Life Is But a Dream

by Brian James

  At that moment, I feel like I want nothing more than to delete myself from her computer entirely. But it’s impossible for me to argue with Kayliegh when she’s this excited. At times like this, she is a whirlwind in the center of a thunderstorm. There are only two choices—go along with her or get left in the ruins.

  I’m not ready to be left behind. Besides, maybe she’s right. It might not be such a big deal.

  I take a closer look at the screen. I scroll through the page and it reads like an advertisement—my photo next to a list with my age and sex and interests so people can choose me or not. Like everyone else in my grade, it says I’m older than I am going to be. —Oh don’t worry about that— Kayliegh tells me. —You have to be sixteen to join the site, so everybody just says they are, even if they aren’t.—

  There are five faces asking me to approve them. They are all boys from places around the country that I’ve never been to. —Why do these guys want to be my friend? They don’t know anything about me.—

  —They probably think you’re cute and want to flirt or whatever—Kayliegh says. —That’s what people do. It’s just for fun, it doesn’t have to mean anything.—

  —So what do I do?—

  Kayliegh shrugs, putting her hands up in the air. —You pick.—

  I wonder how she knows if these people are even real.

  They don’t feel real to me.

  I try my best to act like I’m enjoying it. I type a few messages and send a few requests to kids at school. I don’t know why, but something about it feels wrong—feels like the computer is trying to read my mind. I start to wonder if the more information I feed into it, the more real the fake me becomes. If I keep giving away pieces of me, it will take my place. It disturbs me to even think about it.

  —Are you hungry? Want to go downstairs and get something to snack on?— I ask. I think Kayliegh suspects I’m only making an excuse so we can turn off the computer. But she says okay anyway and I close the screen. I won’t look at that page again for another two months when my vice principal has it open on his computer at school.

  * * *

  The image in the mirror is smiling. I keep looking at the door hoping somebody will come rescue me, but they don’t. There is no sound of sneakers through the hall, no trays of medicine being wheeled, and in their silence there is only the noise that is never supposed to be inside the walls of the Wellness Center.

  The girl in the mirror enjoys it.

  She is smiling and her eyes are evil.

  —You’re her, aren’t you? The secret person— I whisper, and she mimics me. —You’re what will replace me once they are done.—

  She answers without moving her lips. Her reply echoes through the walls—buried inside the noise like thunder in a hurricane. —I already have—is what she tells me.

  —No— I mumble.

  It can’t be true.

  I can’t be stuck here—not when Alec and I were so close.

  Alec.

  I want to see him.

  I want to see him right away, so I jump out of my chair and grab the door. It’s locked. I jiggle the handle and pound on it with my fist. The girl is laughing at me. I can feel her laughter in my bones and I scream.

  —I want out! Let me out!—

  My hand hurts, but I bang harder. My throat is raw, but I yell louder.

  When the door opens from the other side, I rush out into the hallway, gasping for air like someone half-drowned being pulled out of the water. The nurse catches me before I get too far. I try to escape and another one tackles me.

  There is a tiny prick on my arm like a bee sting—then everything dissolves.

  * * *

  —Hello, Sabrina. How are you feeling?— Dr. Richards asks as she enters my room.

  There is a sick feeling in my stomach as I notice that it is nighttime.

  —Was I asleep?— I ask.

  —We gave you something to calm you down— Dr. Richards says. —You were sleeping for a few hours.—

  My hand wraps around the stone in my pocket. It’s the stone from outside of the hospital—the one I took as the police car was watching. I know its shape by the way it cradles in my palm. It’s more powerful than the ones I find here and the heat from my body causes it to sputter and spark. I check to make sure the light doesn’t shine through my sweatshirt and am relieved to see that it doesn’t. My hand must be absorbing all of the colors it sends out.

  —You realize that you gave us all a bit of a scare?— Dr. Richards tells me.

  I nod shyly. —I guess. I never really thought about it.—

  Dr. Richards drags the chair from under the desk in front of the window and pulls it next to my bed. The sound of the chair’s legs scraping across the floor is horrifyingly loud and I flinch. —What was it that upset you in the waiting room? Can you remember?—

  —Mmmm, hmmmm.— I remember.

  —Will you tell me?—

  I look around the room and see my stuff scattered around. The pink bag with the koala keychain sits in the corner. The books on the desk are the ones I brought with me. The photos taped to the wall are ones my mom sent and the drawings are ones I’ve made. —It was nothing … just that room I was in. I was getting claustrophobic, that’s all.—

  —The nurses said you were talking to someone in there. Who were you talking to?— she asks me. I just shake my head because I don’t want to say. When she asks a second time, I answer by touching my tongue to the sleeve of my sweatshirt. —Okay, we won’t talk about that then— she says, encouraging me to bring my hand back into my lap. —Instead, can you tell me what made you want to leave?—

  —I don’t know— I say.

  —Then why did you?—

  —It wasn’t really like leaving— I say. —Or it wasn’t about leaving, I mean. It was more about … like wanting to fly or something. Flying just to fly, you know?—

  I watch as Dr. Richards scratches down every word I’ve said, turning the sound of my voice into blue ink in her notebook. —You went to the town. How did it feel being out there after spending the last several weeks here?—

  I think about Alec walking with his arm around my waist and how the sky changed colors with each step. I picture the sun sitting low in the sky, calling for us to walk into its center and out of the world completely and how wonderfully amazing it felt to be free. But then I remember the old couple with sharp teeth and hungry static in their eyes. I remember the headlights of the police car and the idea of every move I made being followed. I notice the hum of the fluorescent light above my head then. It hurts my eyes and makes everything shiny like the shoes I used to wear with white dresses on Easter. I twist a strand of hair around my finger and examine it. It looks wet and blacker than its normal dark brown.

  I’m being watched still.

  I bite my bottom lip and hold it between my teeth.

  It’s all true. They are working together—the hospital and the static working to make us into sleepwalking mannequins that behave exactly like they want us to.

  The thought tightens the skin over my ribs.

  But every thought I have is fleeting. Each one is like the piece of a puzzle and no matter how many times I try, I can’t make them fit together. It’s as if they know the precise moment when I’m about to figure out their plan and that’s when they flood the air with a stronger storm to confuse me.

  —Sabrina? Did something happen in town?—

  I try to concentrate, but the lights blink too fast for me to think straight. They scramble my thoughts.

  Alec is right. To be safe I shouldn’t tell them anything.

  —For me to help, you have to talk to me.—

  When I refuse to answer, Dr. Richards folds her arms in front of her, leaving the notebook open in her lap. She arches her eyebrows and her hand scratches out a few words in the notebook.

  —I had to contact your parents— she says. —They needed to know about this incident. Also, to be honest with you, Sabrina, I’m concerned about how t
hings have been going with your treatment lately.—

  I try to follow what she’s saying but it’s not easy.

  The lights continue to flicker and her voice keeps fading.

  She sighs and leans back. —Perhaps we should talk again in the morning. You’re probably still drowsy from the medication.—

  Medication.

  She said they gave me a shot and it dawns on me now. That is why I can’t concentrate—why my thoughts are all swimming around in circles. We never should have come back here.

  —Where’s Alec?— I ask forcefully.

  —In his room— she says. —We’ll discuss it in the morning after you’ve slept some more.—

  Dr. Richards waits with me until a nurse comes. She crosses the room to meet her and whispers something to the nurse before she leaves. The nurse hands me a cup with six pills and watches me so closely that I have to sit on the edge of my bed for five minutes and forty-two seconds with the medicine under my tongue until my entire mouth burns with the chalky taste of acid. After she’s gone, I finally spit out what’s left into the palm of my hand and wash it away in the bathroom sink.

  Whatever it is they are trying to do to me here, I’m not going to let them.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  In my dream, I’m standing in my yard in Burbank. The house at my back is like mine only different, the way it always is in my dreams. It’s turned at the wrong angle so the sun shines on it differently. Also our driveway is grown over with grass as tall as my knees that has dried to a golden brown in the forever drought. The roads in my neighborhood have suffered the same fate. There are fields between the houses and the houses are marked by trees taller than normal instead of street numbers painted on a curb that no longer exists.

  Somewhere, a few lawns behind me, a fence rattles in the breeze. The sky above me is bleach bright, but I know the horizon at my back is purplish black with rolling waves of storm clouds screaming their thunder into the landscape. I refuse to look over my shoulder. I know there is only horror there.

  In front of me is the familiar creaking of a tree branch as the tire swing sways back and forth. I run ahead, rushing around the side of the house where I know the boy is waiting for me—the boy who never had a name before but now is Alec and always has been. Yellow dandelions sprout through the grass and their flower tops snap off as I tear through the yard. They rise up around me and flutter like yellow starfish before becoming part of the sunbeams that dance warmly on my bare skin.

  I see him as I round the house. He is exactly where he is supposed to be. He is naked just as we always are when we meet here —There you are— he says. —I’ve been waiting for you. Are you ready?—

  I stand with my legs crossed and my toes digging into the soft dirt. My entire body blushes as I nod. —Yes— I say, pressing a finger up to my mouth to straighten out the crooked smile on my lips.

  His eyes are glowing, following me as I approach the swing with careful steps. His eyes are beautiful and I don’t mind being watched through them. My legs rub against his as I slide onto the swing opposite him. Our knees touch. Our hands clutch the same spots on the rope and we start to swing—moving only inches at first but quickly climbing higher.

  I lean back as far as I can so that my neck is draped toward the ground. The grass seems to fall farther and farther out of reach—the sky sinking closer and closer to greet us.

  We pump our legs faster as the storm chases across the ground, turning houses into dust. My house will be next but that doesn’t make me sad. It’s not like the house I grew up in—this is only a shell, empty inside of anything I’ve ever cared about. We swing one last time and then let go of the rope. We fly away as the house is destroyed. We become thin birds sailing toward the sun—our arms spread like featherless wings.

  We are holding hands, speeding toward the horizon. The city blankets the world below us. Its streets are tentacles expanding its reach. Buildings sprout up like weeds and quickly grow taller to turn into rockets ready to shoot us down. Before they launch, before they can ever catch us, the sky peels back like a curtain made of paper.

  I see figures appearing on the other side. They pop up like fireworks exploding into the world—a million colorfully scribbled faces, the kind Picasso or maybe a toddler would draw. —They are angels saying hello— I tell Alec and he says he knows. They wave their hands and the storm dies below us as the world is coming to an end.

  Alec guides us to a mountaintop perch where we watch the valley fill with seawater until it is a swimming pool the size of an entire state. We are the last two people alive and the rocks beneath our feet crumble and dissolve into sand and we are staring out into a new ocean—the sun’s reflection burning a hole in the center of the water.

  —We have to swim out there?— Alec asks.

  —Then we’ll fall through the center— I explain.

  —Won’t we drown?—

  —We can breathe underwater until we arrive.—

  —Where will it take us?— he asks.

  I smile because we’ve been through this all before and he always forgets. —Heaven, remember? We’re angels now. We’re safe.—

  I race for the water and Alec trails behind. But as soon as my feet touch the warm waves, the dream fades and my eyes shoot open. The ocean is instantly swallowed by the darkness of my hospital room—the sun replaced by the glare of a security light outside my one window, locked and sealed for my own safety.

  I wrap my arms around my chest and hold the memory of him close to me for as long as I can. Even though I miss him now, I’m happy he came to visit me. And I know he is in his room thinking the same thing because I visited him. Our dreams are connected. They have always been that way, even when we were little kids. We just didn’t know it then.

  I try to remember every detail of my dream because in this one we came closer than in any other one I’ve had. It showed me what we have to do. I was confused before and thought we needed to learn how to fly. I was wrong. We have to be on the beach, not in the sky. We have to be on the sand, waiting for the sun to open up a place for us to sink through.

  I close my eyes, but don’t even try to fall asleep. I pull the blanket over my head to make a cocoon. My breath fills the space around me, warming my skin. Like a baby waiting to be born, I lay restlessly counting the minutes in my head. I want morning to come and my door to be unlocked so that I can find Alec and see if he saw it too. It is the one wish I make on the stone pressed against my stomach.

  * * *

  I haven’t been able to leave my room all day. My breakfast was brought in on a tray and my lunch also. The walls inch in on me, hour by hour. I’ve been in here for twenty hours, four minutes, and twelve seconds exactly. That’s not terribly long, but time stretches out when I’m confined and kept apart from Alec.

  The sun has moved away from my window to the other side of the hospital and I want nothing more than to travel with it. I want to be outside. I want to see Alec. They know that. It’s the reason I think they are keeping me in here.

  —It’s afternoon— I say. —Aren’t I even allowed to go outside?—

  —It’s just a precaution— Nurse Abrams says, clearing away the untouched fruit salad and preparing my dessert—six pills measured into paper cups. —Tomorrow, perhaps.—

  —What about group? Aren’t I supposed to go to group? Dr. Gysion will wonder where I am— I say.

  —You’re not going today. Dr. Gysion knows all about it, don’t worry.— Her voice is a gentle lullaby in the shade. I can tell she wants to let me leave. But there are rules that she has to follow even though there are others she is allowed to make up. Keeping me in my room is someone else’s rule. That much is obvious to me. —You have to be cleared by Dr. Richards before resuming your normal routine. Maybe that will happen after today’s visit— she explains. —I know your visit with her is scheduled for a bit longer than usual. It’s nothing to worry about. Just some simple tests, I promise. Nothing too bad. Then maybe it�
��s back to normal.—

  —Is that why you’re here early?— I ask, looking up at the clock. It’s only five minutes to three o’clock. Normally I wouldn’t see Nurse Abrams for another two hours when she’d come to fetch me from the lawn where Alec and I would be talking about things we would never share with our doctors.

  —Yes— she answers. —We’re going to head down there in a minute.—

  —Are they going to give me more needles?— I ask, wrinkling my nose at the thought. They’ve given me two injections since I came back—long needles that appear to be filled with rusty water. I hate the needles. I can never tell if they are taking stuff out or putting stuff in.

  —No needles. Cross my heart— Nurse Abrams says, and there’s something strange about the way she’s talking to me today. Not detached and mechanical like the past weeks, but softly as if I were so fragile her words might break me. —Ready?—

  —I guess so— I say, and we walk out together.

  I keep looking over my shoulder as we make our way toward the examination room. I’ve spent so much time here that I could wander around blindfolded and never bump into any of the furniture inside. It’s two long hallways from my room and I’m hoping to see Alec along the way. I look all around and poke my head into every room, hoping for a glimpse around a corner or even just a flash through an open door, but he is nowhere.

  —Everything okay?—

  —Fine— I say.

  I’m not fine though. My hands are trembling inside my pockets. My feet are cold even as sweat tickles behind my ears. I know what’s going on just by the way she’s acting. I know I’m in trouble. It’s just as it was in school when my teacher sent me to the office. She wouldn’t say what it was I’d done. She didn’t want me to be prepared. It’s easier to lie when you’re expecting the questions. Everyone knows that.

  As we walk through the hall, there is something else bothering me. I wouldn’t ever dare to tell her. It’s my secret for now. I know about the noise inside the hospital. I can’t tell anyone here that it followed us back or they will keep injecting me twice a day. Anyway, the noise is still small like the sound of a television whispering in the next room, but it’s growing louder. Soon it will echo through the hollow halls and ring inside my ears.