Lucid (31 page)

Max gets very quiet. I start to speak, but he shushes me and reaches out, holding my arm. After a moment he giggles softly.

“I think I can hear him laughing,” he says.

And the pieces of my broken heart shatter. Tears streak my face. Max turns his head and kisses one from my cheek. He then gets up and leaves me on the floor.

“You can keep the chart in case you lose him,” he tells me.

I dress for school and as I head downstairs, I feel a stab of panic wondering who will be at the breakfast table. Maybe somehow it will be Bill. Maybe when I truly go crazy, I’ll get to see him all the time.

It’s my dad, waiting for me with a blueberry donut and a big smile. He asks if I’m willing to miss school today. I tell him he can twist my arm. He has a meeting in Manhattan and offers to take me along, give me a chance to wander the Columbia campus, grab a yummy meal with him. I guess I haven’t been doing a great job of hiding the fact that these have been two of the worst days of my life, spiraling toward far worse than that. I’m no longer convincing everyone I’m fine. He wants to cheer me up and clearly thinks his company can do it, which is pretty sweet.

On the train, he seems awkward for a few minutes.

“So. Jim seems like a really nice guy.”

“He also seems like a James. And yes, he’s very nice.”

A silence follows that is kind of funny.

“Good,” he says. And that is the end of our James discussion.

He seems to feel more comfortable having displayed his support for my choice. He leans back, tries to read the paper for a few minutes, and dozes off. I gave him the window, even though it was always my spot when I was little. He’d said thank you, but he probably doesn’t care about the seat, just likes me taking care of him.

There’s less to look at on the aisle because everyone’s heads block your view. I’m staring at this piece of gunk ground into the Amtrak blue carpet in the aisle when a familiar pair of purple Converse high-tops with neon pink laces comes into my eye line. The scribbles and designs in Sharpie across the toe are signed by their artist owner, Jade.

“Can I have some money, please?”

I look up into her bright hazel eyes. The amazing thing is that
I’m no longer frightened. Am I adjusting to insanity? Or am I Maggie’s dream, getting ready to disappear?

“Maggie, you promised! I know it’s only ten, but I really, really need a Strawberry Shortcake Good Humor bar. I’m ravished. Or am I ravishing?”

“You’re actually both,” I say, marking my first official conversation with a hallucination.

“Two dollars, please. I’ll bring you change.” Jade likes to stay on message at times like these.

“Will you give me a bite?”

“I’ll give you half. You’re my sister.”

“I only wish,” I say. And am sad to see that she doesn’t register this. I open my purse and find a five-dollar bill. When I look up to hand it over, the aisle is empty. And I’m sorry. Maybe if I’d had a little sister to love so much, I wouldn’t have gone crazy. No. I’ve had Max to love so much and I still went crazy.

When I turn around, my dad is just staring at me.

“Have a nice nap?”

“Who were you talking to?” he asks, looking at the five dollars in my hand.

“My imaginary friend,” I say with the brightest smile I can find.

“Do you have to pay her five dollars to be your friend?”

“I was just heading to the food car. Want anything?”

He stares at me. “Sweetie, are you okay?”

“Totally.” And I jump out of my seat as fast I can.

When I come back with my Strawberry Shortcake Good Humor bar, he asks if I’ve been sleeping well lately. By which he means am I
still having that dream I told him about, the one that has apparently disturbed me so much. Of course I tell him I’ve been sleeping well. And just to put it all to bed, so to speak, I tell him I feel so much better since that recurring nightmare went away.

Just before we pull into Penn Station, I get a text from James asking if I’m sick, why aren’t I at school. I totally spaced on letting him know I wouldn’t be there. As I furiously text my apology, I wonder how this could happen. Of course, if I’m only Maggie’s fantasy, that would explain it. How could any girl forget the love of her life for even a minute, let alone all morning? Maggie never forgets Andrew.

My dad drops me off at Columbia’s Low Plaza and gives me a cheerful kiss. Clearly, he’s still nervous about my phantom chat with Jade because he says that his cell will be on all the time, and if I need anything at all, I should call him right away. I figure that reassuring him will only create more concern, so I say thanks, you’re the best, and act all excited about my day at Columbia. He looks in my eyes just a half second too long—dads are really transparent creatures—and then heads back downtown for his meeting.

I stand staring at Butler Library across the immaculate quadrangle. It’s beautiful and represents everything exciting about getting out of your small town high school and starting life for real.

Then I realize. I’ve never visited Columbia before. Of course, I know that, but I’ve never stopped to wonder why. After all, I’ve been in Manhattan before. I’ve been on a college tour with my dad before. Wouldn’t it make sense that this would be the first place I’d come? And yet I didn’t. What suddenly makes sense, terrifying sense, is the vision of this as a blank space in Maggie’s fantasy. That’s right. I’ve seen it before, in my dream. Maggie went there with Benjamin.
He taught English here, creative writing. He worked in the building two blocks from where I’m standing. Maggie never wanted to go to college. She gave that to me, at her father’s college, and never bothered (as if she controlled the dream enough to bother) to fill in the blank of having me visit.

I’ve heard the phrase “my blood ran cold” in books and movies. This is what it feels like. It’s your body that’s cold, and really frightened in a way that you don’t know how to fix. I literally can’t move. I don’t notice any sound, though life is going on around me. I’m staring at the air in front of me but can’t focus my eyes on anything. I’m not real. I’m not.

There must be a thousand explanations and a thousand examples of how Maggie could be having the same experience that I’m having. I try to slow my breathing, which makes me feel light-headed. A strangely familiar voice says, “Hi.”

I turn directly into a charming and friendly smile that I’ve seen many times. In my dreams.

“Are you okay?” Andrew asks.

I swallow hard. I’m aware of a conscious effort to keep from blacking out. I take my best shot. “Do I know you?”

“Nope. I’m just a random citizen who thought you looked a little ill or something. I didn’t mean to intrude or bother you.”

He doesn’t know me. Obviously, since I’m not real, he can’t know me. Then a ray of hope. Andrew is showing up in Maggie’s dream, just like Bill showed up in mine. But of course, this hope is dashed. Andrew is alive and real. Bill is only a memory.

“I’m sorry to push this, but you’re not looking any better. Do you want to sit down on that bench over there?”

I should send him away. But I can’t.

“Sure.”

He takes my elbow, gently, so different from Thomas’s terrifying attack. He leads me to the bench and sits beside me.

“Can I get you some water? Or maybe you need some food in your stomach?”

“I’ll be fine in a second.” I look at him and smile. I want to talk to him, even if I don’t know why. “I like your bracelet.” He’s wearing an awkwardly tied multicolor friendship bracelet.

“Thanks. My girlfriend’s sister made it for me.”

“Her younger sister, I hope.”

He laughs in a really easy and appealing way. It reminds me of someone else’s laugh.

“Oh yeah,” he says. “My girlfriend’s older than seven.”

“Good to know. Do you guys go to Columbia?”

“I go to NYU and she’s an actress.”

“She must be a handful.”

“You’d think so. She’d probably say that. But I think when you really want to be with someone, all that stuff goes away.”

“She’s lucky to have a guy who feels that way.”

“We’re both lucky we found each other. I mean, I don’t know what I’d do with the rest of my life if I ever lost her. Crazy, huh?”

I stare in his eyes. And remember the smile his smile now reminds me of.

“There’s worse things than crazy,” I say. And wonder if that could be true.

I tell him I’m feeling better. He points me toward the visitors’ center and heads off with a little wave. I watch him go and suddenly
wonder what he’s doing here. His life is downtown. Why would Maggie put him uptown to meet me? For the same reason I put my mom in her bedroom. We wouldn’t. We just can’t control this thing anymore. If we ever did.

I don’t go to the visitor’s center. Instead, I walk into the library. Gaze at the elegant high ceilings, imagine hiding out in the stacks fifteen hours at a time, cramming for finals, the life I’ve longed to have. Know that I never will. In fact, there probably isn’t even a me in the first place. Being here is unbearable. I catch a cab and head downtown.

I know where I’m going. I come down Hudson, get out at Horatio, and head west. I soak in the neighborhood. I’ve seen it a million times but never really looked at it. Probably because I always thought it wasn’t real, like a fake street in a movie.

All of a sudden I’m there. Staring up at where she lives. Where I live? With my sister, Jade? I summon all my courage and go to the call box. I scroll for Jameson, but just as I get to the
D
s…

“Lose your key?”

I turn to see a lean, handsome man in his mid-forties. I feel as if I’ve known him all my life. And that feeling is like a knife in my gut. Maggie’s father, Benjamin, is dead, as dead as Bill. Yet here he is, thinking that I’m his daughter who has lost her key.

“I can’t believe I did that. I’m a bonehead.”

He sits down on the stoop, and I sit alongside him. There are tears in my eyes. How much Maggie, or I, really loved this guy. And this might be the last moment either of us will ever speak to him. I lean my head on his shoulder, and he strokes my hair.

“Tell me a story,” I ask.

“You first.”

I take a deep breath. “There once was a girl who was very, very unhappy. But she didn’t know it. She invented an imaginary world and told herself it was her special, fun place to go visit.”

“But it was her place to hide,” he says.

“Hey, who’s telling this story?”

“We are,” he says. Which suddenly makes me feel warm and comforted. Someone else once said those words to me. And they made me feel less alone.

“She visits her special place every night. It’s a secret from everyone. And she looks forward to it. Even though it isn’t always easy there.”

“And then one day…” he prompts.

I look over at him questioningly.

“Every story has a point. Every story has a reason and a journey. Every story has an end.”

“That’s where this one is different. Because the girl doesn’t want it to end. Won’t let it end.”

He looks at me with a wisdom that reminds me of the way Bill looked at Maggie last night.

“Oh, it will end all right. The storyteller just needs to find a nice soft place for her to land.”

I start to cry. “Can she find it?”

He studies me. Almost as if he can read the answer to that question in my eyes.

“She will,” he says. “Even if it’s not the one she’s planning on.”

I’m not sure how to take that. But his face looks so kind, I know he meant it well. He doesn’t comment on the fact that I’m crying.
Maybe being a ghost, he doesn’t notice. But then he reaches over and dries my face with his fingertips.

“I have to go now,” he says. “I wish I didn’t.”

He stands, leaning down to kiss the top of my head. I feel this glow and sadness as if he is my own father, which in this moment I wish he were. He walks off down the street and I watch with this unbearable regret that I will never see him again even though he is someone I never really knew.

I wander around for hours. My dad calls, asking if I’m ready to meet up. We talk about getting an early dinner before our train. I tell him to meet me at Union Square Café.

I stand in the park, across the street from the place Maggie goes to be alone in a crowd. To watch the strangers she makes up stories about. If I sit there tonight, will she be somewhere in the room, maybe in a parallel universe, watching me and creating me? Maybe she’s in there right now.

I cross the street, and just before I can enter…

“There you are.”

I know the voice even before I turn around. Emma is looking at me in a very different way from the way everyone else from Maggie’s world has looked at me. She knows who I am. She knows I’m Sloane.

“Do you know who I am?” she asks.

I’m struck dumb. This really isn’t possible.

“Sloane, can you hear me?”

I nod slowly, like a three-year-old.

“Go away, Sloane. Let her be. Leave her alone so she can have a life.”

She glares at me, actually angry, blaming me for everything.

“Why doesn’t she let me go so I can have a life?”

“You know why. Maggie can’t go away. Any more than her sister, or her mother, or I can.”

“Oh, but I can, huh?”

“You can if you want to. You can just let go, and fade away, and be happy that she can live without you now.”

“Because of Andrew?”

“Because of the possibility of Andrew. She can’t really be with anyone until you’re gone. I know you love her. Please, please let it happen.”

“So I’m supposed to, what, kill myself?”

“Stop it!” That isn’t Emma. I close my eyes. But I know he won’t go away.

“Sloane, what are you doing? What are you saying?”

I open my eyes and stare at my dad for the longest moment.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m just confused, I guess. Just. Really confused.”

I’ve never seen tears in my dad’s eyes before. His arms slide around me. He holds me tight.

“It’s going to be okay,” he whispers. “We’ll figure it out.”

M
y eyes spring open. I’m completely disoriented. My head whirls to my left to see the clock, but it’s not there. Who took it? I turn back, and it’s on the right. But I don’t keep my clock there. Suddenly, I focus on the time; my God, I’m late for school.