The screen shuddered to black and then so did I.
I remembered staring past Roman into the trees. They were empty and then…they weren’t.
There were deer, three of them, white tails flashing between the trunks. But Roman hadn’t seen them. He’d seen something else.
Instead of my grandmother’s old quilt I suddenly felt my sheets, moist from sweat. I rolled and then I felt a hand on my arm.
“Don’t move.”
“What?”
I opened my eyes and saw my grandmother. Her eyes were wide behind a pair of thick bifocals, the ones she wore when she was sewing.
I felt a tug and realized she was gripping a strand of my hair, her other hand holding a pair of scissors.
I pulled back. “What are you doing?”
“You want this in your eye?” she said. “Stop moving.”
There was a sharp snip and then one of my curls was resting in her palm. I sat there, wide-eyed.
“Roots need it more than you do,” she said.
“What roots?”
She held up the strand of hair, narrowed her eyes, and said, “Whatever killed the roses is spreading.” Then she hurried out of the room.
I watched through the window as she carried it to the roses planted along the sill. The backyard looked strangely pale—the roses, the flowers potted next to them, even the herbs planted out in the yard frail and muted grey.
My grandmother was muttering something to herself, working the hair through her fingers like beads on a rosary. But as she carved a small trench in the dirt, burying the strand of hair, she wasn’t chanting about the roses. She was chanting something else, dark and pleading—a prayer—and then she said my name.
I stood in front of the bathroom mirror glaring at that one hair that was now so short I looked like some kind of mad scientist. I tried tucking it behind my ear but it just sprung back out. Great. I finally pinned it out of the way but I couldn’t tear myself from the mirror.
I was staring at my lips. At the place Roman had touched them. Kissed them. He was real. I thought I would feel relieved. Vindicated. Happy. But for some reason, the minute his lips had slipped from mine, cold air trickling into their absence, I’d felt afraid.
What if he wasn’t like me? What if he wasn’t sick? What if he was normal? I wasn’t good at normal. I never had been and even though he said he didn’t care, that he wanted me, just me, what if he didn’t know what that meant he’d be giving up? What if normal really was what he wanted? The him in the real world.
In the dream-state time wasn’t constant; it was slow and malleable and six weeks was just a sunrise. He didn’t know what it felt like to be left, not really. And that’s what I did. I left people. And now that he was real he would have real expectations just like everyone else. Like a future. Like college and a job and a family and going to sleep at night and waking up the next morning and not scrambling to catch up with the rest of the world all because you blinked. You blinked and you were gone while the people you left behind were still living. Without you.
That would be the selfless thing to do right? To leave him be. To let him be normal. Especially after what I’d overheard in Dr. Sabine’s office. I could be getting worse, irrevocably, fatally worse. If something happened to me, what would happen to Roman?
All night I’d stared at his hands as if the answer were written along the scars there. As if I would believe it. I stared at my reflection in the mirror now, still trying to summon the same thing. But suddenly my reflection dimmed, my eyes burning as I replayed Roman’s words. It’s mine.
A memory? He remembered? I could still see that little boy, diaper sagging over chubby legs, three small teeth exposed in a smile as the man hovered over him. Roman. He remembered.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. That he would be as lost in the real world as he was in mine. But what if he wasn’t alone? He hadn’t been, at least not as a child. And from the way that large hand rested on the top of his head, the way the man swung him into his arms—he’d been loved too. Probably still was. Roman had a family. Roman belonged to someone else as much as I belonged to my mom. And what if they were far away? From here. From me.
He was starting to remember. It wouldn’t be long before he’d start stitching the memories together, feeling whole again. What if that’s all it would take for him to finally wake up? And what if when he did he wanted the memories more than he wanted me?
When I finally came out of the bathroom, my uncle was sitting on one end of the couch, my mom on the other.
“You hungry, kiddo? There’s food.”
I saw the pizza box sitting on the counter. I reached for a slice and it was cold. I could still see their heads peaking over the back of the couch, so far apart, and it made my throat ache. I glanced at the calendar. One week. When I was in the real world time felt like this infinite string I was constantly trying to unravel.
But I wasn’t so afraid of the episodes anymore. I had somewhere to go, someone to be with. But standing there, holding that cold slice of pizza and watching my mom still afraid to indulge in the kind of normalcy I would never get to have with Roman I was angry. And more than that I was scared. I didn’t want time to unravel anymore. I wanted it to stop. To just stop and let me exist in that invisible overlap between my dreams and his. To let me be happy for just a little while longer.
The phone rang, buzzing along the counter, and when I answered it I heard the nasal voice of Dr. Sabine’s receptionist. She wanted us to come in this week if we could. She had something she wanted to discuss with us.
Felix. I rushed to my room, checking my cell phone. Seven missed calls all from the last night I was awake. I dialed his number and he picked up on the third ring.
“Bryn?”
“I’m up.”
“Yeah, after I’ve done all the heavy lifting. How convenient?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Dani and I spent the night in the parking lot outside Dr. Sabine’s office.”
“Gross. I did not need to know that.”
“I was breaking into their network,” he said, his voice dry.
“You what?”
“We tried waiting but three days passed and then three more.”
“I know, shitty timing too. Did you find anything?”
“There’s some interesting emails I forwarded to you. You said the other doctor’s name was Banz? German, right? They were going back and forth talking about Nilostasia?” He fumbled over the word.
“Maybe that’s the new trial,” I said.
“There was stuff about you too. Most of it seemed pretty straightforward but you’ll be forwarded all of their future emails.”
“Anything else?”
“I’m still working on decrypting the files I found on Dr. Sabine’s hard drive but it looks like Dr. Banz has been logging in remotely. Probably from a laptop. If I’m gonna hack into his files I need to get closer.”
“You mean he’ll have to be in the office?”
“Ideally. I’d rather not sneak into his hotel room.”
“So it would have to be during the day?”
“No worries. I’ll need thirty minutes, tops.”
“And there’s no way they can trace this right?”
“Well…”
“Felix!”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“It’ll be fine, Bryn, I promise.”
“We’ll see. Dr. Sabine called this morning and asked if I could come in.”
“Oh…”
“Felix, I swear—”
“It’ll be fine. Look, text me your appointment time and I’ll wait out in the parking lot. You can be my eyes while I break into the other quack’s computer.”
I was pretty sure helping Felix hack into Dr. Banz’s computer was something that could possibly land me in jail if we were somehow caught. But what other choice did I have? I sighed. “Fine, what do you want me to do?”