The same dream. Over and over again. I could map out every scene with skilled familiarity.

First, the Glade. Fires burning. High, skittering voices on the heavy, golden air. I know this place. This is home…as close as I can remember. Figures stoop in the fields, their arms bronzed from the sun. Runners file in from beyond the towering Gates, nothing more than a ribbon of color as they fly through the verdant fields. Harriet stands tall against the setting sun, rigid and strong like roots in the earth. Our leader – Rachel – calls a gathering and the Glade comes alive with activity, ants falling into step in three large columns through the willowy grasses. Fielders, Builders, Slashers, and the small group of Runners that come rushing out of the grasslands, breathless and glimmering with sweat.

And then the scene changes.

Darkness blots out the green and gold of the Glade. The voices filter in, hazy, distant, and I can only tell that they are female from their pitch. All of them talk at once in hushed tones. They're afraid, all of them, in the same way that they were when they first arrived. I remember the panic. How it filled up their eyes and brimmed over in the form of tears. Their lips trembled. They shrank away when you tried to touch them, help them out of the box and onto solid ground. I heard those voices – the panicked shrieks coming in waves, piercing through my brain with the sharpness of cold metal. Then, above all the rest, a deep, calm voice – his voice.

We can only communicate here, in this in-between world, suspended just over dreams and just under the surface of waking. His eyes are huge and soft, like a doe's, and I ache to reach up and brush the high arch of his sun-freckled cheekbone.

"Newt."

"How long has it been?"

I smile a little at the thrill shooting up and down my spine. It flutters like butterfly wings in my chest. "Too long."

His brow furrows. "You haven't been sleeping."

It's not a question. "Yes…but you already knew that, didn't you?"

"Why not?"

"I lead a stressful life. I have no idea who the people around me are, where I am, much less who I am," I scoff at him. "What do you think? Should I see a doctor?"

Shaking his head, he pushes me gently. I barely felt it. "Quit it, would you? I get enough of the sarcasm bit from Minho..."

He looks away, out across the now empty grasslands. Whenever he comes, I've realized that everyone else disappears. The earth beneath our feet is our own. I can't even tell if he's real or some imagined hope I've drudged up from an old life somewhere. All I know is that the numbness goes away. I feel everything. Fear, anger, joy – my favorite is anticipation, what I feel when I hear his footsteps echoing through the columns of trees. It's a welcome deviation from the same old dead calm of everyday life here in the Glade. Where the only movement in my body is my own pulse keeping time in the back of my head. It's like I've come back to life. And I wish I could just stay asleep, forever, and be here with him where everything feels real and safe.

Even if he isn't real – I don't care. I look forward to the night, when I fall asleep and emerge from the darkness to find him trudging out of the forest again with a pack bobbing against his thin hips. A boyish smile on his face.

Maybe I am losing my shit, like Beth says. Going out of my head.

He turns his head toward me, still lost in thought. "You know, I always wonder, even when I'm awake…if you're even real."

"Does it matter?"

He nods slightly. "I think it does…what if this is some sort of clue? Or a trick? And we're playing into it?"

"I just know that...I'd rather be here with you than be awake."

"Don't you see, though?" His eyes meet mine, dark and churning, restless water under a blank night sky. "What if…those people. That put us here, keep putting more of us here…what if this is them playing with our buggin' heads."

My hands itch to take his, and I eye them as he worries his knuckles in his lap. "I don't care if they are. They've done worse things to me. If letting them play with my head means I get to see you, it's a price I'm willing to pay."

"You shouldn't be."

"Well I am," I insist. "And there must be a reason why we meet here, why you can feel everything I'm feeling - "

"That's just it!" He says, standing up from the fallen birch tree we've been sitting on, settling his anxious hands on the peaks of his jutting hips. "I can't figure out how – more importantly why they're doing this to us. What do they want? What do they get out of it? Better yet, who the shuck are they?"

I snort, watching the breeze I've imagined in my dream world come to life and play in the gold thicket of his hair. It reminds me of the wheat we grow in the gardens, how it shimmers in the light and sways beneath the wind.

"You and your stupid made up words." I get up, moving toward him, the ache in my stomach deepening as I smell what must be him on the air.

If he's real – out there somewhere, flesh and blood and bone – I don't know what he really smells like, or feels like, or sounds like. This is all just what I imagine Newt must be. Tall and thin, with legs like a newborn colt, all bony and sprinkled with golden hair. His eyes melting like chocolate under strong, thick brows. A slight lilt to his words, different, but not quite exotic.

This is the Newt that belongs to me – and my Newt smells like dusty earth, a pleasant smell, and the rich crackling scent which fills the air just before a thunderstorm. There's an undercurrent of brackish sweat running quietly underneath it all. It's a weird and wonderful smell, almost impossible to describe. All I know is that it makes me long to snake my arms around his middle, rest my head against the ridges of his spine, and inhale until my lungs run out of room for air.

"We made them up together." He turns back around, already knowing that I'm there. "Me and the boys. The other shanks."

"There you go again."

He smirks, but the expression fades and a new one crops up quickly in its wake. Confusion.

"You're doing it again."

I know exactly what he's talking about. It took me a long time to figure it out, too. That alien sensation that grips my heart in a warm vice every time I'm near him. I've lost track of how many times we've met in this make believe glade, how many years it's been since I wandered in, lost and alone, and found him kneeling there in the middle of the cabbages and tomato vines. But I can always remember the first time I felt it – a stirring up of dust in my chest, where it had been dormant for so long, like a ghost town. I've figured it out – affection, but different from what I feel for the other girls. It runs deeper. Burns hotter, sort of like a runaway grease fire.

"I'm not doing anything."

"Yes you are. I can feel it." He purses his lips, eyes scanning my face for the smallest trace of a tell. "It's…weird. Makes my stomach turn."

I don't say anything, just watch – with a small smile – as his frustration builds.

"Fine," he growls, throwing his hands up at me. "Keep your buggin' feminine secrets."

Liquid fire filters through my veins. It's him. Anger. "Don't be upset with me."

He sits back down on the log, huffing slightly as he makes contact with the rough, grainy bark."I'm not upset…"

I take his hand, and the feeling cools a little. "You can't hide it from me."

"It's just…" He shrugs a little. "We don't have secrets, do we? We can't, not anymore…and yet there's just that one thing you won't tell me. You've somehow found a way to hide it and it annoys the shuck out of me. I can't figure it out."

"Maybe because it doesn't exist."

He's searching my eyes again, squinting as his suspicion burgeons just beneath the surface. "You're lying."

With a disgusted grunt, he throws my hand back into my own lap and stands up quickly, making for the forest. The fire rekindles from cooling ashes.

"Newt, wait, I - "

"Don't!" He says, facing away from me. His hand rests for a moment against the trunk of an old, decomposing ash tree. "I just…let's forget it. I have to get back. It must be morning by now."

"Don't leave me this way. Don't leave angry. We're friends. Friends talk about things."

He bows his head, then turns to face me, eyes softening. The heat in my veins dissipates. It's replaced with numbness – he's feeling nothing, if only just the slightest mark of shame coloring his features. "They do, friends do talk...so why won't you talk to me?"

The way he looks at me...it's almost pleading. How can I tell him what I'm feeling when I can't even name it? Understand it? The only explanation I can offer is the emotion itself, worming its way through the dark earthy color of his gaze, holding steady with mine. It's strange for both of us...

"You're right." He says. "I'm sorry."

It's my turn to shrug. "I know…you're kind of transparent."

He laughs a little and closes the distance between us. It takes my breath away, when he stands this close, knowing how it affects the both of us, and I can feel every little suggestion of emotion that races through his head. Right now there's contentment and shame and always the air of fearful uncertainty where our memory is supposed to be. And something else – something new from his side. It feels like a million little fingers prodding me, beating against my skull from every different direction.

"I wish I knew who you were…" He says, those massive eyes of his taking in every little detail of my face. A shiver runs through me when his dark gaze catches mine. "Who you really are. I feel like...maybe we knew each other once. Or we're supposed to."

"You know who I am."

He rolls his eyes. "You know what I mean."

"Like I said," I reply. "To me, it doesn't matter. It only matters that I know you now."

Panic grips the both of us, originating from him, and it echoes through our bones with renewed ferocity. Nervousness pulls at the corners of his mouth, blooms pink in the depths of his cheeks like ripples in the water. He lifts his hand and hesitates for just a moment before he reaches forward to press the palm against my cheek. It's rough and shiny with callus, aged like working man's hands, but he's just a boy.

He's experimenting with it. Rattling its cage to see what it can do.

"There it is again." He whispers.

"What?"

"That…what you're feeling now."

"It's called irritation," I tell him. "A nasty side effect of having my personal space invaded by an insolent little klunk."

He laughs, distracted, and his hand falls away. I can breathe again."Brilliant choice of words."

Suddenly, the smile disappears, and he tilts his head back toward the forest. Whispers tangle with the incoming breeze, incoherent, but he seems to recognize them. He backs away slowly, reluctantly, without even knowing he's doing it.

"I have to go." He says. "They need me back there."

I try to hide my disappointment - but it's no use. He knows it's there. "I guess I'll be seeing you."

"Only in your dreams." He jokes, pulling his lips tight against his teeth for a moment, as if the words themselves were uncomfortable. "Take care of yourself, Emma."

I watch him disappear into the growing darkness of the forest. It starts to spread, gray shadows forming at my feet.

"Goodbye." It comes in only a whisper, and I close my eyes as the dream-Glade disappears.

Only to reopen them - to the draped cloth walls of my tent.

.

.

.

"Been seein' Dream Boy again, huh Emma?"

It's just Beth. There's a knowing smirk on her face as she wrings the water from her shirts and hangs them to dry outside her own tent across from mine. The first traces of sunlight cling to her back and drip down into the colorless dirt like liquid gold. I ignore her, kicking the quilts off of me before I stand up and tuck my pillow beneath the sheets. With my back turned, I can work in peace. I don't have to look at that stupid smirk on her face. I know she thinks I'm crazy. Or an idiot. Or whatever it is that she thinks.

"Dunno why you bother with him," she says over the cold slap of wet fabric. "He doesn't exist."

"What if he does?" I retort.

"Then you'd never see him. We're stuck here, forever, remember?"

I finish making the bed and slip on my moccasins, ducking beneath the tent flap and turning my back on her before she can fire off anymore smart ass remarks. The others will have gathered already at the meeting spot. I always wake up late, a dangerous habit when every minute of waiting is precious time wasted…but I know why they keep me. Despite being the airhead of the whole lot, I'm the fastest, and no one – not one Newbie that's come since – has been able to beat me out of a sprint yet.

Leah and Anna are waiting for me when I get there, stomping their feet and folding their arms as I dash across the flat, empty grasslands. The Glade is just waking up behind us. Smoke curls into the air, black and littered with old ashes. Soon, everyone will come together for breakfast – everyone except us, the Runners.

Leah is the patient one. Anna just keeps stamping around like a billy goat, collecting her pack and water skin as the rumbling starts and the maze begins to open up from the outside in.

I glance, quickly, at Leah as I throw my pack over my shoulders. The weight of her gaze is uncomfortable, almost suffocating, like she's already under my skin – looking for the answers I won't readily give.

"You don't have to say it. I already know."

"I wasn't going to."

Leah clears her throat and addresses us both. "You know what to do. You're late and you're dead - literally." She looks at me when she says this, but doesn't accuse me outright. "Keep a sharp eye. See you at nightfall. Look alive, ladies."

The sky above us opens up with light. Dawn has come.