his own, putting pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding. His strong grip comforts me, and I continue.
“I do that, sometimes—dream about her. It wakes me up every time. Except, it’s not really her, even—not that I’d really know. I have no memories of her. And it was a closed adoption, so my parents—the Mercers, I mean—won’t talk about it.”
For a moment, the kitchen is still, the low hum of the air-conditioning the only sound other than my own and Thayer’s breathing. When a few more seconds pass and Thayer doesn’t say anything, I start to panic. Maybe I shared too much. Maybe he doesn’t want to hear my lame dreams or angst about my birth parents. It’s not something I like to think about myself. I don’t even write the feelings down in my journal.
But then Thayer squeezes my hand more tightly. “That must be hard,” he says simply.
A rush of emotion washes over me. It is the best thing, the only thing, really, to say.
“Do you hope to meet her someday?” Thayer asks.
I consider this. Astonishingly, it’s a question no one has ever asked me. “I think so,” I say. “I mean, there’s part of me that’s really angry at her, of course—every adopted kid feels that way, probably. I want to know why she gave me up, why she couldn’t keep me.”
“Maybe she had a good reason.”
“Maybe.” I nod. “But more than that, I’d just like to see her. Talk to her. Figure out if we even have anything in common.” Suddenly, I feel tears blinking at the corners of my eyes. I swallow hard, horribly embarrassed. I am not going to cry around Thayer.
I give an exaggerated shrug. “Anyway, whatever. You asked what I was dreaming about, so there you have it.”
“Thanks for telling me,” Thayer says. Then he takes a breath. “I’m not a great sleeper, either.”
“Why not?”
“Insomnia, mostly. But I used to sleepwalk,” he confesses, looking sheepish. “It used to freak my parents out so badly.”
“What did you do?”
He laughs. “Well, once they came downstairs to find me sitting up on the couch in the den, remote control in hand, with an infomercial blaring.”
“And you don’t remember it?”
He shakes his head. “Nope. I was sound asleep.”
I cuff him on the arm. “They’re just lucky you didn’t order anything. They could’ve gotten stuck with a whole bunch of Snuggies.”
“Or Life Alert alarms,” Thayer jokes.
“Or those infrared flashlights that show you where your cats and dogs peed on the carpet,” I add.
We both snicker, and I’m grateful to Thayer for turning the conversation away from my mother and lightening the mood. When he pulls his hand away from mine, I realize I miss its warmth.
Then I ask, “Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever woken up?”
“In the bathtub, with the water running,” he answers without any hesitation. “I was twelve, and my parents lost it, thinking I might drown one day. My dad threatened to take me to one of those sleep specialists and run tests. You know—with the electrodes and the monitoring, like you’re some kind of lab rat. I wasn’t into it.” His eyes darken. “He was so, so angry.”
“He was worried,” I say diplomatically.
Thayer sniffs. “I don’t think so.”
I don’t say anything more, but I think I know what Thayer is getting at. This one time, Mr. Vega flipped out at Madeline because she was walking around the neighborhood barefoot. Not because he was worried that she’d step on something sharp, but because of what the neighbors would think. I’m not saying he wasn’t concerned about Thayer drowning in the bathtub, of course, but I wonder if some of his anger was because the whole thing was an added complication, an annoyance, an oddity, for him.
“Parents are weird, aren’t they?” I ask softly.
Thayer nods. “You said it.”
We look at each other like we have a special sort of understanding. I want to reach out, to brush a hand across the sharp angles of his cheekbones, to tilt his gaze back to me. Or, at the very least, grab his hand and squeeze it tight. But I realize I’m scared. What if he pulls away? What if he laughs?
“So do you still sleepwalk?” I ask.
“Nah.” Thayer shakes his head. “I grew out of it, I guess. But I still have anxiety dreams all the time. My big one is showing at up school and realizing I’m in my underwear.”
“That one’s a classic.”
“Do you dream about that, too?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No, I