, they survived something and now have a happy ending, fed by tourists and locals.”
My body relaxes as I listen to the lull of Max's voice describe my happy place.
“How remarkable,” Petermann says. “How did you know all this?”
“She told me once in a dream . . . we were in Thailand . . . and Alice turned to me and just said, âI wish there were pigs here.'” Max lets out a low laugh, like he can't help himself. I smile.
“Looks like we've got all we need,” Petermann says over the speaker. “You can come out now, Alice. Next session we will start putting you guys to sleep.”
I want to thank Max for stepping in to calm me down, but he leaves while Nanao is still unhooking me from all the
wires. When I come back down the stairs to the main hall of CDD, I expect to find my terrarium in the trash, or right where I left it. Instead, Lillian has made a special place for it on the bookshelf behind her desk, nestled in among some tiny cacti pots and a photo of a handsome guy with a man-bun.
Lillian doesn't say thank you for the terrarium, but she does say, “Your boyfriend left his phone here.”
“He's not my boyfriend.” I turn around.
“I couldn't honestly care less what dysfunctional scenario the two of you are carrying out.” Lillian looks back down at her paperwork. “But I imagine he'll need it.” She hands the phone out, still not looking at me.