Somnia

It was Nick, but he was perfect. All of his acne had disappeared and his skin was completely smooth. His hair was glowing strawberry-golden rays everywhere, his eyes glimmering the blueness of the sky around us. I was transfixed on his face. There were things happening behind him, but I didn’t care. All I could see was him.

~

My nose was cold, as were my cheeks, but my body was warm. I could note that much before I even opened my eyes to confront the buttery sun beaming at me.

Nick’s arms around me didn’t really feel physical. They didn’t feel like arms anyway. Arms didn’t make my heart beat like it was beating then. But it was also the dream. I knew that Nick wasn’t just a person.

~

“Siv, wake up.”

I didn’t want to open my eyes at all. I didn’t want to move. Sleep felt so good and I didn’t want to face the day.

“No,” I whined.

“Come on, you can still make it to school if you get up now,” he said.

“I don’t want to.”

“Well what are you going to tell everyone?”

I managed to open my eyes.

“I don’t know.”

“If you go to school, then they’ll never know you were gone.”

How could I go to school after something like this?

“Alright.”

I couldn’t say no to him now.

~

School seemed so strange that day. The warm light shone in through the windows and made everything feel fuzzy and old. I was in a state of delirium from my lack of sleep and the strangeness of the night prior. I’d missed my first class, but it didn’t matter.

The dream I’d had about Nick was all I could think about. I had never seen something like that in my waking life. The hyper-magnification of his appearance was almost magical. He did not look real. There was a bright light emanating from his every pore. I could see everything in him; he was the world in a person.

It wasn’t until I laid down for bed that I began to worry. Would he and I just pretend that what had happened, never happened? We hadn’t discussed it on our walk to school. My brother, and everyone else, would surely find it strange if he and I suddenly became close. Besides, I didn’t expect anything more from him.

He probably thought of me like a younger sister. Did I want anything more from him than that? A brother loves his sister, and wants nothing more than to take care of her. A brother never breaks his sister’s heart either. Not real brothers and sisters, but symbiotic ones.

I didn’t even know that I was asleep until the rapping at my window awoke me. I was in an in-between phase, where strange fantasies of my consciousness melded with the dreams of my subconscious.

I didn’t even have to get up and look before I knew it was him.

He signaled for me to open the window, so I did. He pulled himself up and crawled into my room.

“Now it’s me who can’t sleep,” he said, closing the window. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s kind of hard to sleep alone after you’ve slept with someone else.”

Nervous laughter.

Maybe it was too sensitive of a thing to say, but I didn’t care. There was this great urge to tell Nick absolutely everything. He was my priest, we were in the confession box. But he was too young to know how to respond.

I crawled back into bed, but he just sat on the side of it, looking at me.

“How was school today?”

He’d graduated the year prior, along with my brother, and now they studied at the college.

“It was strange. I was still tired, and I couldn’t concentrate on anything,” I told him.

The only thing I couldn’t tell Nick about was the dream I’d had about him. There was something like
a lock placed over it, and I just knew I could not utter a word about it until I had some kind of key.

“It’s Friday night, shouldn’t you be at a party or something?” I asked.

His smirk re-emerged for the first time that night.

“Shouldn’t you?” he said.

“No, I don’t like them.”

“Well, neither do I,” he replied, “I just like the drugs.”

“Come here,” I said.

Finally, he took off his shoes and jacket, and got under the blanket with me.

~

I could see his face again, in all its perfection. But now, my field of vision was panning outward. I could see his body. He was still in his striped sweater and jeans, but there were white wings sprouting from his shoulders. Long, fluffy feathers blew in the soft breeze. He was so still.

There was no sense of panic or desperation when I didn’t see Nick for another week. I didn’t even miss him. But I was happy to see him again.

In the eyes of girls, young men like Nick and my brother seem to lack intensity. They don’t care about anything but hanging out with each other, and girls never know what they talk about or do. Girls make up stories in their minds about them, and try to make them into heroes or something stupid like that. I knew better, and maybe that was why I had never really had a crush before. I knew that just because a boy was handsome, that didn’t mean that he would save me from my problems.

The girls at my school seemed to believe that any boy that they liked would magically transform into Romeo. I never believed in that. But I didn’t believe in being alone either. I wanted a Romeo, but I could see that the boys in the village could never be him. It’s a hormonal urge to want to love someone so much that you’d die for them.

It was a Saturday and I’d spent most of the day at my friend Nora’s house. We were supposed to be studying for a test that we had the following Monday, but instead, she spent most of the time talking to me about her boyfriend. She was afraid that he was cheating on her, and wanted me to test him to see if he would. I refused and she acted weird about it so I left.

When I returned home, Christian, my brother, and Nick were sitting on the roof, smoking a joint.

“Oh no, she’s home,” my brother said.

“That’s pretty stupid, you know. The neighbors can see you,” I said.

“Well why don’t you come up here and shield us then?” my brother said.

I rolled my eyes and dropped my bag in front of the door, then headed over to the ladder so I could climb up.

Nick sat between us as they smoked. I tried to guard them from where our nearest neighbors might be able to see, but it didn’t do much good. The smell was really strange, infectious but repulsive in a way. It was the closest I’d ever been to it.

“Do you want to try?” Nick asked me.

“She’s too little!” Christian said.

I did want to do it, but not with my brother around. So I just shook my head and watched them. I felt as if I was getting a contact high anyway.

Eventually, once the joint had whittled away completely, we went inside. They were laughing at every stupid thing possible, and it was making me laugh as well. I was surprised that they hadn’t fallen off the roof. My brother was just as annoying as usual, but it was worth it to be around Nick when he was in such an open state.

~

Just as soon as I was pretending to go to bed, Nick was pretending to go home. He knocked on my window, as I knew he would, and I let him in like I’d done the week before.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hey.”

“Do you want to get high?”

“What do you mean?”

He pulled a joint out of his pocket.

“We can’t do it here,” I said.

“Let’s go to the treehouse.”

The treehouse looked even more magical at night. Nick lit several candles in a circle around us, and everything glowed orange. I felt as if we had traveled back in time.

“Have you ever done this before?” he asked.

I shook my head no.

“Just put it between your lips and inhale. I’ll light it for you,” he said.

“Okay.”

I put the white stick into my mouth as he held a flame to its tip. I puffed, and blew out a small cloud of smoke. I felt nothing.

“You didn’t inhale,” he said. “Breathe in deeply, through your nose.”

I held it to my lips again and tried what he said. I felt some of the smoke enter my lungs this time, but it still didn’t feel right.

“Let me see it,” he said.

I watched him as he took a hit, and then leaned into me. He pressed his lips to mine, blowing the smoke into my mouth.

“Now hold your breath,” he said softly.

I could feel the chemicals infiltrating my brain now. I was lighter.

“You know,” I said. “I have never been kissed before.”

This was the stupid, sensitive kind of thing that girls want boys to understand. It’s the intensity that they’re unable to receive. But I couldn’t stop myself from saying it. I already felt the need to tell Nick everything.

“Still haven’t,” he said, “That wasn’t a kiss.”

“I know, that’s what I said,” I told him, “I said that I’ve never been kissed.”

I took the joint from him again and this time I managed to inhale until my throat was burning. I coughed as Nick laughed at me.

Before long, neither of us could stop laughing. I felt these warm waves of pleasure washing over every inch of my body. I couldn’t imagine ever having a bad thought again, let alone a bad dream.

“Why did you tell me that?” Nick asked.

I had forgotten that I’d even said that. My heart caught in my throat at the memory. The high intensified my embarrassment.

“I don’t know. It just came out.”

“That seems to happen to you a lot,” he said, “You seem to say things without thinking too much.”

Only around you.

“It’s not a bad thing. I like it, actually.”

I felt too ashamed to even look at him. He could see right through me, and I’d had no idea.

“Was it because you wanted me to kiss you?”

It was too much. I rolled over so that he couldn’t see my face.

“Okay,” he said, “Never mind.”

I let myself focus on the way that the high felt. My body was humming, and strips of electricity were flowing to my fingertips like lightning. I could feel the cold breeze blow through the treehouse, and eventually, Nick started to play music from his phone. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever heard.

“Siv,” he said.

I sat up to face him.

“What?”

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I nodded.

“I wasn’t trying to embarrass you,” he said. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright. I feel good, really,” I said.

“Good.”

We didn’t speak for a while, and just let the music play. I leaned against one wall of the treehouse, while Nick did the same against the opposite wall. I let myself look at him, and he looked at me. The longer that I gazed, the more that it was like my dream. I realized that he was perfect in real life as well.

He crawled over to me, and leaned into my face. He was going to kiss me, I knew it, so I closed my eyes. And then he did. All the comfort in the world flowed from him to me, and I felt like I was soaring above the treetops. It was a transfer of energy, a precious energy that spiritualists would strive for years to obtain. I didn’t know that definitively, but it seemed that way in my imagination.

He hugged me as soon as he pulled away from my lips. I knew that it wasn’t a normal kiss, but I didn’t understand how yet. Thoughts were flying through my mind rapidly, but I didn’t care about them.

“Are all kisses like that?” I asked him, even though I already knew the answer.

“I wouldn’t know. That was my first one too,” he said. “But I really doubt it.”

He pulled away from me finally, and blew out each candle. I fixed the pillows and blankets for us.

He held me in his arms, but I couldn’t sleep yet.

“How could you have never been kissed?”

He laughed.

“What does that even mean?”

“Everyone likes you. So many girls like you.”

“Well maybe I never liked any of them.”

There was nothing I could say to that. The comment flew over my ego and just confused me farther.

“Can I tell you something, Siv?”

I turned over so that I was facing him, and nodded my head.

“I was adopted. When my parents adopted me, they didn’t know how old I was. My mother found me alone, in a park,” he said. “But then something happened a few weeks ago.”

He sighed. I could tell that this was all laying heavily on him.

“My birth mother found me. She told me that she had been looking for me since I was born. I don’t know how she found me, but I know she’s my mom. We look just alike.”

“How is that even possible?”

“I don’t know, but the strangest part is that she told me my real birthday. And I’m two years younger than they thought I was.”

“So… you’re my age?”

“Yes. I haven’t told anyone else, not even my parents. So you can’t say a word, okay? Not even to Christian.”

“I won’t. I promise.”