“Exactly what it sounds like,” my mom said. “You can go inside people’s dreams.”

“I think you were in my dream the other night too,” Aaron said suddenly.

“What?” Goose bumps broke out all along my arms.

“You called out my name.”

The empty space. Aaron standing still, the hum, the need to call out to him.

This was real. This was happening. I was in my brother’s dreams.

“Oh my god…” I breathed.

“You remember too,” he said, not a question.

“Yeah … yeah, I do.”

That admission set off a whole other round of questioning—what was the first strange dream I had, where was I, had I seen either of my parents in any of the dreams. That was when the pieces really started to click together.

The snake chasing me, a recurring nightmare of Aaron’s that I didn’t realize he still had.

The nightmare I had on the bus and the stranger’s scared face, like my screaming had woken her up from a bad dream. It had. I’d been screaming because of her bad dream.

The urgent care, with Emily, those two men I thought I recognized. I did recognize them, from a movie though, not real life. Was Emily asleep too? Was I inside her head while she was awake?

The further I tried to think back, the harder it became to remember when this all started.

“How do you even know about this?” I asked, one of the least important questions out of the millions running around my head, but the safest one. “Do you know other dreamdivers?”

“The AM told me about them,” my dad said. “There was one there at the same time I was—I never met them, but they were the talk of the program. It’s an unusual ability.”

“Great…” I muttered. Looks like I won’t even be fitting in among the weirdos.

I guess I’ll find out for sure—it’s already decided that I’m going to be shipped off to the AM. Tomorrow. The moment the place was mentioned, everyone decided that that was the next best logical step.

“Are we sure that’s necessary?” I asked, fear crawling up my throat. “Can’t we just play things out at home for a little bit? Maybe it’s just a phase.”

“Rose, you’ve been sleeping in more and more the past few weeks,” my mom said softly. “I’d be more inclined to let it slide if we could say for certain that it was just typical teenage exhaustion, but now this … your ability seems to be escalating. You need to get help.”

“I’m not sick,” I argued.

“It’s just like getting a yearly physical, Rose,” my mom said. “Just a little bit more thorough. You’ll just go and get checked out, stay for a bit to make sure everything’s all right.”