In front of her a sea of people clapped wildly as they screamed and waved their arms. All those faced turned up towards her made Emma swallow hard. She felt as though she were in two places at once. For a second she thought she was having some sort of weird memory flashback because some of the dreams she’d had the night before were strangely similar to this one—standing on stage, microphone near her mouth, except nothing she’d dreamed was precisely like this. She had an excellent memory, a freakish memory, her friend Julie claimed sometimes, and this was not the same crowd, not the same stage she’d been on before in her dream. She swallowed again. She’d never been on stage in her life, at least not with a guitar in her hands. All of her stages involved talking to students about the Dewey Decimal system. Suddenly, a wave of confusion flowed through her. She closed her eyes and rested her fingers on the strings of her guitar, wondering what the fuck was happening. When she opened her eyes, she stood at the edge of the stage, frowning down at the clipboard she held. Thick bracelets sat over her wrists, the chased silver riveted into the cuffs looking bright against the soft leather. The name at the top of the clipboard read “Duncan Green,” and she licked her lips as the face associated with that name flashed across her thoughts—dark hair, brown eyes, gorgeous smile. Then she blinked and she was back to hanging on the bathroom sink, trembling. Shit. What just happened?
She slid down, sitting on the toilet lid, trying to pull herself together. She never cursed like that, not even in her own head. The most obscene expletive she ever used was damn, and it was telling that her brain supplied her with the word “fuck” right in the middle of her nervous breakdown. She wasn’t sure what it meant, just that it was downright strange. She struggled to breathe properly, willing herself to calm down. She was always calm. She didn’t freak out, and she didn’t have hysterics, and this ability to remain laid-back was one of her strengths as a teacher. She repeated this to herself, snorting under her breath when she flinched at a knock on the door. Not so calm, huh?
“You okay in there, Emma? I thought I heard something,” Julie called.
Emma swallowed and stood up, forcibly pushing thoughts of Duncan Green, rock star, out of her head. “I’m okay, Julie, just feeling tired today.” She lifted her blouse from the bottom of the sink and held the stained part under the faucet again. “I’m trying to rinse out the stain now.”
“Okay, Emma, just wanted to check.”
Emma sighed in relief as Julie stepped away from the door. Her thoughts wandered back to the hallucination, and she grimaced as she tried to puzzle out what had just happened, trying to think over the ache in her skull. She liked music but didn’t go out of her way to buy a lot of it. She didn’t know much about rock, but even she knew who Duncan Green was. Even if she didn’t know his face, his gorgeous face, her brain supplied, she’d still know who he was because Julie’s obsession with everything Duncan was well known to everyone who worked in the library. Usually Emma found it amusing, but right now she just wished the weirdness would stop. Emma couldn’t figure out why she was dreaming about him. Or hallucinating him. Whatever. And what about the other man, the one with the leather bracelets? Julie never mentioned him, but Emma knew, somehow, that he was associated with Duncan. She didn’t know how or why she knew that, but she remembered him from her dreams last night, how his curly hair made her want to sink her hands in it. He was the second man in her dream from this morning, she realized. She wished she knew his name. And that meant that the first man in her last dream must have been Duncan Green. She shivered, remembering how good his body felt against hers. She took a deep breath, trying to figure out why she was seeing these two men so vividly now, while awake. The dreams and hallucinations were connected, somehow. She shook her head and shut off the water. She looked at herself in the mirror, noting the dark circles under her hazel eyes, her messy brown hair. Shit.
She wrung out her blouse and hung it up with a spare hanger on the back of the door. There was no way it would dry in time to wear again today, so she slipped on her pink sweater and buttoned it up, relieved that it looked okay with her gray pleated skirt. She squared her shoulders, smoothed down her long hair, and opened the door. For a moment she felt a surge of something, not fear precisely, but not relief either, and she scanned the office, thankful that both Julie and Portia were off in the stacks, probably helping students. Walking through the clutter, she stopped at Julie’s desk and watched her screen saver for a few seconds. Various photos of Duncan Green in all his rock star glory faded in and out of view on the monitor. He was lovely, she mused, looking at his long, wavy hair and brown eyes, usually lined with some smoky makeup, every woman’s dream bad boy right there. In a few of the shots, the more casual photographs, she noticed another man standing behind him, holding what looked like papers in his leather-cuffed wrists. His hair was shorter, and his green eyes practically leapt from the picture, making Emma’s heart pound before the screen saver blinked another photo of Duncan into view. Emma had no idea who he was, but she knew he was the other man in her dream. She bumped the desk and the screen saver winked off. If only she could turn off her brain as easily.
Emma had more flashbacks throughout the rest of the day. Random bursts of vision and sound, none lasting long enough to pin down, but long enough to make her head start to pound instead of ache. She saw crowds and Duncan’s hands signing photos and pieces of paper. It was as if she was in his head, but just when she’d figure out that the point of view was Duncan’s, the hallucination would snap away and she’d be looking at him. She could hardly wait until school was done for the day so she could go home and crawl under the covers of her bed. She’d taken ibuprofen, but it didn’t do a thing to relieve the pain behind her eyes. At lunchtime, she hid in the library office, eating her sandwich alone while the visions flew past her closed eyes. She wondered if she was going crazy. She thought at first that maybe she just hadn’t slept well, but she’d never hallucinated before. By four o’clock, she was almost crying from the stress. She’d spent the afternoon dodging questions from Julie and Portia. She didn’t feel like trying to explain what was wrong when she didn’t understand herself what was happening.
After the last bell, she was finally able to escape, for once not lugging anything home with her to work on in the evening. She worried about driving, hoping none of the episodes would happen on the way home, but luckily the drive home was uneventful. She pulled into her short driveway, waved to her neighbor, and went into her small house, grateful to be home. She prepared a quick dinner, ate it standing up at the kitchen counter, then stripped and fell into bed, desperate for sleep. She dropped off right away, slipping into a heavy sleep despite the early hour.
The next thing she knew, it was dark and she was sitting up in bed, heart pounding. She flicked on the small bedside light and tried to calm herself, blindly looking around at her soothing cream walls and pale yellow curtains. The streetlight outside filtered through the soft fabric, twinkling in the darkness of her room. She didn’t feel rested at all.