I haven’t been to see Jason at all this week.
Please don’t go, I beg.
Please, please, please don’t go.
1, 2, 3, shock.
1, 2, 3, shock.
The quiet pulse in my head that started in Marcus’s dreams, that continued outside Mo’s house, starts to get faster and more insistent.
“Has anyone…Is Marcus coming?” I ask, speaking over the noise in my brain.
“We can’t reach Marcus.”
“Should I…I could try…” I start to suggest, but Mrs.R’s sudden shriek makes me turn back to Jason.
She’s weeping like a mother who is losing everything.
I cry even harder.
I’m terrified that we’re watching him take his final breaths.
That he’s dying.
That he’s dead.
The wailing gets even louder. Unbearable. The pain in my head is too much.
Please let this be a dream, I plead with everything.
Please.
And suddenly, just like that, the walls start to peel. The ceiling dissolves.
“Is anyone…” I say, pointing to the melting doorframe. “Can you see that?”
1, 2, 3, shock.
The wailing is getting louder and louder.
“Mrs.R,” I say, reaching for her, but like everything around us, she is vanishing.
I look around and I am the only thing that’s real.
Twenty-Seven
I wake up by the ocean.
I know it’s a dream because it’s summer and there are clusters of families and friends and children milling around, building sandcastles that I step on without trampling. Sand pies that I stumble over without smashing.
I accidentally step on limbs as I run from person to person, searching each face for that smile. The one that says unknowable things.
Marcus.
I’m looking for Marcus.
This is the first dream I’ve ever been in without him, and I feel it acutely, like hearing the echo of my voice in a tunnel. The sound is full but filled with an aching aloneness.
