Chapter 5

Elena stares at her bedroom ceiling with disgust. It's a beautiful summer Sunday morning; a perfect time to laze in bed, daydream, and plan out exactly how far she's going to let a certain boy get the next time they're alone. But, after a night of apparently dreamless sleep, she is now completely awake, and cannot lie still.

Sighing, she rolls over, and cranes her neck to see the clock on the nightstand. 7:38 AM.

Gross!

She rolls on to her back again, and closes her eyes. Even more frustrating than her inability to sleep in is the fact that she hasn't had any viewings since observing Gavin's father yesterday. Normally, she has one or two short visions in one day, but sometimes has been bombarded with multiple occurrences in a single hour. It's rare, requires her to seek isolation so that no one else will notice, and the frantic rapidity of those episodes always gives her a splitting headache, but total silence from her dreamscape is almost worse. In her experience, the total absence of viewings means she's reached a plateau in her life, and some sort of decisive action on her part is required. The only question is, what?

Elena sits up, swings her feet off the bed, and, grabbing a robe, heads for the bathroom. If she can't enjoy a slothful morning dreaming about Gavin's body, at least she can get clean. The house around her is silent, and both of her sister's bedroom doors are closed.

She walks into the bathroom, tosses her robe over the open door, and turns on the water in the bathtub. Adjusting the faucet so that it's on the hottest setting possible, she waits for the water to heat up.

Should she somehow contrive to tell Gavin that his father is gay? Would learning that truth bind them together? After the months of viewings, developing a close relationship with Gavin had become her ultimate goal, but what will sharing this unattractive bit of truth do except cause him pain? It would almost certainly drive a wedge in-between Gavin and his father, but if that happened, might he simply return to California to live with his mother? Hardly the result she's looking for.

Pulling up on the lever to redirect the water to the shower head, she steps under the hot spray, flicks a few stray hairs over her shoulder, closes the shower curtain, and reaches for the soap and body sponge. And then, there's the flip side. What if she remains silent, tells him nothing, and he eventually learns the truth, and asks her whether she knew? Would he ever be able to trust her after that? By her own design, he now knows her secret, and she remembers quite clearly his response upon learning about her ability. Not, 'Are you sure?' or 'How does it work?' but with calm acceptance, 'Do you still have dreams?'

She growls in frustration, and rubs ferociously at her arms and belly with the soapy sponge. It isn't supposed to be this fucking hard to decide what to do.

Unfortunately, she has never been able to manage any sort of control over what or whom the dreamscape shows her. When asleep, she is simply pulled into that future world, allowed to witness an event, and then pushed out. When awake, it's as though she's looking through a window into someone's house. The only pattern is that the events she witnesses have always been personally significant to her; never generalized viewings of natural disasters, terrorist acts, or other world events. She knew when her mother began contemplating whether or not to date Bob, when their relationship turned intimate, and when he finally decided to ask her to marry him.

Her viewings of Gavin had been unique because he was such an enigma to her. Here was someone whom she had never met, and, as far as she could tell, wasn't connected to her by friends, family, or anything else. He had simply appeared in her dreamscape one day. After that initial appearance, her viewings of him had become more and more frequent, as though the dreamscape was trying to focus her exclusive attention on him. If, in fact, that had been the intention, the strategy had proven to be wildly successful.

It had been something like reading a serialized story in a magazine. Gavin, in the starring role, hadn't seemed all that interesting at first, just your average teenage boy with a pretty uneventful life. It had been the mystery of why she was being shown his everyday life in such vivid detail--a single nighttime viewing often revealing what appeared to be a full day of his life--which had initially captured her attention. She saw him talking to friends, brushing his teeth, drawing cartoon characters in class instead of paying attention, girl watching, playing with Mac, almost everything. The only two people who had remained hidden from her viewings of his life had been Gavin's parents. Their absence from her visions was so complete that when his life had been turned upside down, she hadn't realized at first why he was so upset. It was only when Gavin finally confessed to his best friend, Ken, that his parents were getting a divorce that she fully understood what was going on.

Elena's body is now covered in suds from head to foot, and putting down the soap and sponge, she steps back under the pounding spray with a contented sigh. Leaning her head back so that the water pours over her face and cascades through her hair, she wishes that Gavin is here with her now. She remembers how he looked at her last night before climbing out of the bedroom window, and smiles.

What had addicted her to Gavin all those months ago hadn't been the viewings of his everyday existence. It happened the fourth or maybe fifth time he appeared to her. He had been alone in his bedroom, sitting in front of a desk with half a dozen open textbooks and scattered papers. No homework was being done though. Instead, Gavin was clicking away at something on his computer screen, and, from her angle, she hadn't realized at first what it was. Tiny pictures? Thumbnails of ... Girls! Gavin's gaze locked on one image in particular, and, after more clicking, it expanded.

Elena was not particularly impressed. The girl's hair was nice, but the tits were obviously fake, and the position she'd been filmed in looked decidedly uncomfortable. She was leaning forward, her face pressed against the floor, with both of her improbably sized breasts hanging down. Her legs were spread as far open as she could manage, of course, and she appeared to be inserting...

Is that a banana? Dude, we gotta find you some better porn!

Gavin's eyes had grown wide during Elena's mental critique of the model's appearance. Not surprisingly unconcerned with the finer points of reality, he had begun struggling to remove his pants and underwear. Elena, at first amused, and then embarrassed, could, of course, not stop watching. Gavin's eyes, although fastened on the screen in front of him, held a far away look, as though focused on some internal fantasy of his own. Pants and underwear discarded, his hands moved between his legs; touching, stroking, unknowingly displaying his most private self to her.

Tethered to him, she had felt herself melting inside, his heightened sensations drifting to her across the link. Even though he had no idea she was there, it had felt almost like she was sharing the moment. No longer embarrassed, she had drifted as close to his body as possible, reaching, striving somehow to touch, but never permitted to do so.

The memory of that first time in her dreamscape with him, his pumping hand, his body taut and stretching towards orgasm, has her panting underneath the shower's spray. Making love with Gavin yesterday had been intoxicating because she could finally touch him, but this experience is thrilling for another reason. Her own hands are busy; the right tracing delicate circles in-between her lower lips, the left massaging and then tugging on her right breast by its nipple. The heat of the water, its insistent thrumming pressure, is pulsing through her body. She is climbing, spiraling upwards towards her eventual release, desperately wanting to scream out loud.

In her mind, Gavin and her own unseen awareness climax simultaneously, and, for the briefest of instants, they touch. His body, the bedroom around her, everything suddenly takes on a sparkling clarity. A powerless observer no longer, she can feel!

And then, it is gone.

There is a stranger sitting at the kitchen table when Gavin comes downstairs Sunday morning. He looks like a body builder. Large muscles cover his oversized frame, and Gavin is astonished that all of him fits in one chair. His father is making coffee, and neither one of them gives any sign of having heard his descent.

A cop?

Had someone besides Laura seen him jump from Elena's roof last night?

"I don't care what you paid for it," the big man says emphatically, "it's a rip off. I'll grant you, Michael's boys used to build one of the best boxes in the industry, but now?" He shakes his head in disgust. "Total crap!"

"What," his father objects, turning with two cups of coffee in his hands, "I should've let you build me one, and relied on your sterling technical support? Oh, good morning, Gavin." He hands a cup to the stranger, sets down his own coffee, and beckons Gavin forward. "This is my friend, Bill. Bill, my son Gavin."

Bill reaches out, takes Gavin's offered hand, and does not crush it to a bloody pulp. "Nice to meet you," he rumbles.

"Hello," Gavin says, reclaiming his hand.

"You'll have to forgive my son's eloquence," his Dad apologizes, "he's usually not awake until well after 2:00 PM. When did you finally get home last night, anyway?"

Bill saves him from having to come up with a response by raising a beefy hand. "Just a minute, Al. Before you ground him for life, I have a question for the boy." He turns to Gavin. "Hypothetical situation. You're a burglar. You break into a house..."