Chapter Three
Three
The sky was so blue. It was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes—that blue, blue sky. Like something out of a dream, or a painting, a photograph with the contrast bumped up. It was so bright it hurt my eyes, and I had to blink several times before I could even stand to keep them open.
I remembered being shoved to the ground. My head hurt a little, but not as much as I would’ve expected it to—more like that groggy, heavy feeling that came from sleeping in a little too late, the one that would linger the whole day unless you got coffee or fresh air in time.
There was no shortage of fresh air. I turned my head, and blades of grass tickled at my nose.
The blue sky had already caused a twinge of panic, a dull one, like I knew there was something to feel but couldn’t quite muster the energy to all the way feel it.
The last I remembered, it had been night, so it was unsettling to have to squint against the sun.
But now there was blue sky and green grass where previously it had all been black—starless night and charcoal asphalt and then that borderless darkness smothering everything.
And hadn’t there been more? Voices, not frantic but…
terse. Efficient. I was suddenly reminded of the time they’d done a scoliosis check on the kids in my elementary school, and one of the volunteers had thought she’d seen something in my back.
In the month before my parents took me in to see the doctor, I’d sat ramrod straight and gingerly laid myself in bed every night like I would break, until finally my pediatrician had confirmed it was nothing.
Maybe this—whatever this was—had also been nothing.
I sat up, automatically putting my hand to the back of my skull.
I couldn’t feel anything there, not a bump or a cut or my hair wet with blood.
It did throb a little, and sitting up so fast made my vision kaleidoscope for a few seconds before clearing out again.
I was still wearing my blue-purple dress from the date. The date had happened…right? If this was a dream, I didn’t know where it had started. I couldn’t think of any other explanation of why I’d be sitting here in this strange place in broad daylight, my car nowhere to be seen.
There was a car only a few feet from me, actually, just not my car. When I looked again I saw that it was missing its two back wheels and rear bumper, and there was a piece of paper tucked into the window with numbers scribbled on it that meant nothing to me.
None of this meant anything to me. There was the grass prickling the backs of my knees, and when I turned my head there was a hedge, blocking out my view of anything else except the hint of rooftops on the other side.
When I turned my head in the other direction, over a slight hill there was a building painted white with signage toward the top I couldn’t read, its letters partially obscured by a few trees. Garage. Some sort of garage.
Maybe my car had been taken to a mechanic? That didn’t make any sense—there’d been nothing wrong with it, other than the few things that had always been wrong with it. Maybe whoever had crashed into me and taken my purse had stolen my car, as well? But then why would I be here?
The garage didn’t look particularly open, at least not from where I was sitting.
There were two large metal doors, painted green, that were rolled shut.
While I was studying them, a figure passed over my vision, just once, the shadow of a man or the memory of whoever had attacked me, I couldn’t really tell.
A shiver ran through me, not just from the vision—it was cold, a crisp chill to the air that I’d been too distracted to fully appreciate until now.
I pushed myself to my feet, running my hands over my body, checking for any damage.
Checking for…I didn’t even know what. I tried pinching myself hard, because wasn’t that supposed to work if you were in a dream?
But all I did was leave an angry red mark on the back of my hand that faded after a minute, the same way it would’ve if this were real.
From up on the hill, that white-and-green garage was calling to me.
Maybe it was because it was the only building I could see from this vantage point, but at least it was something.
I gave the area around me one last look, making sure my purse or car keys weren’t lying nearby, even though I already knew they wouldn’t be. And then I started climbing the hill.
The side of the building with the rolled-up doors didn’t look that inviting.
There were a few cars parked close by, something about them a little off, in the way that details in dreams can be skewed versions of the real thing.
The side of the building I was more interested in was the one that had an actual door and a couple windows that I could peer through even though everything was dark inside.
It took a minute for my eyes to adjust. It looked like a standard mechanic’s reception area—linoleum floor, a front counter, chairs set around the perimeter, a small table with a carafe and some paper cups stacked up.
The only unusual part was that, in this space, there were shelves and shelves of books lining the walls—battered, well-loved books with cracked spines, from floor to ceiling.
This had to be a dream. The bookshelves proved it, exactly the kind of detail my subconscious would’ve added, putting something I loved in an incongruous place, reminding me that this world was constructed by my own secret desires.
“Oi!” The voice behind me made me jump.
I spun around to see a man. I supposed I should have felt threatened, especially since my body still carried inside it the feeling of that person slamming into me, the way it had only taken a second to completely lay me out. But I didn’t.
Still, there was a charge in the air around this man, the way you could sometimes feel a storm coming.
Not so much danger as the potential for danger.
It was hard not to be aware of the fact that he was taller than me, stronger than me—he had that lean, wiry look to him like he could haul his own body weight up the side of a mountain, which was something I definitely couldn’t do.
He was dressed monochromatically—heather gray T-shirt streaked with grease, dark gray work pants, heavy black boots.
Light brown hair in a buzz cut and the most electric blue eyes I’d ever seen.
A full-body shiver ran through me again, but this time I didn’t think it was the cold. Maybe I felt threatened after all.
“We’re closed,” he said, and even in those two clipped words I could hear the lilt of an accent. I might be living in my subconscious right now, but I’d still learned my lesson about commenting on that.
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t really know what else to say.
This was all so surreal. I couldn’t believe that my own mind would betray me by dreaming up places that weren’t open for business.
I’d read once, when I was a kid, about someone who’d said they couldn’t visualize a cup of milk without making it tip over and spill.
Over and over, they’d tried to picture it, and every time the cup would tilt and milk would cover the table.
I’d become a little obsessed with that idea at the time, of your mind getting stuck on something like that.
I’d tried to visualize my own cup of milk, but when it tipped over and spilled I never knew if I was experiencing the same glitch or just manufacturing it to happen.
The man was staring at me, and I realized it must seem quite odd, this woman just standing in front of his closed shop with no sign of moving. If it seemed any way at all to him. I’d never really thought about the consciousness of other people in my dreams before.
He sighed, and when his voice came again it was gruff. “Electricity’s out,” he said. “I can have a look at your car but might not be able to do much.”
“I don’t have a car,” I said automatically.
A flash of a look crossed his face, an unmistakable then what the fuck are you doing here? before he gestured behind him. “Bus to Dublin city center runs every fifteen minutes or so. About a kilometer down the road, little more, keep straight and you can’t miss it.”
Dublin? I hadn’t realized I’d said it aloud until he gave me a slow nod, like he thought there might be something wrong with me. Which. There was something wrong with me. I just didn’t quite know what.
“American, yeah?” he said. “Anywhere you want to go, it’ll likely be through Dublin. Take a right at the road, stay straight, it’s about ten minutes, fifteen if you walk slow. Can’t miss it.”
An inappropriate urge to laugh bubbled up inside me. His confidence in what I couldn’t miss seemed suddenly wildly funny, since I felt like I was missing everything. Was I somehow in Ireland? How was I in Ireland?
Whatever existential or logistical crisis I was in the middle of, the man wanted no part of it. He gave me one last look, a perfunctory nod that was clearly his closest approximation to have a good day, and then he disappeared around the side of the building.
It felt like I was in the middle of a video game, and I’d never been much good at those. Like I had two options—follow the man and try to talk to him, get more information. Or follow the road like he’d told me to and see where it took me.
Maybe there was a third option. Lie back down in the middle of the grass where I’d woken up in the first place, close my eyes, and see what happened.
I tried it standing right where I was, closing my eyes and repeating the words in my head.
Wake up wake up wake up. I didn’t want to be in this weird liminal space anymore.
I didn’t want the glass of milk to keep spilling over.
When I opened my eyes again, everything was the same.
That blue, blue sky, the stretch of green grass, the garage, the cars parked around the field.
I suddenly missed my car with a fierceness I never thought I’d feel about a nine-year-old compact sedan.
I wanted nothing more than to be able to climb inside of it, see if my Check Oil light was on again even though I’d just gotten an oil change, and put the horrible date and confusing aftermath behind me as I drove all the familiar streets home.
But for now, I was here, and I didn’t know what to do except I knew I had to do something. I headed for the road.