Dream Student (Dream Series book 1) Read online

  Now she says it, I remember that as well. “Well, whyever he was there, I saw him.”

  “Too bad I missed him. I’d like to have seen him.”

  “Maybe you still will. He might be here until after Christmas for all we know,” I say, and then, sadly, we drift back onto the topic of my nightmares.

 

  ***

 

  We talk about the whole situation for a while longer, but nothing comes of it. We go around and around with the same questions, and keep coming up with the same lack of good answers. At least I’m pretty calm and rational the whole time. No crying, no screaming, no hysterics. Good for me, right?

  So we’re all tired of asking the same unanswerable questions over and over, when Beth happens to glance at the clock and see that it’s almost six. All three of us realize at the same moment that we’re very hungry, so off we run to Lardner to partake of the daily offerings.

  When we’re finished, Brian has to go study, for real, since finals are now only four days away, and Beth and I have to get back to the dorm because at seven o’clock we do our drawings for Secret Santa. It’s a nice little distraction, if nothing else. Something fun and cheerful to think about for a little while. God knows I need all the help I can get on that front.

  We do this every year. You pick somebody’s name out of a hat, then you buy gifts for them for five days. At our big Christmas party next Wednesday we all find out who was giving what to whom.

  So here I am sitting in the lounge waiting to pick my name. Last year I let Beth do it for me. She drew Joe Karver, who wasn’t yet an RA then, and with whom I’d just broken up after a few unsuccessful weeks of sort-of dating. I was not thrilled by her pick, which I’m still not convinced was totally random. I thought it over a bit, though, and decided to try and be mature about the whole thing, and also have some fun with it.

  The first gift I gave him was a can of tomato soup, which is what I spilled on him on one especially unsuccessful date. The next three gifts were all along the same lines, and the final one was a video of the old movie, “The African Queen.” We were going to go see it together at the campus movie theater one Saturday night, until we officially broke up that afternoon. He didn’t figure out what the early gifts meant, but he finally realized when he saw the movie. He got all upset. He was ready to make a big scene in front of everyone and I had to yell at him: “Read the card, dummy!”

  I had put quite a bit of thought into what to write, which probably you can’t tell from the words I ended up putting down: “So what if we’re not boyfriend and girlfriend? I hope we can still be good friends! Love, Sara.” Okay, it’s not exactly poetry, but it did get the point across, and everything was right again with the world.

  Even though that ended up turning out fine, I’d rather get someone I don’t have quite as much of a history with. It finally gets around to my turn, I go up and pick out of the hat with the men’s names–you’re supposed to get someone of the opposite sex, at least until we run out of girls and then the remaining men get other men. Written on the little paper is “George.” There’s only one George in the dorm, and I got my wish–other than a few games of Monopoly, I don’t have any history with him at all.

  Which, I now realize, maybe isn’t so good after all. I don’t actually know much about him or what he liked or dislikes, other than that he’s from Florida and he enjoys playing Monopoly. At least the first gift isn’t until Saturday, so I have some time to try and figure out what he might like, or at least what would embarrass him.

  Now that’s done, it’s back to studying for me. I’ve spent far too much time dwelling on the stupid nightmares; I’ve got a lot of catching up to do if I’m going to be ready for my finals.

  ***

  Tuesday night. The last official day of classes went by, and I couldn’t honestly describe anything I did today. I do have a few pages of notes that I took, so I assume that I not only went to my classes but paid at least some attention in them. Things get clearer around dinnertime; I had Captain Crunch instead of the fried-whatever-it-was in brown gravy, I’m sure about that. And then I spent two hours finishing up my last lab report for advanced Organic Chemistry lab, getting it ready to print out so I can hand it in along with the rest of my work and have that class out of the way.

  And right now I’m supposed to be on my way to University Hospital to be monitored. I’m still not completely clear on exactly what that’s going to involve. I think it’s just a few unobtrusive electrodes taped to my head while I try to sleep, but I don’t really know for sure so I’m a little nervous.

  “Are you sure about this?” Beth asks me. “You can cancel if you want to, I’m sure Dr. Ritter will understand.”

  I’m sure he will too, but I have to do this, I think. If only I could get the image of myself as a lab rat out of my head. I’ve got this picture of me with a little rat face and little rat legs and a cute pink bow on the little rat tail. Beth laughs at me when I tell her about it

  “Oh, grow up. I’m sure it’ll all be harmless and easy. And no mazes or anything either.”

  I hope not. “Fine, but if it is weird and creepy, I’m going to blame you and never ever let you forget it.”

  “OK, OK. That’s fine by me, just go already!”

  So I do.

  ***

  It’s just starting to snow as I walk over to the hospital. I’m really cold, and I wish Brian was walking with me so I could cuddle with him and he could keep me warm. But he’s studying, and I think that it’s probably better in some ways that I do this myself. It builds character or something, right?

  Cold or not, I make it over there and I find the sleep monitoring lab without any trouble. Dr. Ritter is waiting for me. He goes over everything again, how this will be perfectly safe and harmless. It’s pretty much what I expected, although it’s not just “a few” electrodes, it’s quite a lot of them, with wires going all over the place.

  Dr. Ritter is very reassuring about the whole process, and I almost do feel reassured. The electrodes are applied to my forehead, and I’m lying here in the very comfortable bed trying to fall asleep. The EEG monitor is beeping every so often…beep, beep, beep.

  Beep, beep, beep. Just like counting sheep. Beep, beep, beep, sheep, sheep, sheep…

  ***

  …Sara is arguing with her brother. He sits at her desk in her dorm room while she paces around the room yelling at him. It makes perfect sense to Sara that Bob is here, even though he really ought to be back home, a few hundred miles away. It makes perfect sense that he knows all about the nightmares she’s been having, even though she hasn’t said a word about it to him.

  It even makes sense that they’re screaming at one another at the top of their lungs, though their arguing is usually low level guerilla warfare, with metaphorical sniper attacks and the occasional bomb to liven things up. Comparatively speaking, this is nuclear war.

  Still, it all makes perfect sense…

  …And then, for a moment it doesn’t; Sara is somewhere else, someone else’s bedroom. And then it all makes sense to her again. She’s been here before. This isn’t just any bedroom, this is the bedroom, his bedroom.

  Here he is, with another girl, another teenager, another victim. She looks familiar, Sara knows she’s seen her face somewhere–the newspaper, maybe? Or on TV? Yes! Now she remembers. It was on the news a couple of nights before: a runaway girl, frantic parents, fears that the worst had happened. And here the worst is happening right in front of Sara, and just like all the other times she can’t do anything except watch, and scream…

  ***

  …Someone’s talking to me. Trying to reassure me. “It’s OK, it’s OK.” As if saying that over and over makes it true. When my eyes finally start focusing again, I can see who it is. Dr. Ritter. He’s standing over me, and he keeps looking back and forth between me and some papers he’s holding.

  “Hi.
So much for your experiment, I guess.” I try very hard to keep my voice calm and casual. I really don’t want to lose it in front of him. Again.

  Strangely, he doesn’t look as though this was a complete disaster; what he does look is puzzled. “I take it you had another nightmare, Sara?” He helps me sit up, hands me a glass of water.

  Oh, God. I take several deep breaths, drink the water in one swallow, then several more deep breaths. I tell myself over and over: relax. Be calm. Dr. Ritter is waiting expectantly, and after a minute, or ten, I’m finally able to speak in a relatively even tone. “Yeah. It was different–a different girl, I think I saw her on the news, she ran away from home or something–and the same guy, and he…”

  “Yes, I can imagine what you saw. I’m sorry.” He has the decency not to look me in the eye as he says it. “But you have to see this,” he goes on, giving me the papers he was looking at, printouts of–I assume–my EEG readings. I force myself to focus on it. Anything to keep those images out of my head. Calm. Relax. I can do that. I have to.

  “Right there. Something happened. Your delta waves just changed–it’s as though the monitor was switched on to someone else right in the middle of the session.” He’s pointing at a spot on the reading where it goes all of a sudden from nice straight lines to jagged up-and-down.

  That’s it, that’s exactly it. I don’t know much about brainwaves or what they’re supposed to look like, but a sudden change like that has to mean something. For whatever it’s worth, this is proof. I’m seeing what he’s dreaming about. Somehow. “It’s not me. Not my dream. It’s his dream.”

  “This can’t be right. This doesn’t happen. The only possible way you would ever see something even remotely like this,” Dr. Ritter says, more to himself than to me, “is if there was a sudden traumatic event, a seizure or something similar. And even then it wouldn’t be this extreme.”

  I agree completely. “OK, so I’m not crazy, it’s really happening. Tell me what I’m supposed to do about it.”

  He remembers I’m sitting right here. He frowns. “Don’t jump to conclusions, Miss Barnes. I’m going to have all the equipment checked over. That has to be the explanation. There has to have been some sort of malfunction, some kind of error with the computer. Otherwise, this,” he waves the printout, “is simply impossible.”

  He’s wrong. Well, it is impossible, that’s true, but it’s happening just the same. And his printout proves it. There’s something real, something physical going on here. It’s not just my imagination, it’s not just my subconscious. I’m actually seeing what other people are dreaming. And honestly, there is some comfort in knowing that it is real, that I’m not losing my mind. Not a lot of comfort, but some.

  Of course it still doesn’t explain why it’s happening to me, or how it’s happening, or what I should do about it. The only thing I’m sure about at this moment is that there’s no point in sticking around the lab for the rest of the night. Dr. Ritter tries to talk me into it, into staying here until he can recalibrate his monitors and reboot the computer and re-whatever some other thing that needs re-whatevering. All I want is to go back to my own bed and try to get a couple of hours sleep without anything stuck to my head.

  And so off I go.

  Six: Innerspace

  (December 5-8, 1989)

  I make it as far as the hospital lobby. I step out of the elevator and Brian’s there. What’s he doing here? I run straight to him, hug him. “You’re not sick, are you? You’re OK?”

  He’s confused; he has no idea what I’m talking about. “I came to see you, I thought you would want someone to be with you.” Oh my God, that’s so sweet of him! I can’t think of anything to say, so I kiss him instead, and I keep right on kissing him. People are staring at us, but I couldn't care less. I’m just so glad he’s here. I finally back off a little and let him breathe. “I can’t believe you came here for me. That’s the nicest thing…”

  “I love you.” He says it in pretty much the same tone that you’d say “the sky is blue” or “water is wet” and that hits me even more than the words themselves. “This is where I should be.” Yes, yes, yes. And yes.

  Except–there is a tiny little part of my brain that isn’t 100% happy. It’s saying, since when are you so needy? You’re such a baby running to Brian every time you feel a little bit scared. Yeah, maybe. That might be true. Right just now, though, I don’t care if it is. He makes me feel better, he makes me feel safe, and that’s good enough for the moment.

  “Sara?”

  Oh, right. “Sorry, I was just thinking. You know what, you have great timing. I was just leaving, so you can walk me home. And maybe we can go back to your room, we can spend the night there, how’s that?”

  “Okay.”

  I didn’t think he’d object.

  ***

  Now it’s Wednesday, and I’m another day closer to finals. Biochemistry is Friday morning. There were a lot of complaints about that since nearly everyone in the class is dreading that exam, so the fact that it’s on the first day of finals seems particularly cruel. Personally, I don’t mind, because it’s my best class; I know I’ll do just fine.

  Then there’s Statistics for Experimenters on Monday, which I’m also not worried about. Physics, on the other hand, next Wednesday morning, has me somewhere between frightened and terrified. If anything I’m even more lost than I was Sunday night. Everything Julie tried to explain to me has gone right out of my head.

  On the plus side, I didn’t have any more dreams last night, mainly because I didn’t get a lot of sleep. Brian and I were up until almost five in the morning talking about everything except the dreams. He was very comforting, very understanding. And it’s funny; since I told him about the nightmares he’s pretty much always been in his confident place. He hasn’t had any attacks of nerves at all.

  I know what’s going on. He’s so worried about me and my mental state that he doesn’t have time to be insecure and all the rest of that nonsense. I just wish I wasn’t having these stupid nightmares and I could be a little less nervous myself.

  Whatever. Enough introspection for the moment. It’s time to get up and start the day. Brian’s still asleep, so I slide very slowly out of bed and tiptoe to the door. It’s better this way, because if I wait until he wakes up, or if I wake him up, I know what’ll happen next. I won’t be able to help myself, especially since we spent so much time talking that we never got around to it last night.

  Not that I don’t want him right now. I do, very much. Too much. We could easily spend all day in bed, but as boring as it sounds studying for finals is more important. The world doesn’t stop turning just because of my own personal needs and wants, after all.

  ***

  So I spent the majority of today in the library trying more or less in vain to get a handle on physics. My only break from that was to turn in my Science in Western Thought paper–Beth just about rewrote the whole thing for me, and I have to admit it’s a heck of a lot better now. And then I ran into the Student Union for a quick snack and a stop into the bookstore to find something I could use for a Secret Santa gift.

  I ended up buying a slinky. I have no idea why they sell slinkys in the school bookstore, and I have no idea if George will like it. All I know is that he’ll get at least one gift for Secret Santa, and I consider that a moral victory for me.

  Honestly, I think the fact that I can still function on any kind of level at all after several hours of torque and rotational motion–not to mention a couple of weeks of freakish nightmares–is a big moral victory.

  Of course, I still have to find four more gifts for him, and what those might end up being I have no idea. My brain really isn’t up to the challenge of trying to figure it out at the moment. I need food, sleep and Brian, although probably not in that exact order.

  ***

  I’m back in Brian’s room. He’
s lying here right next to me. He just a couple of minutes ago drifted off to sleep. I can feel myself slipping away as well. It’s been a long day, after all…

  ***

  …She’s somewhere vaguely familiar, but Sara can’t immediately place herself. It takes a few seconds. It’s a dorm room, that’s obvious, and a guy’s room, that seems pretty clear as well. It’s the exact same size as her room, so it’s most likely another room in her own dorm. She concentrates on the details, trying to figure out where, exactly, she is. There’s a definite theme here, she notices: the poster of the Manhattan skyline, a snowglobe with the Statue of Liberty–John! John from New York, this is his room.

  And just as Sara figures that out, in walks John, and he’s not alone. The weird thing is, neither John nor his companion–Sara can’t tell who it is yet–appear to see her. The light bulb goes on: this isn’t her dream! It’s like the nightmares, except it isn’t a nightmare. It’s John dreaming, and she’s watching. Sara’s not frightened, because after all, John is harmless enough, and if she’s really honest with herself she has to admit that she is a little curious about all of this.

  The door closes, and now Sara gets a good look at John’s companion. She’s stunned to see someone she recognizes. He’s with a tall, dark-haired girl named Annie Sellers. Sara can’t help but notice that Annie’s wearing a blouse cut far too low and jeans at least a size too tight. Sara doesn’t really know her, except by reputation; Sara’s heard more than once that Annie “gets around” pretty frequently. She thinks to herself: why the hell is he dreaming about her? What does he see in Annie Sellers?

  She gets her answer when John and Annie descend together onto his bed. Sara doesn’t want to watch anymore–this isn’t frightening, but it sure as heck isn’t something she has any interest in seeing–but she can’t turn away, can’t stop looking…