Chloe Benjamin - The Anatomy of Dreams

I found him in the attic of the library. He was leaning against one of its octagonal walls with a physics textbook in his hands.

“So you ditched our history final, and now you’re studying for physics,” I said. “Waste of time. At the rate you’re going, I doubt you’ll even make it to the end of the semester.”

Gabe looked up. His knees were tucked in toward his chest, and notebooks were spread out around him. Faint light shone through tower’s windows, and his eyes looked bare and squinty, as they did in the morning.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve seen you,” I said. “Tuesdays and Thursdays, like clockwork. You’re lucky if Keller hasn’t spotted you again, but he will. The thing I can’t understand is why you keep doing it.”

Gabe put the physics book down and straightened his legs.

“It wasn’t me,” he said.

“Please, Gabe.”

“It wasn’t.” He raised his eyebrows. “How can you be sure? It’s dark out at that time of morning. Have you ever seen my face?”

“You sound pretty defensive for someone who supposedly wasn’t there.”

“Hardly.” Gabe’s features relaxed, as if on command.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “Who else could it be?”

“David Horikawa. Michael Fritz. It was Mike who told me about Keller’s flowers, you know — those ones with the doubled discs. He’s been convinced for months Keller’s running experiments in that garden. I’m not the only one curious about it.”

“You expect me to believe there’s a whole band of kids running around Keller’s place at night?”

“All I’m saying is it wasn’t me.”

“But I know you,” I said. It was the only thing I could hold on to, the only thing that convinced me I wasn’t delusional. “I know the shape of your body, what it looks like when you walk.”

I was almost crying. After the months we’d spent together, this cool confrontation was excruciating. I knelt down in front of him, putting my palm on his knee.

“Gabe,” I said.

But he only looked out the window, putting his hand over his eyes like a visor. When he turned toward me again, his face had the same blank look I’d seen that night at Keller’s.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I have to work.”

He picked up the physics book again. When he opened it and began to read, underlining every so often, it was as if I wasn’t even there.

•••

That evening, I collapsed in my bunk. Hannah was out, and being alone made me cry even harder; I blew my nose so loudly that someone in the room next door banged on the wall and shouted, “ Je- sus Christ, cut it out with the foghorn!” I fell asleep in my clothes, my eyes swollen shut. When the door opened, I thought it was Hannah, coming back from the common room at lights-out. But when someone climbed up to my bunk, the wooden ladder creaking more than it ever did beneath Hannah’s ninety-five pounds, I realized it had to be Gabe.

He was disheveled, greasy haired, and his eyes were bloodshot. He stopped in front of me and knelt.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, scrambling into a sitting position.

“I can’t stay for long, but I needed to see you. I have to tell you something.”

He exhaled, looking up at the ceiling. When he faced me again, his jaw was set.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Okay.” My head was pounding, and I wasn’t sure exactly why he was apologizing. “For what, exactly?”

“For acting like a total weirdo. For freezing you out in the library. For — for not being honest.” He put a hand on my knee. “The truth is, Sylvie, I’m not doing so well. My head’s in a funny place. But I don’t want to lose you.”

“Then don’t,” I said.

“It’s not that simple.”

“What’s wrong? Is it your mom? Or your grades? Did you hear from your dad?”

“No, no.” Gabe shook his head.

“What, then?”

He seemed more impenetrable than he ever had before, and I was exhausted. Embarrassed, too, that he had seen me this way. The waistband of my jeans had ridden up, digging tracks into my stomach; one sock had fallen off and somehow wound up on my pillow. I hadn’t bothered to take my hair out of its bun, and now it sagged over the side of my head, bobbing above one ear whenever I spoke.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

“I want to.”

“Well, can you try?”

“I have been trying.”

I could feel my eyes filling again. Stop it , I told myself. You’re being a girl, a stupid girl .

“Hey,” Gabe whispered. “Don’t cry”—and his thumbs were below my eyes, scooping the moisture off my cheeks and wiping it on his jeans. He was frustrated, thinking hard; when we spoke again, it was labored.

“All I need is a few days. A week, tops, to sort everything out. Then we can go back to normal — to how things were. I’m serious this time.”

I stared at him, trying to understand. For a moment, I almost gave in, but I was still angry: at his audacity and his withholding, his request for me to trust him when he wouldn’t tell me anything. I pushed him by the shoulders, pulling my knees up to my chest so he couldn’t come closer. But he pushed back, and we struggled against each other, Gabe trying to calm me while I wrestled even harder. I shoved my knee into his stomach, and he made a low noise of pain, but he didn’t pull away. Thick, sloppy tears rolled down my chin and onto the chest of his T-shirt.

Gabe was making snuffling noises, noises that I thought were from exertion before I realized he was crying, too. His head was limp, hanging forward from his neck like a scarecrow’s, but he held me just as strongly.

I had never seen him cry before. Against my better judgment, my resistance softened. What did I know of his secrets, and what right did I have to know them yet? Gabe laid his forehead on my chest, wrapping his legs and arms around me until I stilled. I don’t know how long we stayed like that; the next thing I remember, it was the middle of the night, the moon a sliver of fingernail in the window. We were lying down, Gabe breathing steadily with sleep. His knees were tucked behind mine, and one of his arms was around my waist. I must have moved slightly, because he stirred and looked at me, his eyelids flickering.

I turned to face him. There were four inches, maybe less, between us.

“Are you sure you don’t want to break up?” I asked, keeping my voice low so I didn’t wake Hannah.

“I’m sure.”

“Why?”

“Why am I sure I don’t want to?”

He grinned at me, lopsided.

“Yeah,” I said. “Because it kind of seems like you don’t know what you want.”

“Sylvie,” Gabe whispered. He tucked his forehead into the nook of my shoulder; I could feel his breath against my ear. “You’re my person.”

The words vibrated inside me, and I grinned despite myself. You’re my person : he was mine, and I was his. But when I woke up the next morning, I wondered if I’d dreamed it. The light was pale and bluish as water, Hannah was snoring softly below me, and Gabe was gone.

•••

That day, he wasn’t in the dining hall at breakfast. I thought he was avoiding me until he was absent at lunch, and again at dinner. Gabe could scarf down three sloppy joes before belching loudly and declaring himself satisfied; there was no way he’d subsisted for an entire day on granola bars from the dorm vending machines. That night, I stood in front of the dessert window, staring at that night’s special — whipped-cream-topped Jell-O in plastic cups — while feeling increasingly nauseous. There was a whiff of perfume, and then Nina, Gabe’s ex, appeared at my side. She grabbed my arm.

“Sylvie,” she said. Her long, dark hair fell forward in a sheath, and her silvery eyes were wide with urgency. “Have you heard?”