My dad used to take the whole family to Fenway during the summer. Someone he works with has season tickets and he would give my dad a few whenever my dad would offer to cover a shift for him. None of us are huge baseball fans—or team sports in general—but we would love sitting out in the hot, humid air, us with the rare soda that we weren’t usually allowed to have, my mom and dad with the beers that they only ever seem to drink in the summertime, just enjoying the intensity of the fans and the sound of the announcer ringing through the stadium. That was where I was—suddenly ten years old, my eight-year-old sister sitting next to me, my young, healthy parents handing us some popcorn to share. Like night and day—a nightmare one second, a beautiful memory in a dream the next.

I think it must have been my sister. It had to have been. But even when she was with me at the baseball stadium, it was kid-her, not current-her, and she didn’t seem to think that she was in a dream. I don’t think I realized I was in a dream.

Maybe I’m being paranoid. Maybe my brain did me a solid and pulled me out of the festering pit of anxiety I was sinking into and dropped me into something peaceful and sweet. But there’s just this feeling I have, in the back of my skull, that I wasn’t alone there.

onmyown

Have you thought about confronting your sister about it? Asking her if she went into your dream? Changed it? Wait, can she change dreams?

thatsahumanperson

I’m not sure, tbh. We haven’t talked about the ins and outs of her power very much. I was hoping to, when she got back from the hospital, because I think her power is really interesting and cool and, I don’t know, I guess I was hoping we’d have an easier time connecting after finding out that we were both Unusual, but we never got the chance. My dad was diagnosed the same day that she finished the program, and since being home, she’s mostly been hanging out with her new girlfriend (? not sure what their status is), going to work, and sleeping. Lately, mostly sleeping. So we haven’t had a chance to talk about how it all works. The first dream she visited of mine, I think she did make all the other people in the dream vanish? Or maybe that was me? Or the dream itself? She wasn’t aware of what she could do yet, so I don’t think, if it was her, that she was consciously trying to control it. Ugh. I guess I could just ask, but … that’s never been easy for me.

tacotacotaco