“Okay, so I feel like I should probably tell you about this dream that I saw,” I said, hoping a change of conversation would help him open up. I was surprised at myself in the moment, that I just came right out with it like that, but there was something about talking to Damien that made being blunt feel easy. Maybe it was the fact that I’d been inside his head, that we had this shared experience, or maybe it was just that he had told me his whole situation at the AM without sugarcoating or beating around the bush.

“I assume it was of the nightmare variety?” he asked casually, stretching out even farther like he was trying to melt into the bench.

“Um, yeah.” I winced. “Most of them were.”

“Most of them?” His languid lounging position immediately tensed as he turned to me, throwing his arm over the back of the bench so he could face me head-on. “You went into multiple dreams?”

“I … I think so?” I said, a little surprised that he seemed bothered by this. It’s not like he had been dreaming about anything really embarrassing.

“What do you mean you ‘think’?” he asked.

“Well, I’m still not one hundred percent certain they were yours,” I said. “You were only physically in the last dream—or at least, physically there in a way that I could see you. The rest of them … well, I think they were yours because they had the same … quality to them.”

“What does that mean?”

“Dreams are like signatures, or someone’s particular smell, or the way they walk,” I explained. “Most people have unique ones but all the differences are really subtle.”

“So how can you be sure that the ‘quality’ you were feeling was mine?” he asked.

“Well, your dreams felt different,” I explained. “Usually when I go dreamdiving, I’m myself in other people’s dreams, sometimes interacting with them, sometimes just standing off to the side and observing. But being in your dreams was like how it was when my ability first started.”

“What was it like then?” he asked, seeming genuinely curious. It felt good—and weird—to talk to another Atypical about my ability, instead of a doctor who was writing everything down. With Damien, it just felt like sharing, without every single word being loaded with meaning that the other person is interpreting. Sharing in the way that I wanted to be sharing myself with Aaron—bonding over our abilities, something we haven’t been able to achieve, too ready to go at each other’s throats.

“It was like the dreams were happening to me,” I said. “Like I was just inside the dream, experiencing it in the same way the dreamer was.”

“So you were experiencing my dreams the way I was?”