Not so super -- Chapter 6

 

I woke up the next day, confused and disoriented.  My alarm app always had that effect on me.  But as my brain started to boot up, it reminded me that I was still basking in glory.  We were just four points behind Newton and the team was clicking.  I was pretty pleased with my own performance.  Despite Anthony’s assertions otherwise, I rarely got perfect scores.  I wanted to savor yesterday for as long as I could.

 

I entered the kitchen looking for some way to revel in the moment.  Mom was already dressed and on her way out the door.

 

“I need something celebratory to eat, Mom.  We had a great meet yesterday.”

 

Mom was reading a fridge-mounted to-do list while absent-mindedly fiddling with an earring.  She was wearing a professional looking, navy suit.  Her bag was sitting in the table, waiting to be scooped up  When I came in, she turned to me with glassy eyes.  She had clearly heard me without listening.  Her mind was elsewhere.  But she did catch the part about eating.  She wrinkled her nose at the fairly empty cabinets.

 

“Crackers?”

 

“I’ll find something at school.  Hey, me and the boys need to work on our history paper tonight.”

 

“I’ll be working late -- do whatever you like.  You can help yourself to, uh, leftovers,” Mom said, waving generally at the fridge.

 

“Maybe, I’ll go over to Kenneth’s after,” I said.

 

Mom gave me a quick peck and headed out the door.  I ate my crackers, took a quick shower, and packed up to leave.  

 

I had been placed in a school on the other side of Cambridge, resulting in a twenty minute walk every morning.  I loved it.  I enjoyed everything about the walk.  I enjoyed the feeling of being in motion.  I especially enjoyed the people watching.  What I didn’t enjoy was the voices.  Music helped to mask the impact.  I also found things to count, to take my mind off of the random words coming at me.

 

I popped my earbuds in and headed down the street.  Firing up my Thursday playlist, I turned to lock the door behind me. The music didn’t guaranty protection from the intrusions, but it masked them a little.

 

When I turned onto Brookline street, the wind picked up.  I tugged my jacket around me.  Across the street, I saw a pair of girls in purple coats, laughing as the wind took one of their hats off. 

 

I didn’t get too much company on my side of the sidewalk until I got close to Mass Ave.  Then the floodgates opened up.  I hung fifty feet back from the intersection, a girl with a lavender coat standing just ten feet in front of me.   Beyond her, I saw the vast heterogeneity of Cambridge, waiting to cross the street.  They ranged from students younger than me, to professionals on their way to work to retirees on their way to wherever they went.  I saw women in pretty clothes and boys wearing confrontational t-shirts.  I saw people in all colors, sizes and shapes.  I saw people of every brand and flavor.  Every flavor but mine, of course.  Unbidden, a smug, serene image flashed in my mind.  I pushed it away and waded into the sea of diversity before me.  I did notice purple coats four, five and six among the diversity.  I wondered whether they were all heading towards some convention.

 

When the light changed, I took a deep breath and tried my best to thread through the diversity silently.  I dashed across the “la derniere fois” street, ducking around a man reading his cell phone.  I turned left and hustled down the sidewalk until I found a relatively quiet space.  From there, I settled into the consensus speed on the block.

 

Even then, it was hard to avoid the “constitutionally unheard” other pedestrians and I was on edge until I (seven) turned off of Mass Ave onto Prospect street.  Here the crowds thinned out, but there were (eight) still enough people around to (nine) enjoy watching.  I wondered about some old guy eating outside of Whole Foods and a woman who seemed to have too many young kids for them all to be hers.  Up ahead, I recognized some senior girl, with purple coat number ten.  She was pleasant enough to walk behind, so I slowed down to her pace and let the music run through me.

 

Soon enough, she led me to school.  I felt so good, enjoying the crisp autumn weather, the music and the scenery, that I almost failed to register Dro and Kenneth, standing outside the school entrance.

 

Almost.

 

At six feet, ten inches, Kenneth would stand out in any crowd.  Dro and I only made him look that much taller.  When I came across them, Dro was up on the third step while Kenneth stood on the ground.  They were both watching some video on Kenneth’s phone.

 

Anyone looking at tall, lanky Kenneth, with his great posture and muscular arms, would immediately jump to the conclusion that he was a basketball player.  But they would be wrong.  Still, the impression was so strong that Kenneth had been forced to go along with it.  As long as I’d known him, he had been the backup center for the school's team.  He didn't see much playing time, but that was fine, as he aspired to be off the team entirely.  His true love was the bass -- classical, jazz or rock.  If it had a bass, he was happy to be there.  In orchestra, when he wrapped his arms around the upright, it looked like a cello.  But, oh, he could make it sing.  Every night, and for hours on the weekends, he would saw away, working his lightning fast scales and exercises.  Even a non-musician like me could appreciate that he was something special.

 

But Kenneth couldn't escape the perception the world had created for him, and the world envisioned him on the basketball team.

 

“Morning boys!” I said happily, as I interrupted their YouTube.  “Got practice today?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.  Kenneth had a much-resented basketball tucked under one arm.

 

“Yeah, I guess,” Kenneth answered without much enthusiasm.  “I’ll see you after.”  

 

His voice was like his bass, deep, soulful and melodic.  He pulled his eyes off of his phone and did a double-take.

 

“Hey, you’re in a good mood today.  What’s up?”

 

“You’re basking in yesterday’s Jupiter, man,” Dro chimed in.  Kenneth looked from Dro to me for an explanation.

 

“I was the top scorer at yesterday’s math meet.  We won,” I explained. It had felt good in my head, but sounded lame on the outside.

 

“Oh, cool!  Nice!” said Kenneth.  He couldn’t have cared less about math, but he was into whatever we were into.  I had never met anyone who took so much delight in other people's happiness.  So if we took a math meet, Kenneth was as excited as Gers, Dro and me.

 

But that was as much excitement as we had time for.  Checking my watch, I saw that we were going to be late for first period.

 

“Hey, guys -- I got to get to class and so do you.”

 

“Oh, yeah,” said Kenneth.  “I have Jean for French.  She hates it when I'm “something in his hair” late.”

 

Unconsciously, I reached into my hair.  Before I realized what was doing, I had removed a dead leaf.  I looked from the leaf back to Kenneth.  He gave me an odd, appreciative nod, then tucked away his phone.  I couldn't help but feel that some unspoken communication had gone both ways there.  That caused me more than a little discomfort.  But if Kenneth was suspicious, he didn't mention it.

 

“Playtime’s over, boys,” he said, as if nothing had happened.  And, hopefully, from his perspective, it hadn’t.  But I had acted on his unexpressed thoughts.   I couldn't escape the fear that Kenneth had seen me do it.

 

In retrospect, it’s a good thing Kenneth got to bask in my glow before school.   By the end of first period, there was nothing left to bask in.  School only got worse from there.  We were approaching midterms, and it seemed like every teacher had suddenly remembered work we were supposed to have already received.

 

After math class, when the bell finally rang for lunch, Zeta, Gers and I could barely lift ourselves out of our seats.  We were all weighed down by the homework that had been piled on top of us.  As we shuffled down the hallway, I grumbled, breaking the silence.

 

“How are we supposed to get through all this?” I asked no one in particular.

 

“Emma and I were planning on hitting Starbucks after school,” Zeta answered.  “You could join us if you wanted.  We could drill through the calculus together.”  She looked from me to Gers, an unfamiliar look of uncertainty on her face.  I wasn’t particularly interested.  I primarily thought of Emma as the girl who had told me that I was “boring and directionless.”

 

“No, but thanks,” I answered.  “We have to go over to the library and work on our history project.”

 

“Oh, okay.  That’s cool,” she said. 

 

She looked a little disappointed, but not too put out.  She turned to head off for her locker.  After she left, Gers turned to me.

 

“Actually, we’re not working on the project until after Kenneth’s practice.  We should get there early. We need to stake out a good table. We could work on this calc stuff then.”

 

I nodded.  We both turned to look at Zeta’s retreating form.  We were thinking the same thing.  We could have invited her.  But what she’d never know wouldn’t hurt her.  We dropped our extra books in our lockers and headed down to lunch.

 

The afternoon was no better, but I survived. As my last class let out, I connected with Gers and headed across the street to the library.  By being there early, we garnered the seats of our choice.  Gers found a table that was just the right size for the four of us, next to a floor-to-ceiling window.  The late autumnal sun helped me heal from the day that had been.  I pulled out my phone to tell Dro and Kenneth where to find us.

 

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**Rick Smith

@IntegralRick

 

Second story, third table on the right, by “Thrillers.”

#qDaBoyz

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**Alejandro Rodriguez

@DrDroDoctor

 

School yard, under a tree, by “Billie Jean.” 

#qDaBoyz

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**Rick Smith

@IntegralRick

 

Whatevs.

#qDaBoyz

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I flipped through some of my other Twitter feeds without much enthusiasm and then accepted what I had to do.  Gers was already working, so I pulled out my calculus book and joined him.  Thirty minutes, and too few correct answers later, Dro joined us.  He dropped into the seat across from me, with some German novel in his hands.

 

“Dude, you’re bilingual.  Why don’t you just place out of language in Spanish?” Gers asked.

 

“Because then I wouldn’t be able to tell you that you were a swinehund,” retorted Dro, in what was easily the worst German accent ever.

 

An hour or so later, Kenneth came in.  Linda, the infamous girlfriend, had him in tow.  She was opinionated, controlling, and wanted nothing to do with us.  Even so, I always felt a kindred spirit with her.  She and I shared one painful experience in common.

 

Linda was the Yang to Kenneth’s Yin.  They had met in Orchestra, where Linda played a  passable viola.  And she only played viola, because she knew she wasn’t good enough to make Orchestra as a violinist.  I had heard them duet.  She was terrible.  But as bad as she was a musician, she was an awesome athlete.

 

As a freshman, she had waltzed onto the tennis team and taken the top court.  In doing so, she had unseated several other players with several years and several inches on her.  But Linda had unbelievable strength and could hit baseline shots that nobody could keep up with.

 

12 months later, Linda was Linda’d by the smaller, younger, speedier Louisa.  While Louisa couldn’t serve up aces like Linda, she could outlast anyone.  Linda always spoke about the great success the team had, since Louisa joined.  But I knew that Linda would have preferred to have a slightly slower teammate.  Linda had been unseated by Louisa, just like I would be unseated by Shao.  Although Linda always looked at me with undisguised disdain, I knew that we connected on some deeper level.

 

Kindred spirit or not, I was unenthusiastic about spending the next hour working in Linda’s presence.  She’d either be hanging off of Kenneth or telling us how to do our project.  But I didn’t have to “hear” Linda to know what she wanted.  Every couple of seconds, her eyes flicked to where a few of her teammates -- not including Louisa -- were sitting.  This was an opportunity to be a hero.

 

“Hey, Linda,” I began.  “We’re going to be working here for, like, an hour, so…” I let my eyes flick briefly to the other girls.

 

“Oh, yeah.  Yeah, that’s great.  I’ve been meaning to catch up with Sindhu and Barbie.”

 

She gave Kenneth a quick peck and hustled across the library.

 

“Nicely done,” said Gers.  Kenneth shot him a look but refused to retort.

 

“Alright, everyone,” Gers changed the subject.  “Get your project plans out.”

 

We took out our sheets and stared down at our progress to date.

 

“Let’s go around the horn.  Dro, you were going to take the Lafayette story, right?”

 

“No, man,” said Dro.  “I’m doing this chick who always followed him around.  She was a babe, man.”

 

Three surprised heads rose up from their sheets to fix three confused, frustrated stares on Dro.  We were all thinking about the unfairness of life.  Despite the fact that Dro’s thoughts were prone to flights of chaos, he got better grades than the rest of us.  Whereas his nonsense was labeled “creative” and “daring,” our hard work was labeled “B-” and “C.” So nobody had the guts to call him on this.  Resigned, we all hunched back over our papers.

 

“Okay.  Kenneth, you were going to be talking about the French population’s support for the revolution right?”

 

Before he could answer, Dro burst out.

 

“Yo, dudes!  Hot Sauce nogging on the Rickstah at twelve o’clock!”

 

Three confused heads rose slightly from their papers.  We slowly interpreted the gobbeldy-gook we had just heard.  Then three surprised heads started to swivel behind me, where we expected to find a cute girl sneaking peeks at me.  Halfway through my swivel, I stopped.  I suddenly realized the smug, serene smile that I’d find when I turned around.

 

In physics, we learned about this guy, Erwin Schrodinger.  He hated animals.  In 1935, he had this whole experiment worked out with a cat in a box.  The box held a radioactive particle.  Maybe the particle would decay.  Maybe it wouldn't.  If it did?  The cat died, end of story.  If it didn't, the cat lived.  But if you didn't open the box and check, you couldn't say that the cat was dead.  

 

I don't know what I was supposed to get out of this experiment, but here's what I got:  you could put off the horror by refusing to acknowledge it.

 

If none of us acknowledged her, we couldn't say that she was there.  Maybe, after being ignored, she'd just get up and leave.

 

“Woah,” said Kenneth.

 

Damn it.

 

I decided to accept my fate.  She was there and it was too late to refuse recognition.  Slowly and carefully, I turned around.

 

Smug?  Check.

Serene?  Check.

 

“Who is she, man?  Do you know her?”

 

“No,” I answered, truthfully.

 

Our eyes met for a second and an eternity.  Then she stood up and started walking over to us, slowly and leisurely.  She didn't have much in the way of hips, but the way they swayed was hypnotic, almost seductive.

 

Given her pace, I had all the time I needed to think of something suave, something sophisticated to say, like ‘fancy meeting you here,’ or ‘Gers, could you call the police?’

 

But my brain, like the rest of me, had ceased to function.  She planted one of those tiny but powerful hips against the side of my chair and looked down, forcing eye contact.  I could practically feel body heat radiating off of her.

 

“Hey,” she said, with a hint of amusement.

 

“Hey,” I responded, like that's what we did.  Like we met each other in normal places and said ‘hey,’ like normal people.

 

And then we stared at each other, lapsing back into our default state, devoid of conversation.  I could practically watch the serene smugness ebb out of her face.

 

“So,” said Dro, breaking the silence.  “Like, are you gonna introduce us, man?”

 

I shot a look at Dro, then quickly looked back at her, my pupils dilating.  Her serene smugness was back in full effect.  She turned to Dro and reached across the table.

 

“Channy,” she said.  “Short for Channing.”

 

“Dro,” he responded, mimicking her tone of voice. “Short for Alejandro.”  Her smile intensified.  His normal, guy sized hand enveloped her tiny hand.  I felt the strangest pang of jealousy, watching him touch her.

 

While they shook I watched her face, cool as a cucumber.  I could just imagine her digging into his thoughts as she had done to me.  She must have seen how his academic achievements were a secret source of shame, how all he ever wanted was to live somewhere where he didn't stand out. 

 

Having read enough she turned her attention to Kenneth.  To do so, she leaned her body across the table so that her shoulder was inches from my face.  I swear that I felt electricity flowing between that shoulder and my eyes.

 

“Kenneth,” he said simply.

 

“Lovely,” she purred.

 

If Dro’s hand enveloped hers, Kenneth’s dwarfed it.  But she took no notice.  She was too busy reading his mind.  She read all about the sensitivity around his name.  She saw how he honored his parents each and every day by maintaining the fullness of that name and what it meant to him.  She read enough to let the name stand as is, not asking about a nickname.

 

Next she turned to Gers.  As her body receded from mind, I let out the breath I hadn't intended to hold.

 

“Gers,” he said.

 

“Short for Gerson,” she finished with the strangest grimace.

 

My jaw dropped.  It was like watching a seasoned veteran make a rookie mistake.  Sure that happened to me all the time, like when I pulled the leaf out of my hair after Kenneth’s intrusion.  But this girl, Channy, was so suave and smooth.  It was shocking to see her make that kind of blunder.

 

Nobody noticed but me, and Channy went right on doing her thing.  She read how Gers hated synagogue, but liked it when we joined him for Passover.  She even uncovered how he loved, more than anything else, the robot he and his dad were building in their basement.

 

That wave of jealousy grew stronger, as I watched my friends touching the girl who claimed to be my future wife.   But a sudden recognition pulled me back into the moment.  

 

I was a party to this.  I was knowingly letting her invade my friends’ deepest secrets.  I had to do something.

 

“Uh.  Can we go somewhere?” I blurted.

 

She was briefly startled, but quickly recovered her former calmness.  

 

“Sure,” she said.  On her smug, serene face, “sure" came out sounding like “Of course we can, Husband.”

 

She took a step back, so I could rise to my feet.  I did so, stiffly and awkwardly.  My only thought had been to get her away from my friends, so she would stop intruding on their inner thoughts.  I hadn’t given any thought to what would happen when I was alone with her.  I couldn’t escape the feeling of being the fly who had begged entrance into the spider’s parlor.

 

As we walked back towards where she was sitting, I felt her hand on the small of my back.  As if I had been stabbed with a tack, I jerked into a straighter posture.  Reading my unease, she quickly took her hand away. 

 

Somehow, we managed to make it back to her seat with some semblance of normality.  As we passed, she scooped up her knapsack.  It was huge.  The sight was utterly discordant with how I had been viewing her.  It was a normal knapsack and it made me think of normal questions.  Had her bag been so stuffed at Starbucks?  If not, what did she have in there now?  How did such a small girl bear the weight of such a large bag?

 

And now that I thought about it, there were other major differences between the image in my head and the real thing walking by my side.  She was no longer in heels, making her look even shorter.  And her clothes were kind of plain --  a faded pair of black jeans and a slightly stained, light-blue hoodie over a pale, plain pink t-shirt.  She looked fine -- normal and kind of cute.  This was not the uniform of some mystery demon, come to steal my soul.

 

Still, the farther we got from my friends, the more uncomfortable I became.  Reading my anxiety, she guided us to the perfect alcove.  It was somewhat secluded from the rest of the library, but my friends could still see me.   They'd bear witness if she tried to kiss me or kill me.  Honestly, I wasn’t sure which prospect scared me more.

 

We settled into two benches, facing each other.  Her face was complicated, like a veneer of caring concern stretched over an underlying base of smug serenity.  As the seconds ticked by, I thought that I could see cracks of frustration starting to pierce both of those layers.  She remained oddly silent, like she was waiting for me to talk.

 

The more her expression shifted, the more obligated I felt to speak.  That made me ornery.  My frustration finally bubbled out of my mouth in a small, harsh whisper.  Unable to meet her gaze, I stared at the floor and blurted.

 

“Okay, I get it.  You're a mind reader and you’re better than me.”

 

I looked up at her eyes, and saw anything other than I expected to see.  Her entire expression had shifted to one of sadness.  Even the thick lenses of her glasses couldn’t block the disappointment radiating from her eyes. 

 

“No, Rick, you're the mind reader.  I'm just a dreamer.”

 

Although I didn't really understand her words, I felt the sudden, irrevocable change that accompanied them.  I found myself looking helplessly back across the third great divide in my life, at the before I would never again inhabit.  I knew that I was a mind reader.  I knew that she knew it.  But to hear her say it was passing a point of no return.

 

When I managed to return my focus to her, she had retreated into the tips of her tiny, fidgeting fingers.  I watched blankly, unable to understand what was making her so sad.

 

“I… I guess I don't get it,” I admitted.

 

She looked up meekly and her body slouched over, towards me.  Everything about her posture proclaimed defeat.

 

“My power isn't like yours.  When I sleep at night, I have dreams… vivid, expressive dreams.  Every night.  Some are magical and wonderful, but they're just dreams and I don’t give them a second thought.  Some are quiet and prosaic, and someday, I’ll live those.  Literally.  Sometimes they're about me at 4, or 14 or 40.  The ones in the past are perfectly true to what happened.  I’ve already lived them. If I wait long enough, I’ll live the ones from the future, too.”

 

I looked at her, trying to make sense of the words.

 

“So, you’re not a mind reader?”

 

“No, Rick.  I can’t do that,” she sighed in frustration or sadness or some emotion beyond my ability to comprehend.

 

“But if you're not a mind reader, how did you know where to find me?” I asked.

 

“That’s my power,” she said, like an exhausted parent, lecturing her toddler amidst the shreds of her waning patience.

 

“I remembered that conversation, at that Starbucks, because I had dreamt it.  I just had to show up and let it happen.”

 

This was not computing.

 

“But how did you know that stuff, about Gers and Kenneth and Dro.”

 

“What stuff?”

 

“Like, that Gers doesn’t like synagogue, or that Kenneth was named for his dad who died in the war.”

 

“Oh.  I remember you telling me that,” she explained.

 

“When?”

 

“Just now.”

 

We stared at each other for a minute.  

 

“Let me explain that I cannot live without you,” she said, her face oddly discordant with her words.

 

“Why can't you live without me?” I asked, checking out my friends to make sure that they weren't catching this freak show.  When I turned back, I gasped.

 

She was gone.  

 

Well, not gone.  Although I recognized the diminutive figure in front of me, with the dark hair and dark eyes, this woman was nothing like the girl she’d replaced.  She was full of sharp scrutiny and intense intelligence.  The movements of her eyes suggested a brain full of activity.  This woman was as agitated as the girl was serene.

 

And then, as if it had been summoned, conjured back to our world, the girl called Channy reemerged, piece by piece.  Every crease and angle of her face became smooth as that calm, serene smile emerged.

 

“I didn't say that,” she denied, offhandedly. 

 

In the silence that followed, my heart rattled against my chest.  Although her appearance and tone were light, I still heard the echo of that other woman in her voice.

 

“I… I'm sure you did,” I stammered.

 

“No,” she said, her teeth starting to grate.  “I… thought it.  You... heard me.”  Her tone had become seductive, almost sexy.  But behind it, I thought that I sensed something else -- fear or anger or something I couldn’t name.

 

“In the future,” she continued, “you'll hear me so well, I'll practically be able to talk to you that way.”

 

I felt myself getting carried away.  This beautiful, intelligent, magical girl wanted to marry me, maybe even date me.  She was my kind, like me.  And she loved me.  She couldn't live without me.

 

And then I remembered the other woman.  I searched the girl's face for any sign of that  woman, but found none.  I saw only love and warmth.  And smug serenity.

 

“Oh, Ricky,” she said, the pet name washing uncomfortably over my rougher edges.  “I should have known how hard this would be for you.  I've been preparing to meet you for fifteen years.  You've only just met me.”

 

Fifteen years ago, I was one.  She was not clarifying matters at all.

 

“We need to connect.  We need to talk about this.”  A tinge of urgency had snuck into her voice.  “You need to talk about this.  You've had nobody to talk to for ten years.  How will I… How will you survive with this bottled up inside of you?”

 

When had I ever talked about this with anyone?  What happened ten years ago?  And then I realized.  Therapy.  Somehow, she knew.  She understood my challenges.  She understood my loneliness.  She understood the web of lies I’d constructed and the impossibility of maintaining them day after day.

 

“You don't know how much you need this right now, but I do,” she insisted.  I was beginning to suspect that she was right.  “I remember how much this meant to you.”

 

That word, “remember,” again.  It meant something different to her.

 

Her smile remained, but through her lenses, I could see the beginnings of tears.  I was suddenly reminded of that other person.  It was like the woman was crying, even as the girl smiled.  Something was bothering her and I couldn't tell what.  I listened, but there was nothing to hear.  Unable to hold the expression any more, she bit her lip and turned away.

 

And then I got it.

 

“Channy,” I said, as forcefully as I could.  I touched her hand feebly, forcing her to turn back to me.

 

“You… you're like me.  You know things you're not supposed to know.”

 

She smiled, weakly, a different smile than any I had seen from her.  The tears began to escape.

 

“You can't tell anyone.  You've got no one to talk to.”

 

“No one that would believe me,” she nodded enthusiastically, urging me on.

 

“Channy,” I said, squeezing her hand, “I believe you.”

 

A smile blossomed on her face, like a light turning on.  It was brighter than any smile that I’d ever seen, even from Jenny.  It was like the sun had cut through the library roof and straight onto our conversation.  From such a bad start we had stumbled into such a good place, two strangers who suddenly had something special in common.

 

Until.

 

“I know,” she said simply.

 

So smug.  So very, very, smug.

 

I looked away, back at my friends, trying to control the anger that was suddenly bubbling inside.  From this distance, I couldn’t really see what my friends were doing.  I was sure they were spying on us, and that made this conversation all the more difficult.  I imagined that they were trying to figure out what was up between us.  The realization that I didn’t know either was oddly soothing.  I let the anger drain out.  After several eons of silence, I ventured to try again.  When I looked back at her, her expression softened.

 

“Rick, I get it, too.  You're getting all of this dumped on you so fast.  I've been dreaming about you, getting ready to meet you for fifteen years.  I… I should have understood how you'd feel today”

 

She looked at her phone and sighed.

 

“I need to get back to class.  You use Twitter,” she said.  Not a question, a simple statement of fact.  Surely something else she “remembered.”

 

“Yeah,” I admitted.

 

“Follow me.  I'll follow you.  We'll send personal, direct messages back and forth.  It will be good.  It will be what you need.”

 

“Sure,” I said, too confused to understand what she was saying.  With a slightly lighter note in her voice, she continued.

 

“I'll be MyFakeWife. All one word.  Capital M, capital F, capital W.  You can be… LittleTwerp.”

 

“What? I'm not a twerp!” I objected.

 

“Trust me,” she said darkly.  “All high school boys are twerps.”

 

“Well, I won't be a twerp forever, then.”

 

She leaned towards me, those smug, serene lips just inches from mine.  

 

“And I won't be fake forever.”

 

Images overwhelmed my mind, images I was terrified she’d see.  With a sudden start, I realized that she wasn’t a mind reader.  I tried to relax.

 

“So, uh.  You’ve dreamed all of this before?  Even this conversation?” I asked.

 

“Yes, I remember this conversation,” she said, with emphasis on the word ‘remember.’

 

“Is this how it went in your dream?”

 

“Mostly,” she sniffed.  “In my dream, you were a better conversationalist.”

 

Great.  I couldn't even live up to the me in Creepy Girl’s head.