I rolled one of the pills between two fingers, staring at the tiny granules within the dissolvable casing. They smelled like sulfur and piss, not exactly the things miracles are made of. I tossed it in my mouth and washed it down with a glass of water. I’d been taking them four times a day, which didn’t exactly help to keep my mind off of the fear that they might not work. What did help was staring at the sketch of the boy’s shirt in my notebook.
My mattress was dimpled with stacks of library books, three of them opened to symbols similar to the one in my notebook but not quite right. One was from a top secret NASA memo that had been leaked by some hacker group trying to force the government to admit that extraterrestrials really exist. Another was of some Egyptian hieroglyphic and the third was a logo for a software company in Silicon Valley.
I’d scrolled through a hundred web pages on everything from constellations to crop circle formations to conspiracy theories about the Vatican. But none of it felt like it was heading in the right direction.
Because for some reason my gut was telling me that this wasn’t some kind of science experiment gone bad. The boy in my head was not some kind of extraterrestrial sent to harvest the memories of one random sick girl who probably knew as much about the social intricacies of the world as they did.
He was real and he was out there somewhere. I just needed to find the physical connection. That almost imperceptible fissure in the fabric of the universe, that split second he’d managed to slip in between the cracks and land in my memories. He was out there, in the flesh, I knew it.
I heard a knock on my door and Dani stepped inside. She immediately let her hair down and stripped out of her mom-approved outfit and into her bikini top and denim skirt.
“Planning on getting in the water tonight?” I asked.
“Yeah, right. I just spent half an hour straightening my hair.”
She sat down on the bed, pulling one of the books into her lap. “Egypt. Planning to run away or something?”
“Into that humidity? Yeah, right.”
She pulled at one of the curls tucked behind my ear. “You know how much people pay for this hair?”
“Not as much as they pay to get rid of it.”
Dani picked up one of the books I hadn’t gotten to yet. “What is this stuff?”
“Research.”
Dani read the headline. “Crop Circles? Wait, is this about the guy in your head?”
I lowered my voice. “Maybe.”
She raised an eyebrow. “So now you think he’s an alien?”
I crawled off the bed, spotted my grandmother in the living room and then closed the door.
“You could be a little more discreet,” I said.
“You know grandma can’t hear anyway.”
“Still. I’m just…”
“Paranoid?” she said.
“A little.”
“Hence all the books on extraterrestrials.”
“I’m just trying to be thorough.” I snatched back the book and stuffed it into my bag. “I know it’s stupid.”
She shook her head. “It’s…not. A little weird maybe, but this whole thing is a little weird.”
“I know.” I sat back down on the bed. “Which is why I’m trying to be discreet. I don’t want my mom freaking out. If I told her, she’d probably think I was getting worse.”
“Do you? I mean, do you think—?”
“Yes.” I looked at her. “I don’t know.”
“And you don’t want to tell your doctor?”
“So she can tell me it’s just another coping mechanism?” I exhaled. “I’ve thought about it and maybe I will. I just, I need…something first. Some kind of proof that it could even be possible. Proof that I’m not crazy.”
“And so far all signs point to?”
“A figment of my imagination. Or another KLS patient. In other words, I’m getting nowhere.” I picked up my sketchbook, turning it to face Dani. “But I do have this. It’s the symbol on his t-shirt.” I flipped the cover closed. “Unless it’s just another dead end.”
Dani narrowed her eyes, finger tracing my pen. “But if not? I mean, let’s say you do find out who he is or what’s causing him to be there. What then?”
“Then I help him figure out who he is. I help him go home.”
“Home. And then it’ll just be you again. Alone over there?”
Alone. I’d never thought of being alone as all that bad. I’d managed a comfortable existence in my grandparent’s abandoned farmhouse and it wasn’t until the boy showed up that I’d finally felt afraid. Even that first time I’d gotten sick, walking along the beach and trying to find a way back, it wasn’t the solitude that scared me, it was waking up and finding that things had changed.
My cell phone buzzed and when I reached for it I saw that it was Drew.
-Still thinking about what I said?
“Who’s that?” Dani asked.
I tossed the phone back on the bed. “No one.”
“That means Drew.” Dani reached for it.
“I’m not texting him back.”
She scanned the screen. “Thinking? What are you supposed to be thinking about?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Doesn’t sound like nothing. Did you really already forget that he—?”
“No.”
“And how you—?”
“I remember, okay. All of it.”
“Well, good.”
And I did. I remembered the empty house. Drew lying next to me. His breath on the back of my neck. His hands gripping my waist, pulling down my underwear. And I remembered being afraid. I remembered telling him I wasn’t ready.
He’d sat up, shoulders tensed. “Really, Bryn?”
I sunk against my headboard, gripping the blankets. Wishing he’d just turn around and look at me.
“We’ve been together for two years. I’ve been patient with you, not pushing, but it’s like you don’t trust me and I’m sick of it. I’m sick of waiting. You can’t even just fucking try.”
“I did. I do try.”
He exhaled. “Everything’s always about you.”
“No it’s—”
“Fuck this. I’m over it.” He pulled on his clothes, still facing the window.
“Drew.”
He finally faced me, something gripped in his fist. He threw it at the headboard, the tiny box cracking against the wood and I flinched. He leaned over me in the dark, seething. But then he just shook his head.
“Do you know how many girls wish they were you right now?”
“What?”
“We’re done.”
Then he slipped out through the open window and I buried myself under the blankets, the pillow moist and sticking to my face until I finally fell asleep.
I looked at Dani. “And that’s why I’m ignoring him.”
“You mean why you’re hiding in your room and the library and the art room reading books on…” She picked one up. “Lucid Dreaming.”
“It’s research.”
“Or maybe you’re trying to get the wrong guy out of your head.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“It means I get to be the judgmental one for once.”
“I told you I’m ignoring him.”
“For now.”
“Like you haven’t done the same thing,” I said. “How many times did you and Dillon Hastings break up and get back together last summer?”
“And every time who was the one telling me what an idiot I was for getting back with such a jerk?” she said. “I could call you a hypocrite but I don’t.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“Well, you kind of are one.” Dani was quiet, picking at her thumbnail. Then she looked at me. “What is it with him?”
My stomach dropped. I didn’t know what to say. That I loved him because he smelled like rain after a game. That he’d grabbed my hand when everyone was looking. That even though he’d changed, even though we both had, there were still
pieces of the boy I knew—soft careful pieces that were somehow more alluring the less he showed them. “He’s just…”
“Familiar?” Dani said.
I nodded. “I know I’m hard on you but I don’t mean to be.”
“It’s just easier to be honest with me than it is with yourself?”
“When did you get all intuitive?”
“When you got all mopey and clingy,” Dani said. “Threw off our whole balance.”
I laughed. “Is this how I sound?”
“Sometimes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Sometimes I need to hear it. Not twenty-four-seven,” she sighed. “But sometimes. I know I don’t always have the best taste in guys.”
“And apparently neither do I.”
“So why bother with him? I mean, why don’t you tell him it’s over? For good this time.”
I looked away. “I don’t know.”
But the truth was, I did know. Because for every girl in the history of girls there is always that one guy she can’t seem to shake. Even though she knows he’s not just bad for her but probably the worst thing.
The kind of guy who says all of the right things just as she was about to cut that last thread, writing him off for good. But then he slips back in somehow, she can never really remember. Not that it matters. She had one second of weakness, one second of fear and he tasted it. And he says he’s sorry and that’s it. He’s salvaged that one last thread just in time.
“He said he wants to be friends.”
Dani shook her head. “Bad idea.”
I was quiet.
“Right?” she said.
I stared at my hands. “Would it be?”
Friends. One word and I’d hesitated. I’d spent half a second too long mulling over that possibility when I should have been cutting him off. Because he’ll need that last thread, thin as it may be, to strangle me with later. That’s what they do. They cut you into pieces with lies and false apologies and those three little words that always manage to gut you in just the right way.
I couldn’t let Drew cut me open like that. Not again. Not now. But for some reason, I just couldn’t let myself cut him open either. So I did the only thing I could do. I ignored him. I buried him under my KLS and my mountains of homework and my unfinished sculpture and my unplanned campus visit to Emory and I left him there.
I thought maybe he’d slip deep enough to disappear. A part of me was afraid that he would. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t confront him—about Jessica, about that night in my room. Maybe that’s why I just couldn’t let him go. Not completely.
“I’ve tried that a few times,” Dani said. “Sort of explains the proverbial ping pong match I had going between Dillon and Josh last summer. We’d fight, break up, try to be friends, and after running into each other randomly at some party, we’d just start talking, things would feel brand new again even though we were probably fighting less than a week earlier. And then we’d get back together. Because the truth is, you can never be friends with an ex. Not just friends.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.” She laughed. “Now if I tell someone I still want to be friends, it really just means I’d like to keep them on speed dial in case I feel like making a booty call.”
“And do you?”
“Occasionally.” She shook her head. “But that’s not the point. The point is being friends with an ex is dangerous and Drew’s already dangerous enough as it is.” I felt her looking at me and I finally looked back. “He hurt you and I don’t like that.”
“And you think I do?”
“I think you’d rather hurt when you’re together than hurt when you’re not.”
I slumped against the bed, the book tumbling off my lap. “Why do we do this?”
“Because we’re afraid that there’s nothing better.”
“And when did we become our mothers?”
Dani shrugged. “I’m thinking around the time we got boobs. They sort of ruined everything.”
“Yeah, definitely not the keys to world domination like Felix thinks.”
“Maybe we should just swear off men.”
“Might as well. By the way my episodes have been happening so close together lately, it looks like I’ll be spending most of my time at some imaginary timeshare anyway.”
“At least now you’ll have a roommate,” Dani laughed.
I tried to think about that night under the stars, the way his face had looked staring up at the Milky Way. But all I could see was the way it had looked breaking out of those waves, how he’d fought against that first breath of air.
“For his sake, I hope not,” I said.
“And yours?”
I shrugged. “I deal. But him…I don’t know. I just get the feeling that he doesn’t belong there.”
“But you do?”
“It’s all mine. Every inch of that place is constructed from my memories.”
“Are you sure?”
“Everything. Every color. Every texture. Right down to the breeze blowing off the ocean. I remember it all.”
“Except for him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what if this isn’t about conspiracy theories or even KLS. What if this is about you?”
“What about me?”
“Your memories. What if he belongs there with them but the present just hasn’t caught up with them yet?”