by Ginger Scott
“I’m guessing by your empty hands that you didn’t bring your notebook with you today.”
I bother to turn my palms over as if something will magically appear. I don’t mean to be a dick to her, but I know I’m coming off that way.
“Forgot it.” I shrug.
“Forgot to bring it? Or forgot to write in it?” She pulls herself close to the desk and clasps her hands together at her lips, elbows on the pressed-wood desktop.
A short breathy laugh escapes my nose.
“Both, I guess.” I sink low in my chair, palms hugging the armrests, neck bent and feet slid almost to the place where hers are tucked under the desk. “Sorry. I’ll make sure I have it next time.”
I really will, too. I feel kinda shitty putting my mood off on her.
“It’s only there to help you. I’ve found that people spend less time digging up surface memories if they write them down. But I don’t mind spending time with you.” Her tiny lips curl into a smug but flirtatious smirk. She’s hot.
“How old are you? I’m guessing twenty-eight.” I tilt my head to the side and narrow my gaze on her, as though measuring the curve of her cheekbone and neck.
She lifts her right brow and leans in.
“Your mom know you treat women like that?” Her voice is even, but her words are pointed.
I chew at the inside of my mouth to mask the inner slam she’s given my ego. I swallow and her eyes trail down to the knot in my throat.
“Hmm.” She leans back in her seat, her posture straight. We make eye contact a few times, and I cock my head the opposite way with a quiet laugh, tongue pushed into my cheek.
“Your pill . . . camera thing, or whatever?” I shrug. “Didn’t do much.”
“It’s not supposed to,” she answers fast.
I roll my eyes to deflect how foolish she makes me feel.
“Let me show you something.” She leans to the side, pulling a black leather purse to her lap. She unclasps the top and pulls out her phone, scrolling through a few things before rolling back toward the desk.
“That camera thing? It did a lot.” She flattens her phone on the desk and drags her finger along a dotted blue line on the screen. It looks like the readout from a heart monitor. “It’s to watch what happens inside, while you dream.”
“This is me?” I sound skeptical. Honestly, I might be. There’s nothing to say that this screen isn’t the same for everyone, some plaything she uses to twist with my head and make me feel comfortable about crying or whatever.
“You can look at it all. It’s locked down to just you. Go ahead. Spend some time in there.” She sits back, giving me full control of her phone. I’m half tempted to take a selfie and save it as her wallpaper. I lean back instead, peering at her over the screen for a few seconds before diving in and swiping through the various pages.
“They all seem to follow the same pattern, like a bunch of big waves. How is that meaningful? This could just mean I was breathing.” I lower the phone and meet her waiting glare.
“Look again. Those waves, are they all big?” She challenges me, her eyes dimming.
I breathe in deeply and straighten in my seat, pulling the phone into both hands and really looking. She’s good at calling me on my bullshit. She’s also right. Those dips and peaks are sometimes tiny. If this was measuring my breath, I’d be dead.
“Interesting, huh?” she says.
I flip through the screens more slowly this time, noticing how the patterns overlay almost perfectly. The faster I flip, the more apparent it becomes.
“What do these mean?” I slide her phone back on the desk and she pulls it around to face her, reflecting on the same dots and graphs I just took in. A faint smile paints her lips.
“It means that something in your dream put you at peace.”
My brow wrinkles, but before she can catch it, I erase it from my expression.
“Did you spend your slumber throwing perfect passes and dodging tackles, winning the game a hundred to zero and getting the girl at the end?” There’s a tinge of sarcasm in her tone; I hear it.
I let her question float out there in this tiny office space for a few seconds, as if I’m struggling to recall what I dreamt. I remember every moment of the movie my mind played for me. It was the same dream I’ve had since I was a kid, only somehow . . . more. It felt tangible, as if I could taste it and smell things.
“Yeah,” I lie, nodding slowly while our gazes tangle and war. I force a proud smile to my lips and shake my head lightly, meeting her now-doubting stare. “I was the hero. Just like I always am . . . but more.”
Leaning back, I fold my hands on my chest and leave the lie alone.
I don’t feel like sharing that dream with her. Better to let my dad think I’m dreaming his dreams.
Funny, though, how in both dreams, they call me Cowboy.
13
Damsel
Why is he in there? It’s my time. I have it marked at the top of my journal, noted in my phone, and I let my fourth-hour teacher know I might be late coming from lunch. No might about it; I’m already late. I’m late because Mr. Meathead Football God is taking up my time.
He thinks this program is stupid, that I’m moronic for believing in something like it. He was probably trying to talk me out of it so he could take my spot and get himself on the list. I bet he still is.
They know I’m out here. I’ve been obnoxiously clear about it, and Ms. Esher even gave me the finger once—the index finger, signaling one minute. That was seven minutes ago! They’re not even talking. It looks as though they’re having a staring contest.
I am never tutoring that asshole. And I’m not going to bother giving him good grades. I’ll just lose his papers; I’ll crumple them up and stuff them in my backpack to throw away at home. Maybe he’ll find them buried in my trash one morning when he wakes up hungover on my lawn.
I’ve nearly convinced myself to knock on the glass when the door opens a few steps away. As we pass each other, Mr. Football God stares down at me as if I’m a speck of dirt on his shoe, an actual sneer turning up his nose. He’s acting like the arrogant rich guy in an Austen novel. I picture a puffy collar on his neck and knickers on his legs, and it makes me laugh to myself.
“Life finally catch up to you? Are they sending you back to third grade?” Hip out and hand perched on my side, I snap the gum in my mouth, for once proud of saying what I want exactly when I want to say it.
He turns to walk backward, smiling at me as the distance grows between us, and suddenly I feel immensely less bad-ass. I’m prepared for his usual grotesque gesture, or some saucy word that’s meant to demean or make me blush. But he’s the bigger person this round, miraculously, and he turns on his heel when he reaches the end of the hallway, toward the science corridor and out of my view.
“You two aren’t friends, I take it?”
I close one eye more than the other and twist to look Ms. Esher in the eyes. Her candor is unexpected.
“I’m his tutor.”
I’m not even that.
I step through her open doorway and slip into the soft leather seat meant to lull me into an honest state and coax me into telling her my deepest, darkest secrets. She clears her throat as she lets the door fall closed behind her, rounding the desk and sitting in the rolling chair opposite me. She drags it in close.
“I brought my journal,” I say, tugging it free from the side zipper of my bag. I flip through the first four pages of notes to the section I really want to talk to her about. Before I can speak, though, her open palm covers the entire page.
Her abruptness startles me and I look up.
Her chin is tucked, the way a librarian peers over glasses when someone’s been loud and needs scolding. Only, she doesn’t wear glasses, and I haven’t done anything wrong. No, I’ve done everything right! In fact, I will argue that I performed better than any person who was ever a part of this project, her beta testing. She is going to want to study me!
“I’m
really sorry . . .” Her hard features soften, and the brave face she was going into this with melts like butter in the microwave. Shit. I have done something wrong.
“It’s okay. Do you need me to slow down? I shouldn’t have skipped ahead, it’s just—”
“There’s been a mistake.” She interrupts me, swallowing after her words. Her bosom lifts with her deep breath, and she pushes back from the desk to allow room to cross her long, tanned legs. I resent them right now, the way they glow compared to my pale, untoned ones hidden under tights I snatched from my mom’s drawer.
“A mistake?” I pull my book into my lap so I can nervously stroke the sharp edges of the cover with my fingertips.
The longer she stares into my eyes without the right words to say, the deeper my gut sinks on the invisible rollercoaster roaring inside my body.
“Ms. Esher . . . I have to be a part of this,” I say, somehow knowing. He never said for certain. All he did was tell me I’m in. I let myself assume he read my file and saw I’m cleared. In the back of my mind, though, I think I always knew. I made it through because of something he did. He cheated to get me in, because it’s important to me. And that football asshole found out. That’s what he was doing here.
“You’ve taken someone else’s spot.” She said that to be mean. My mouth sours.
I shake my head, my brain working like a computer to calculate the right words, to find the right algorithm to fix this. It’s hard to balance the right thing to say with my anger. The wrong words are bound to spill free.
“I didn’t do anything,” I whimper, buying time so I can think. Just think.
“Please be honest.” Her mouth tightens into a straight line, like a guard gate holding back so much more. A fire burns in my chest at her insinuation that I’m a liar, though, and I can’t stop. I can never just stop.
That’s why I need this. This is my biggest flaw. I go and I go and I go, until I crash—and it’s going to kill me some day.
“You do not get to call me a liar. You don’t even know me. You know how I answered some questionnaire, and how I pathetically said what I thought you wanted to hear during my interview.” A small cry slips out, along with a quivering breath.
“I’m not lying, and your assumption that I have means you are not as good at reading people as you think you are.” I roll my shoulders and force my posture even straighter—straighter than hers. I can’t have her legs, but I can win the spinal wars. Stupid. My ankles are crossed and tucked against the chair, my hands covering my notebook in my lap. I dressed purposefully for today, for business. I’m in my gray dress suit that my mom had to tailor down a size since we bought it on markdown, the gray jacket and skirt paired with a red silk top. I’ve landed four scholarships in this outfit. I’m not getting kicked out of some mad science experiment in it.
“If you think you will learn more from some idiotic quarterback who only passes classes because weak people fall for his charm, then your research is doomed. The things I have . . . what I’ve seen in just this first week— No, you know what? No. If there’s been a mistake, then all of this—all that I am and all I bring to the table—is not yours. You can chat with the guy they call Cowboy and hear about his strip club fantasies and touchdowns. Real . . . interesting . . . stuff.”
I cross my arms, satisfied with how my mental algorithm played out. I think I said that all just right. Ms. Esher’s head turns slightly and her eyes fall to where my book is hidden under the desktop. She nods once, quickly.
“Go on,” she says, gesturing toward my lap, her words still soaked in hesitation. I should probably ask for a guarantee, a promise that if I share what happened last night, she will let me stay. I close my eyes for a single breath to regain my groove.
“I’m in this. Not him. Me.” Our gazes war until she nods.
I bring my notes back to the table and return to the page where, well, shit gets weird.
“My dream—it was lucid.” I jump right to the heart.
I hold my finger over my notes, but before I read, I look up to meet her waiting gaze. I anticipate a look of surprise, but the reality is more ominous. I can’t say for certain that she’s smiling, but she’s pleased. Maybe I’ve brought her monster to life.
“Do you want me to read, or do you want to . . .” I shift my book sideways so she has a better view of my writing. I was careful to print since my handwriting is usually a mess. She glances at it, but only for a blip before looking me in the eye again.
“How do you know?” Her question is paired with a more apparent smile. She is definitely pleased. While that eases my worry about being kicked out of this program in the first week, it doesn’t do much for my anxiety about what happened while I slept.
Was I asleep?
“Well . . .” I suck in my lips and shift my position, angling my head to better view the notebook. “Let’s see. I wrote—”
Her hand comes down to cover my words again. Frustration wraps around my ribs and shoves me back in my seat. I audibly growl. And pout. I’m pouting.
“I don’t want to know what you dreamt; I want to know how you knew you were in control.” Her fingers rap against the pages in a wave, each drumming one at a time, urging my attention from her hands to her face.
“I saw someone.” I saw him. I wrote it down. It isn’t a secret, but there’s something guilty-feeling about saying it out loud to her. She’ll read into it, think I have a crush. He’s completely not my type. I have goals—I want to study law, to be a member of Congress one day, to enact groundbreaking legislation. I want to be President. Women aren’t president if they’ve had flings with drug dealers. Jesus, women aren’t even presidents!
“In your dream? We all see people in our dreams . . . sometimes.” She’s leading me. If she knows, why doesn’t she lay it all out for the both of us and save me time? I guess that’s part of the process, though, a certain element of self-discovery I have to walk through. This is the part of therapy my dad calls “bullshit.” It’s the reason he quit taking me to sessions with his colleague at the university, even though I didn’t have a single panic attack during the six months I worked with her. Talking never helped my dad; therefore, it will never help me.
Some bullshit right there.
“Yes, I know people are bound to show up in my dreams.” I close my mouth tight and suck in through my nose. “But it wasn’t my dream I was in.”
“How do you know?”
I blink. Her questions are purposeful, but they’re also maddening. She keeps pressing, lowering her chin and glaring harder.
“I don’t know, I just do!” I growl my words at her.
“That doesn’t make sense,” she says.
My forehead dents. My head hurts.
“That phrase. It doesn’t make sense. You can’t not know but also know.” She’s smug about her point.
I grimace and fold my arms over my chest.
“It’s just a saying, like a colloquialism.” I huff.
“It’s grammatically incorrect.” I swear she’s my equal. I both admire and detest her right now. We sit quietly in a stubborn face off for almost half a minute, until the silence becomes uncomfortable and we both fidget in our seats.
“I know because I was somewhere I have never been, but it’s a real place. I know it’s a real place because I drove by this morning to make sure it looked exactly the same. Also . . . I left something behind last night—in the dream—for me to find.” I almost feel superior sharing this part, as if I have a super power. This little fact perks her ears, too. Her eyelids lower, and there’s an edginess to her expression.
“You . . . left something?”
Exactly. Now she sees why this is so screwed up. She thinks I have a super power, too.
Oh, my God, I have powers!
“Yeah, I was basically guest-starring in someone else’s dream. More like an extra. Only, there weren’t a lot of people in his dream, so more important than an extra. Definitely mentioned in the credits. I had this overwhel
ming feeling that I was supposed to stop him from doing something. I ran after him, toward darkness, which is weird because I am terrified of the dark. Like, I won’t even go down my parents’ hallway when the sun is down because the light switch is too far into the deep.”
“What happened when you chased him?” She drills down to the plot. I tend to ramble when I’m nervous or excited. I’m a little of both.
“He disappeared.”
She seems disappointed by my answer. I don’t know whether she wants me to catch him or what, but when she sees what happened next—when I show her—she’ll smile again.
I bring my bag to my lap again, reaching into the deepest pocket until I feel the item I folded up in a napkin a few hours earlier. Before I bring it out fully, I pause and assure myself that sharing something like this with her is safe, patient-client kinda safe.
“Things in here, between us . . .” I lift one brow, not sure how to spell it out. This is more than confessing a weird fetish or a past sin. This is gray area in terms of the law because of what I brought—what I found. If she mentions any of this to my dad, he will surely classify it as bullshit. If it can’t be solved with math, then it’s irrational and childish. It’s me seeking attention.
“You and I both signed NDAs and patient contracts. Unless you truly endanger yourself or someone else, things in here, said between us, are completely confidential.” Her eyes are always confident. It’s one of the most admirable things about her, and I noticed it right away. She doesn’t waver, and she’s probably excellent at bluffing.
