“Great,” I answer. It’s fruitless to argue with Dave; he’s so freaking calm. “I’ll get right on that.”

I can’t wait.

14.

THIS TIME TY AND I ARE SWIMMING in Branched Oak Lake, the water cool and green and deep under us. At first it feels just like the old days. He says he’ll race me to the shore, and we start out swimming steadily side by side. Then I become aware that I am swimming alone.

I’ve lost sight of Ty.

I tread water and look for him. He’s gone. Nothing but dark water all around me. I call his name. I turn in the water, searching, and then suddenly he comes up right beside me, spraying me, laughing.

“Gotcha,” he says. “Look at your face. What, did you think I drowned?”

“Jerk,” I say as my heart rate begins to slow. There was another dream I had, a couple of nights ago, in which he drowned in a swimming pool, a lifeless shape at the hazy blue bottom that I was trying to fish out using the pool net.

“You know you love me,” he says now.

I do.

“Hey, what’s that?” He looks off over my shoulder at something in the water.

I think he’s still joking around with me, but I turn. There’s a fin cutting its way toward us, maybe twenty feet away. Then ten. Then five. Then it glides under us, out of sight.

“Uh-oh,” Ty says gravely. “I knew we shouldn’t have come out here. It’s not safe.”

“Don’t worry,” I say, with that weird logic that exists inside dreams. “This is fresh water.” As if my stating this fact will negate the existence of this inevitable shark.

He pivots in the water. “There,” he says, pointing down. “Do you see it?”

I see it. A huge dark form taking shape below us, closing in.

It’s on us before I can catch my breath.

Ty screams. He thrashes and goes under. There’s billowing blood in the water. Ty pops up again, sputtering, caught in the middle by a massive great white. I try to grab him as the shark shakes him the way our dog used to shake her toys.

“Ty!” I cry. “Tyler! Ty!”

I can’t get a grip on him. He’s too slippery.

Then, as suddenly as it came, the shark is gone. Ty comes to the surface, gasping. His face is white as milk, his lips tinged with red.

“Lex,” he chokes.

I turn him over onto his back, grab him by the shoulders, and start to tow him toward shore. Blood trails behind us as I swim, so much blood, too much, but I don’t stop to think about that.

“Lexie,” Ty says again, this time like a warning. “I . . .”

“No.” I kick hard, swim with as much power as I can, but the shore doesn’t seem to be getting any closer.

“I have to . . . go,” he says.

I stop. “No. Stay with me, Ty.”

“It hurts,” he whispers.

“Stay with me,” I plead. “Stay.”

His eyes close. His breath rattles in his chest. And then stops.

“Ty!” I scream, and then I sit up with a jolt, tangled in sheets.

Another dream.

My hands are shaking. My breath jerks in and out of my lungs. I can still feel the cold of the water. I can still smell the blood.

A bad one this time.

Really bad.

There’s a soft tap on my door, so soft I wonder if I really heard it. I try to make my breathing quiet so I can listen. Which is hard.

Another tap. Louder. Real.

“Honey?” It’s my mother’s voice behind the door. “Are you all right?”

I fumble for my glasses, pausing before I put them on to wipe my wet face. Was I crying? I couldn’t have been crying. I don’t remember.

I straighten out the blankets before I answer. “I’m fine, Mom.”

The door opens. She pokes her head in. “I heard a noise. It sounded like you were upset.”

I wonder if she heard me yell Ty’s name.

“I had a nightmare, is all,” I say. “I’m okay.”

She comes in and sits at the edge of my mattress. When I was little and had nightmares, sometimes she would crawl into bed with me and stay there for the rest of the night, her body so warm and soft and safe that the nightmares never came back. And then, after Dad left, for the rest of that lousy summer, I slept with her because she couldn’t bear to sleep in their big bed all alone without him.

She snored. Loudly. Like a wounded pig. But then again, the times she stayed with me when I was little, in the twin bed so small she had to sleep sideways to fit, I used to wet the bed.

The things you do for the people you love.

She tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Sometimes I dream about your brother, too.”

She meets my eyes. There’s a painful knowledge there. She heard me call his name.

“Yeah,” I whisper.

I can’t explain it to her, how they make me feel, these dreams where Ty dies. They’re bad, and it feels like they’re getting worse, more graphic in nature, but I don’t want to stop having them. In some morbid way, I like having them. Because at least then I get to see Ty. I get to talk to him, sometimes. At least, when I’m there, when Ty is dying in whatever way he’s dying, I’m with him. I’m hanging on to him. I’m asking him not to go.

In those moments I can do something for him that I didn’t do in real life. I can answer the text. I can be there.

“Valium helps. Do you want a Valium?” Mom asks. “I don’t dream when I take them.”