The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet

Chapter 10

Dream

I have this dream sometimes. It's not like a crazy unicorn-riding, purple-octopus-eats-my-feet type of dream. It's more like a memory of something that never happened.

It's one of those dreams where you wake up and think everything is real. Everything feels real. My sheets. The sun in the window. The warm body against my back.

"Ly-dee-ah . . ."

I flip over. I don't see him at first. I feel him. How close his breath is to me. How warm he is, like an electric blanket, just covering me and making me safe. Then he comes into focus. His blue, blue eyes. His sleepy smile. The weird freckle on his shoulder that I told him he should get looked at but I secretly love because it's the one part of him that isn't perfect. He plays with the necklace he bought me, the one I still haven't brought myself to take off, even now.

"Hey, peach."

When I wake up, I tell myself I should have known right there that it was a dream, that this wasn't the real him, the real me. He never called me peach, not like he did with the other girls. Said I was more than that to him. But in the dream, he does. And I don't catch it until it's over.

"Hey," I reply, my voice weirdly echoey. Like I'm not really there, but actually in the next room.

"I haven't seen you in a while."

"I know. I'm sorry. That's my fault. I've been . . ." 

But why haven't I seen him? I don't remember.

 "It's okay," he says. "I forgive you."

"But we're together now," I say, smiling as he kisses my cheek, pushes my hair back behind my ear. I even feel his foot brush against my calf. "All I want is to be alone with you."

"But we're not alone," he says, laughing. "We're never alone." 

"What do you mean?"

"Everyone else gets to see."

He nods over my shoulder. I turn my head. And everything in my body freezes.

The camera sits on the tripod, just . . . staring at us. Like the computer in that space movie Charlotte likes so much and tried to get me to watch. The red light on top glows, pulses a little. Recording everything.

Like it did when we . . .

That's about the time that I wake up. That warm body against my back dissolves, replaced by one that is fur-covered and purring. The red blinking light of the camera becomes the red digital time of my alarm clock. George isn't here. I'm okay.

I'm safe.

So why is it that all I want to do is crawl under my covers and pretend I don't exist?