Life Is but a Dream (16 page)

A picture of me stares back from the upper left hand corner of the screen. In the photo, my lips are pushed up in a fake kind of kiss like a picture in a celebrity magazine. It was taken up in Kayliegh’s room last spring. I’m wearing one of her really old tank tops that’s much too small for me. It says
SWEET
on the front because it’s meant for little girls but we thought it was funny because it means something different at our age. In the picture I’m leaning forward and it makes my breasts look bigger. She snapped it when we were playing around—just a second of acting silly that was never meant for sharing. It’s the kind of picture my dad would never want to see of me. Really, though, it’s nothing like me at all. But inside the computer everyone will think that is what I’m like. They will all believe I’m posing only at them.

—
You like it?
— Kayliegh asks. There’s a glow around her, so bright she’s practically bursting. I rub my hand over my mouth and shrug one shoulder. She can read my mind. —
Level with me … what’s wrong with it?
—

—
Nothing, I guess
— I mumble. —
It’s just … why did you use that picture?
—

—
Because it’s fun … and you look hot
— Kayliegh says. It was her idea to take the pictures. I took the same kind of her and she kept laughing and asking me if I thought Thomas would like them. I told her that of course he would because Thomas is all hormones. I would never tell her to her face, but he kind of gets on my nerves. He is always saying lewd things to me on the walk home. I really don’t know why she likes him so much. —
Trust me, you look great in the picture so just lighten up. Anyway, it’s just a picture, it’s no big deal. Your parents got you all messed up about this stuff. That’s why I set up a profile for you, so you could see. Besides, you don’t want to become a social outcast.
—

—
But won’t a lot of people see this?
—

Kayliegh falls back on my bed laughing. —
That’s the entire point, Sabrina!
— Something about her tone is like a parent scolding a child and when I don’t smile, she frowns. —
Look
.
You already have five friend requests. This is going to be great.
—

When she smiles, the lavender walls in my room turn to gold. Sparks fly up around her. I want to feel them on my skin. Part of me wants to reach across the bed and trace her smile with my fingers but I know better than to act on every whim the way I used to when we were younger.

I want to describe it all to her—to draw her a picture, the way I’m so used to doing. But then I remember she doesn’t want me doing that any longer. Not after the last time, just before spring break when I drew her with flower petals for hair and me beside her, smiling at the scent. —
It’s cute
— she said when I showed her, but the smile she wore as I was drawing it faded as soon as she peeked. —
It seems kind of … weird though. Other people might get the wrong idea
— and I haven’t drawn a picture for Kayliegh since. Without them, sometimes I have no way of telling her how I feel.

At that moment, I feel like I want nothing more than to delete myself from her computer entirely. But it’s impossible for me to argue with Kayliegh when she’s this excited. At times like this, she is a whirlwind in the center of a thunderstorm. There are only two choices—go along with her or get left in the ruins.

I’m not ready to be left behind. Besides, maybe she’s right. It might not be such a big deal.

I take a closer look at the screen. I scroll through the page and it reads like an advertisement—my photo next to a list with my age and sex and interests so people can choose me or not. Like everyone else in my grade, it says I’m older than I am going to be. —
Oh don’t worry about that
— Kayliegh tells me. —
You have to be sixteen to join the site, so everybody just says they are, even if they aren’t.
—

There are five faces asking me to approve them. They are all boys from places around the country that I’ve never been to. —
Why do these guys want to be my friend? They don’t know anything about me.
—

—
They probably think you’re cute and want to flirt or whatever
—Kayliegh says. —
That’s what people do. It’s just for fun, it doesn’t have to mean anything.
—

—
So what do I do?
—

Kayliegh shrugs, putting her hands up in the air. —
You pick.
—

I wonder how she knows if these people are even real.

They don’t feel real to me.

I try my best to act like I’m enjoying it. I type a few messages and send a few requests to kids at school. I don’t know why, but something about it feels wrong—feels like the computer is trying to read my mind. I start to wonder if the more information I feed into it, the more real the fake me becomes. If I keep giving away pieces of me, it will take my place. It disturbs me to even think about it.

—
Are you hungry? Want to go downstairs and get something to snack on?
— I ask. I think Kayliegh suspects I’m only making an excuse so we can turn off the computer. But she says okay anyway and I close the screen. I won’t look at that page again for another two months when my vice principal has it open on his computer at school.

*   *   *

The image in the mirror is smiling. I keep looking at the door hoping somebody will come rescue me, but they don’t. There is no sound of sneakers through the hall, no trays of medicine being wheeled, and in their silence there is only the noise that is never supposed to be inside the walls of the Wellness Center.

The girl in the mirror enjoys it.

She is smiling and her eyes are evil.

—
You’re her, aren’t you? The secret person
— I whisper, and she mimics me. —
You’re what will replace me once they are done.
—

She answers without moving her lips. Her reply echoes through the walls—buried inside the noise like thunder in a hurricane. —
I already have
—is what she tells me.

—
No
— I mumble.

It can’t be true.

I can’t be stuck here—not when Alec and I were so close.

Alec.

I want to see him.

I want to see him right away, so I jump out of my chair and grab the door. It’s locked. I jiggle the handle and pound on it with my fist. The girl is laughing at me. I can feel her laughter in my bones and I scream.

—
I want out! Let me out!
—

My hand hurts, but I bang harder. My throat is raw, but I yell louder.

When the door opens from the other side, I rush out into the hallway, gasping for air like someone half-drowned being pulled out of the water. The nurse catches me before I get too far. I try to escape and another one tackles me.

There is a tiny prick on my arm like a bee sting—then everything dissolves.

*   *   *

—
Hello, Sabrina. How are you feeling?
— Dr. Richards asks as she enters my room.

There is a sick feeling in my stomach as I notice that it is nighttime.

—
Was I asleep?
— I ask.

—
We gave you something to calm you down
— Dr. Richards says. —
You were sleeping for a few hours.
—

My hand wraps around the stone in my pocket. It’s the stone from outside of the hospital—the one I took as the police car was watching. I know its shape by the way it cradles in my palm. It’s more powerful than the ones I find here and the heat from my body causes it to sputter and spark. I check to make sure the light doesn’t shine through my sweatshirt and am relieved to see that it doesn’t. My hand must be absorbing all of the colors it sends out.

—
You realize that you gave us all a bit of a scare?
— Dr. Richards tells me.

I nod shyly. —
I guess. I never really thought about it.
—

Dr. Richards drags the chair from under the desk in front of the window and pulls it next to my bed. The sound of the chair’s legs scraping across the floor is horrifyingly loud and I flinch. —
What was it that upset you in the waiting room? Can you remember?
—

—
Mmmm, hmmmm.
— I remember.

—
Will you tell me?
—

I look around the room and see my stuff scattered around. The pink bag with the koala keychain sits in the corner. The books on the desk are the ones I brought with me. The photos taped to the wall are ones my mom sent and the drawings are ones I’ve made. —
It was nothing … just that room I was in. I was getting claustrophobic, that’s all.
—

—
The nurses said you were talking to someone in there. Who were you talking to?
— she asks me. I just shake my head because I don’t want to say. When she asks a second time, I answer by touching my tongue to the sleeve of my sweatshirt. —
Okay, we won’t talk about that then
— she says, encouraging me to bring my hand back into my lap. —
Instead, can you tell me what made you want to leave?
—

—
I don’t know
— I say.

—
Then why did you?
—

—
It wasn’t really like leaving
— I say. —
Or it wasn’t about leaving, I mean. It was more about … like wanting to fly or something. Flying just to fly, you know?
—

I watch as Dr. Richards scratches down every word I’ve said, turning the sound of my voice into blue ink in her notebook. —
You went to the town. How did it feel being out there after spending the last several weeks here?
—

I think about Alec walking with his arm around my waist and how the sky changed colors with each step. I picture the sun sitting low in the sky, calling for us to walk into its center and out of the world completely and how wonderfully amazing it felt to be free. But then I remember the old couple with sharp teeth and hungry static in their eyes. I remember the headlights of the police car and the idea of every move I made being followed. I notice the hum of the fluorescent light above my head then. It hurts my eyes and makes everything shiny like the shoes I used to wear with white dresses on Easter. I twist a strand of hair around my finger and examine it. It looks wet and blacker than its normal dark brown.

I’m being watched still.

I bite my bottom lip and hold it between my teeth.

It’s all true. They are working together—the hospital and the static working to make us into sleepwalking mannequins that behave exactly like they want us to.

The thought tightens the skin over my ribs.

But every thought I have is fleeting. Each one is like the piece of a puzzle and no matter how many times I try, I can’t make them fit together. It’s as if they know the precise moment when I’m about to figure out their plan and that’s when they flood the air with a stronger storm to confuse me.

—
Sabrina? Did something happen in town?
—

I try to concentrate, but the lights blink too fast for me to think straight. They scramble my thoughts.

Alec is right. To be safe I shouldn’t tell them anything.

—
For me to help, you have to talk to me.
—

When I refuse to answer, Dr. Richards folds her arms in front of her, leaving the notebook open in her lap. She arches her eyebrows and her hand scratches out a few words in the notebook.

—
I had to contact your parents
— she says. —
They needed to know about this incident. Also, to be honest with you, Sabrina, I’m concerned about how things have been going with your treatment lately.
—

I try to follow what she’s saying but it’s not easy.

The lights continue to flicker and her voice keeps fading.

She sighs and leans back. —
Perhaps we should talk again in the morning. You’re probably still drowsy from the medication.
—

Medication.

She said they gave me a shot and it dawns on me now. That is why I can’t concentrate—why my thoughts are all swimming around in circles. We never should have come back here.

—
Where’s Alec?
— I ask forcefully.

—
In his room
— she says. —
We’ll discuss it in the morning after you’ve slept some more.
—

Dr. Richards waits with me until a nurse comes. She crosses the room to meet her and whispers something to the nurse before she leaves. The nurse hands me a cup with six pills and watches me so closely that I have to sit on the edge of my bed for five minutes and forty-two seconds with the medicine under my tongue until my entire mouth burns with the chalky taste of acid. After she’s gone, I finally spit out what’s left into the palm of my hand and wash it away in the bathroom sink.

Whatever it is they are trying to do to me here, I’m not going to let them.

CHAPTER

TWELVE

In my dream, I’m standing in my yard in Burbank. The house at my back is like mine only different, the way it always is in my dreams. It’s turned at the wrong angle so the sun shines on it differently. Also our driveway is grown over with grass as tall as my knees that has dried to a golden brown in the forever drought. The roads in my neighborhood have suffered the same fate. There are fields between the houses and the houses are marked by trees taller than normal instead of street numbers painted on a curb that no longer exists.

Somewhere, a few lawns behind me, a fence rattles in the breeze. The sky above me is bleach bright, but I know the horizon at my back is purplish black with rolling waves of storm clouds screaming their thunder into the landscape. I refuse to look over my shoulder. I know there is only horror there.

In front of me is the familiar creaking of a tree branch as the tire swing sways back and forth. I run ahead, rushing around the side of the house where I know the boy is waiting for me—the boy who never had a name before but now is Alec and always has been. Yellow dandelions sprout through the grass and their flower tops snap off as I tear through the yard. They rise up around me and flutter like yellow starfish before becoming part of the sunbeams that dance warmly on my bare skin.