Chloe Benjamin - The Anatomy of Dreams

“Jesus Christ, Gabe,” I hissed.

“Don’t freak out,” said Gabe. “I won’t do anything untoward.”

He said the last word — one of Mr. Keller’s favorites — with special emphasis. The headmaster’s house was a two-story brick structure with small, turreted rooms rising up like pointed attics. But Gabe led us around to the garden, a square plot inside a silver-gray fence. Two stories above us, the tall windows glowed with light. Gabe barely glanced at them before stepping lightly through the unlatched gate.

I edged inside the gate and followed his footsteps — he wound through the plants with such dancerlike precision I suspected it was not his first time there. The sun was long gone. In the moonlight, the flowers and vegetables Keller tended glowed with the otherworldly iridescence of deep-sea creatures.

“Everyone’s probably back in the dorms,” I whispered. “So find whatever you want to show me or don’t.”

“Keep your voice down.” Gabe held my eyes. “Come here.”

He was in the corner of the garden, pointing to a little patch inside the ninety-degree angle of the fence. Below his finger was a flower, large, a fuchsia color so vibrant I could see it in the dark. When I bent closer, I saw it was not one flower but two — or one and a half. The flower had two faces, rimmed with slender pink petals, which shared the same central disk and the same stem. What was notable about the disk — that saturated, mustard-colored eye — was that it looked like the infinity symbol, as if someone had pinched the middle. I touched it, and when I pulled away, there was fine gold dust on my fingers.

“This is what you wanted to show me?” I asked.

Gabe’s eyes shone, two small moons.

“This is what we’re breaking curfew for? We’re trespassing on Mr. Keller’s property — do you realize we could be suspended?”

Gabe clamped his jaw shut. His eyes flitted across my face the way they had through our group on the hill. Then a different, steely sheen came over them; it was as if someone had let down the blinds.

“Forget it,” he said, stepping over the fence.

He began to walk rapidly toward the dorms. I hopped the fence and ran to catch up with him. I was almost five feet seven, taller than he was, but I felt like a kid bobbing at his side.

“Was it some kind of joke?” I asked. “Push the Goody Two-shoes, see how far she’ll go? See if you can get her in trouble?”

He made a snorting noise and kept walking. I could tell I’d disappointed him, but some resentment deeper than I was capable of moderating was rising to the surface.

“I really thought you’d be into it,” he said, keeping a step or two ahead of me.

“How could you know what I’d be into?” I asked. “We’ve barely even spoken!”

By then, we had reached the dorms. To the left was the boys’ dorm, and to the right was the girls’. I half expected him to grin at me, confess it had all been in play. But he continued toward the door, as if I was the one who had wronged him.

“I’ll tell people about it!” I said, the words flailing out of me. “I’ll tell the girls in my dorm!”

It was the only thing I could say to disempower him. I had figured out by then that it wasn’t a joke, what he’d found, that it meant something to him and that, for some reason, he had chosen to share it specifically with me.

He turned; his face seemed to hang with resignation. Then he walked through the door to the boys’ dorm, leaving me alone on the path.

I didn’t tell anyone, of course. I already felt guilty for the way I’d snapped at him; or maybe it was something else that held me back, the curled edges of belief. While we washed up in the bathroom, the other girls teased me, asking how it felt to kiss Napoleon. I told them it felt good.

•••

During the rest of that year, I barely spoke to Gabe. The flower incident had ended so badly that we were skittish around each other, prideful and embarrassed. But something uncomfortable and magnetic glowed between us. When we found ourselves inescapably close in proximity — in line at the dining hall, or seated at one of the dreaded two-person desks in Keller’s classroom — our silence was as loaded as any acknowledgment. Finally, one of us would break: “’Scuse me,” I’d say, reaching past him to grab the 2 percent milk; or Gabe would clear his throat and ask, “Pencil?” his body angled the tiniest bit toward mine, until I reached into my zip-up case and wordlessly handed one to him.

If the eclipse brought us together the first time, our next real meeting was equally serendipitous, orchestrated by forces that felt as fated as the phases of the moon. Summer had passed in a close, muggy blur, and now it was late August, the beginning of senior year. My flight from New Jersey had been delayed, and it was nearly midnight in the Arcata/Eureka Airport. The student shuttles ended at nine P.M., so I was slumped at the Delta desk at baggage claim, calling the dorm phone without success. I hung up and dragged my bags — two massive duffels and an overstuffed, twenty-pound backpack — to the nearest bench. Outside, it was cool and dewy. Drops of moisture clung to the parking meters and the slick yellow uniforms of the crossing guards. In ten years or even five, most of the students at Mills would have a credit card or a cell phone, and being stranded at the airport would be easy to fix. Having neither, I felt like a forgotten piece of luggage myself.

“Patterson?”

I turned. Gabe was outside the sliding doors of Baggage Claim 3, wind ruffling his hair as the doors whooshed shut behind him. He stood wide-legged in a pair of too-small flip-flops and worn cargo shorts; he’d slung a bag over each shoulder, making his T-shirt ride up around his waist. A dark fuzz of hair extended down from his belly button, and his skin was sun-browned. He grabbed the bottom of the shirt and tugged it down.

“Lennox,” I said.

“You’re late. Late for senior year.”

“So are you.”

We regarded each other, wary. Then I scooted over on the bench, and he lumbered over, dropping his bags on the sidewalk with an inadvertent, gruntish sigh.

“Well,” he said. “I guess we’re stranded.”

“Shipwrecked.”

“Marooned.”

We grinned at each other, at our senior-year banter, at the strange August night that was as wet as early spring on the East Coast. I looked at Gabe’s shirt. It was holey around the neck and worn thin, with a blown-up image of Darth Vader on the front. Below, it said in block capital letters, WHO’S YOUR DADDY?

“Nice shirt,” I said.

“Ditto.”

I looked down. I’d forgotten I was wearing an old T-shirt of my dad’s, a comfort on plane rides back to school. GET YOUR REAR IN GEAR, it read: 5K WALK FOR COLON CANCER.

“Touché,” I said.

We sat for a few moments in slightly bashful silence, both of us knocked down a peg. Absentmindedly, as if he’d done it a thousand times before, Gabe stuck his thumb through one of the holes at the neck. I’d heard he was on scholarship; there were rumors that his family was broke, that his dad had died penniless, though others held that his dad was just a living asshole who refused to pay child support.

“Where’d you fly in from?” asked Gabe. “Jersey?”

“How’d you know that?”

I was genuinely curious. I had never discussed my family with Gabe. Then again, we’d never discussed his, either, and I still knew that he lived in California with his mother. I knew, too, that she was morbidly obese, a consequence of some medical condition, though no one knew exactly what it was.

Gabe shrugged. “I listen,” he said.

“What about you? Where’d you fly in from?”

“Michigan — I was visiting my gran. She lives on Lake Superior.”