Dreamology (23 page)
Authors: Lucy Keating
See You Soon
ONE MONTH LATER,
I sit at my windowsill, marveling at how beautiful Boston looks under a blanket of snow. The cars nearly disappear beneath it, so all you see are gas streetlamps and the orange light of people's windows. The snow seems to muffle sound, too, especially at night, and I feel like I'm living in a different time.
“Bug,” my dad says over the intercom, “sorry to interrupt, but we were just wondering, did you feed Jerry tonight? Or should we do it?”
Before I even open my mouth to answer, the unnerving sound of his boyish giggle comes over the line, too, and I make a face instead.
“Margaret,” my dad says. “Stop it. Alice will hear you.”
“I fed him, Dad,” I call out. “And I'm on the phone.”
“Tell Max I say hello,” he says, and the intercom clicks off amid laughter.
“Did I just hear your father . . . giggle?” Max asks. His voice is deep and crackly and I can tell he's in bed.
“Margaret is here,” I explain.
“Again?” he asks.
“Again,” I say. Once I told my dad everything that had happened, he wanted to be connected with Margaret immediately to make sure I was okay. She was in town for a conference and it was like they'd known each other their whole lives. Like her Crocs and his worn penny loafers were meant to sit across from each other beneath the kitchen table, perusing their various academic periodicals. Not to mention they both owned the same color corduroys. I shudder. “It's honestly a little gross, how gooey they are for each other. But I've never seen him this happy in my life.” I pause. “They've been . . . cooking. She's totally patient with his culinary inadequacies. I think it's making me fat.” I stand in front of my floor-length mirror and stick my tummy out intentionally. “Too much cake.”
“You're gorgeous,” Max says, almost defensively.
“Even if I blow up like that little blueberry girl from
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
?” I ask.
“Violet Beauregarde,” Max says. “And yes, even then.”
“You really do know everything,” I say, getting under the covers.
“So do you. You just don't always bother with the details,” he says.
“Wanna come over?” I ask. It's an inside joke. I know he won't, but it doesn't mean I'm not serious.
Max lets out a low laugh. “We both know I'd like that, but my mom's on my case now that she knows we're dating. She likes you,” he clarifies. “She just doesn't like how close you live. I guarantee she knocks on my door any minute to check up on me.”
“Fine,” I grumble. “Maybe I'll just go downstairs and ask Margaret to reverse the procedure so I get you back in my dreams again.”
“Not unless you wanna see your dad and Margaret Yang making out,” Max warns. I squeal and we both erupt into laughter. “Besides,” he says, “we both know you still dream about me anyway. And I dream about you. We just don't dream together.”
In the pause, I just listen to the sound of his breathing for a little while. It's so comforting. I don't have any trouble sleeping anymore. This is the only noise machine I need.
“What?” I say after a few seconds when I hear Max laughing softly on the other end of the line.
“I just can't believe there was ever a time before this,” he says.
“Go on,” I say, blushing. “I like where this is going.”
“I just mean, there was basically always a dream you, of course. But to think that only a few months ago you didn't really exist. You were just this person I looked forward to seeing every night and hated saying good-bye to. You were my secret. My dream girl.”
“Say that last part again?” I ask.
“I've said it a million times before,” Max mumbles. “I should record it for you on your phone.”
“That's actually a great idea,” I say. “It could be my ringtone!”
“Alice, I was kidding.”
“I'm still waiting for you to say it again,” I say.
Max sighs, but it's a happy sigh. “Alice Rowe, you are my dream girl.”
I smile quietly.
“But now I have to go to bed,” Max says.
“No!” I command.
“Yes,” he says. I'll see you in . . .”âhe pausesâ“six and a half hours? I've gotta go. I'll see you soon.” After everything, he is still just as serious as ever.
“See you soon,” I say. But I don't put down the phone. “Max?” I say after a few minutes. “Are you still there?”
Max's voice comes out soft, as he drifts off into sleep, just the way he does every night when we do this. “You know I am, Alice. I'm always here.”
I smile to myself, a sense of calm coming over me as my
whole body relaxes into the mattress, Max's breath creating a rhythm on the other end of the line.
The sooner I go to sleep, the sooner I get to wake up and see my dream boy again.
“Would you please stop somersaulting?
Because I don't like it,
and neither does the person sitting next to me.”
âLucy Keating, talking in her sleep, 2001
THE DREAM TEAM:
To Sara Shandler, the truly delightful human, who along with Josh Bank, always makes me feel like I have something to say that is worth hearing, and always knows the very best way for me to say it. Les Morgenstein for not hesitating to say “sure” when I walked into his office and clumsily announced I had something I'd like him to read. Joelle Hobeika for getting the proposal out the damn door, without which none of these acknowledgments could ever be written. Jocelyn Davies for immediately sharing my vision of what this book could be, and working patiently with me to make it so. Hayley Wagreich for fixing some of my toughest notes before I even had a chance to process them, and for putting Emperor Fluffbottom on her bulletin board. Natalie Sousa for creating the cover of my dreams (see what I did there). And of course: Romy Golan, Heather David, Matt Bloomgarden, Stephanie Abrams, Lori Paximadis for handling all the rest.
The VIP Read Team: Sarah Carden, Annie Martyr, Jennifer Graham, Marty Keating. For approaching the drafts I sent and questions I asked with dedication and, most of all, enthusiasm, fuel that kept me running until the end.
My Family: Mom, Dad, Mike, Andy, Shannon, and Laura, for their incredible encouragement, for always telling me I was funny, for always telling me to “write it down,” and for being the lovable weirdos who gave me some of my best material.
Like Family: Nyssa Liebermann, Ghazal Moshfegh, Erin La Rosa, Cayley Lambur, Alexandra Jamali, Justine Wardrop, Kate Perry, Carly Holden, Kyle Blasman, Anthony Pucillo, Anna Carey, Nick Greer, Ben Shattuck, Nate Sherman, Pedro Noyola, Aaron Bergman, Liz Parker, Hopie Stockman, Susie Cooley, Alexis Deane, Rebecca Welsh, Matti Sloman, Susan Birkett, John Spooner. Some of you read, some of you spent entire dinners or walks or car rides discussing a bunch of teenagers I made up, and some of you just listened . . . which was often all I needed.
My Professors: Lisa Corrin for kindly and without judgment pointing out in an Art History paper that I cared more about the stories of the artists than the work they created. Jim Shepard and his amazing fiction seminars, for giving me purpose then and now.
The Ghosts of My Alloy Past: Lanie Davis, Katie Schwartz, Rachel Tobias, Liz Dresner, Theodora Guliadis, Beth Clarke, Emilia Rhodes, Stacey Silverman, Gina Girolamo, Maggie Cahill, Tripp Reed, Cheryl Dolins, Amanda Bowman, Ashley Williams, and Monsieur Socktopus, all of whom helped me along this journey from assistant . . . to assistant . . . to eventual author.
J. Allan Hobson, for his wonderful book
The Dreaming Brain
.
And of course, Ernie The Dog, who always keeps me laughing.
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LUCY KEATING
is a writer living in Venice, California. She grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, attended Williams College in the Berkshires, and is still a New Englander at heart. Besides writing, Lucy's greatest loves are music and her dog, Ernie, who has his own Instagram, @ernsboberns. Lucy has always had wild and vivid dreams, and has been known to rearrange furniture in her sleep. Visit Lucy at
www.lucykeating.com
and follow her on Twitter @lucyinwifi and on Instagram @luhlala.
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Cover art & design by Natalie C. Sousa
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
DREAMOLOGY
. Copyright © 2016 by Alloy Entertainment. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Produced by Alloy Entertainment
1700 Broadway
New York, NY 10019
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015943566
EPub Edition © March 2016 ISBN 9780062380036
ISBN 978-0-06-238000-5
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FIRST EDITION
