The Dream That Stuck

The Dream

Theo sat straight up in bed.

His pajamas were the ones with rockets on them, and his blanket was twisted around his legs like a vine, and his heart was beating so fast it felt like a little bird trapped inside his chest.

The room was dark. Not all-the-way dark, because his nightlight made a warm orange circle on the wall near the door. But dark enough. Dark enough that the shapes of things looked wrong — his bookshelf looked too tall, and his laundry pile looked like something crouching, and the curtain by the window moved just a little, like it was breathing.

Theo did not like any of this.

He climbed out of bed, dragging his blanket behind him like a cape, and walked down the hall to Mae's room.

He knocked. Not loud. But not quiet either.

Nothing happened.

He knocked again. This time a little louder, and also he whispered, "Mae. Mae. Mae."

There was a groan from inside. Then footsteps. Then the door opened, and there was Mae, his older sister, her hair sticking up in four different directions, her eyes only half open.

"Theo. It's —" She looked back at her clock. "It's eleven forty-seven."

"I know," said Theo.

"That's almost midnight."

"I know," said Theo again.

Mae looked at him. She saw the blanket cape. She saw his face, which was the face of someone who had recently been very frightened. She sighed, but it was a soft sigh, the kind that meant come in instead of go away.

"Okay," she said. "What happened?"

Theo sat on the edge of her bed. Mae sat next to him. Her room smelled like the lavender lotion she put on her hands every night, and it had glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling that she'd stuck up there two summers ago. Some of them had fallen down. But most of them were still there, glowing faintly green.

"I had a dream," Theo said.

"What kind of dream?"

Theo pulled his blanket tighter. "A bad one."

"How bad?"

Theo thought about this carefully, because he was the kind of person who liked to be precise. "Really, really bad. Maybe the worst one."

"Worse than the one with the giant spider?"

"Way worse."

"Worse than the one where your teeth fell out?"

"Way worse."

Mae nodded slowly. "Tell me."

So Theo told her.

In the dream, he'd been at school, except it wasn't exactly school — it was shaped like school, and it had the same hallways and the same water fountain that always dribbled, but everything was empty. No kids. No teachers. No one at the front desk. He walked through the halls and his footsteps echoed, and he called out but nobody answered. He went to his classroom and the chairs were there but the people were gone. He looked out the window and the playground was empty too. The swings were swinging by themselves, back and forth, back and forth, like someone had just been there but had left.

And then he realized — everyone in the whole world had gone somewhere, and nobody had told him where.

He stopped talking. Mae was quiet for a moment.

"That," she said, "is a bad one."

"I told you."

"You did tell me." Mae pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. "But here's the thing, Theo. It was a dream."

"I know it was a dream."

"Dreams aren't real."

"It felt real."

"Sure," said Mae. "Dreams are good at that. That's basically their whole trick. They feel super real while you're in them, and then you wake up and — poof. They're just... nothing. They're like bubbles. Big, convincing, very detailed bubbles. But still bubbles."

Theo frowned. He appreciated the bubble comparison, but he was not fully convinced.

"If they're nothing," he said, "then why was I so scared?"

Mae tilted her head, thinking. She did this a lot. She was twelve, and she'd had a lot of time to think about things, but Theo's questions were the kind that made her think even harder than usual.

"Because your brain believed it while it was happening," she said. "Your brain is really good at believing things. That's what makes it a good brain. But sometimes it believes things that aren't true, especially when you're asleep. When you're asleep, there's no one checking. It's like — you know how when Ms. Perkins leaves the classroom, Marcus immediately stands on his chair?"

"Yeah."

"Your brain is Marcus. And sleep is Ms. Perkins leaving the room."

Theo almost smiled at that. Almost.

"But what if —" He stopped.

"What if what?"

"What if everyone did go somewhere? And nobody told me?"

"Theo. Look at me." Mae pointed at her own face. "I'm right here."

"I know, but —"

"Mom and Dad are down the hall."

"I know, but —"

"But what?"

Theo's voice got very small. "What if one day you're not?"

And there it was. The real question. The enormous one hiding underneath the dream, like a whale under a boat.

Mae didn't answer right away. She looked up at her glow-in-the-dark stars for a while. One of them — the one near the corner — was barely glowing anymore, almost out of glow. But it was still there.

"I can't promise that nothing will ever change," Mae said. "That would be a lie, and I don't lie to you."

"I know you don't."

"Things change. People go places. That's just... how it works."

Theo's lip did a thing. A wobbling thing.

"But," Mae said, and she said it firmly, the way she said things when she meant them all the way down to her bones, "I will always, always, tell you where I'm going. Okay? I will never just disappear. Nobody who loves you is going to just disappear and not tell you. That's not how it works with people who love you."

Theo thought about this.

"You promise?"

"I promise. If I ever go somewhere, I'll tell you first. Even if I'm going somewhere boring, like the grocery store. Especially if I'm going somewhere boring like the grocery store, because I'll probably want you to come with me so I'm not bored."

Theo did smile at that. A real one.

They sat together for a minute. The house made its nighttime sounds — the hum of the refrigerator downstairs, the tick of the hallway clock, the soft rumble of their dad snoring two rooms away.

"Mae?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I stay here tonight?"

Mae looked at him. His rocket pajamas. His blanket cape. His face, which was already looking less frightened and more sleepy.

"Yeah," she said. "But you have to stay on your side."

"I will."

"And you can't steal the covers."

"I won't."

"You always say that, and then you always do."

"This time I won't."

"Okay." Mae got back under her covers and scooted over to make room. Theo climbed in on the other side, dragging his blanket with him. He bunched it up under his chin the way he liked.

The glow-in-the-dark stars shone above them. Tiny green dots, scattered across the ceiling like a made-up constellation.

"Mae?"

"Hmm?"

"What do you dream about?"

"Lately? Mostly about forgetting my locker combination."

"That's not very scary."

"It is when you're in seventh grade."

Theo laughed. It was a quiet laugh, a sleepy one, and it faded into a yawn.

"Mae?"

"Theo, if you say my name one more time, I'm going to start charging you a dollar per question."

"Last one."

"Go ahead."

"Do you think... the swings were really swinging by themselves?"

Mae turned her head on the pillow to look at him. "No," she said. "I think it was probably just the wind."

"Just the wind," Theo repeated softly.

"Just the wind."

He closed his eyes. Mae watched him for a moment, the way his breathing slowed down and his grip on the blanket loosened, the way his face smoothed out like a lake going still.

She reached over and pulled his blanket up a little higher on his shoulder.

Then she closed her eyes too.

And the green stars glowed above them both, quietly, all through the night.