Chapter 2

"Your dream girl?" Grimm translated. He wanted to face his student--years of lecturing had left
him uneasy talking to someone he wasn't looking at--but he didn't dare take his eyes off Sara. Her
behavior around other people had become unpredictable, sometimes even dangerous. He
positioned himself between Alejo and Sara, ready to catch her if she tried to attack this student as
she had done to another just a week ago.

"This last night, I dream of her," Alejo said.

"You dreamed about her?" Grimm was too stunned to be angry. While he well knew the kind of
dreams teenage boys usually had about teenage girls, the notion that Alejo had dreamed of
someone he had never met with enough detail to recognize her piqued his curiosity.

"Si. In my dream, her hair iss long."

Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see Alejo miming a hair length just reaching his elbow.
Sara's hair had been that long once . . . when she had been well. Now it was shorn close to her
head to prevent her from ripping it out during her all too frequent panic attacks.

"She talk to me," Alejo continued. He hesitated, then shook his head. "No remember what she
say."

"Are you sure it was Sara?"

"Si. Yes. I no have doubt." Indeed, he did sound very sure. "Look. She know me also."

At some point, Sara's unfocused, wandering gaze had settled on Alejo. There was no expression
on her face, no indication of any emotion or desire in her stance, yet she was clearly looking at--and seeing--the young man.

"I should take her upstairs," Grimm said. "She doesn't do too well with people anymore.
Especially strangers." He paused, not sure how much information was too much. Most of the
school knew that something had happened to his daughter--his daughters--over the summer. Both
the town paper and the university paper had covered it extensively for over a week, then dropped
coverage when no new information was forthcoming. The interesting information wasn't
believable, and the believable information wasn't interesting, especially when it failed to develop
or resolve in short order. "I'm afraid we don't know what's wrong with her," he supplied,
answering the question he knew Alejo would be too polite to ask. "Some of the doctors think it's
a nervous breakdown of some variety."

Alejo didn't respond. He was locked in some silent communication with Sara, neither moving.

Then it broke. Whatever had been happening between them ceased; perhaps a decision had been
made. With mincing footsteps, Sara began walking around the edge of the room. She moved
towards Alejo but stayed next to the wall instead of cutting straight across. Frowning, Grimm
headed over to intercept his daughter.

He took hold of her hand to lead her from the room. With an uncanny strength, she jerked her
hand from his grasp and pressed her back to the wall as if to get as far away from him as
possible. She tried to continue towards her goal, but found her way blocked by a wooden cabinet
on one side and her father on the other.

Sara sank to the floor then and, meshing herself to the cabinet, began to rock. Her fists were
bunched up next to her ears, arms pressed against her face.

"I'm sorry you had to see this," Grimm said without turning around. He didn't want Alejo to see
the pain he knew was on his face. "You should leave. I'll have to give you a rain check on the hot
chocolate." Behind him, he could hear Alejo gathering up his coat, the chair scraping back into
position under the table. He waited until his student left the room, then sat down on the tile
across from his daughter and prepared to wait with her until she was ready to move. "Someday,"
he promised, "we're going to laugh about this."

They sat together, separated, the young professor in his suit and tie, and the teenager wearing the
female version of his face and too-large sweats.

"I can hear the ocean," she replied, speaking to the floor.

"I know, honey," he answered sadly, because that was all she knew how to say anymore.

****

Famous last words, Lisa thought, as she closed the door to her dorm room. It was just after 1:30
in the morning. The coffee shop had closed and the library wouldn't become 24 hour until next
week.

She slung her backpack into the corner and rolled back her head, trying to loosen some of the
tenseness in her neck and back. Tanya still wasn't back, she noted, her eyes falling on the empty
top bunk. That wasn't much of a surprise. She might wander in eventually, or it might be days
before she returned. Like the time she ducked out for a bag of Doritos. Six days later, she
returned, with no clear explanation of where she'd been. And without the chips.

The answering machine was flashing. Lisa crossed over to the heavy wooden desk on which it sat
and pushed the playback button. There were five messages.

"Lisa, honey," the first one said, in the careful tones of someone doing her best to stay calm. "I
know you're probably in class. Call me when you get back."

She cringed; it was her mom. The only person who couldn't take "we're not in; we'll return your
call when we are" as an acceptable reason for someone not to answer the phone. She had
forgotten to call her mom.

"Dear, I had to step out for a minute. Hopefully, I didn't miss your call. It's dinner time and I was
hoping to talk to you. It's so hard to sit here and eat at this big table without you. Please call
back."

She glanced at her watch. It was far too late to call her mom now. It was possible that her mom
was still up, still pacing around like she always did. Lisa could practically smell the brownies
baking. On the chance that she wasn't however . . . and, Lisa'd been warned about making early
morning phone calls unless there was a hospital involved. With a beep, the machine started
playing the next message.

"Lisa, where are you? It's been dark for hours. It gets dark so early this time of year and I just
worry about you so much, having to walk across that great big campus by yourself in the dark.
You just never know what can happen to a pretty girl like you."

Beep.

The next message started, and there was nothing calm about her mom's voice anymore, fake or
otherwise. "Young lady, I don't care if you're laying dead in a ditch. You'd better pick up that
phone-"

Lisa slammed her hand on the delete button. "You have no new messages," the machine
informed her, in its polite, assembled speech.

"Thank you," Lisa breathed.

How many times did they have to go through this? They'd been through finals twice before. The
first time, Lisa sat her mother down and explained what was going on. The problem with a
mother who never went to college herself was that she couldn't, or refused, to understand the
nature of the beast.

"It means I'm going to be out a lot," Lisa remembered trying to explain. "I'll be at the library."

Arms akimbo, her mother answered, "And there are no phones at the library?"

"Of course there are phones. In the lobby. I won't be in the lobby. I'll be where the books are. If I
have to go down to the lobby to call you all the time, I'll never get any studying done. I'm
eighteen years old," she said. "You should trust me to take care of myself."

A look of hurt crossed her mother's face. With a rush of words, Mrs. Davis covered it up. "I trust
you. You know that. It's the people out there," she said, with a sweep of her arm, "who are trying
to take my little girl away from me. I don't trust them. You need to be careful."

The conversation didn't end there. It never did.

As much as she loved her, Lisa decided that her mother was just going to have to wait until
tomorrow for that phone call. She grabbed her Anatomy text book from the bookshelf and settled
down at her desk to look over the diagram of muscles before going to bed.

****

That night Lisa dreamed. One minute she'd been staring at the Anatomy text; the next she was
standing in a child's bedroom, one she'd never seen before. The walls were painted a soft yellow
with a bright floral runner framing the ceiling. Two beds occupied most of the room, each
covered in a thick white duvet with lace trim, barely visible through a mound of lacy pillows and
stuffed animals. The room felt bright and cheerful and unimportant.

Feeling too awake to be asleep, she was reminded of another dream once: Of the first time she
teleported, and the first time she met another teleporter. The beaches of Tapahini bore no
resemblance to this space. Not physically. But there was an overwhelming sense of deja vu. She'd
been here before, wherever 'here' was.

"Hello?" she called, her voice sounding distant. "Is anyone here?"

She strained her ears, and heard nothing. If this was a dream, it was unlike any she could
remember. Digging her nails into her other forearm, she held it until the grasping hand started to
tremble. Nothing else changed.

"Okay . . . ." she said, as she started looking for anything that would answer any of the six basic
questions.

Her eyes found the door, a simple wooden affair. She reached out to grasp the doorknob.

"That's not the way," someone said. "Not the way at all."

Lisa turned a circle, but found no speaker. The room was just as empty and still as when she first
arrived, even the lacy drapes in the windows didn't move. The sound seemed to begin and end in
her head. But this wasn't telepathy. Telepathy didn't use words, not as such. For the Tomorrow
People to say that one talked telepathically or heard someone's telepathic voice was an
inadequate description at best, but it was the only way they knew. This sounded like someone
talking directly into her head, like listening to herself think. She realized that was also how her
own calls had sounded.

"Come out!" Lisa demanded. "I'm tired of this game."

"This isn't a game," the voice returned. The air to the left of the door shimmered, thickened into a
teenaged girl with long tea brown hair and china blue eyes. The girl looked pained to see Lisa,
her eyebrows drawn and face twisted as if she were hurting. "How did you get here?"

"You're asking *me*?" Lisa responded.

The girl disappeared back into the air, then coalesced on the right side of the door. "You can hear
me?" she asked, crossing her arms protectively in front of her.

"Should I not be able to?"

The girl tilted her head to the side before saying, "No one's ever answered before."

Big surprise, Lisa thought. The girl didn't seem to understand when a joke had gone on too long.
"What are *you* doing here?" she asked. With any luck, she'd get a straight answer and then they
could all go home and get on with their lives.

"Waiting."

Lisa sighed. No luck. "Waiting for what?"

The girl faded out, then back in. She didn't change positions, but she gave an impression of
movement, as if she were shaking.

When no answer was forthcoming, Lisa gestured to the door. "Why don't you leave?" She
reached for the knob again, and was stopped by something that felt like a slap on the wrist,
though the girl still hadn't moved and she could sense no one else present.

"No!" came the panicked response. "You can't go there, Lisa Davis. Don't go there!"

Lisa blinked. The next question caught in her throat as she realized what the girl had said: The
girl had known her name. Had this been a normal dream, that wouldn't have been interesting at
all. But this had never been a normal dream, if it was a dream at all. Lisa didn't have to search to
find the girl's name in return: Sara Grimm. She only knew of one context where names where
exchanged without introduction. Tomorrow People always recognized one another. Maybe it was
an offshoot of their telepathic abilities, or maybe it was something else.

Then, before Lisa could figure out how to respond to the last statement, the dream was gone and
she was laying awake in her bed.