Dreamology (15 page)

“So what did
you think of
Nocturne
?” Isabella Stewart
Gardner says. We're seated facing each other in her empty bathtub, fully clothed, sipping chocolate milk shakes.

“I thought it was the most beautiful painting I've ever seen,” I say breathlessly after swallowing a big mouthful of ice cream, careful not to spill on my plum ball gown. Isabella, in turn, is dressed in a gown made of deep-green velvet.

“I'm so glad you think so,” she replies.

“Me too,” Emmet Lewis adds. He's seated in the corner in an orange wing-backed chair, wearing a teal suit and perusing a book titled
Tweed, Tweed, and More Tweed!

“Come on,” Isabella says, hoisting herself out of the tub abruptly,
before extending a hand to me. “I want to show you my latest acquisition.”

Raising the hems of our skirts around our ankles so we don't fall, we tiptoe down the staircase to the third floor of the Gardner Museum, but when we reach the bottom of the steps, I see we're back at the Met, in the Impressionist wing.

“Isn't it lovely?” Isabella asks, pointing to a painting of a bright green field, where a purple hot air balloon is tethered to the ground. “It just arrived.”

“It's striking,” I say. There really is something extraordinary about it, but I can't put my finger on what it is. The colors and detail are so vivid they're nearly lifelike.

“Touch it,” Isabella suggests.

“Are you sure?” I hesitate. “It's against the rules.”

“Alice, I make the rules,” Isabella says. “And I insist. You haven't seen the half of it.”

Biting my lip, I reach a hand out to touch the painting and find that suddenly I'm inside it. And the hand I extended has landed on Max's cheek, where he stands in the basket of the hot air balloon.

“Wanna go on a ride?” he asks, a welcoming smile on his face.

“Okay,” I say, taking his hand and climbing over the top of the basket.

“Lillian, will you do the honors?” Max asks. Lillian appears, holding a giant pair of golden scissors, and snips the rope with ease.

And just like that we are rising, up, up, and away, slowly at first
and then a bit faster. I look down and see there's no longer a field below us but, instead, the city of Boston. Fenway Park, the Citgo sign, and a gleaming statehouse dome, the Charles River snaking through it all. Everything is bathed in a warm, dusky light.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“Back to the cloud,” Max says. “To finish what we started.” He comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my shoulders, leaning down to rest his head on my shoulder blade.

I blush. “We don't have to go back to the cloud,” I say.

“We don't?” he asks, spinning me around to face him.

“Nope.” I take a nervous breath, gazing up at him.

“Great,” Max says. “Because I've been dying to do this again all night.” Then he places one hand at the back of my neck, and leans down to kiss me.

WHEN WE ARE
ushered into Petermann's office the next morning, I am shocked to see him dressed in something other than athletic attire, but relieved to see it's just as strange. Max and I aren't the only people in the room in pajamas. Petermann's are a silk cobalt blue.

“Good morning, sleepyheads,” he says, removing his glasses and setting down the paper. “Please, take a seat and help yourself.”

Spread out all over his desk is an array of breakfast items. Scones, cinnamon buns, bagels, and croissants. In other words, heaven. Lillian walks in looking tired, pushing a cart with a bunch of clinking cups.

“Would anyone care for coffee?” Petermann asks, gesturing to the cart, and both Max and I eagerly raise our hands.

“This is all for us?” I ask, genuinely excited.

“She has a thing for baked goods,” Max interjects, and I nod enthusiastically.

“It's your reward for all your hard work yesterday,” Petermann says, leaning over his desk and clasping his hands together. “I think it really paid off, because not only did you sleep soundly through the night, your brain activity was off the charts. Now I am dying to hear what happened!”

Max has already covered a bagel in cream cheese and taken a big bite, so I go first, smiling when I notice he put the other half of the bagel on my plate. There is something very primal about it, like we are prehistoric people and he went out and killed the bagel and brought it home for me. “Well, we dreamed about the hot air balloon again,” I start to explain.

“No,” Petermann says, waving a hand impatiently. “No, no. Earlier. Start at the very beginning, when you were conscious. Begin with the reenactment and go from there.”

I hesitate, and look at Max. “Everything?” I ask. But Max just gives a
why not tell him
shrug, and Petermann insists. So this time, I don't leave anything out. I tell him about Emmet and the clawfoot tub, about the stolen artwork, about
Nocturne
, and about how we stood in front of her and went through the whole dream . . . even the kiss. I look down when I mention the
last part, feeling weird talking about it in front of Petermann, of all people. But he doesn't seem fazed.

“Your idea must've worked,” I say. “Because it all felt so real at the time. I could actually hear the symphony music from the Met dream.”

“So did I,” Max adds. “And your lips tasted like Oreos.”

“So did yours!” I practically shriek in excitement, and Max, laughing, reaches over and lets his hand rest lightly at the back of my neck, giving it an affectionate squeeze.

But Petermann doesn't look excited. “I'm confused. You mean his lips tasted like Oreos in your dream.”

“No,” I say. “Well, yes, they did in the dream the first time, but then they also did in real life.”

Petermann's brow furrows. “I suppose it would be silly for me to ask if you had in fact consumed any Oreos yesterday?”

Max and I shake our heads.

“What is it?” Max asks.

“I'm not sure,” Petermann says, tapping his fingers on his desk. “Have either of you ever experienced anything like this before? A moment where something from your dreams seems to seep into your reality?”

The question makes the hair on my arms stand up. “I have,” I say cautiously, telling him about Sergio and Brunilda outside my window, and Jerry's giant footprint. “Have you?” I ask Max.

Max nods. “The parrots have been stalking me, too. The
other day they were roosting on the goal during a game and cheered when I scored. And yesterday, when I went to switch my laundry from the washer to the dryer, I pulled a rubber ducky out with the load.”

“Like the washing machine dream,” I whisper. “I saw one in the Charles River a few weeks ago.”

“Had either of you ever experienced this . . . dream bleeding, so to speak, before meeting each other?” Petermann asks.

Max and I both shake our heads again.

“They're merging,” Petermann says under his breath.

“What?” Both Max and I speak at the same time.

“I don't want to alarm either of you yet,” Petermann says. “But it's my concern that now that you've met in real life, your minds may not be able to tell the difference between reality and your dreams. It's possible that the longer this continues, if we can't stop you from dreaming of each other, it could become impossible to distinguish waking and dreaming, one from the other.” He pauses and leans forward. “And you may slowly begin to lose your grip on reality altogether.”

“You mean like, go insane?” I ask.

Max's hand, once tangled up in my hair, has dropped into his lap. “That doesn't make any sense,” he says.

“Look around, Max,” Petermann says. “What about any of this makes sense?”

“It's going to be okay,” I say to Max as we walk to his car. It's still early in the morning, not even eight yet, and the whole quad is empty. Max is still holding my hand, but he hasn't looked at me directly since before Petermann told us his theory. “We'll figure it out. Petermann will figure it out.” I stop, waiting for him to show he heard me.

Like the gentleman he is, Max doesn't go around to his door, but comes to mine first, opening it for me.

“I know we will,” he says, placing his hands on the sides of my shoulders. “I just wish everything wasn't so complicated. I should be studying for a history exam right now, but instead I'm worried my dreams are taking over my mind. I know it's silly, but I just sort of wish that last night's dream balloon never came down to earth again.”

“Why? What happened on the balloon?” I ask, pretending to be confused.

“Oh, you don't remember?” Max says, playing along. “Would it help if I reminded you?”

“It's not just helpful, it's important,” I say, pointing a finger at him. “Crucial to research as a matter of fa—” But I don't even get to finish my sentence, because Max is already kissing me.

I pull away, feeling disoriented. “Sometimes when you kiss me, I become completely weightless,” I say.

Then I see the look on Max's face. He's staring in horror at the ground. I look down too and realize we actually
are
weightless. We're floating. Just a bit, just a foot or so. I kick my feet and just like that,
whomp
, we're thrown back to the earth again, where we lean against the car to ground ourselves. My heart is pounding so fast I think it might burst through my rib cage, and I feel like I might throw up.

“Did you see that?” I ask.

“Yup,” Max says, breathing hard.

“Did we . . .”

“We did.” Max nods. “And I think it might've been my fault.”

“How was it your fault?” I asked.

“Well, I said I didn't want to come down from the balloon again . . . so we started to go up.”

Max is looking at me, terrified. I take his hand and squeeze it tight.

OLIVER'S HEAD APPEARS
upside down over mine with a quizzical expression, but I can't hear what he's saying through the musings of The Cure in my ears, so I pull out my headphones. If you are not familiar with postpunk or new wave music of the late 1970s, I highly suggest you amend this, particularly if you are hopelessly in love.

“What?” I ask, choosing not to sit up from my position on the quad, where I've been splayed out all free period just staring at the foliage above. I swear this one tree keeps turning from a normal fire-red color to various shades of hot purple and pink, which I could attribute to the fact that I'm dozing on and off. Or the fact that, you know, as Petermann said, I'm losing my grip on reality.

“I said, what's up with you?” Oliver repeats, still standing over me, his curls falling in his face like the first day we met.

“Can you be more specific?”

Oliver stretches out next to me. “You've got this funny smile on your face,” he says. “Like you have a secret nobody else knows.”

I have a secret only one other person knows.

“Oh,” I say, trying to make my face more serious. “I didn't realize.”

But I did realize. My dad said the same thing to me at breakfast, after I looked up from my Cheerios to find him giving me an odd look, and had to block his face with the cereal box when he wouldn't stop. I've been smiling like an idiot since I woke up, because I can't stop thinking about the kissing. Or our kiss last night, in our dream. Or our kiss yesterday, at the Gardner. So many kisses, and all of them incredible. I know I should feel guilty, and really a part of me does. But another part, a bigger part . . . feels great. Like something has fallen into place. I don't want to hurt Celeste. She's been nothing but nice to me. But I can't help how I feel, and Max can't help how he feels. And honestly, a part of me wonders if I feel this way because technically—and pardon me for sounding juvenile—I saw him first. He was mine first.

“Is this about Wolfe?” Oliver says now. “Please tell me it's not about Wolfe.”

“It's not about Max,” I say. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because he's right here,” Oliver says, sitting up and leaning on his elbows.

“Hi,” Max says, from where he's standing over us.

“Hi,” I say with a little laugh that mortifies me, and I brush the hair away from my face.

“Hi,” Oliver says in a tone he doesn't even try to mask as suspicious.

“Hello,”
Celeste says loudly, and we all turn to where she is standing a few feet away, hands on hips, in the middle of the quad.

“Is it true?” she asks, sucking in her cheeks a bit as she looks at Max.

“Is what true?” Max says, his posture stiffening.

“You two,” she says, looking at him but nodding to me. “I have to admit, I did sort of wonder about it. I could tell you acted strange around her, but I didn't think you'd actually . . .” She stops talking and just looks down, shaking her head.

“What's she talking about?” Oliver mutters to me under his breath, but I don't move a muscle.

“Where were you yesterday?” Celeste says to him, tears welling up in her eyes.

Max just keeps staring at her, his face like stone. As I watch him, I realize people might think he's being a jerk, or that he doesn't care. But I know better by now. He's shutting down. He's scared.

“Because the thing is,” she continues, “you said you had to
go to some event with your mother. Some stupid event with those giant scissors and the big ribbon you hate. So did you?”

Max opens his mouth as if to speak, but nothing comes out.

“Did you?” she asks again, her voice breaking. I want to put my face in my hands.

Max exhales. “No,” he finally admits.

Celeste's mouth is hanging open. “So it's true. When Francesca Dello Russo texted me this morning and said she'd just seen the two of you kissing on a quad at MIT when she went for a run this morning, I said, no way. She must be mistaken. But deep down I knew she was right.” She looks to me now. “I was nice to you. I
liked
you, Alice.”

“Celeste,” I start to say, not knowing what's going to come out. “We didn't mean to hurt you. We just—”

But Max interrupts me. “It's my fault,” he says. “Don't blame Alice. I kissed her. But it just sort of happened . . . we . . . I didn't mean it.”

Now it's my turn to stare at Max in shock. I know what he means, it did just
happen
. There was the symphony music and the painting and my dress and the twirling . . . and yes, it was all a bit dreamlike and fuzzy. But it didn't end there. There was also the drive to CDD and the handholding. The bedtime stories and the kiss on the quad today. One thing was for certain—last night and today, I meant it when I kissed him back. I thought he did, too.

“You didn't?” I ask.

“As if that makes it better,” Celeste scoffs as she starts to turn away. “And by the way, in the future, if both of you would be so kind as to never speak to me again, I'd really appreciate it.” She marches off, and it's only at this moment that I realize the entire quad is staring at us.

Max doesn't chase after her, but he doesn't turn to me, either. He just stands there a moment, looking dazed, before walking off toward the boathouse. I turn to Oliver and see he's already long gone.

After all the mixed signals and emotions, the MRIs and EEGs and dream reenactments, I thought we were starting to figure it out. Not just the science . . .
us
. But we weren't. We're no closer than we'd been since the day I got here. As the quad starts to hum again, no doubt with the gossip of what a terrible person I am, I put my headphones back in my ears and slink away to hide out in a place where nobody will see me cry.