“With your parents?” I ask. “They were great.” Then I wince. I forget that Real Max still may not know me very well, but Dream Max definitely does. And he knows when I’m lying.
“Well, they are certainly something,” he says. Neither of us speaks for a little while, and all we can hear are the repetitive beeps of a machine that’s attached to our pods, tracking our vitals and brain waves. Lillian asked if either of us wanted a noise machine. They have ninety-two varieties, everything from chirping birds to waves crashing on the beach, even just the sound of voices in another room. Max said he liked that one because it reminded him of being little and going to bed, listening to the sound of his mom’s dinner party downstairs. But in the end we decided we’d rather just talk to each other.
“Your parents really love you,” I try. “That’s all. They just don’t necessarily show it in the best way.”
“Hey, kids,” Miles pipes in over the intercom. “I’m really enjoying this heartwarming exchange, but I just want to let you know the clock is ticking, and you have seven minutes to fall asleep if this session is going to be useful at all.”
“That’s really helpful, Miles,” I call out. “Nothing like a little anxiety to calm the body down.”
“Whatever. I’m going to get a cappuccino,” he says. “You better be asleep by the time I get back.”
How was I supposed to fall asleep, lying inches away from Max? What if I talked in my sleep, or, worse, what if I talked about him? The good news is that for some reason he doesn’t seem to be able to fall asleep, either. Max, the perfect student. So I don’t feel so nervous. And the less nervous I feel, the closer I’m getting to falling asleep.
“Why did you come here?” Max asks out of the blue. “To CDD, I mean. When you were little.”
“I don’t really remember,” I reply. “But according to my dad, it all started after my mom left to go do her ape thing.” I haven’t told Max the full story, but we’ve been to enough exotic places and seen too many rare species for Madeleine’s research not to have come up.
“So she just left you? I don’t think I ever realized that,” Max whispers, and I’m surprised I never told him that part. I’m also surprised at how genuinely offended he sounds. But then his tone softens. “I guess we always had other stuff to talk about . . . like when we found ourselves scuba diving around that old pirate ship.”
I smile. “Or how about when we floated down that milk river on a raft made out of a giant piece of Cinnamon Toast Crunch?”
“Delicious,” Max replies, and I giggle. But I’m reminded yet again that when it comes down to it, what do we really know about each other? How much have we already missed?
“Anyway, yes. I guess she left us,” I say, before correcting myself. “I mean yes. She did leave us. My dad would say it’s less definitive. But it’s not. She definitely left.” I think about the dream I had, lost in my house, how I felt when I woke up. I wonder if that’s the kind of dream I had when I was little. I decide to switch topics. “So what about you? How did you end up here? I picture you as this perfect child with no problems. Like the kid who ate spaghetti without ever getting it on his white bib.”
Max snorts. “I was never like that, not even close,” he says. “But then there was the thing with my sister . . .”
“What sister?” I ask. “Is she at college? You mentioned her the other night, too, and I didn’t even know you had one.”
Max doesn’t say anything for a long while, and I wonder if he’s fallen asleep already. But deep down I know he hasn’t. And something terrible is coming.
“That’s because she died,” Max says.
My heart clenches, and the sleep pod suddenly seems tight around my body. I want to go to him, but it has me in its clutches.
“Max,” I say. “I am so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Thanks,” he replies, and I can just picture him stretched out next to me, gray eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling. “It was a long time ago. I was seven and she was fifteen.” He pauses for a minute. “You would have liked her. She was a total free spirit. My parents couldn’t control her, and they hated that. But she was always there for me whenever they weren’t, which was most of the time. And then one of the many weekends she was grounded, she snuck out. And the other kid had been drinking, and Lila only had a learner’s permit, so she couldn’t . . .”
Tears are welling up in my eyes, not just over Lila, but imagining Max, just a kid, suddenly so alone. So much is starting to make sense. About who he was, about what Celeste said. About who he’s so intent on being now. And how we didn’t miss a little bit, we missed everything. Max experienced a whole life without me.