“I like to visit museums, not live in them,” I say, rolling my eyes. “It’s just not a home.”
“It’ll get there,” she reassures me. “You’re just tired from the drive.
“Actually, I slept most of the way . . .” I trail off, thinking about falling asleep on Max’s chest. I tell Sophie about the night at the Met, and she says it sounds really romantic. But her tone says otherwise.
“I know I’m crazy to keep thinking about him like this,” I say. “You don’t have to tell me.” We’ve had this conversation a million times before.
Sophie sighs. “It’s just that you have a fresh start here, Al. Maybe it would be smart to, you know . . . date a guy you can actually, like, be with?”
“It feels like we’re together . . .” I say.
“You know what I mean, Alice,” Sophie says, sounding ever so slightly impatient. “Someone you can actually have. And introduce to your friends. And make out with behind a bush on field trips. Someone who is . . . like . . . real.”
Real. The last word hangs there between us, and I shake my head, embarrassed. She’s right. No matter how I feel about Max, there is still one problem. The night at the Met was a dream. Every night with Max, for as long as I can remember, has been a dream. Because Max is the boy of my dreams . . . and only my dreams.
Because he doesn’t actually exist.
2
Venom of the Beaked Sea Snake
I AM OBVIOUSLY entirely aware that it sounds one hundred percent nuts to be in love with someone I’ve never met, who isn’t even real. But since I can’t remember a time when I haven’t dreamed about Max, it can be hard to tell the difference. The locations change and so do the stories, but Max is the constant, greeting me each dream with his mischievous grin and big heart. He is my soul mate.
I know it can’t last forever, though. So just to be safe, I write it all down in my notebook. Sophie once called it my dream journal, which sounds like something you’d find next to the incense section in a gift shop. It goes with me everywhere, and right now it’s riding in my I ? NEW YORK tote bag, in the wicker basket of a rusty old Schwinn I found in the garden behind Nan’s house. I named the bike Frank, short for Frankenstein, since I essentially brought him back from the dead.
Currently Frank is standing between the two stone pillars marking off Bennett Academy from the rest of the world—pillars that seem to say, Oh, no you don’t. Not in here. What they actually say, carved across their granite fa?ade, is HE WHO FINDS SOLACE WITHIN THESE WALLS, FINDS SOLACE WITHIN HIMSELF. I am skeptical of this statement.
I survey the student parking lot, chock full of sparkling Volvos and Audi SUVs, and then glance down at Frank. The only reason I am even standing here is due to a reciprocity program Harvard has with Bennett for the children of its professors. The handbook claims it’s because Marie Bennett, who started the school on her back porch in the 1800s, was the daughter of a Harvard president, and therefore a “relationship based on mutual respect” has existed ever since.
“Whatever that means,” I’d said when my father read me the description out loud over dinner last night.
“It means having the child of the chair of the Neuroscience Department as a student makes Bennett look good,” my dad explained. “And in return you get a top-notch high school education for free.”
“Are you sure?” I said, tilting my head to the side and twirling some angel hair pasta on my fork. “Because I’m pretty sure I got the scholarship for my athletic prowess.”
“Ah, yes.” My dad nodded, playing along. “It’s probably that trophy you won in the fourth grade. What was it for again?”
“Longest hula-hooper,” I reminded him, taking a big bite of pasta. “The highlight of my sports career.”
“That’s the one.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin and winked at me.
Now I chain my bike outside the main administrative building, which looks more like the White House than a high school, and all but tiptoe down the sparkling marble hallway, because no other way seems appropriate. I rap on the door of the dean of students’ office for my nine a.m. “meet and greet,” a term that made me wrinkle my nose when I read it in my info packet last night.
“Come iii-iiinnnn.” The singsong reply surprises me, but I find nobody in the waiting area, so I wander into Dean Hammer’s office, avoiding the serious gaze of old portraits. It looks like the New York Public Library has been condensed into one little room—dark wood, brass lamps, and rows upon rows of books.
“So, what did you do?”
I whirl around so quickly at the sound of someone’s voice that I trip over the coffee table, landing flat on my back atop the cranberry carpet. I squint up at the figure now peering over me, grateful that I chose a pair of shorts instead of the tangerine sundress I’d thought about wearing this morning. All I can make out is hair. Lots of it, blond and unruly.