by Kit Alloway
He told himself not to touch her, but his hands were just moving, unstoppable as waves. “I know this sucks,” he said, resting his hands lightly on her upper arms. “It sucks for me, too.”
She gritted her jaw—out of anger or against trembling, he didn’t know which.
“Then what are we doing?” she whispered. “If you don’t hate me, what are we doing?”
He didn’t want to tell her that there was a difference between loving someone and being healthy for them. Besides, she wouldn’t care. If she’d fallen in love with an atomic bomb, she would have held on until it obliterated her. That was just the kind of person she was.
She’s not going to get over me, Will realized. She never really got over Ian. She won’t get over me.
His heart beat hard, just once, at the thought that she felt that kind of loyalty toward him, and he remembered a promise he’d made to her once, to do what he could to lessen her pain. I would do anything, if you’d only tell me what to do.
He hugged her. There was nothing else to do. She kept her arms stalwartly crossed, let them dig into his chest like the edge of a fence, but after a moment, she hid her face in his shoulder and leaned into him. “I don’t hate you,” Will told her. “I’ve never hated you, not for a minute.”
“Then what are we doing?” she repeated, her breath a warm misery against his skin.
He could have said so many things. We’re doing the best we can. We’re taking care of ourselves. We’re waiting to see if I can learn to be brave.
That’s the truth, isn’t it? he thought. Josh has no fears and no doubts. I’m the one who’s still afraid.
He couldn’t say that, but he should have said something, because in a moment she was pulling away, shaking her head, and walking out of the living room without looking back.
Will rubbed his neck. I know this sucks, he thought again. Believe me, I know.
He was suddenly glad that he had a session with Malina the next day. Maybe she’d be able to help him sort out what had just happened.
Will wandered into the kitchen and dropped into a chair beside Deloise.
“I take it that didn’t go well,” Whim said, not looking up from his phone.
“Apparently by trying to be nice to Josh, I’ve given her the impression that she never meant anything to me.”
“Duh,” Winsor said.
Will lifted his eyebrows.
“Ian self-destructed when they broke up. That’s how she knew he cared.”
Deloise capped the nail polish bottle. “That’s very insightful, Winsor.”
Winsor shrugged. “I had a front-row seat.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not going to self-destruct to make Josh feel better,” Will said. “If she wants to fault me for being nice to her, that’s her problem.” He rocked onto the back legs of his chair, the scene replaying in his mind, wishing he felt as easy with the decision as he pretended. “I am kind of blown away that she flat-out told me what was wrong, though. Josh used to hate confrontation.”
“Maybe she’s maturing,” Deloise said.
“Maybe she has no idea what she wants,” Whim countered. “Now, I, on the other hand, know exactly what and whom I want. I am currently trudging a path of self-improvement in order to make myself the man said whom needs and wants me to be—”
“Stuff it, Whim,” Deloise said. “We aren’t getting back together.”
“Of course we are.”
“I don’t get back together with guys who cheat on me.”
“Ah, but you see, that’s why I’m reading Fidelity: Teaching a Stray to Stay. Will recommended it to me.”
“Seriously?” Deloise asked Will.
“I thought it might give him some insight.”
“And has it?” she asked Whim.
“Not really. It says that men who cheat are selfish, entitled man-children, which I’m quite certain doesn’t apply to me.”
“So much for insight,” Winsor muttered.
“Speaking of man-children,” her brother said, “what is the deal with this guy Sam who keeps trying to talk to you?”
Winsor was having a good day, as far as Will could tell, but not so good a day that she was able to hide her emotions. She shifted uncomfortably in her wheelchair, as if trying to escape its confines. After an ominously long pause, she said, “I don’t know him.”
“Winny, get real. A guy doesn’t scream your name like Stanley Kowalski because he doesn’t know you,” Whim said.
Winsor wouldn’t look at him.
“Whim,” Deloise said.
“You can’t seriously expect us to believe that you don’t know him—”
“Whim,” Deloise repeated. “Leave her alone. She’ll talk about it when she wants to.”
Whim snorted and got up from the table. “Girls,” he muttered as his long legs carried him out of the kitchen. “Come on, Will. Let’s go chew tobacco and talk trash about skirts.”
Will made no motion to follow him. Deloise held up the nail polish bottle and pretended to hurl it at Whim.
“Was he upset?” Winsor asked.
“I don’t think Whim ever really gets upset,” Deloise said. “He just fakes it to manipulate us.”
“I think she meant Sam,” Will said. When Winsor didn’t confirm or deny, Will said gently, “Yeah, he was upset. He was pretty desperate to talk to you.”
Pain flickered across Winsor’s face. “My head hurts. Del, could you…”
“Yeah, of course.”
Deloise went down the hall to get Winsor’s headache medicine, but she’d hardly left the room before Winsor was whispering to Will.
“Do you know? Does everyone know?”
He had to guess at her meaning. “Just me and Del.”
Winsor nodded and released a shaky breath. “It’s so strange … It can’t be real.”
Will chose his words carefully. “Do you know Sam from the canister?”
“I don’t know how I know him.”
“That’s okay,” he told her. “I mean, I know it’s probably bizarre and confusing, but … your souls were hanging out together for months in there. It makes total sense that you feel like you know each other.”
“No, you don’t—” She rubbed her head then, and if she hadn’t had a headache before, Will suspected she did now. “We were…”
When she didn’t continue, Will put his hand over hers. “It’s okay,” he repeated. “Whatever happened is okay.”
She didn’t open her eyes. “No, it’s not. It’s really not.” She blinked then. “Who are you to tell me it’s okay? You don’t know—”
Her voice had risen, and she began trying to push her wheelchair back from the table, but she just kept knocking into the trash can.
“What’s wrong?” Deloise asked, returning with a pill bottle.
“I’m sorry, Winsor,” Will said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You don’t understand!” she shouted at him. “You weren’t there! I shouldn’t even be in this house, I don’t live here anymore, I moved out!”
She began to shake violently then. “Winsor, calm down,” Deloise said. “Take a deep breath—”
“It’s not safe here!” Winsor yelled at her. “It’s not—I can’t—I have to…”
She grabbed her head with both hands, still shaking, her face flushed.
“Winny?” Whim asked, rushing back in the room.
“Whim,” she cried, and held out her arms. Whim picked her up—she hardly weighed anything anymore—and sat down on a chair with Winsor in his lap.
“I don’t want to talk about him anymore,” she said, sobbing against her brother’s neck.
“You don’t have to talk about him ever again,” Whim promised her. “Never again, all right?”
Over her shoulder, Whim lifted his eyebrows at Will, who shrugged helplessly. Whim raised his hand, as if to say, I’ve got her.
Deloise set Winsor’s pills on the table, and she and Will walked into the hallway. He was almost to the
stairs when he heard Winsor say, “I was already there for a thousand years.”
Eight
Music throbbed in the darkened club. The dance floor was an inky black pond below. Josh couldn’t see where it ended, saw no bar, no tables, just an endless sea of bodies. The ceiling was so high above them that the violet lights strung across it looked like purple constellations. The air smelled like amber incense and jasmine.
She had no idea who the dreamer might be. It could have been anyone. The lights were so low she couldn’t even make out the faces of the people a few feet away. She and Feodor had jumped into this nightmare together, and she couldn’t see any more of his face than the distasteful scowl on his lips.
A man—she thought he was a man—put his hands on her hips, trying to get her to dance, and Josh shoved him away. He said something; Josh couldn’t tell if it was an apology or an accusation.
Josh closed her eyes and imagined the stone walls that protected her mind. When she removed the cork from the wall, though, a strain of music came through instead of a wisp of smoke. She heard the slow pound of drums, a synthesized throb, and a woman’s voice—delicate, wispy.
Despair. What’s the point in trying? It’s easier to just dance.
Josh realized she was moving in time to the music. The beat seemed to have snuck into her bones.
“Focus,” Feodor said sharply.
She imagined her walls again, but this time the music poured through them, wearing at the mortar and stone like a fast-moving current.
The music filled her with a seductive, irresistible sadness. The pain was inevitable, and so exquisite. There was a bittersweet pleasure in feeling so miserable.
She tore herself away from the feeling and opened her eyes. “It’s too intense,” she said. “I’ll get lost.”
“You’re afraid,” Feodor said, and he sounded so irritated that Josh wanted to prove herself to him.
“I’m not afraid. I’m being careful.”
“Overly so. We have wasted weeks being careful.”
Confused, Josh closed her eyes again. She imagined her walls, but they were half-crumbled, and the music swam around her on a current of air—no, a blast of air, a wind of ennui that swept her away.
You have to follow it, she told herself.
Eyes still closed, she let herself dance. She had never felt so in control of her body, of each tiny muscle in her neck as she rolled her head back and forth on her shoulders, of every vertebra bending and twisting, of the subtle rocking of her hips. Someone touched her; she didn’t mind. She was uncatchable.
Indulgence. That was the word. Forget trying to be strong. Forget trying to prove herself—to Will, to Feodor, to her mother.
The dreamer came to her as if she had called, a man with thick black hair and eyes like dark moons. He put his hands on her hips, and she didn’t have the strength to push him away, to refuse the meager comfort of being touched. For the first time, she realized that all those years of training had taught her to move her body in ways that could be sexy.
The nightmare, she thought distantly, through the cloud of music. This is still a nightmare …
Beneath the music, she heard the muffled sound of stone walls crumbling.
The hand on her throat had been replaced by a pair of lips. Josh had never felt so beautiful, so desperately sad. She wanted to throw everything to the wind, quit trying, sink into this paradise of unhappiness.
I just wish someone else understood, she thought.
The music understood. The dreamer with his hands around her waist and his mouth on her skin understood. The darkness understood.
Josh knew she had forgotten something. But she didn’t care. All she could remember was the way Will had hugged her in the living room, and how hard it had been not to hug him back, not to give in to the comfort he had offered. Was it so wrong that she was tired of being the strong one?
I can’t go on pretending I don’t miss him.
She began crying. The tears rolled freely down her face, joining in the dance of heartbreak the rest of her body was acting out. She felt no shame, no fear at expressing herself so freely. Just the opposite; for the first time in her life, she held nothing back.
Her feet grew warm. She assumed the warmth was caused by the friction of her dancing feet, but it climbed up her ankles and then started up her shins. That’s when she heard a sloshing sound.
The club was completely dark by then, so Josh saw nothing when she looked down. But she could feel the water creeping up her legs, and dancers around them began to push and shove toward exits. When the music shut off, it was replaced by shouting.
This, too, seemed fitting and right—to die in the dark, to literally drown in her misery. She and the dreamer wrapped their arms around each other and waited for the pain to end. They were resigned …
Except for one thing.
She wanted Deloise to get her lighter after she died.
Ian had given her that lighter, a rose-gold Zippo, with the words TO J.D., LOVE ALWAYS, IAN. She’d carried it through Feodor’s universe, through the Hidden Kingdom, through a thousand nightmares.
I’m just going to toss it into the archroom and then I’ll come back here and die, she told herself, and she threw open an archway to the basement with a flick of her hand.
The sight of the bright white room startled her.
Wait a sec … What the hell am I doing?
She’d been dancing, and thinking about how beautiful sadness could be, and how she wanted to die—
Die? she thought. I don’t want to die.
She’d gotten caught up in the dreamer’s fear. Now she was clutching him as the warm water sloshed around her knees, and people were screaming as they fought each other to reach exits Josh wasn’t even certain existed. She’d completely lost Feodor.
“It’s too late,” the dreamer told her.
Josh let the archway to the basement close and then tightened her arms around the dreamer’s neck. She hadn’t gone this far to fail at connecting with this nightmare. Trying to hold on to her sense of self, she imagined inhaling the dreamer’s fear.
I want to die. And no one’s going to stop me from killing myself.
To the dreamer, his death felt inevitable, even though he wasn’t completely convinced he wanted to die. Deep inside, he wanted someone to stop him. He just didn’t think anyone would.
But we’re surrounded by people, Josh thought, and suddenly she saw how the nightmare would play out.
The club would empty. The water would rise. The dreamer would call out for help, but it would be too late, and he’d slowly drown, the back of his head knocking against the club’s ceiling.
“You have to ask for help,” Josh told him.
“Everyone’s tired of helping me. I’m always the needy one.”
“That’s not true. But you have to ask them now, before it’s too late!” She squeezed his shoulders, hopefully hard enough to hurt him. “Ask now!”
The water had reached the tops of Josh’s legs.
“Um, help?” the dreamer said, so softly that no one but Josh heard him.
“Louder!” she told him.
“Help!” he called.
“Louder! Tell them what you need!”
The dreamer’s shouts were edged with hysteria. “I need help! Somebody help me! I gotta get out of here!”
Someone nearby called back, “Over here! Grab my hand.”
A doorway of light began to grow, not too far away, and Josh saw a line of people holding hands and working their way outside. The last person in the line grabbed the dreamer’s hand and pulled him after them, and he grabbed Josh’s hand. Together, they sloshed through the growing water. By the time they reached the doorway, Josh was swimming, her feet not even touching the floor.
The water didn’t pass through the doorway, but hung there, as if against an invisible barrier. Josh stumbled out into a parking lot lit with streetlamps and the flashers of police cars. Fifty or more people wearing soaking wet clu
b clothes were lingering around, watching the doorway—including Feodor, who wore a pleased smile.
“That’s all of them!” a nearby cop cried, and everyone began to cheer. “We did it!”
A firefighter rushed forward to wrap Josh and the dreamer in big gray blankets.
“Listen to me,” Josh said to the dreamer. “You have to remember this dream, okay? You have to remember to ask for help.”
“This is a dream?”
“Yes, and you’re going to remember it when you wake—”
The nightmare resolved in an explosion of gratitude and relief. Not for the first time, Josh splashed onto the archroom floor.
* * *
“Brava!” Feodor cried, before they’d even gotten up. “A masterful performance!”
“Masterful?” Josh repeated as she climbed to her feet. “I could have died!”
Judging by the fact that Feodor’s clothing was only wet up to his belt line, Josh was certain he’d left the nightclub while she was still contemplating killing herself.
Feodor shrugged. “What is reward without risk?”
“I completely lost myself in that nightmare, and you let me!” Josh insisted. “What kind of shitty partner are you?”
She realized how ridiculous the question was as the white walls of the archroom bounced the words back into her ears. Feodor wasn’t her partner, and he never would be. He wasn’t even her friend.
He made no reply, but his lips curled with disgust, as if the idea of being her partner, of some loyalty between them, was repulsive to him. All the niceties of his manners were gone, as though his mask of politeness had slipped, had been shaken off by her words, and she was looking at his true face.
The moment stretched uncomfortably between them until Josh said, “What I meant was, it’s your job to make sure I don’t lose myself in a dreamer’s fear.”
“I was working on a theory,” he said, and then he was recognizable again, his expression of detached intellectual interest firmly back in place. “What if losing yourself in the nightmare is the only way to merge with the Dream?”
“That’s crazy.”
