“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.
21
Hi
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.