“Okay, it’s not anyone real,” I said, grimacing.
She was still glaring at me skeptically. There was no way I’d get out of the conversation without telling her something. And the truth was that as much as I wanted to keep the man to myself, I was also bubbling over about him inside, and part of me was dying to dish about him with my best girlfriend. Still, I wasn’t exactly sure about the best way to start dishing about someone who existed only in my dreams.
I took a deep breath and just dove in. I told her all about the dreams, but I didn’t mention how I first saw him. I just said he was some guy I’d seen in a picture somewhere.
It actually felt great to talk about him. I felt like I gushed for ages. When I was done, Rayna just stared at me.
“You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?” she asked.
“I need a boyfriend.”
“You do need a boyfriend.”
“I don’t need a boyfriend.”
Rayna raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t need a boyfriend,” I clarified. “I’m not saying I’m against the idea, but I don’t want someone just to have someone. It has to be the right person.”
“And Make-Believe-Fantasy-Guy is the right person?”
Yes! He is! I wanted to shout … but that would have sounded crazy. Still, it felt completely, 100 percent true. The man in my dreams was the right person. He proved it to me every night.
Of course he did. No matter how real the dreams felt, they were dreams, which meant the man’s personality was a figment of my imagination. Of course he knew me better than anyone else! Why wouldn’t I make him perfect for me? The iris tattoo was an especially nice touch, tying him in with my father and how horribly I missed him.
Freud would have had a field day with it.
Yet no matter how obvious all that was, it didn’t change my feelings. I shut my mouth and let Rayna think she had won the argument. I even told her she could fix me up with someone after I got back from Rio, though I knew no one would match up to the man I’d created in my mind.
Three days later it was Ben who cornered me. We were at Dalt’s, and I was finishing off a blueberry muffin—grilled, of course—while we played cribbage and I daydreamed.
“So when the pod people come and steal your body, does it hurt, or are you pretty much unconscious for the whole thing?”
“Huh?” I asked.
“I just double-skunked you three times in a row. What’s going on with you?”
He lifted an eyebrow. He was in detective mode now, and there was no escaping it. I imagined spilling to him the way I had to Rayna, and almost choked. I’d rather die than describe my fantasies to Ben. I’d never hear the end of it.
Still, I needed to tell him something, and he knew me too well to buy a complete lie.
I thought about the pictures. I could tell him about the pictures without telling him about the dreams. Ben was like Dad—he ate up anything that smacked of the inexplicable. He’d probably love the picture of the man at St. Vitus’s Cathedral, standing in midair on nothing.
“You might think I’m crazy … ,” I started.
“I already think that, so …”
I took a deep breath, then started to explain. I told him about every picture, including the ones that were completely impossible and seemed to prove the man wasn’t actually in the shots when I snapped them. By the time I finished, Ben’s brow was furrowed, and the concern in his eyes had deepened into alarm.
He really did think I was crazy. I shouldn’t have told him.
“Can you stop looking at me like that? I know there’s a logical explanation,” I assured him. “I just don’t know what it is yet, but—”
“You need to show me those pictures,” Ben said gravely.
“Um … okay,” I said, though I suddenly wasn’t positive I wanted to share them. “After Rio I figured I’d open them up again and try to—”
“Now, Clea,” he said. “I really need to see them now.”
TWENTY MINUTES LATER Ben was in my room, leaning heavily on my desk, one hand twined in his front tuft of hair as he stared at my computer screen. I clicked through each picture, first as I had originally composed it, then with the enlarged view showcasing my fantasy man. Seeing him on the screen was more intense than I’d thought it would be—my heart started pounding so hard I could feel it in my head, and I worried Ben could hear it.
I glanced toward him to check, but he wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were locked on the screen.
“Mind if I steer?” he asked tightly, his hand poised over the mouse. I never let anyone else drive my computer and Ben knew it, but at the moment it took all my energy to keep myself together. I nodded, and he took the mouse, clicking through the photos and zooming even closer on the man’s profile, his eyes, his lips.…
I shuddered. This had to stop. I wasn’t acting like myself at all, and I had no good explanation to give Ben if he asked me why.
“Clea,” he said.
I winced, preparing for the most embarrassing conversation of my life, but Ben looked exhausted, like the last ten minutes had utterly drained him. He drew his hand out of his hair, then looked at me apologetically. “I need to show you something downstairs.”
“You do?” I couldn’t imagine what he would need to show me in my own house, but I followed him down two flights of stairs. Then he turned toward my dad’s studio.
“Ben … ,” I warned.
“I know. But we have to go in.”
I strained against the urge to howl and pull him away as he opened the door. The studio had been my dad’s inner sanctum. For as long as I could remember, the rule was that you either went in with Dad, or you knocked and waited for permission. Time in the studio was a by-invitation-only honor to be shared with Dad, which meant the door had stayed closed for the last year. Entering without him now felt like a desecration.
“He’d want you to, Clea,” Ben said. “Believe me.”
For the first time, I felt a little flare of anger toward Ben. Grant Raymond was my dad. Why would Ben know what he’d want better than me? I was about to work up a suitably snarky reply, but Ben’s ghost white face stopped me. Something was very wrong, and for some reason he needed to tell me in the studio. I went in.
Like Dad’s office, his studio was a maelstrom of loose papers, books, and a spectrum of supplies. Yet while the office drowned in work chaos, the studio exulted in the wilder bedlam of his amusements. Digital photography was king among these, and no less than three large computer monitors rose like islands among the reams of photo paper, extra ink cartridges, and tangles of USB cords. Everywhere sat much-loved and dog-eared tomes of mythology and history from all over the world.
In the middle of one stack of books I noticed a biography of William Shakespeare, and I felt a pang of heartbreak. I missed my dad so much. I hated to think that even my smallest memories of him were fading, and yet I had almost completely forgotten how passionate he’d become about Shakespeare about six months before he disappeared. Mom had been stunned by it. She had spent years begging Dad to accompany her to the theater. Then all of a sudden he was ravenously devouring everything even remotely Bard-related: plays, sonnets, and volumes of commentary on his works. That was Dad’s way. When he seized on a new topic, he studied it exhaustively.
Ben opened the closet where Dad kept all his cameras, from his newest digitals to collectors-item Brownies he’d bought on eBay, to long-defunct Polaroid OneSteps he couldn’t bear to throw away. I winced as Ben shifted them around and they clanked together.
“Be careful,” I said.
“Sorry. Almost got it.”
He pushed aside a couple more cameras, then stood on tiptoe and leaned forward to press a spot against the back wall. What was he doing?
“There,” he said.