Chapter 9 #3
Motivation matters. The book keeps repeating “you need a good reason.” Mine’s easy.
My dreams are better than my waking life right now.
In here, I’m stuck wondering if he’ll ever choose me, or if I’ll wake up one day and see a wedding announcement.
In there? I can say fuck it and never think of him, or I can think of him as much as I want, but on my terms.
I want that.
My heart twists. Tessa always joked about being dramatic, but reading her actual words, she meant every bit of it.
Reality Checks
–Read something twice (book, sign, text)
–Check the time, then look again
–Count your fingers
The dreaming brain sucks at keeping those things consistent. Words scramble if you read them twice. Clocks change. Fingers decide to cosplay spaghetti. If it looks wrong, you’re probably asleep.
“Spaghetti?” Seriously?
I lift my hand and wiggle my fingers, just because. For one stupid second, my heart leaps, what if?
But no. Five fingers. Normal. Calm down, Lenny.
Every time something even slightly off happens in waking life, I do a reality check, too, pause, and ask, “Am I dreaming?” It feels silly, but the idea is to build the habit so deeply that it follows you into sleep.
It dawns on me how often Tessa checked her watch back in school, during lectures, in hallways, even while we were cooking together. I always assumed she was bored out of her skull or counting down until lunch. But maybe that wasn’t it at all.
The words blur for a moment as my eyes sting.
“What even is all of this?” I whisper. “How did I miss it?”
But then again, I’ve always been good at missing things when the version I wanted was easier to live with.
I’m so confused, but still, I flip forward a few more pages.
Fully lucid. FINALLY. I walked through the door on the beach, checked the time, then again, and it was all wrong. Knew right then. So I turned the sky purple. It looked ridiculous. Then I made it rain pasta because I could.
I smile to myself. Of course, Tessa made pasta rain, but the next entry, that’s from a few weeks later, wipes the smile right off my face.
Class was a blur. All I could think about was getting back to dreaming, back to the place where he didn’t exist at all. I know this might be a problem, but I also don’t care.
Lucidity is getting easier and easier. I manage it almost every night now, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever experienced.
But I always feel like I’m being watched.
Like there are eyes on me, but I can’t see anyone.
I tried to look it up, see if that’s a normal side effect, but nothing is mentioned in the book, so I’m ignoring it for now.
A cold ripple skates over my skin as I turn the page to the next entry. Being watched? By who?
There was a man in my dream, and he wasn’t like any of the other people in my dream. I couldn’t change his appearance or make him leave. He just smiled at me. But it was a nice smile, a very nice smile.
It sends a small chill crawling up my spine, and I can practically hear her voice in my head when I read her dream entry of the next day.
Okay, so this is going to sound insane, but… he was there again.
Like he expected me.
Another entry about him.
I didn’t invent him on purpose. He just keeps showing up, like my mind decided to replace who it really wants with someone who doesn’t make me feel as if I’m begging for scraps.
Then another.
I should probably be disturbed by how vivid it feels, how real he seems, but I look forward to it. To him.
If dreams are wishes, maybe this is the first time mine have listened.
He keeps showing up.
It’s like the universe finally gave me a version of love that doesn’t hurt.
Shit.
I sit a little straighter as I read the entry from another night, the last bite of the muffin forgotten halfway to my mouth.
When I dream of him, it feels steady in a way my waking life doesn’t.
Safe, almost. I don’t have to pretend or brace for disappointment.
I don’t have to wonder if I am asking for too much.
It’s ridiculous, and I know it’s ridiculous, but he makes me feel free.
Like maybe my heart is tired of hurting and decided to give itself a decoy to breathe for a minute.
But what if he’s not a decoy? What if he’s the only version of love I get to have?
My thoughts are still racing when I turn the page and read the next entry.
I couldn’t care less if my own subconscious conjured him for me.
If I could stay here with him, I would.
I close the journal over my thumb and stare at the opposite wall, a slow, creeping oh shit threading through me.
I was right.
All those dreams I had of her over the years, the conversations, the laughter, the nights she felt more real than the people in my actual life, they weren’t only grief hallucinations, wishful thinking, or the brain’s weird way of coping. They weren’t my mind inventing her. They weren’t mine at all.
The reason she looked so vivid, so alive, so Tessa every single time is because she was. She was there. She was conscious.
And I wasn’t.
But how the hell did she do it?
How did she manage any of this?
The muffin sits like a small, warm stone in my stomach as my fingers tighten around the journal’s spine.
If she could learn it…
… if she could find a way into dreams so deep she never came back out…
… maybe I can learn too.
Maybe I have to.