The Dream Thieves

Little lights danced at the corner of his vision as he chained his bike to the staircase outside his place. Swiping the back of his sweaty hand over the front of his sweaty forehead, he climbed the stairs, and realized Blue was waiting at the top.

Blue Sargent was pretty in a way that was physically painful to him. He was attracted to her like a heart attack. Currently, she sat against his door in lace leggings and a tunic made of a ripped-up over-sized Beatles shirt. She had been paging idly through the supermarket’s weekly saver, but she put it down when she saw him.

The only rub was, Blue was another troubling thing. She was like Gansey in that she wanted him to explain himself. What do you want, Adam? What do you need, Adam? Want and need were words that got eaten smaller and smaller: Freedom, autonomy, a perennial bank balance, a stainless-steel condo in a dustless city, a silky black car, to make out with Blue, eight hours of sleep, a cell phone, a bed, to kiss Blue just once, a blister-less heel, bacon for breakfast, to hold Blue’s hand, one hour of sleep, toilet paper, deodorant, a soda, a minute to close his eyes.

What do you want, Adam?

To feel awake when my eyes are open.

“Hey,” she said. “You’ve got mail.”

He knew. He’d already seen the ignored, unopened envelope emblazoned with Aglionby Academy’s raven crest. For two days he’d been stepping over it, as if it might disappear if he failed to acknowledge it. He’d already gotten his grades, and the envelope wasn’t fat enough for the quarterly fund-raising gala information. It might be just an alumni banquet or a photo book advertisement. The school was always sending out notices for opportunities to enhance the Aglionby experience. Summer camps and flying lessons, deluxe yearbooks and custom raven-emblazoned apparel. These Adam threw out. They were meant for the eyes of affluent parents in houses decorated with framed images of their children.

But this time, he didn’t think it was a fund-raiser notification.

He stooped to retrieve it, then hesitated, fingers on the doorknob. “Are you coming in? I need a shower.”

There was a beat. This was easier, Adam thought suddenly, when we didn’t know each other.

Blue said, “You can take one. I don’t mind. Just figured I’d come say hi before my shift.”

He played the key in the lock and let them both in. They stopped in the center of the room, the only place they could stand without ducking.

“So,” she said.

“So,” he said.

“What’s new at work?”

Adam struggled to think of an anecdote. His mind was a box he tipped out at the end of his shifts. “Yesterday, Boyd asked me if I wanted to be his tech for his next season. Rally season.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’d have a job after I graduated. I’d be gone six or seven weeks out of the year.” It had been a flattering offer, actually. Most of the mechanics who traveled with Boyd had been at it far longer than Adam.

Blue guessed, “You said no.”

He glanced at her. He couldn’t read her as easily as he could read Gansey. He couldn’t tell if she was pleased or disappointed.

“I’m going to college.” He didn’t add that he wasn’t killing himself at Aglionby to end up a fancy mechanic. That might have been good enough, if he hadn’t known what else was out there. If he hadn’t grown up next door to Aglionby Academy. If you never saw the stars, candles were enough.

She poked a toe at a half-rebuilt fuel pump sitting on newspapers. “Yep.”

There was something there, lurking just behind her answer, some private distress. He touched her face. “Something wrong?”

It was not quite fair. He knew that his touch would distract both of them from the question. Sure enough, Blue closed her eyes. He pressed his palm on her cool cheek, then, after a pause, down her neck. His hand was hyper-aware of what it was feeling: the stray hairs at the base of her neck, the faint tackiness of her skin that came from the memory of the sun, the lump of her throat moving as she swallowed.

He captured her with his other hand, pulling her closer. Carefully. Now she was pressed against him, close enough for him to be self-conscious of his sweaty T-shirt. His chin rested on the top of her head. Her arms linked loosely around him; he felt her breath heat the fabric of his shirt. He couldn’t forget that his hip bone was pressed against her.

It wasn’t enough. He ached inside. But there was a line he wasn’t allowed to cross, and he was never sure where it started. Surely this was close to it. He felt dangerous and kinetic.

Then her fingers cautiously pressed into his back, feeling his spine. He hadn’t gone too far, then.

He leaned in to kiss her.

Blue tore herself from his arms. She actually tripped in her haste to get away. Her head knocked against the slanted ceiling.

“I said no,” she gasped, hand clapped on the back of her skull.

Something stung in him. “Like six weeks ago.”

“It’s still no!”

They stared at each other, both hurt.

“Just,” she said, “. . . just, not kissing.”

He still ached. His skin was a constellation of nerve endings. “I don’t understand.”

Blue touched her lips as if they had been kissed. “I told you.”

He just wanted an answer. He wanted to know if it was him, or if it was her. He didn’t know how to ask it, but he did anyway. “Did something . . . happen to you?”

Her face was blank for a moment. “What? Oh. No. Does there have to be a reason? The answer’s just no! Isn’t that good enough?”

The correct answer was yes. He knew it. But the real answer was that he wanted to know if he had bad breath or if she was only doing this with him because he was the first one to ask her or if there was some other obstruction that he wasn’t considering.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he said. He tried not to let it sound like he was still hurt, but he was, and it did. “You gonna be here when I get back out? When’s your shift start?”

“I’ll wait.” She tried not to let it sound like she was hurt, but she was, and it did.

While Blue paged through a few maps he had on his plastic bed stand, Adam stood in a cold shower until his heart stopped steaming. What do you want, Adam? He didn’t even know. From inside the sloped old shower, he caught a half-image of himself in the mirror and startled. For a moment something about his own reflection had seemed wrong. His wide eyes and gaunt face peered back at him, troubled but not unusual.