In Your Dreams (In Your Dreams #1)

Chapter 11

"So you..." I stop, unable to put my thoughts into words.

"Yeah," he says, sensing what I can't bring myself to say.

"Why...why didn't you tell me? Like, when we were down by the river, why didn't you say anything? Or since?"

He takes a deep breath. "One thing at a time, you know? Baby steps. I told you I have these little future flashes in my dreams sometimes, and you believed me. So, okay. Now I'm telling you this. I wanted to show you the journals at some point, and there's never been a time I could have you over when no one else was home. And, I mean, come on. What was I supposed to say? 'Guess what, Zip? I dreamed about you and now we're here together'? That sounds like a total line."

It does sound like a total line. I lower my eyes to the notebook in my lap, letting my fingers curl around the metal spiral. The notebook definitely seems beaten up enough to be a few months old, but..."How can I be sure...I mean, why should I believe..."

Kieran completes my thought for me since I can't seem to finish my sentence. "Why should you believe I didn't just write and draw all of these two days ago or something and plant them up here, right?"

I swallow hard, embarrassed at doubting him. "Yeah."

"Keep reading," he challenges.

Starting with a September entry, I read Kieran's description of someone who sounds a lot like Brad Wallace talking to Kayla and him next to a glass door. He writes about a gravel path resembling the road to the boat launch. He details a wind chime with patterns of swirls and stars and suns that reminds me of a project my mom's working on and would have been hanging in her art workshop the night the Laniers came over for dinner. Some of the events are out of order-he describes the wind chime a few weeks before the entry on meeting Brad, for example-but they're all dated at least a month or more before they actually happened.

"Okay," I tell him, looking up from the words on the page. "I guess it would have taken a lot of work for you to do all of this and plant it here."

"Do you want to read any more?" he asks, his voice so eager I have to give in-on one condition.

"Yeah, but not anything too...you know...recent."

He nods. "I know this is all freaking you out, but I wanted you to know that I'd seen you before we met. And I need you to understand it's not like I walked into school on the first day looking for you. I mean, obviously there was a pattern to my dreams for a while, but nothing in those descriptions told me who you were or where you lived, so I had no idea you'd be here. Think about all the things on the first day of school I couldn't control. I didn't make my class schedule. I didn't plan on passing out on your desk-"

"Or maybe you passed out because you recognized me and it freaked you out."

His eyes narrow and he looks at the floor, as if entertaining my theory. "Could be. I guess it's possible my subconscious recognized you first. Who knows how my brain works? I don't think it completely hit me until we were talking in the infirmary that the girl I'd been dreaming about was you. So then I said all that crap about you looking familiar and wondering if you'd ever been to Asheville."

"I thought you were just trying to be smooth," I tease.

"Yeah-that's me. Mr. Smooth." Kieran rolls his eyes and digs around in the bottom of one of the boxes for another notebook. "Here," he says, handing two new notebooks to me and I hand him the one I'm holding. "These are the first ones from this set."

I start reading, and Kieran moves closer to rest his head on my shoulder, a gesture I tell myself is probably due more to exhaustion than affection, but I don't really care. With him warm next to me, his hair rubbing against my neck, I begin exploring what was involuntarily going on in his mind two years ago: A drawing of someone who resembles Kayla in a tank top and shorts, getting a medal for something. Beautiful descriptions of mountains and forests which I'm assuming are places in North Carolina. Doodles of sunbursts, like the ones he's always drawing in his notebooks at school. A shadowy sketch and description of a man in his late thirties. Shadow Man pops up several times, but each sketch is a little more clear than the previous one, and I notice with every subsequent appearance, he's starting to look like Kieran-an older version of Kieran with a goatee.