I spent lunch in the library, which wasn’t all that unusual. What was a little unusual was the way I had my bag so inconspicuously hanging from a coat hook in order to block the computer screen from view.
I knew I was being paranoid but all of the secrecy wasn’t because I didn’t want people to think I was weird. That was sort of a given. But because the last time I went on a research binge concerning my disease I sort of freaked out.
I’d already been living with it for a few years but when I got into high school things changed. I was growing up and there were things I wanted to do and wanted to be a part of. I wanted friends. I wanted a boyfriend. I wanted school dances and debate club and homecoming and to try out for the spring play. I wanted that cliché high school experience you see in movies.
But then I started missing classes, buying dresses I never wore, talking to boys who forgot that I even existed during those three weeks of school I’d missed during an episode. And when I was trying so desperately to fit in, only to be yanked back out every three months by my disease, I realized the truth—that I wouldn’t be able to have any of it unless I found a cure.
I spent almost my entire Freshman year in the library pretending to finish makeup work when I was really researching potential cures for KLS online. I was obsessed. I was afraid. And when they made me stop, when the librarian figured out what I was doing and they sent me to the school psychologist, I was angry.
I hated that feeling of standing still, of being a bystander to this thing that was happening to my body and not being able to do anything about it. All of the reading and the research, all of the knowing, it made me feel stronger somehow.
But then they were right. After chasing down every false cure and success story, I had nothing. So I stopped.
As I sat there, scrolling through webpages that looked vaguely familiar, I realized another unfortunate truth. Since my days of trying to find a cure via Google, nothing on the KLS front had really changed.
Someone in Europe was still trying to sell some kind of liquid “cure” on Ebay. The number of people with the disease was still hovering just around a thousand, seventy percent of which were still of the male variety. They were still using stimulants to combat the drowsiness but not much else. And there was still no one else out there like me.
I checked forums and blogs, scanning personal testimonies from people living with the disease. But none of them went anywhere during an episode except from their bed to the nearest bathroom.
Basically, there was still no cure, no answers, and I was still strange even by KLS standards. Even stranger now that my mind was apparently open for lease.
If I just had his name I could ask Dr. Sabine to check some kind of medical database for KLS patients. She’d help me, right? If there was someone else out there like me she’d want to find them too. The entire scientific community would. But what if he hadn’t been diagnosed yet?
KLS was always getting misdiagnosed for all sorts of things—depression, narcolepsy. It was even harder to pinpoint for me. Apparently I was suffering from some kind of hyper-evolved form of the disease, which was their only explanation for the place in my head.
At first I’d thought it was a dream. They might have chalked it up to just that if I hadn’t described them as being so intense, the colors so bright, everything tactile and real.
Some KLS patients suffered from hallucinations. I’d had a few when the disease first started—mostly just reaching for things that weren’t really there or hearing my mom’s voice when she wasn’t in the room. But in that state, everything had been filtered and blurry. I remembered the lights burning my eyes and every sound making me shudder.
They’d said that was the norm. For people with KLS, the hyper-realism of the world is stripped during an episode, and even during a hallucination everything is dulled under the film of the disease, almost like you’re travelling through a fog. But even I’d managed to escape that somehow. Because even during that brief period when I’d had the hallucinations, suddenly I’d just blink and then I’d be back on the beach again, like I’d slipped through some trap door of my brain that no other KLS patient had access to.
What if the boy had found the trap door too?
Or what if he was just a sign that I hadn’t managed to escape anything at all? The bathtub overflowing, pricking my finger that day in the garage, I’d seen those things before they happened. Or had I? What if they were just symptomatic hallucinations, hyper-realistic because so were all of my other symptoms? What if this was how it really all started, all of those symptoms having been delayed but not indefinitely?
Someone was hovering over me and I clicked the browser closed. I turned and saw Drew sitting on one of the empty tables.
“You can’t avoid me forever,” he said.
“Watch me.”
“Have been. What’s that you’re researching over there?”
“Make-up work.”
Mrs. Mendoza came around the corner. “Off my table, please, Mr. Mitchell.”
“Sorry.” He slipped down, smiled. “Just helping Bryn here with some make-up work.”
Mrs. Mendoza pinched her reading glasses and gave me a look. “Ahuh.”
I looked away, cheeks burning. Mrs. Mendoza had caught Drew and I making out in the history section one study hall last year. Drew had walked into my class, a forged note summoning me to the office. Then he’d pulled me into the library, a biography on James Madison pressed into my back as he slid his hands under my shirt.
“Bryn?”
“What?”
Mrs. Mendoza sighed. “I said why don’t you two go ahead to class.”
“Oh, right. Yeah, we’ll get going.”
Mrs. Mendoza disappeared around the corner just as the bell rang. I scrambled for my things but Drew reached for the strap on my bag.
“Distracted?” he said.
“No.”
“No particular presidents come to mind?”
I shrugged him off.
“Can you just hang on a minute?” he asked.
“What?” Jesus, he was making this so exhausting. All I wanted was to forget about what had happened. The things he’d said. The way he’d looked at me as if saying no had been some kind of betrayal. And then the girl he’d found. Whoever she was. I just wanted to forget about her too.
“Bryn…” His familiar drawl climbed up my neck.
I shook it off, lowered my voice. “I don’t have time for this right now.”
“Right now or never?”
Both.
He exhaled. “I just want to—”
“What? Talk? We tried that, remember?”
“Talk.” He shrugged. “Look, I just don’t want you to hate me anymore.”
Flatter him and maybe he’ll go away. I let out a long breath. “I don’t hate you…all the time.”
He cracked a smile. “That’s a relief. I just thought…I mean I just want to…”
I raised an eyebrow, waiting.
“Be friends,” he said.
“Friends?”
“Yeah.”
Something sputtered in my stomach. I tried to imagine being friends with Drew but I knew exactly where we’d end up. Our mouths inches apart. Yelling. Kissing.
I anchored my arms over my chest. “It would never work and you know it.”
“No, I don’t know that.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Trust me. I can see where this is going.”
“Oh really? What are you some kind of psychic now? Come on, Bryn.”
“It won’t end well.”
He smiled. “Then change the ending.”
I tried not to smile back. “Look, I have to go. I’m supposed to meet with Mrs. Ward before class.”
“And the friend thing?”
“Fine. I’ll think about it.”
He finally let go of my pack and I shrugged it on.
“Thinking’s good,” he said.
I shook my head. “Don’t hold your breath.”
> He smiled again, always confusing my annoyance for snark. But even as I walked away, I could still feel that invisible tether between us growing taut. I still felt raw.
When I got to English class Mrs. Ward broke us up into pairs. We’d just read The Kite Runner and were building kites out of construction paper, marking the four corners with examples of symbolism and archetypes and foreshadowing and all of the other things most writers probably did completely by accident.
“I saw you talking with Drew,” Dani said. “He was smiling. Why was he smiling?”
She was cutting out a drawing I’d done of a pomegranate—our symbol for sin.
“Because he thinks I’m an idiot, that’s why.”
“Well, where did he get that impression? By the way he better not be smiling within five feet of you at the lake tonight.”
“I’m a good actress.” I involuntarily rolled my eyes, already dreading running into him at the senior bonfire tonight. “Trust me,” I said. “I don’t plan on being anywhere near him.”
“Acting. Sure.”
My stomach twisted, ashamed at how weak I really was. And not because I had KLS but because I was some stupid teenage girl still clinging to some pathetic delusion. I was afraid to admit that I couldn’t trust myself so I changed the subject.
“Yeah, you know what you do to pretend like you’re not in love with Felix too.”
“What?” Dani snapped. “Lower your voice.”
Mrs. Ward walked by our table, a finger to her lips. “Ladies.”
“Sorry. Paper cut,” Dani said.
Mrs. Ward walked back to her desk.
“Nice save,” I said.
Dani glowered. “Cut it out with the whole Felix thing. I’m serious.” She chewed on her bottom lip, not looking at me.
I raised an eyebrow. “You’re not telling me something.”
She flinched.
“Dani. Spill it. Now.”
“No.”
“Dani. What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re lying. Since when do we have secrets?” I said, even though I’d been hiding one of my own. I still wasn’t sure if I should tell her about the guy in my head. Just in case that’s all he was. I didn’t want her to think I was crazy too.
“We don’t,” she said under her breath.
“So?”
“So…” She was staring at the table. “I didn’t want to tell you because I thought you’d judge me.”
“Judge you? Oh God. What is it?”
“See?” she hissed.
“Sorry,” I said, palms raised. “No judging. I swear.”
Dani scanned the room. “Not here.”
She nodded toward the door and when Mrs. Ward wasn’t looking we slipped into the hallway, heading for the girl’s bathroom. It was empty.
Dani leaned against the window. “I slept with Felix.”
“What?” I asked. “When?”
“A long time ago.”
“How long is long, exactly?”
“Long…” she said, “as in two years ago.”
“You were…fourteen? Are you kidding?”
“I’d just turned fifteen. It was…”
“Let me guess, a mistake?”
“An accident,” she said.
“An accident? How do you accidentally…” I lowered my voice, “do that?”
“It was the anniversary of the funeral. You remember we all went to the gravesite. It was…I was having a hard time.”
I remembered. Dani had sat on the grass next to her dad’s headstone, fingers curling into the ground, tearing at it.
“That night Felix knocked on my window. He’d come to check on me. He stayed with me all night, curled under the blankets with me, letting me cry into his shirt. And then it just happened. I don’t know. It just…”
“And you regret it?”
“No.”
“But you won’t be with him.”
She didn’t say anything, just stared at the dingy tiled floor, cheeks turning red.
“Jesus, no wonder he’s in love with you,” I said. “You’ve got his fucking v-card in your back pocket.”
She let out a small laugh. “Some secret, right?”
“I’m surprised you actually kept it from me. That’s a first.”
“And it’ll be the last.”
“Good, because you can tell me anything.”
“I know,” she said. “Likewise.”
Likewise. I hope.
“I have something to tell you too,” I said, not sure how to start.
“About Drew?”
“No.”
“What is it?”
I hesitated, mulling over the words.
“Is it bad? Oh God, it is about Drew isn’t it?”
“No,” I hissed. “And no judging, remember?” I moved toward the window, lowering my voice. “You know that place I go when I’m sleeping?”
“The place that’s not a dream?” she said.
I nodded. “I saw someone. Well, more like found. This boy, he just washed up on shore. I thought he was dead, that he’d drowned, but then he woke up.”
Her eyes were wide. “Did you tell anyone about this? Like, your doctor?”
“No. Why? Do you think something’s wrong?”
“Well, that’s not normal is it?”
I sunk against the wall. “Neither is being conscious somewhere else while I’m supposed to be sleeping. But I’ve always been kind of an anomaly. Part of me doesn’t think they’d believe me.”
“Why not?”
“I think they’d just say it was all in my head, like everything else.”
“You don’t think so?” she asked.
“I used to.” I thought about the weight of his hands, his finger curled around my thumb. “Now I’m not so sure.”
“Is he still there?”
“He’s staying at the farmhouse.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “So let me get this straight. You’re shacking up with some guy in your head who may or may not really exist.”
“I’m not shacking up. He’s lost. What am I supposed to do with him?”
“What’s he look like?”
“Um, dark skin. Black hair. Nice teeth.”
She shook her head. “Nice teeth?”
“Well, I don’t know. I mean what do you want? He’s a guy.”
“I want details. I want to know everything.”
“So you don’t think I’m crazy?” I asked.
“No. Why would I?”
“Thanks.” I smiled, relieved. “Well, he doesn’t remember his name. He hates coffee. He may or may not play the bass. Oh, and he hates Bob Dylan.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Okay. Now I think you’re a little crazy.”
Chapter 16
Bryn