* * *
In the middle of my sixth or seventh chain of stories—this one a Reddit board—the words disappear and the screen fills with Raya’s face. She’s calling me.
We typically communicate via text, so I slide my thumb quickly over the screen and put it to my ear. “What’s wrong?” I say.
“Nothing,” she says. “What makes you think something is wrong?”
“You’re calling me. You never call.”
“Oh. Well, we haven’t talked since . . . you know. And I thought a text was kind of, I don’t know. Flippant.”
“I like flippant.”
“How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Really?”
“No.” I sigh. “I’m terrible. I’m also fairly certain I’m going insane.”
“Going?”
“Ha-ha.”
“Why are you insane?”
I take a deep breath. I’m hesitant to tell her, not only because it sounded so ridiculous when I said it out loud, but because I got the sense Harrison didn’t really believe me—or at least understand how shocking it was. I don’t want the same thing to happen with Raya. But then, I realize, this is Raya. My friend who owns at least six different astrology books, burns sage with frequency and once buried quartz crystals in four pots of soil and placed them in the corners of our college apartment to “create a boundary of protection” when we thought she had a possible stalker. If anyone is going to believe this, it’s her.
So I tell her.
Aside from a few well-timed and incredulous whats, Raya doesn’t say anything until I’ve unloaded every single detail—from my first recollection of dreaming about Oliver when I was in college to seeing him in the Giant to meeting him in Dr. Okafor’s waiting room. Even then, in the silence that follows, I have to prompt her. “Say something.”
“You’ve been dreaming about this man for years?”
“Yeah.”
“We lived together. How is this the first time that I’m hearing about this?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “The dreams always felt kind of meaningless—intense, but meaningless—until I saw him, anyway. It’s weird, right? I mean, have you ever heard of anything like this before?”
“I don’t know,” she echoes, pausing to consider. “I mean, a few nights ago, I dreamt I went grocery shopping with Barack Obama. He kept trying to put this premade meat loaf from the deli section in my cart and I didn’t want it. I was getting so angry, but he wouldn’t leave it alone. He was all, ‘Take the meat loaf. It’s delicious.’ So I started screaming at him. At Barack Obama!”
I wait a beat. “Was there a point hidden in there?”
“I’m saying—dreams are weird. Inexplicable.”
“OK, sure. But after your dream, did you then meet our former president in an OB/GYN waiting room?”
“What would Barack Obama be doing at an OB/GYN?”
“Raya.”
She snickers at her own joke.
I press on. “I keep thinking I must know him somehow. Don’t you think? I mean, I don’t remember ever meeting him, but it’s the only thing that could possibly make sense.”
“Oh my god,” Raya says.
“What?”
“I just remembered this documentary I saw once. It was about two girls who met as teenagers and completely recognized each other, even though they were strangers. It turned out they were twins separated at birth.”
“Are you talking about The Parent Trap?”
“Was that it?”
“Not a documentary.”
“Oh, well still, I’ve always heard that about twins—that they have this weird connection and dream about each other and stuff. Maybe this guy is your long-lost brother.”
I think about some of the dreams. Oliver’s hands. And clear my throat. “Ah . . . I don’t think he and I are related.”
“You never know. Your mom, she wasn’t exactly faithful.”
I should be offended, but that part is actually true. “OK, my mom is . . . my mom. But I think I’d know if I had a half sibling running around.”
“Yeah. I suppose.”
“What else?” I wait a beat, but Raya appears out of outlandish guesses. “Don’t you think it must mean something?” I say. “That I’ve been dreaming about this guy for years and then I actually see him? In real life?”
Raya pauses. “I don’t know—do you think it means something?”
“Oh Jesus. Now you sound like Vivian.”
“Really?” she says, clearly not offended by this comparison. “I always thought I’d make a good therapist. You know, one time, when I was fifteen, my grandparents took us to Salem, Massachusetts, for some family vacation, and I had this reading with a real, bona fide witch, and she actually told me I was going to be a psychologist when I grew up. She was obviously wrong, but—” She trails off, going silent. And then: “Oh my god. That’s it—that’s exactly what you need.”
“A psychologist? Great—thank you so much.”
“No, a psychic.”
“Uh, no.” I love watching Warner McKay at three a.m. talk to the dead relatives of his audience members as much as the next gal, but I don’t know that I actually believe he’s psychic. It’s all so vague: Who’s got the J name? I’m sensing something in the leg . . . a J name, who was stabbed in the thigh, or fell off a cliff and broke it or maybe had their leg amputated? It feels more like a really great guessing game.
“No, really. They understand all that stuff—dreams and what they mean and all that. And there are a ton of psychics all over Philadelphia. There’s probably even one in little old Hope Springs.”
“I don’t know—I kind of think that’s all a scam.”
“Well, sure, probably some of them are. But some of them are truly legit.”
“Hm.” I was thinking more like a dream expert or a therapist might have more legitimate insight. “I’ll think about it.”
When we hang up, I consider calling Vivian, who is a therapist of sorts, if only to balance the scales of Raya’s mystical approach with Vivian’s logical one. But I can literally already hear what she’ll say: Mia, you’ve been under a lot of stress lately, what with the move, losing the baby—it can really do a number on your brain, make you sometimes think things that aren’t necessarily true.