Stupid Perfect World

It was like he was inside me, his slow rhythm stuck in my head, something invisible and ancient connecting us.

I sat down on the floor with my notebook, grabbed for the pen, and cut into the paper with quick strokes.

In this tower with no doors,
My skin hunger pulses,
Like his breathing in my ears,
So near and yet…

“Oh, crap,” I cried, staring at the staggered lines of handwriting. I hadn’t been keeping a journal…I’d been writing poetry.

I had to get out of here, out into the rain and oxygen. I grabbed my jacket again and ran toward the teleporter, checking in headspace for somewhere—anywhere—that it was raining. Climate Watch informed me that it was pouring in Paris, drizzling in Delhi, and that a monsoon was skirting Madras—all five seconds away.

But I hesitated inside the teleporter; it seemed wrong to go ten thousand kilometers. I wanted that rain right there, on the other side of my window.

Then I saw the fire evacuation stickers on the wall—maps and procedures for when teleportation failed—and smiled.

“Sky deck,” I told the teleporter, not wanting to climb thirty flights of emergency stairs.

The huge room twinkled into view. It was empty, of course. Nothing to see tonight through the floor-to- ceiling windows, streaks of rain concealing the dark mountains in the distance. The stars in the sky were washed away, even the moon a blur…

The moon a blur? Argh. I was thinking in poetry now!

I looked around for the soft red pulse of the fire exit, pulling the jacket across my shoulders as I ran. The storm was deafening up here, the rain driven by high-altitude winds.

EVACUATION ONLY, the door warned, less than poetic.

I placed my palm flat against its cold metal surface, bit my bottom lip, having a last moment of hesitation— afraid to break the rules.

“Meeker,” I hissed at myself. That’s what Kieran Black thought of me, with my Scarcity-era notebook and pen, scribbling to impress Mr. Solomon.

Well, this was the door out of my stupid perfect world, a door for calamities and conflagrations, and for when things were on fire…

I shoved it hard, and a shrieking filled my ears. A dingy flight of stairs led upward, harsh lights flickering to life overhead. A canned voice broke into the alarm, asking the nature of the emergency, but I ignored it and dashed toward the roof. Two flights up was another door, plastered with stickers warning of high winds and low temperatures, of edges without safety rails, of unfiltered, cancer-causing sunlight—all the uncontrollable dangers of outside.

I pushed the door cautiously, but the wind reached in and yanked it open with the crash of metal. The rain tore inside, streaming across me. I was frozen for a terrified moment; the rushing blackness seemed too vast and powerful. But that calm, infuriating voice kept asking where the fire was, driving me outside.

The wind grew stronger with every step I took. A few meters from the door, my jacket was stripped from my shoulders, disappearing into the darkness. Half-frozen drops streaked out of the dark sky, battering my face and bare arms, feeding my hungry skin.

I opened up my hands to feel the rain drum against my palms, and opened my mouth to drink the cold water, laughing and wishing that Kieran Black was there beside me.

Two minutes later, security arrived and took me home.

Seven

MORE DRAMA, PEOPLE!” Ms. Parker cried.

Everyone just stared at her, swords drooping. We’d been practicing this scene for hours, trying to get the blocking right. Most of this was William Shakespeare’s fault; it’s pretty hard to switch two swords in the middle of a fight by accident. Come on.

The so-called army waiting off-stage was growing restless. Every time they got ready to march in with a warlike volley, Ms. Parker cut in, complaining about the lack of drama. Too bad nobody had taken death-by- poisoning for their Scarcity project—they could have showed us how….

“Okay, take a break,” she finally said in disgust.

Everyone headed to the green room or over to the teleporters, but I sheathed my sword and slid off the edge of the stage, climbing up through the empty seats. The quiet out here was a relief from forgotten lines, implausible blocking, and Ms. Parker’s demands for drama.

I sat down in the last row, a few seats in from the aisle, and tipped my head back. My eyes closed automatically, and I felt the soothing darkness close around me.

Sleeping, it turned out, was awesome. I was clocking six hours a night now, plus naps. The lost time was killing my grades, but I loved slipping away into oblivion and consummation.

And the psycho prince guy had been wrong to worry: Stage 5 sleep wasn’t a rub at all. It had all the drama our production was missing, and I was devoutly addicted to it.

Since that first real sleep, Maria had been reading to me every night. It was an actual olden-day tradition called “bedtime stories,” according to Maria. And even though her journal was just random sentences, she did spin stories in my head. The sound of her voice made dreams happen.

It felt like talking in Shakespeare’s old-speak, using “dreaming” to mean Stage 5. That old definition had disappeared along with sleep itself. Nowadays people only “dreamed” of bigger houses or getting famous.

But I kept wondering how close the two meanings were. Did I really want everything I saw in REM sleep? Should I risk making real what I did there, or should I keep it safely hidden in my dreams?

“Kieran,” came a whisper from right beside me.

I jumped, my eyes flying open.

“You okay?” Maria asked softly.

“Oh, sorry.” I blinked, for a moment wondering if this was real or not. “I was just napping.”

“Awesome.” Her smile glimmered in the stage lights. “How’s the Bard going?”

“Not dramatic enough for Ms. Parker.” I let out a sigh. “I’m not sure what would be, except maybe a hurricane blowing off the roof.”

“Ooh…” she breathed softly. “A hurricane would be fun.”

I smiled. She’d told me about her trip to the roof, her wild dancing and her skin hunger—all of it had wormed its way into my dreams.

She leaned in close, her breath in my ear. “I have a question for you.”

“We don’t have to whisper,” I said. “We’re on break.”

“But I like whispering. It makes things more…dramatic.”

A shiver went through me.

“Speaking of which.” Maria turned back to the empty stage, where the lights were shifting between palettes, sword-fight red to soliloquy blue. “Tonight when I read to you…maybe it would be better in person. I mean, more dramatic, from right beside your bed.”