I'm so sick, so keyed up. My dreams have been fever-bright, and I wake up gazing into the past. And maybe I'll turn into a pillar of salt of I stare too long. If I keep looking back. But I can't remember my dreams, just that they swirl with stars and are blood hot.

I can't even write that well (my handwriting must give me away, shaky as it is. I bet you already knew I couldn't hold my pen.)

Okay.

Okay. (I stumbled to the bathroom, splashing water on my face, letting it run in a river down my neck and dotting my T-shirt.)

Okay. I'm okay.

Lacy's phone rang to wake me, and it's hard to recall a time when I've been more grateful for being hauled from the depths of my subconsciousness, for being pulled out from the tides of my sleep and my memory.

Sorry. Sorry about the handwriting.

I can't think about the dreams now. Dreams are smoke. Little wisps, burned away by sunshine. Sometimes, they linger a little longer, though, especially at night. Even if I don't remember them exactly, a shiver rolls down my spine when I think about how heavy they are. I'll forget the dreams under the city noise, under the whisper of Lacy's voice on the phone.

(But I don't. The phone and whispers just tug out a different memory, one that spreads out before me. This time, though, there will be no call to drag me from the past.)

A shimmering chime, and you glance at your phone, unsure who's calling this time. It rotates: Jay yesterday, Lacy earlier this week, Sam and Nick intermittently. The only people you consistently answer for are Clair and classmates you're doing group projects with.

The screen blazes with Lacy's name, as well as a photo of the two of you at a football game (holding a sign that reads "Who hates Iowa??" Sam hadn't been able to sneak his in because, apparently "Fuck the Badgers," was considered profane.)

You punch 'decline' and Lacy is sent to voicemail.

"Want to grab dinner?"

Clair blinks and sets aside her textbook. "What'd you have in mind?"

"Chinese?"

And that's that.

When you leave the restaurant, you (nearly literally) run into your friends. Lacy and Jay and Sam and Nick all appear flushed from the night, shoving each other the way they do. When Lacy catches your eye, she arches an eyebrow, but if she's got an acidic comment, she keeps it to herself.

"Well if I knew the party was at Village Wok, I would've gone there instead," Sam drawls.

You're annoyed that he needs to relieve the tension. You're not ignoring them or anything. It's just different when they're around. (Not bad, exactly, just not the same depth you feel when it's just you and Clair.) But that's hard to say without sounding like an asshole.

"Want to hang out?" Jay asks. "We've got some wine and Sam finally fixed his N64."

"Mario Kart, baby."

When Nick shoots Lacy a wink behind Sam's back, she grimaces. "Now, I don't want to hang out with us."

Clair doesn't look at you, and you don't look at her. "I've got a ton of homework," you hear yourself say. "This was just a break to get out of our room."

The excuse sounds weak, but Clair nods, bolstering your words. "Unless you guys want to write up my lab report for me..." Her eyes glitter star-bright and lips twitch into a smile.

"Nope," Nick says, "I'm never writing another one." He thumps Jay and Sam on the back simultaneously. "My buddies here might."

They both wince, likely thinking about the next three years, papered with lab reports.

"You still have the rest of the semester," Lacy says, but Nick ignores her.

The conversation boils away after that, awkward and stilted. And when you wave goodbye, splitting off from them at Centen, you try and work through it.

It doesn't feel like distance with them, though maybe it is. It feels more like you and Clair have been stitched together by the golden thread of the Fates. Everything else is behind a pane of glass: charming and enchanting, but you're very aware that it's not real. (A village in a snow-globe, a staged photograph.)

These thoughts have drifted away by the time you unlock the room, though. You'd moved in more-or-less right after Thanksgiving, and Clair's and your things are strewn and jumbled on the floor. You prod a pile of clothes off the end of the futon and flop down, observing the starscape above.

"I don't want to go to class tomorrow."

"I'll email my prof," Clair says, flipping open her laptop. She fakes a cough. "It seems like I'm coming down with something."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah." Her grin stretches. "I believe it's called 'Vitamin M. deficiency.'"

You snort. "And they'll buy that?"

"Who cares? What do you want to do tomorrow?"

You were the one who'd suggested skipping, but like usual, you hadn't thought much beyond that. "Ummm..."

Clair frowns, her fingers pausing their flow of words. "Yeah, I wasn't sure either."

Stifled silence. "Bell Museum?"

"And M. with the game winning point! Right at the buzzer, too."

You grin. "Be serious."

"I am. I forgot about the museum. What else were we going to do? Laze around here all day? Go to class?" Her face mutates in mock horror.

"Horrible, really."

"That's what I'm saying. Look what you saved us from."

And the night drifts, the way it usually does. And the day dawns late, as you've decided not to attend your classes. When you grab breakfast, you feel a nervous lurch in your stomach. Well, that and excitement thrumming through your bloodstream.

Between Thanksgiving and now, you've skipped an astronomical number of classes. To be fair, you and Clair still make time for homework, but it's hard to get to class when it's time for you to leave. You watch the numbers tick by in digital red (accusing "You're Late," numbers), and soon they've passed the deadline you'd set for yourself, and you and Clair end up walking to Dinkytown or strolling down to that bubble tea place she likes on Washington or hopping on the bus to Uptown to window-shop for the afternoon.

But still. It never seemed like intentionally cutting class. Just like a different kind of education (a film in Technicolor instead of a faded photograph. Clair likes that metaphor when you tell her, but it's not subtle or clever or anything. Maybe if you went to class you'd be able to construct better ones. So it goes.)

So, an intentional adventure.

You huddle together on the way to the museum. It's not far, but the recent cold snap has been sudden and extreme. To you, it seems as though the freeze has bleached the world: pale and tired greys, bone-white snow. And while there's something beautiful in that, you're more than happy to get back indoors.

Clair scuffs her boots on the rug in the lobby. It's dry, and she leaves sopping streaks in thick lines. You follow suit, but when she looks away from you, you elbow her in the ribs. She whips around, smiling, before nudging you back.

Messages flow between you without words. Her freckles jumping or your eyebrows knitting together. A playful shove towards the first exhibit. Quiet and loud.

The museum isn't a grand affair, but neither of you have been there before, so it's laid out like a surprise. Halls and stairs and rooms all twined together. You'd known it was a natural history museum, but the walls of staged and dead animals still sort of spooks you. Birds leaping into flight trailed by foxes with gleaming jaws, snapping at them. Glossy, lifeless eyes. Beetles entombed under glass.

"It's sort of creepy," you say. A pale deer stares ahead, unaware of a pair of encroaching wolves.

"Oh?" Clair wrinkles her nose.

"Just. Animals like that. Staring at you with beady eyes."

Clair, nose to nose with a squirrel perched on a log, glances over her shoulder at you. She smiles, "It's better than art museums. Creepy paintings staring at you." She bends her fingers, hands claw-like, and lunges at you.

"Hey!" You leap backwards, tripping over the overturned corner of a rug.

Clair catches your wrist, and musses your hair with her other hand. "Besides," she continues on as though nothing happened, "They teach about conservation and shit."

"And shit? Very scientific."

"Right. Conservation and scat."

You shake your head, and turn your attention to a small plaque about some kind of songbird.

"I'm surprised you don't know what that is." You jump because she'd snuck right up to your ear.

You swear, and she laughs, the sound bubbly and wonderfully alive in this place. When you've recovered yourself (hand pressed to your neck, your pulse jumping as quickly as you did), you ask, "Okay, genius, what is it?"

"I'm just surprised," Clair draws out the word, "That you've never seen a miniature Peruvian spotted dragon before. Sadly, this little guy didn't make it out of infancy." She clucks her tongue.

"Are you an expert on, uh, Peruvian dragons?"

"Spotted. Miniature. And no." She frowns at the bird.

And that is how your afternoon goes. You skip from one diorama to the next, pointing out whatever you want her to explain (Short-spined crocogater. Purple frost toad. Bolivian mermaid.)

Clair leans on a glass-topped table of back-lit bugs, pointing at a stripped one. "What's that?" She rests her chin in her hands, batting her eyes expectantly.

"It's a—" Words, words, words. "—South Dakota Zebra hissing beetle."

She grins, and whirls to the next creature, yellow hair streaming behind her. You follow, on and on and on. And when you're done, you step back out into the bite of the wind.