Free Dreamland by Robert L. Anderson

Connor’s dad and stepmom came home, Connor introduced her as his friend. The word sounded sweet to her, like a long, sunny dream about a picnic.
    Before she left, she pretended to get lost on the way to the bathroom and pocketed one of Connor’s swim medals. Just in case.

SEVEN
    She had two friends now. It was a new reality; it was as though gravity had lessened and everything had become easier, lighter.
    Instead of waiting with Gollum at the bus stop for Morgan Devoe or Hailey Madison to peg them with empty soda cans, Dea and Gollum were riding to school in Connor’s Tahoe. At lunch, she, Connor, and Gollum split french fries and debated whether mayonnaise was an acceptable condiment. (Gollum was a yes, Connor a firm no.)
    They went to the homecoming pep rally together, all three of them, and sat together on the bleachers huddled under an enormous blanket that Gollum had found in the horse barn (it stillsmelled like hay). They ignored the game, and instead pretended to be sociologists witnessing alien social groups and arcane mating rituals. By group consensus, they vetoed the dance and instead drove Connor’s car to the middle of an abandoned farm, and had a midnight picnic in the field with corn chips and spiked hot chocolate Connor had brought in a thermos. On Halloween, they dressed up like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Gollum was the jelly and wore all purple. Dea was the peanut butter and wore all brown. And Connor didn’t wear anything special, but kept squishing them into enormous bear hugs and shouting, “Sandwich!”
    Connor either didn’t notice that he’d made friends with the two biggest losers at Fielding, or he didn’t care. He never teased Gollum about her clothing or the fact that she was on the subsidy program at lunch, although he teased her about everything else—shipping Harry and Hermione (“how obvious”), listening to Led Zeppelin, refusing to pee in public restrooms. And he never said anything about the rumors, which Dea was sure he must have heard: that Dea and her mom were cannibals. That Dea and her mom were zombies. That they sucked the blood out of local animals, and worshipped the devil. He never asked her why she had to sit out in gym, either, or why she sometimes lost her breath even if they hadn’t been walking fast.
    Connor made no secret about hating Fielding almost as much as Dea and Gollum did. When he passed his cousin, Will Briggs, in the halls, Dea noticed that they barely spoke to each other. Will sometimes muttered hi. Connor sometimes nodded. That was it.
    She was happy. She didn’t worry too much about it. Shedidn’t wonder why Will Briggs almost seemed afraid to meet Connor’s eyes, as if Connor might hex him.
    She didn’t hear the rumors about Connor—whispered stories about what had happened to his mom and baby brother all those years ago; rumors that it was Connor’s fault. That he’d done it and only made up that crazy cover story afterward, of the intruder he hadn’t seen. That his dad had orchestrated a cover-up to keep Connor from getting shoved in a mental institution. That some woman was writing a book about it and was going to tell the truth.
    She didn’t hear any of it. How would she? Connor and Gollum were the only two people she talked to.

PART TWO
    Once upon a time, there was a pregnant woman who dreamed of a woman, also with child. The woman who dreamed was very sick. The doctors said she was dying. She hadn’t woken in two whole days, hadn’t spoken or stirred.
    But only dreamed, and dreamed, and dreamed.
    And as she lay in her hospital bed, sheathed in sheets as cold as a thick layer of ice, she dreamed of the other woman, belly taut and round as a bowl, lying in the middle of a field of snow. But the snow drifted like feathers, and warmed, too, and the dream woman was laughing, her mouth open to the sky, her pink tongue exposed.
    And the real woman could