“He was freaked. He said he didn’t want to talk there but we exchanged numbers and I—well, I’m getting coffee with him tomorrow,” I said. Not technically a lie, even if it made it sound like Damien and I were meeting for the first time. It’s not that I think Dr. Bright is untrustworthy, but I’m still figuring out Damien for myself. I don’t need her hovering over this whole thing in the way Aaron is.

“Are you sure you should be meeting with this person?” she asked, confirming my fears.

“Yeah, it’ll be fine,” I said and she nodded, like she was considering her next words carefully. I jumped in before she could ask more questions about Damien.

“You never saw anything suspicious there?” I pressed. “At the AM?”

“I can’t talk about my time there—it’s all completely confidential. But you’ve had a good experience. The most important thing is to find physicians that you trust. As long as you feel you’re making progress, that’s what matters.”

“Yeah, I guess. Well, anyway, I’ll see this guy tomorrow and see what he says. I definitely don’t want to go to an organization that’s doing something unethical. Plus, it’s nice to make new Atypical friends.”

“That’s very true. It’s important to have a community of people you feel you can be yourself with.”

“Maybe if he needs more help, I could introduce you guys?” It might be a hard sell to Damien, but she’s right, a community of support is something I think both of us want. “It seemed like the AM … wasn’t really helping him.”

“My door is always open.”

JANUARY 24TH, 2017

For the first time in a long time, real life has become slightly more interesting than the dreamworld.

I’ve been spending more time at Emily’s dorm, not even napping, but playing board games and making out and watching Marvel movies so that I can fully appreciate her fic. And it’s been wonderful, I feel so at peace with her, so at home, but it’s still an escape. It’s its own kind of dreamdiving. Emily still doesn’t know about my ability, about Atypicals at all, about my dad, so I’m never really … me with her. Not in the way I can be with Damien.

We’ve gotten coffee every day since our first meet-up and Aaron got SO weird about it so quickly, wanting to come along and meet Damien himself, in a super annoying and uncharacteristic big brother play, so I’ve been going straight from Emily’s to coffee in the hopes that Aaron will just STOP asking about it. But I’m worried that he’s going to read things in my thoughts because, as I said, things with Damien have been even more fascinating than what the dreamworld can conjure up.

And today was very, very interesting.