“I have a problem,” she says quietly, trying not to feel like a dork. “I have a problem, and I need to solve it. I would like to have a dream about how to solve this problem.”
She concentrates. Climbs into bed, closes her eyes, and continues in a calm voice. “I would like to dream about what I can do to block out other people’s dreams. I want—” she falters. “I mean, I would like to help people, and I also…would like…to live a normal life. So their dreams don’t fuck up my life forever.”
Janie breathes deeply. She stops speaking, and instead focuses her mind on her problem. Until she remembers. “And I would like to remember the dream when I wake up,” she adds out loud. Over and over, she repeats the words in her head.
She peeks at the clock quickly and chides herself for messing with the mojo. 12:33 a.m.
She focuses again. Breathes deeply. Lets the thoughts float around and meld together in her mind.
Slowly, she feels the thoughts filling the room. She breathes them in. They caress her skin. She lets her mind be free, allows her muscles to relax.
And she lets the sleep in.
Nothing happens at first.
Which is good, she discovers.
Lucidity comes late.
2:45 a.m.
Janie finds herself in the middle of a dark lake. She treads water for what seems like hours. She grows weary. Panics. Sees Cabel on the shore with a rope. She waves frantically to him, but he doesn’t see her. She can’t hold on. The water fills her mouth and ears.
She submerges.
There are many people under the surface of the water—men, women, children, babies. She looks at them with panic, her lungs bursting. They stare at her, eyes bulging in death. She looks around frantically. The pressure in her lungs is overpowering. Everything dims, and goes black. She feels her eyeballs bulging, and hears the haunting inner laughter of the floating bodies around her.
Janie gasps and sits up. It’s 3:10 a.m.
She breathes hard. Writes down the dream in a spiral notebook. Tries not to feel bad that she failed. She expects this.
It’s not over, she tells herself, lying back down.
Let me dream it again, she thinks, calmly. And this time, I won’t drown. I will breathe under water, because this is my dream and I can do what I want with it. I will swim like a fish. Because I know how to swim. And…and I have gills. Yes, that’s it. I have gills.
She repeats this to herself as she lies down.
3:47 a.m.
She doesn’t have gills.
She rolls over and groans, frustrated, into her pillow. Repeats the mantra. 4:55 a.m.
It begins again.
When Janie slips under water, exhausted, her lungs burning, she looks around at the others who are floating under the surface.
She begins to panic.
The bulging eyes.
And then.
Miss Stubin blinks at her from under the water. She smiles encouragingly. She is not one of the dead. Floating next to Miss Stubin is another Janie, who nods and smiles. “It’s your dream,” she says. The drowning Janie looks from Miss Stubin to Janie. Her vision dims. She grows frantic.
“Concentrate,” Janie says. “Change it.”
Drowning Janie closes her eyes. Falls farther under the water. She kicks her feet as she loses consciousness, struggling to move, to get back above the water.
“Concentrate!” Janie says again. “Do it!”
Gills pop from the drowning Janie’s neck.
She opens her eyes.
Breathes. Long, cleansing breaths, underwater. It tickles. She laughs in bubbles, incredulous. She looks up, and Miss Stubin and Janie are smiling. Clapping, slow motion and soundless, in the water. They swim over to her.
The formerly drowning Janie grins. “I did it,” she says. Bubbles come out of her mouth, and the words appear individually above her head when each bubble pops, like a cartoon.
“You did it,” Janie says, nodding, her hair swishing like silk.
“Let’s swim now,” Miss Stubin says. “Someone’s waiting for you on the shore.”
Janie and Miss Stubin swim partway with the formerly drowning Janie, and then they stop and wave her on.
She nears the shore, and when she surfaces and can stand, the gills disappear. She walks out of the water, streaming wet in her pajamas—boxer shorts and a T-shirt. Cabel is there. He’s wearing boxer shorts too. His muscles ripple in the sunlight. His body is tan. It glistens.
It looks like they are on a deserted, tropical island.
He doesn’t move.
He doesn’t have a rope anymore.
He’s sitting in the sand.
She waits for him to do something, but he doesn’t move.
“Remember, it’s your dream,” she hears. It’s her other Janie speaking, the one who is aware that she is dreaming.
Janie hesitates and approaches Cabel. “Hey, Cabel.”
He looks up. “I care about you,” he says. His eyes are brown and turning muddy. Janie wants to believe him. And so she does.
“What about Shay?” she asks.
“Dreams aren’t memories,” he says. “Please talk to me.”
6:29 a.m.
Janie smiles in her sleep. She watches over herself in the dream, and plunges back into it, taking it in different directions, starting over at various spots to make it fun, or sexy, or beautiful, or silly. November 27, 2005, 8:05 a.m.
The alarm clock rings. Janie keeps her eyes closed and reaches to turn it off. She lies in bed, going over the dream in detail, remembering it. Memorizing it.
When she has it solidly in her mind, she sits up and writes it in her journal. She can’t stop smiling.