“For you, madam.” He unfolded his jacket and revealed a paper bag nestled inside of it, just barely spotted with water. But his T-shirt was soaked. The fabric was plastered to his skin, so she could see the lines of his shoulder blades and muscles. He’d bought her a double cheeseburger—he’d remembered they were her favorite—and a Coke. They split the french fries, their hands bumping every so often when they both reached into the bag. Connor’s shirt was damp, and the smell of laundry detergent and clean cotton intermingled with the lingering fast food smells. It was comforting. Like being in a fort while the rest of the world melted.
“Thanks for listening tonight,” he said. “I’m sorry about how I . . . well, I’m just sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.” She’d just finished the last of the fries. She was full and sleepy and happy. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“I’m glad you did.” Connor looked down at his lap. “It felt kind of good to talk about it. I’ve thought about telling you before. At the same time . . . I don’t know. I liked that you didn’t know.” He turned to her. “It’s been my whole life. I’ve carried it with me everywhere. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” she said. That was the problem, she thought: no matter where she and her mom went, no matter how far they ran, they carried their old selves with them, their broken-down bodies and jerky hearts, the need to walk, the dreams that clung to them like shadows.
“Hey, Dea?” Connor was smiling, just barely.
“Yeah?”
He leaned closer. He found her hand. “I like you, too.”
A shooting pain went through her—what would happen if her mom insisted she leave? What could she do? Where would she live?—but she pushed the thoughts away.
“Check it out.” Connor leaned over her, so for a moment his chest was an inch from her mouth and she thought about kissing the spot between his collar bones. Then the seat whirred backward, bringing her with it, so she was staring up at the roof. He put his seat back, too, so they were lying side by side, separated only by the console. The rain was a constant thrum, like the beating of a gigantic heart.
They lay there for a long time, fingers interlinked on the console, with the heat blowing and the world pouring down around them. At a certain point, Dea realized that Connor had fallen asleep. She wanted to wake him but by then she, too, was teetering, somewhere on the balance between wakefulness and sleep. She let go, instead, and let the darkness close over her.
TEN
She was in without trying, relieved to find herself not in Chicago but in some other patchwork landscape—a combination, she realized, of Indiana flatlands and an industrial yard, grass running into pavement, and warehouses turning the horizon smudgy with smoke. Connor was standing with a half dozen other boys in the center of a field, playing a version of Red Rover, except their hands were chained together and they were all wearing prison jumpsuits, vivid orange against the dull gray sky.
But even as she stood there, trying to convince herself to leave, to let Connor be, the concrete began eating up the grass, spreading like an inky stain from one end of the field to the other, and the boys froze and darkened and elongated, becoming telephone poles and streetlamps. The warehouses splintered and stretched, punching up to the sky like enormous fists. Snow began to fall, and wind whipped down the now-familiar Chicago street.
The dream was sharper than it had ever been, every detail realized, every angle precise and well-constructed. The deli with the blinking Christmas lights and the Lotto sign was fully stocked now, although there was no one behind the register. In the distance, someone was singing “Silent Night.”
Connor was remembering better, more clearly. His conversation with Dea had brought back the details. She knew, too, that she was experiencing the dream so vividly because they were lying so close. There was no veil between them, no psychic interference.
A car rolled slowly down the middle of the street, beaming thick cones of light out into the whirl of snow. Already, she could feel it—a prickling unease, like being watched from a distance. And she knew the dream was changing imperceptibly, growing colder and darker. The men with no faces were coming. Above her, Connor’s apartment was dark.
She went around to the back of the building. A chain-link fence separated the alley from an area for parking and garbage disposal. She hopped it easily, her feet crunching in the snow when she landed. She’d never been in a dream this real. It made her even more alert, and even more afraid.
Could you die in a dream? Really die?
She had never asked.
Stitched up the back of Connor’s building was a set of wooden stairs, similar to the one that had run up and down the back of the apartment she and her mom had rented in Chicago. She began to climb. The snow muffled the sound of her footsteps. The railing was icy, so she kept her hands in her pockets.
On the fourth floor, Connor’s floor, it was dark. The light was missing its bulb. A trash bag had been dumped just outside the door, its slick black surface already pooling with snow. She eased open the screen door and tried the handle. Locked. She would need a key.
She had never messed too much with the fluid nature of dreams, except to make harbingers when she needed to find an exit. That was the whole point of walking—noninterference. But she knew that dreams flowed. They reacted to minor shifts like water breaking around a rock. That was part of why it was important not to change anything, her mom always told her.
Picture a rock dropped into a well, she’d said. Picture all those ripples spreading outward. If the rock is big enough, you can start a flood.
Dea squatted and sketched the rough outline of a key in the snow with a finger. She was terrible at drawing—it looked more like a knife. Anyway, nothing happened.
She spotted a wire hanger distending one portion of the trash bag. She tore a small hole in the bag, working with her fingers to enlarge it. It was so quiet and still, she could practically hear the snow fall. Every sound she made was thunderous, as if it were echoing across the whole city, across the whole dream. She worked the wire hanger out of the bag, releasing a small cascade of trash in the snow: an empty hair dye carton, the shattered globe of a discarded Christmas ornament, a wadded-up paper towel.
She straightened out a portion of the hanger and worked it into the lock. At last, the dream responded. There was an invisible ripple, a change, like passing from air into water, and suddenly she was holding not a hanger, but a key. It turned easily in the lock. She hesitated for only a second before she eased the door open, and stepped into the darkness of Connor’s old apartment.
Her sneakers squeaked on the linoleum floor, and she stood still, holding her breath, listening for sounds of movement. Nothing. A dim light up ahead illuminated the rough shape of a kitchen: countertops and cabinets. Dea marveled at the details. There was a plate, several cookies, and a glass of milk on the kitchen table—Dea realized they must be for Santa Claus and felt her heart constrict. It was amazing what the mind could recall and re-create—even things the dreamer could never remember when awake. It was like dreaming was a secret doorway into places forgotten or deliberately buried. On her left was a large living room and the source of the light: a decorated Christmas tree. The small lights glimmered in the branches, casting strange patterns on the ceilings and wall. To her right were several doors, two of them closed, one of them open just a crack. She inched slowly toward the open door, holding her breath, terrified that at any second Connor might appear—or, even worse, she’d hear the wet mouth-breathing of the faceless men somewhere in the darkness behind her. But nothing happened. She spotted the corner of a desk and a twin bed draped with dark green sheets. Connor’s room, then.