Page 57 of See You in Your Dreams

“Yeah, well, hopefully my best is enough.”

Dylan fixes me with a smile. “Either way, I’ll be right here the entire time.”

I nod mutely, gratitude filling me. His presence alone is enough to put me a hundred times more at ease. I inhale a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

It doesn’t take long for me to get settled in bed, tugging up the covers. Dylan switches off the light and perches on the chair by the desk, watching me. If anything goes wrong, he’s supposed to shake me awake. Not that either of us have any clue whatsomething going wrongmight entail.

Doing my best to still my pounding heart, I shift onto my side and close my eyes, fighting to regulate my breathing. Minutes pass as I turn over, switching positions while trying to get comfortable. Finally, I open my eyes on a sigh.

“This isn’t working. I’m too wired to fall asleep, but anything I take to make me drowsy might interfere with my power.”

“You just need to relax,” Dylan says, a shadowed shape barely visible from across the room.

“Easy for you to say. All you have to do is sit and eat snacks all night.”

“Hey, it’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.”

A restless silence descends. A span of heartbeats later, I hear the scrape of a chair and the sound of soft steps crossing the room. My bed creaks as Dylan settles onto it, tucking himself under the covers.

Heat settles low in my gut as Dylan presses up alongside my back. “What are you doing?”

“Helping you relax.”

Dylan’s arms snake around my torso. Fire dances across my skin as his hands glide down my chest. They hover around my belly button, and for an instant, I think they’re about to drift lower still. A breath huffs out of me, my tensed muscles relaxing slightly when his hands instead settle in place.

“There,” Dylan says, his voice slightly breathless. “Is that better?”

“Much.”

His soothing warmth envelops me, making me feel safe and protected. Making me feel loved, even if we haven’t said the word to each other yet. With Dylan here, I can actually believe everything will be all right.

Wrapped up in his arms, I hardly even notice when I drift peacefully off to sleep. One moment, I’m lying in my bed, relishing my boyfriend’s touch. The next, I’m floating amid a vortex of swirling color.

Striated lines of reds and blues and violets all bleed together into a dark whirlpool. Half-glimpsed images rise and fall amidthe churning multihued waves, each a vague suggestion of reality.

The oak tree outside Banton High.

My old room at the Ellingtons’.

My mom’s slackened face.

A tremor racks me as the colored waves darken and thrash like a growing storm about to break. I scramble to maintain control over the nascent dreamscape, to recenter my emotions, but I can feel the power slipping through my fingers. Terror squeezes my throat.

This is how it happens—how I trapped Harvey within a nightmare. How I ruined Dad’s final days. How I drove Mom to take her own life.

As if from a great distance, I hear a faint voice echoing through the dreamscape. It’s too faded to discern any words, but I recognize the familiar comforting presence all the same.

Dylan’s right here by my side, just like he promised.

The knowledge gives me something to hold onto, anchoring my reality so I don’t drift away. Gradually, the swirling colors regain their former calm, the dreamscape once more solidly under my control.

This is a realm of infinite possibility—the nascent subconscious muck from which dreams emerge. I can sense them waiting out there, a legion of half-formed possibilities. With a focused act of will, I could breathe life into any one of them and create an ephemeral new world.

The notion is equal parts wondrous and terrifying. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I find myself excited by the potential my power offers, seeing it the way Dylan had. Then, I recall all the harm it’s caused, the lives it has ruined. The dreamscape trembles again before I manage to recenter myself. I am not here to play God or to enjoy myself. I came here with one purpose in mind: to find and help Greta.

Now, if only I had any idea how the fuck to do that.

Tentatively, I reach out my hand, prodding at the shifting sea of color. Shades of blue stick to my hand like paint, dripping from my fingers in great, messy blotches. A faded memory drifts back to me of painting with these colors—of imagining them into magical wonderlands for me and my parents.