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  I needed to sit but satisfied myself with putting a hand on the back of the chair instead. I touched him, half expecting my hand to go right through him like smoke. Like a ghost. Like the fantasy I knew he really was.

  He turned to me. “Then don’t go. Stay here with me, okay? Come to the party. Spend the night. Wake up with me in the morning.”

  “I don’t belong here, Johnny,” I breathed. “I’m sorry. I just don’t.”

  “But something’s keeping you here,” he pointed out. “Something’s bringing you back.”

  “Just smoke. Just dreams. This isn’t real.”

  “It’s real to me,” Johnny shouted so fiercely I took a step back. “It’s fucking real to me, Emm, okay? It’s been real since the first fucking time you showed up on my doorstep, and every fucking time since! I don’t care if you’re crazy or whatever the hell’s going on, I don’t care. Just…stay. Please.”

  He reached for me, and I let him hold my hands. I let him pull me closer. I let him kiss me, soft and deep. And I felt myself drifting. Giving in. Instead of waking up, I felt myself falling deeper into this dream.

  “I’ll do whatever you want. Stop making the movies. Hell, I’ll stop the parties. I’ll get a real job, if you want that. I’ll wear a fucking suit and tie, buy a car, pay my bills on time. I’ll be whatever you want me to be, Emm. Just don’t keep walking in and out of my life, making me crazy.”

  “I want you to be an artist,” I told him. “I want you to be everything you can be, that’s all I want. And I want to be with you, Johnny. I just can’t do it here.”

  “Why?” he asked, face pleading.

  “Because I don’t belong here. I don’t belong in this place.”

  He cupped my breast, thumb passing over my nipple. “You feel real to me here. You feel like you belong.”

  I put my hand over his. “But…I don’t. And whatever this is, it’s wrong of me to keep doing it.”

  “Whatever this is,” Johnny said with a humorless laugh. “What is it for you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I do,” he said. “I love you, Emm. And I want to be with you.”

  “You are with me.” Tears slipped over my cheeks. I tasted salt. “We’re together. Just not here. Not now.”

  “Then when?”

  “In the future.” It sounded crazy, but he didn’t pull away. “I’m from the future. I’m crazy. I make all of this up in my head. It’s not real, you’re not. This isn’t. All of you are something I just made up.”

  “Stay, anyway,” Johnny said.

  I tried again to wake. Nothing. I tried to make something else happen. Change the room. Change his frown to a smile. There was only one way to do that.

  “Just a little longer,” I said. “I’ll come down to the party for just a little while.”

  Had I ever made anyone so happy before? Johnny hugged me. He kissed me. He smiled, which I loved, and he took my hand as we went down the stairs and out the back door. He held my hand as he introduced me to people whose names were familiar even if their faces weren’t. He kissed me in front of them. He brought me drinks, which I drank and got tipsy from.

  Time passed. The night went on. The party got more raucous. I saw a couple fucking in his pool, just as he’d said. I saw people smoking dope. I saw some shooting up, though I turned away at that, the sight of them injecting their veins disgusting and scary. I saw a lot of things at that party, but everywhere I went, I also saw Johnny.

  Had I ever spent so long here before? Maybe something had broken, and if it had, I’d been the one to break it. I’d forced this on myself, trying to figure out a way to stop it, and now I was becoming truly afraid I wouldn’t ever get out of it.

  People talked to me, and I answered. If they thought I was drunk it was because I slurred my words a little. Weaved a little in my walk. I saw Johnny from across the pool. He was looking at me, expression concerned, while a young woman in a terry-cloth halter top, her breasts like watermelons, tried without success to grab his attention.

  Everything was hazy, like it wanted to spin but wasn’t. And I couldn’t wake up. I took another drink, tossed back a shot in a way I’d never done in real life. Fire burned my gut.

  I stumbled into the kitchen through the back door. Ed was there. He looked up, eyes wide, mouth open.

  “Holy fucking shit. Where the fuck did you come from?”

  “Outside.” I looked at the bottle in front of him. The cigarette. The drugs. The notebook.

  This was the same as the last time, except the bottle was already empty, the ashtray overflowing, the drugs gone with only the needle left behind. I blinked and went to the sink to splash cold water on my face. Also like the last time.

  “Holy fucking shit,” Ed said. “You were there. Then you weren’t. What the fuck? What the fuck?”

  “Maybe you’re high,” I said cruelly, my voice thick like syrup. “Maybe you’re crazy.”

  “I am crazy,” Ed said.

  We stared at each other across the kitchen. Heat shimmered between us. That’s what I thought. But it wasn’t heat, it was something else. Something invisible pulled me, tugging at my belly like a string attached to my guts. I twitched.

  “Fucking crazy,” Ed said. “You were there, and then you weren’t. Did you know I wrote a poem about you, Emmaline?”

  “Yeah, you told me.”

  “You don’t like it. You’re not impressed.”

  Something tugged me harder. I went to my knees right there on the kitchen floor. They smacked the linoleum, hard and painfully. I put both hands flat on the linoleum, wondering if I were going to fall. Puke. Pass out? How could I pass out when I was already unconscious?

  “Oh, shit,” Ed said.

  I closed my eyes.

  The world shook.

  Then the world wasn’t shaking, just my bed. Just me. I opened my eyes, blinking, and Johnny’s face swam into view. He had my shoulders and was shaking me.

  “Emm!” he cried when I focused on him. “The fuck are you doing?”

  “She was just trying—” Jen began, rubbing at her eyes.

  Johnny glared at her and gathered me close. “Fucking bright idea!”

  Jen looked scared. “Is she okay?”

  “I’m fine. Johnny! I’m fine!” I pushed him away a little bit so I could catch my breath. “Seriously, lay off.”

  He cupped my face and looked into my eyes. To Jen, he said, not meanly but not in a voice filled with sunshine and light, “I think you’d better go.”

  She did, squeezing my shoulder before she left. “I’ll call you.”

  “Yeah,” I said, too tired to get up and fight him to go after her, wanting really to just curl up next to him and knowing my friend would understand.

  When she’d gone, Johnny kissed me, my face still in his hands. Then he looked into my eyes again. “What the hell were you doing?”

  “I was trying to figure out if I could control the fugues,” I whispered, hating that I felt ashamed.

  He drew in a slow, shuddering breath. Emotions flowed over his face, too many for me to discern. “And can you?”

  “Apparently not,” I said sourly.

  Johnny shook his head. “Don’t do it again.”

  Annoyed, I turned my face from his. “Is that what you want? Me to just do whatever you say?”

  “No, Emm.” Johnny turned my face gently to face his again. “I just don’t want to lose you all over again.”

  Chapter 25

  It felt like something had broken inside me, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Whatever had made my brain skip and jump back and forth from dreams to consciousness seemed to be…not repaired. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that. Not fixed. Broken worse, and yet better.

  I didn’t go dark again for a week in which Johnny hovered over me so mercilessly I thought I might kill him. Then another week passed with me clearheaded. One more. At the end of the month, spring was inching into the air and I hadn’t even dreamed of Johnny-t