Elsewhere Read Free Page A

Honestly, Liz, it isn’t any worse than the hole in my head.”
    “Hole in your head?” Curtis asks. “Could I see it?”
    “Of course.” Flattered, Thandi forgets all about Liz and begins to raise her braids.
    The thought of seeing the hole and the arm at the same time is too much for Liz. “Excuse me,” she says.
    Liz runs outside onto the main deck of the ship. All around her, older people in various styles of white pajamas are playing shuffleboard. She leans over the ship’s railing and stares into the water. The water is too far away for her to see her reflection in it, but if she leans far enough over, she can sort of see her shadow—an indistinct, small darkness in the middle of an expanse of blue.
    I am dreaming, she thinks, and any moment, my alarm clock will sound, and I will wake up.
    Wake up, wake up, wake up, she wills herself. Liz pinches herself on the arm as hard as she can. “Ow,” she says. She slaps herself across the face. Nothing. And then she slaps herself again. Still nothing. She closes her eyes as tightly as she can and then snaps them open again, hoping to find herself back in her own bed on Carroll Drive in Medford, Massachusetts.
    Liz starts to panic. Tears form in her eyes; she furiously brushes them away with her hand.
    I am fifteen years old, a mature person with a learner’s permit, three months away from an actual driver’s license, she thinks. I am too old to be having nightmares.
    She screws her eyes shut and screams, “MOM! MOM! I’M HAVING A NIGHTMARE!” Liz waits for her mother to wake her up.
    Any moment.
    Any moment, Liz’s mother should arrive at her bedside with a comforting glass of water.
    Any moment.
    Liz opens one eye. She is still on the ship’s main deck, where people have begun to stare.
    “Young lady,” says an old man with horn-rimmed glasses and the air of a substitute teacher, “you are being disruptive.”
    Liz sits down by the railing and buries her head in her hands. She takes a deep breath and tells herself to calm down. She decides that the best strategy will be to try to remember as many details of the dream as possible so she can tell her mother about it in the morning.
    But how had the dream started? Liz racks her brain. It is odd to try to recall a dream while one is still having the dream. Oh yes! Liz remembers now.
    The dream began at her house on Carroll Drive.
    She was riding her bike to the Cambridgeside Galleria. She was supposed to meet her best friend, Zooey, who needed to buy a dress for the prom. (Liz herself had not been invited yet.) Liz could remember arriving at the intersection by the mall, across the street from the bicycle racks. Out of nowhere, a taxicab came speeding toward her.
    She could remember the sensation of flying through the air, which seemed to last an eternity. She could remember feeling reckless, happy, and doomed, all at the same time. She could remember thinking, I am above gravity.
    Liz sighs. Looking at it objectively, she supposes she died in the dream. Liz wonders what it means when you die in your dreams, and she resolves to ask her mom in the morning. All at once, she wonders if going to sleep again is the answer. Maybe if she can just manage to fall asleep, the next time she wakes up, everything will be back to normal. She feels grateful to Thandi for making her memorize their cabin number.
    As Liz walks briskly back across the deck, she notices an SS Nile life preserver. Liz smiles at the ship’s name. The week before, she had been studying ancient Egypt in Mrs. Early’s world history class. While the lesson was entertaining enough (war, pestilence, plague, murder), Liz considered the whole pyramid thing a real waste of time and resources. In Liz’s opinion, a pyramid was really the same as a pine box or a Quaker oats container; by the time pharaoh got to enjoy his pyramid, he’d be dead anyway. Liz thought the Egyptians should have lived in the pyramids and been buried in their huts (or wherever it