Chapter 15
I do eventually leave Kieran’s house with my birthday presents—a copy of The Portable Dorothy Parker from Kayla and a silver charm bracelet from Kieran. Back home after Kayla drops me off, I fall asleep with the bracelet still on my left wrist, my thumb rubbing across the flower-shaped beads with my birthstone in the center spaced evenly amongst the plain round beads, the pattern only broken up by one bead with a “Z” etched on its surface and by a silver dangle with a tiny basketball at the end. Sometime in the night, I start dreaming of the sunbursts Kieran always draws, only my sunbursts are a brilliant orange outlined in black instead of the pure black they are when doodled with Kieran’s pens. When I wake up, I type out the details in the same file on my laptop as the other dream I recorded yesterday morning, a little disappointed I didn’t dream about Kieran and me kissing in the art studio. But I guess we don’t control our dreams.
My dreams Friday night don’t mean much, but Saturday night, after coming home from my rescheduled movie outing with Kieran, Kayla, and Brad Wallace, I fall asleep once again twirling the beads on my wrist, but this time, I dream about Prom. During study breaks on Sunday, I read and re-read the dream description on my computer, looking for clues, trying to force my brain to remember something else with more meaning than the words already on the screen:
My head on Kieran’s shoulder as we dance. Some slow song I don’t recognize. White Christmas lights hang from the gym ceiling like a canopy and lit-up clouds line the gym walls. Other couples dance in front of us. The room is a swirl of colors—all the girls’ dresses. Everything goes black.
Everything goes black—I remember waking up and feeling vaguely creeped out, but beyond the fact that my description suggests I suddenly stopped seeing the lights and the colors as if someone dropped a curtain in front of my eyes, I have no idea why the dream scares me so much.
And if there’s one thing I don’t want to be freaking out about with a little over a month to go, it’s Prom. I walk into school Monday morning and am instantly greeted by a large banner hanging over the gym doors, giant sparkly blue bubble letters telling me Prom tickets will start going on sale Friday. If I’m remembering correctly from previous years how this works, we’ll have three weeks of signs around school reminding us to buy our tickets, accompanied by more signs encouraging us to sign up for the parent-chaperoned After-Party at the Stanley Farm, followed by a week during which only the Prom committee is allowed in the gym for decorating purposes. From now until the first Saturday in May, Titusville Senior High will be all-Prom, all the time, the mania only broken up by boring classes. As a freshman and sophomore, I considered the month of April to be the seventh level of hell because I was so not interested in the whole thing, but there it was in your face every day. Now, as a junior with a real live date and a disturbing dream about the event hidden at home on my computer, I don’t know what to think.
“In Your Dreams,” Cassie spits from behind me, reading the Prom theme off the banner. “Sooo lame. How do you even decorate that?”
I’d forgotten Cassie was on the Prom Committee, something she also tried to drag me into until I mentioned I’d rather file my fingernails off with a cheese grater than sit around after school discussing themes and color schemes. Judging by her attitude, In Your Dreams wasn’t anywhere near the top of her list of ideas for the evening.
“How to decorate dreams,” I muse aloud, as we start walking up the stairs to our lockers. “I’m picturing lots of those kind of white Christmas lights all over the place—on the ceiling, the walls…”
“Sure you don’t want to join the Prom Committee?” Cass elbows me. “There’s still time.”
“No, thanks.”
I retreat into my head for a minute and think about my dream as the hallway noise of conversation and slamming locker doors vibrates around me. What did I just do here? Did I change the future? Or did I report a future that’s going to happen anyway? Is the Prom Committee going to choose white Christmas lights now because I made a suggestion to Cassie, and she’ll take the idea to them? Would they choose white Christmas lights anyway, even if I hadn’t said anything?
In Your Dreams. No kidding. Three months ago, I don’t think I’d ever thought about whether or not I believed in fate or wondered if dreams could determine the future, and now I’m questioning whether or not I can influence the Prom Committee’s free will?
Cassie pulls me back to the present moment only to confuse me even more. “Well, at least you’re going to Prom,” she says.
“Wait—how do you know?” I ask, wondering now if everyone in Titusville is seeing the future.
“You and Kieran were out with Kayla and Brad Saturday night, right? Well, Brad told Ben O’Leary Kieran had asked you, and Ben, I’m assuming you don’t know because you never pay attention to anything, is dating Stephanie.”
I fill in the rest of the gossip chain for myself. “Stephanie” must be Stephanie Hull, Cody and Candace Hull’s little sister. Two weeks ago, Cody asked Cassie out and they’re going to Prom together, which marks their fourth try at a relationship since eighth grade.
“About time he asked, too,” Cassie huffs. “I didn’t think you two were ever going to get past whatever ancient courtship rituals you were engaging in. Please tell me he’s at least kissed you by now.”
“I kissed him, thank you very much.”
Cassie pushes out her lower lip and nods slowly. “I stand corrected, Zip McKee. And it looks like you’ve already got him trained to wait for you at your locker, so kudos on that.”
My eyes shift a few feet ahead of me to see Kieran leaning up against my locker, hands in his front jeans pockets and eyes on the floor. “I’ll let you have some alone time with your lover boy before class,” Cassie teases before walking up the hall to her own locker, her comment thankfully lost to Kieran in all the noise.
“Hey,” I greet him, sliding my backpack off my shoulder and to the ground at my feet. He stands up from the metal door so I can start fumbling my way through my combination.
“Hey, yourself,” he says back, moving behind me. He slides his arms around my waist and kisses my neck near my ponytail holder, prompting an almost immediate tap on the shoulder from Mr. Berringer, a Spanish teacher whose unfortunate task this morning is patrolling the junior hallway to prevent any misbehavior—fights, phone usage, and, in our case, hormonal teenagers behaving like hormonal teenagers.
“Hands, Mr. Lanier,” Berringer scolds.
Kieran peels himself off me and slams up against the locker next to mine, arms outstretched and hands raised as if he’s ready to be frisked by the cops. Berringer grimaces and moves down the hall.
“High school is kind of lame sometimes,” Kieran groans, turning towards me. “All I want to do is give my girlfriend the ‘Good Morning’ she deserves, and they act like it’s a crime.”
The word “girlfriend” lingers in my ears on this, the first time I’ve ever heard those words in reference to me. I almost have to convince myself I’m Kieran’s girlfriend and he isn’t talking about someone else, it seems so bizarre.
“High school is lame all the time,” I counter, grabbing books for the morning classes I don’t already have in my backpack. “And you can give me all the ‘Good Morning’ you want after school, by the way.” I raise my eyebrow, and he reaches out to grab my hand, risking another warning from Berringer. “Or after detention,” I point out, standing on my tip toes to catch the back of Berringer’s head still moving in the other direction over the sea of our classmates. “Because we’re both headed there if you don’t cut it out.”
Kieran pouts and drops my hand. “Okay, okay. Anyway, I need to ask you something.”
“Yeah?”
“Can we go to the library for a while after school instead of the Diner?”
“Sure. Something you need to work on?”
The warning bell rings before he can answer, and after he glances around to make sure Berringer isn’t patrolling the general vi
cinity, he gives me a quick kiss and we cross the hall to English. After enduring another Think-Pair-Share set-up, Kieran and I are free to pretend to talk about The Natural, a book we’ve both already read, while we really talk about why he wants to go to the library.
“I think I want to find out about my real parents,” he tells me. “You know—look up old newspaper articles online, try to find some pictures.”
“You’re sure?” I ask.
“Not completely. By this afternoon, I’ll probably have changed my mind again. But all that information’s out there and I have to look—too tempting not to. I’d do my research at home, but I don’t trust my not-parents won’t go looking through the computer.” He sits back in his chair and stares out the window, his hands gripping the edge of his seat. “Maybe this doesn’t make any sense, but they’re not real until I actually see them, you know? Even Morgan Levert. I’ve seen him in my dreams, but I want to find out what he looked like back then.” Kieran pauses, eyes still on the gray day outside, the white clouds rolling across the sky as if they’re moving out so the darker rain clouds can settle in. “And I want to see my mother—Jenna. I can’t help it.”
“I don’t blame you,” I say, knowing if I’d learned I’d never meet my real mother in person, I’d want to go looking for pictures of her, too.
“So, you in?” he asks.
“Of course,” I agree, slipping a foot out of one of my sports slides and rubbing my toe along his ankle underneath the cuff of his jeans. He flashes a grin, and so I don’t stop. “So what parallels did you find in the reading to mythological sources?” Mrs. Harvey asks as she comes up next to us. I jam my foot back into my sport slide to avoid detention, while Kieran dazzles Mrs. Harvey by outlining some relationships of themes in the novel to Arthurian legend.
English class and the rest of the day drag on the way they always do this time of year, when you know the light at the end of the tunnel is the freedom of summer vacation, but the light’s still far enough away to be only a pin-prick against the darkness. After my seventh period Music Appreciation class, I check my backpack to make sure I have everything I need to take home with me. Once I’m satisfied all the necessary materials to complete my homework for tomorrow are present and accounted for, I decide to skip a last trip upstairs to my locker and head straight to the library on the first floor at the rear of the building.
Titusville isn’t big enough to support a municipal library, so the five people who actually read in this town either go to Sumner to check out or buy books, or they use the bookmobile the Sumner Public Library sends out around the county every two weeks. The high school library stays open for students until four on weekdays during the school year to accommodate any work students might need to do, so Kieran and I have plenty of time to research his real parents and get downtown to the Diner before my mom’s store closes.
Kieran reaches the library doors seconds after I do, apparently not having changed his mind about searching for information. “Ready?” he asks, holding the door open for me.
“Yup.”
Lucky for us, unless a big project’s due in some class, most Titusville students avoid the library like it’s a communicable disease, so we don’t have to fight anyone to use the computers. Reading each other’s minds, we walk without speaking to the computer furthest away from the circulation desk, where Mrs. Bochine clacks away at her keyboard, barely noticing us as we pass by. After we sit down, Kieran gathers my face in his hands and levels a kiss so crushing I’m afraid he might suck all the air out of my lungs. “God, I’ve wanted to do that all day,” he whispers in my ear as we hold each other, our bodies twisted into unnatural positions since we’re sitting side by side. Over his shoulder, I can just barely make out Mrs. Bochine’s hands at her computer, most of her blocked from our view by the row of books that hopefully shields us from her eyes.
“No kidding,” I gasp, abandoning all caution and kissing him again, my hand traveling to his knee where I hear the faint scraping of my charm bracelet against his jeans.
Cassie, and sometimes Lauren and Ashley, too, have described to me what I’m finally getting to experience with Kieran, the constant gnawing in the pit of my stomach, the painful yet pleasant ache telling me no matter how many hours—days, even—I could spend kissing him, they’ll never be enough. There will always be want, overtaking me when my mind wanders off during a boring explanation of the subjunctive in French class, burning through me at night when I can’t be with him. I never believed them before, thought they were going on about another one of those dumb girl things that don’t seem to be a part of my world for some reason, like picking out the perfect eye shadow to go with that new sweater or finding the right shoes to match that purse. But now, with Kieran’s tongue circling mine, I’m convinced I’m experiencing normal, natural, and kind of scary urges, feeling biology do what biology does instead of just reading about it in a textbook and looking at a bunch of diagrams. And biology’s telling me what I want to do right now is drag Kieran to the back of the library so I can push him up against a wall and do the kinds of things I’ve only seen people do in movies, things I wouldn’t know how to do in real life without making a total ass of myself.
As much as I want to surrender to biological imperative right here in the library, some part of my brain reminds me of the real reason I’m sitting at this computer terminal, and so I pull away from Kieran ever so slightly, my tongue running along his bottom lip because I don’t want to separate completely.
“What were we doing here again?” he breathes, his words practically inside my mouth.
“Research,” I whisper back.
Kieran sighs and takes his hands from my face, placing them on the keyboard. I sit up straight next to him, still risking a potential adult reprimand by brushing my fingertips lightly down his inner thigh, my hand coming to rest on his knee. He closes his eyes for a second as my hand moves, shaking his head quickly as he tries to focus.
“Okay,” he starts, wiggling the computer mouse. The psychedelic swirls of the screen saver disappear, revealing the school’s homepage. Kieran types a search engine address into the location bar, and we’re off. Sort of. He drops his hands from the keyboard to his lap, his left hand sliding over my hand on his knee.
“Change your mind?” I ask.
“No. I…I mean, should I just type his name into a search and see what comes up? Start with New York newspapers?”
Sensing his confusion is probably stemming from fear more than anything, I slide the keyboard over in front of me and type “Morgan Levert” into the space with the flashing cursor. “It’s not a common name,” I tell him. “I think we have a good chance of finding what we’re looking for if we go broad and then narrow from there.”
I stab the “enter” key to find I’m right—the first four web links that pop up appear, based on the headlines, to be about the Morgan Levert we’re looking for. Kieran moves the mouse to click the first link, bringing up a scanned newspaper article with the headline “Guilty Verdict in Washington Heights Robbery.” He slowly scrolls through the text, the words telling us little we don’t already know. Next to the middle paragraph is a photo, but since we’re looking at a scan of an old article, the photo is an even more grainy black and white than it would be on a fresh newspaper page. No matter how unclear the picture, the man standing behind the defense table awaiting his fate, flanked by two men in suits who I assume were his lawyers, is definitely Morgan Levert, only younger than Kieran drew him in his dream journals. This version has more hair, pulled back into a ponytail. A few strands have escaped to frame his stoic face, the locks appearing oily even in the dull flatness of a scanned photograph. And he doesn’t have a goatee as he did in the journals, the lack of facial hair combined with his youth giving me an uneasy feeling.
I’m staring at a long-haired version of my boyfriend.