Work Text:
She was certain one of them was dead. That was her conclusion when she first met her- either she was dead, and heaven was weird, or her many many suspicious were correct: ghosts (see: existed. See: haunting her).
It felt more real than it should have when she first blinked open her eyes on a glass landscape, her head swimming and the ground below her mist, sheen, and something ethereal. It felt genuine, corporeal and she believed it the way that people believe dreams.
It was raining, clear blue tendrils that connected the sky to ground and made the air heavy with plinking sounds of raindrops. She swore she heard a city down below but the rain drowned it out.
The sky was an off-color green that poured icy sheets of rain on her head, she shivered and stumbled in the ground fog.
Despite the chill and the downpour, she could see perfectly fine ahead of herself.
She felt a certain level of dread, the type of dread you feel in dreams because you always know something is going to happen and the dream wants you to know.
She steps forward, searching the empty landscape and balling up her nightgown in her hands.
She opens her mouth to say something but finds a face materializing before her in the rain, maybe she had always been there.
She was a girl around her age with spiky black hair and a small stature. She had something like a scar on her forehead and large, surprised hazel eyes.
Lapis tilts her head and tries to think about saying hello.
The rain comes down and they stand on the glass surface with her toes tingling, “I’m dreaming.” She says it out loud, but she’s not sure she believes herself.
The girl appears to reach for something on her face and then misses. She had loose green pajamas with an alien on the front.
“This is a new one.” It was almost a whisper and Lapis’s eyebrows skyrocket, she didn’t quite understand, but it was fading before she could do anything.
“Wait!” She calls, a hollow echo against the glass and her hands feel like cotton as the world closes in around her. “Wait!”
She was thirteen and woke up in a cold sweet with a bed that was covered in rain droplets. Her eyes go wide, she feels the bed all around herself. It was damp.
“Mooom!” She jumps up from her bed and scrambles to the kitchen, her mom was already sipping her coffee and listening to NPR, “Mom!” She skids in across the tiles.
“Lapis,” She says calmly, “Have you brushed your teeth?”
“My bed!” Lapis said breathlessly, “I had a dream, it was raining, a girl was there,” She searches the air breathlessly, “And I woke up wet!”
Her older self would access that she could have phrased that better.
Her mom’s eyebrows skyrocketed, “Lapis,” Her voice came out with a knife’s edge, she took her by the elbow, “We don’t,” She massaged the bridge of her nose, “Okay, I have a book for you to read. But in the future, we don’t bring up things like that.”
Lapis was very confused and very certain she wasn’t understanding.
Of course, a good long book about the birds and the bees shut her right up about it for awhile.
———
The vision of the small girl with dark hair and edged glasses didn’t cease.
They were relentless, her image was in every picture in her dreams, her standing in the middle of a city fountain as she held her pants up, in the clouds as Lapis flew. Lapis had a lot of flying dreams. She was always watching.
She was silent usually, sometimes murmuring to herself, “I can’t believe I was talked into this.” And “Winners don’t have to go to cram school mom, come ooooon.”
Her face, her voice, her smell of slight chamomile tea and copper imprinted in Lapis’s brain like a stain.
And she very rarely got to talk to her. The dreams and visions were short and annoying and made her whole body tense.
“Hey!” She yelled as the girl on one particular night- when she was riding her bike through an underpass at the time. “Hey, turn around!”
The girl didn’t and Lapis darkly let her go. “Goddamn rude ghosts.”
She came up with a plan.
—————-
She was 14 and she was kneeling on her carpet, contemplating the flame at the end of her lighter and lowering it toward the buried wick of a candle.
“Do we really need candles Lapis? Really?” A gruff voice asks her with a surly gravel to it, they were the same age but the other girl loomed over her like a wolf next to a terrier. Lapis was the terrier.
Lapis scowled, “Yes, really,” She snapped, “We are going to do this right.”
Jasper rolled her eyes and leaned over with her chin in her hand, “I don’t think it works like this.”
Lapis shakes her head and managed to light the last candle, the ones she smuggled out of her aunt’s house two at a time until she could fill her room.
“Shhh,” She hushes her, “Just put your hand on the planchette.”
“The what?” Jasper asked in delight.
“The eye thing. The thing with the hole in it.” Lapis had two fingers on the piece of wood.
Jasper was laughing, “Oh my God, planchette. This game is so much bullshit, planchette.”
“Shut up,” Lapis focuses on the Ouija board and Jasper puts her finger on it as well, Lapis takes a deep breath to steady herself, “Spirits!” She barks and Jasper jumps, “Why do you send this pale nerd to me every night?!” She demanded hoarsely into the open air.
She waits for a tingling in her fingers and something, something to happen. The planchette starts to move.
Lapis holds her breath, trying not to shiver or falter.
“A,” She says breathlessly, she watches carefully as the wood piece moves inch by inch, gliding across the dark painted letters. “S,” She leans forward, “S.”
She hunches over in realization, “Goddamit Jasper!” Lapis picks up the planchette and throws it at her head.
“I couldn’t help it!” Jasper was cackling and Lapis fumed.
“This is serious! Ass? Really. There’s like ten other funny words to spell anyway.” She huffed with her arms crossed across her chest.
Jasper chuckled and shook her head, “It’s just a dream Lap,” She reached out toward her, tucking a piece of Lapis’s hair behind her ear. Lapis has a mixture of emotions: sickly butterflies that dug into her gut and made her bite her bottom lip like a grave digger into soft earth.
“It’s weird,” Lapis looks at the ceiling, “I’ve looked it up. Everyone in your dream is supposed to be a face you’ve seen before. I’ve never seen her in my life!”
“Are you sure?” Jasper was lulling back on the carpet and looking bored. “We see ads and TV all the time- you probably just forgot seeing her. It’s not some conspiracy. Or..oooh, ghost conspiracy.”
Lapis threaded her fingers through her hair, shaking the strands loose, “You got a better explanation? Because dreams don’t work like mine do.”
Jasper bounced her eyebrows up and down, “I have some ideas.” It was lewd in its slowness, like she was tasting the words, Lapis threw the nearest pillow at her.
“And it’s not like that.” She grumbles and itches the skin on her wrist.
“And what are you, some sort of dreamologist now?”
Lapis massages her eyes- a lot like her mom she realizes and stops herself. “I could be.” She murmurs. “You would be too if you dreamed like I do.”
“Oh the great and powerful Lapis, who dreams better than the rest of us.” Jasper teased her and Lapis wondered why they were friends. “Mighty dreamer of dreams and girls.” She snorts and leans toward Lapis, “We all have dream girls Lap, some just handle it better.” She winks and Lapis blows out one of her candles.
“We should go to sleep.” She says sternly and goes to put out the rest, “Maybe she’ll eat me alive this time and we’ll both be out of our misery.” She finishes morosely.
“You’re so grim Lazuli.” Jasper pats her on the back and she stiffens, “You don’t have to be so obsessed with your ghost.”
Lapis feels a hand on her elbow and she swats at Jasper’s large hand. “Go to sleep Jasper.”
She says it darkly but something like magnets and falling rocks makes her think this wasn’t done yet.
She crawls into her bed and Jasper curls up in her sleeping bag on the floor, “You are so useless.” She whispers as she tosses the Ouija board across the room into a pile of her unwashed clothes.
She closes her eyes and settles in, it happens the moment she drifts off.
It’s jarring and instant and she’s standing next to a tree in a school yard. She tilts her head and looks around, her skin itched. The sun is bright and glows through the leaves and Lapis has the distinct feeling she wasn’t in New Jersey anymore.
“You!” Lapis jerks her head to the side and finds a pair of large hazel eyes.
Lapis looks around dumbly, “Can you hear me?” She was always uncertain if she could hear her or not.
Her face screws up, “You.” The girl bit her bottom lip furiously and glared at the ground before turning on her again, “Why won’t you leave me alone?”
Lapis frowns and puts her hands on her hips, “It’s not like I want to be here. I just am.”
“Peridot!” Someone was calling the short girls name, she waves her off.
She looks around and then back to Lapis, “You are unexplainable. You’ll make me look crazy talking like this.”
Lapis’s eyes go wide, “….Are you asleep? Or like, dead?” She tried to clarify.
Peridot scowls, “No I’m not dead. And I’m pretty certain I’m not asleep.”
Lapis raises her eyebrows, “I’m asleep.”
“Bully for you strange apparition from my brain.” Peridot looked visibly upset.
Lapis reaches out and she has same itching tingling, “You’re real, aren’t you?”
Peridot hunches over, “Please stop talking. It’ll make me think I have to see a doctor.”
“I’m real too.” Lapis says softly, “We should talk.”
Peridot looked up, something alive in her green eyes, but the scene around them was already fading. The thick oak and the dappled grass speckled with light become a long tunnel and Lapis startled awake.
There were leaves in her hair.
——————
Lapis spent days trying to figure out the whole ‘dream someone into existence,’ thing or else ‘dreaming with a real living breathing other person.’
She slept more than one person rightly should. She learned very, very little.
Her parents wanted her to see someone, mostly on the basis that her mom digging through Lapis’s internet history and finding a concerning number of searches for ‘dead people’ and ‘dead person in my head?’ and finally ‘girls named Peridot.’ It was mainly the first two that worried her.
Lapis brushed them off, weird things happened all the time, it wasn’t like Lapis was a stranger to weirdness- she swore she saw her grandma’s spirit until she was six.
It wasn’t concerning until she dreamed that Peridot, her girl, this girl was by a lake, it was a bright lake with the sun high over head, it felt like it was always day time when she visited her.
“Wait,” She called out to the girl as she watched her walking somewhere. “Wait, I’m coming.” The same itch and feeling of dread weighed her down, but this felt very important.
Peridot turned her hazel eyes on her and reached for her. She was murmuring to herself and opening a book.
Lapis felt like she was moving through molasses. She didn’t know why it was so hard this time.
“Peridot,” The name tasted funny against her tongue, Peridot snapped her neck up in response. Lapis manages to haul herself to the grassy plain next to her, Peridot was all business.
“Where do you live?” She asks and held up her book, she seemed more attentive this time. “And can you read this?”
Lapis look in confusion on long lines of characters, “Um, is that Chinese?”
“It’s Korean,” The girl growled apprehensively, “You aren’t from here…” Lapis nods slowly and looks around.
“I’m in New Jersey.”
“In New Jersey? Like, physically there and not here?” The girl sighs and rubs her eyes, “We shouldn’t tell anyone about this.”
Lapis put her hands on her hips, “This is not how I thought our conversations would go.” She scowls and looks at the words on the page again, she blinks and they form their way into thoughts in her head. “The book is about frogs or something.”
The girls face lights up and splits into a delighted smile, “Correct! You can read this, I should start keeping a journal about you.”
Lapis shakes her head, “Your name is Peridot.” She repeats and examines her face, “I’m Lapis. Lapis Lazuli.”
Peridot looks her over, “Lapis. Okay. Have you been dreaming about me long? Because I feel like I’ve been seeing you for a very long time.” It was a matter of fact statement.
Lapis hums, “I don’t know. Maybe? All my internet sources say I should consider medical attention or else pay $1.99 right now to hear my fortune.” She does her goofy voice for the $1.99 bit and Peridot’s face relaxes.
She laughs, actually laughs, “You’re funny for some sort of illogical phenomena.”
Lapis lifts her eyebrows up, “I’ve been waiting three years for this conversation.”
Peridot hums and points out to the water, “Well…There is something I want to try.” She tilts her head, “Do you see anything on the water?”
Lapis makes a face at her, “What are you going on about?”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to see it.” Peridot says as if in meditation, “But I’d like to confirm some of my suspicions.”
Lapis rolled her eyes, “Now we are back in weird-ville….Not that we ever left.”
“Look.”
Lapis sighs and she looks at the water, it was night time now- an instant change that only dreams could pull off. Or maybe it was something else. There were rocks beneath her feet instead of grass, she scans the horizon, squinting off into the distance.
A very faint light plays against the water. It twirls and dances like a too-bright firefly that shun milk-white light and made Lapis’s skin crawl.
“What is that?” She asks again, Peridot was still there but she was very faint.
“Ah, just as I thought.” She seemed deep in thought and Lapis wanted to whap her.
“What is it?”
Peridot cleared her throat, “I friend of mine took a trip to Bangladesh and went on a ‘mythology folk tour.’”
Lapis put her palms up, “Okay?”
“There were these things called aleya. Marsh ghost lights- will-o-wisps for you I guess.” She translates, “They can’t always be seen… In fact, they usually can’t be.”
“Alright, great. Wonderful. Creepy ghost lights, I see them.” She kicks a stray pebble, “We should really stay focused- hey! Wait!” Peridot was fading, receding into nothingness as her eyes roam over her. Lapis makes a frustrated noise in the back of her throat and Peridot’s voice remains.
“Alright, I should write this down. I was right.”
“What the fuck!?” She kicks another stone and one of the white-wispy creatures dodges, zipping and zooming past her like a labrador retriever. Without a body.
Lapis sighs and watches them twirl and make lazy loops. They dance for several very long minutes and Lapis feels somewhat voyeuristic.
She was wrapping her arms around herself and frowning when the lights started to retreat, she had the sudden very urgent need to follow.
Her eyes go wide and she reaches her hand out toward the light, “Hey…Wait.”
Lapis struggles to follow the dream and walk across the water, the liquid holds her weight easily and she starts jogging. The pale light that was growing more sickly and almost letting out a tinkling sound, she runs toward it.
“What are you doing?” A harsh voice ricochets through Lapis’s brain and she turns on her heels.
Before she can process the voice and the lights and her own body she feels the unyielding tug of gravity and she is very abruptly dunked into a cold body of water.
She was at her local lake. She was in the middle of her local lake.
——————–
At the tail-end of 15 Lapis was diagnosed as a psychic.
She was psychic and young and was among the handful of individuals that had the ability- recognized by governments and used with abandon, but there nonetheless.
“And it never occurred to you to tell us?” Her father had a stern quiet tone to him, he was always like that. Stern and quiet.
Her mom was a bubbling cauldron. She didn’t believe the diagnosis and didn’t talk about it because her family simply didn’t talk about things like that. Not sex, not drugs, not gossip and not talk of psychics. Lapis knew the line.
It took Lapis telling her how she slept-walk into the middle of the lake for her mother to even acknowledge it, and that was just one step.
Her older brother was the first one to raise an eyebrow up at her and give a languid pull on her ponytail- like they were kids. “So,” He said easily, “You’re an X-man now.”
Lapis rolled her eyes and rolled her tongue in her mouth and tried to form the words, “No. I’m nothing. I see weird shit and can sometimes-”
“Walk on water?” He gave a shit-eating grin, “I’m the one now related to Jesus, I should be the one complaining.”
Lapis shook her head, “We don’t know what it is.” And they wouldn’t until she was 18 and legally an adult. Legal enough for her parents to stop having the authority to opt her out of ‘The Programs’- who access people like her (among other things). “And as your new Jesus-sister I demand some respect.” She says teasingly and he gives her another smile.
“Alright, but at least have a useful power. Like lottery ticket vision.” He rubs his hands together and she sighs.
It was at least something.
She doesn’t sleep much in those months after she’s diagnosed. And she doesn’t sleep much for the rest of sophomore year.
—————-
She’s sixteen when she’s painted into a corner.
It was either sleep, no alarm clock, no energy drinks, just sleep, or else face the hard cold churning of her ugly thoughts. Of Jasper- and smashing her nose in.
Of the long angry dates they went on and the cold raw wound left when she walked away.
She runs out of distractions.
She falls asleep.
When Lapis was younger her father took her on car trips to help her fall asleep. She always did have trouble with it- common for psychics they said.
He drove her to the Walmart, not the close one but the one a town over and he got them donuts and pressed his finger to his lips.
“It’s our secret,” He smiles as he chows on an eclair, “Your mother does worry about my heart.”
Lapis nods, “Alright,” She would yawn, “But no telling her about grandma either.”
Her dad would chuckle and tucks her in. “Sure thing.”
She figured falling asleep in cars was why she was always having dreams about transportation: trains, boats, planes, and cars. Lot’s of cars. And flying.
She was sitting in the front seat of a car, it was her dad’s truck mixed with a bad road trip movie she saw once, she wasn’t driving at all.
She was in the driver’s seat but it was steering and pedaling itself. Lapis’s eyes were wide, she felt that they were going ludicrously above the speed limit. There seemed to be a very distant wall at the end of the road.
She leans back in her chair and her heart races.
“How have you been?” A familiar voice enters her periphery in a pleasant tone and she can feel her seated next to her.
Lapis doesn’t turn her head, she can kind of just sense that she’s there.
“It’s been awhile.” She says in the same curious, nasally voice.
Lapis’s hands bleach against her chair as she holds on tighter, “You knew.” She whispered and worked herself up on the inside, “You knew.”
“I had a few lucky guesses and a friend of mine that suggested it. She told me about the ghost lights.”
Lapis’s gut churns and the car speeds out of control ever-farther.
“You knew I was psychic and didn’t just spit it out.” Lapis frowned and finally glances in her direction.
“I mean,” Peridot gives a sheepish shrug, “It was just a hunch. Things like this don’t just happen.”
Lapis lets out her breath, hanging her head slightly. “Why us? Wait…. Are you psychic too?” She had a hundred questions and none of them felt quite like the one she needed.
“No, at least,” Peridot holds her chin, “I don’t think so. I think you’re the one visiting me. Or inviting me, or, I honestly don’t know.”
Lapis nods her head, she felt she already knew that. “Why you then? I mean, no offense, but you aren’t exactly close by.”
She watched as the other girl’s face turned a rusty-red and she looked away, “I mean sometimes, I mean sometimes when you’re born,” She was scratching her wrist and then swallowed. “It is sometimes random.”
Lapis scrunched up her nose and huffed, the car was going faster. “And when it’s not?”
“Uh,” Peridot looked up to the ceiling, “Some people are born connected.”
Lapis nodded, she knew that too. “Like, we’ll murder each other someday connected, or like, uh, some, uh, other type of connection?” Her face was going red now too.
Peridot met her gaze, steady and strangely sure of itself for a moment, “I dunno.” Her eyes flickered back to the road. It seemed to be ending. “Do you feel like murdering me?”
Lapis snickered and she could feel herself smiling, “Not really.”
Peridot leaned toward her, “That settles it.”
“We’ll both go crab-fishing one day as our great and mighty destiny?”
Peridot shakes her head, “I guess if that’s what you call it in America these days.” She was smiling now too. They were very close. “Sure.”
Lapis felt her eyes stretching wide and she really not thinking about Jasper at that moment.
“Wait!”
She turns just in time for her car to smash into a brick wall and flames to engulf her entire vision. They met the wall.
She wakes up shaking and with a warmth that spread throughout her entire body. Steamed and red and licking her insides.
She groans and lies back down in bed.
—————-
The Program started knocking on her door three months before her eighteenth birthday. It was lame and tedious and involved a lot of her mother screaming at them to leave.
And they left. For now. Lapis played with the end of her pencil and watched her grades tank like they were the titanic. She didn’t really see the point of it anymore.
She learned in the bathtub that there was more to her than dreaming about pretty girls on the other side of the world. It was almost a second, an instant, but the water moved with her- it moved when she flicked her wrist.
She really was an X-men (at best) or a freak (at worst).
Her brother bought her PC games and her father had his second minor heart-attack. It was a strange year.
She spent a lot of time sleeping- more than she rightfully should, and most of not even being able to talk to the person she wanted to.
Dreams were frustrating like that.
She was at the hospital for her mother’s late night shift, trying to greet her mom with a coffee and another story about ‘Social Studies was bogus, and hey sign this permission slip of me failing.’
Her mom was always more pliant after a long shift.
It was a particularly long night to the point Lapis fell asleep in one of the waiting room chairs.
It was instant, faster than any ramen noodles or dudes during their First Time. She blinked her eyes open and the daylight streamed into her vision.
She could taste a difference, a little campus around them with English words she understood on the road signs.
She looked around until she found Peridot, her, her girl, sitting on a stone enclave and scribbling in a note book. Her hair was dyed blonde now and Lapis thinks she likes it.
She blushes as she remembers their last encounter. Some people were born connected.
“Hello.” She ventures slowly after she realizes there was nothing else to do.
Peridot’s eyes flicker up and she jumps, “Oh God.”
Lapis puts her hands on her hips, “It’s just me. You don’t have to be freaked out.” She glances around and then takes a seat next to her. “What are you up to? And uh, where are we? This doesn’t seem…the same.” Lapis says as Peridot seems to catch her breath.
She nods, “We’re back in the US. My dad works at Apple here in California,” She sticks her little chest out, “And I just got accepted to Berkeley.” She sniffs and waits for Lapis to be impressed.
“What? Are you older than me?” She frowns, “Fuck, your growth spurt just never kicked in did it.”
Peridot kicked her and Lapis mouth felt open as she felt a tremor of sensation through her whole body. They had never tried to touch before.
“I’m seventeen.” Peridot growls, ignoring their sudden contact. “And I am a perfect height and got into college early.” She sniffs, “So I wouldn’t make fun.”
Lapis covers her mouth and laughs, “Don’t worry, that ego more than makes up for it.”
Peridot growls and tries to poke her again, Lapis laughs at the sensation, “Are you feeling that?”
Peridot nods, “I am feeling that. Very much so.” She knits her brow together, “We really need to write all of this down.”
“Wait,” Lapis says breathlessly, “We only have so much time.”
“So?” Peridot was scribbling again, “We don’t know that. Maybe you’re stuck here.” She quirked up a grin and Lapis blinks in surprise.
She hums and threads her fingers through the grass, “Alright. Start small then, we’re ‘connected’ and I don’t even know your favorite color.”
“It’s green.”
“Okay, strike that. We’re connected and I totally could have guessed what your favorite color is.” Lapis says with an amused look as she points at her green shirt across from a green backpack.
“Alright, so if you can guess things, what’s my favorite season?” Peridot said as she bit the end of her pen.
“Spring?” Lapis guesses.
“Wrong. How about my favorite toy?”
“The hearts of the weak.” Lapis says absently.
Peridot laughs. “You’re getting closer.” She leaned in close, “Favorite music.”
“Death metal.”
“Wow, no.” She said dryly without blinking.
“Hello Kitty theme song.”
“It’s like you can read my mind.” She responds flatly.
Lapis laughs and leans closer to her, “I’m only so psychic. Besides, we’d miss all the fun parts if I knew like, all the junk about you.”
“Fun parts?”
“Fun parts. Learning about each other.” She couldn’t meet Peridot’s eye as she says that.
Peridot reached toward Lapis again, almost to her face. “You know, I know you like fall.” She says quietly and Lapis’s dream heart thumps louder in her chest, “And I know you at least like short girls.”
She was grinning mischievously, but Lapis raises to the challenge. She can feel herself fading and makes a mad dash for Peridot’s cheek. “Maybe.” She laughs, “Maybe I do.” She says with a wink and kisses her cheek fondly before her consciousness is tugged back to New Jersey.
Her last vision was of Peridot with a slack jaw and dreamy look on her face.
Her mom was glaring at her when she wakes up, “Were you really asleep in here the whole time?” She was tapping her foot and Lapis stretched out.
“I brought you some coffee.” It was cold and she had to send three emails to her teacher begging for extensions.
—————–
It took Lapis a long time to get her license, psychic people were much more prone to seizures than normal people so it was harder for them to be approved for a license without some serious vetting.
The people from The Program were sending her emails, and she was busy deleting their emails.
She got her license a month before her 18th birthday, in the middle of July with the heat like a toaster oven on high she made her decision.
She remembered un-sticking her thighs from her plastic desk chair and walking into the living room to find her brother lounging there.
He was 23 but he assured their parents he wasn’t going anywhere, they didn’t really know what to do about it.
Lapis blinked at him and dangled her keys, “Want to go for a road trip?”
He raised his eyebrows and looked around, “Mom and dad about?”
“Nah. They left the jalopy though.”
A delighted look sprang into her brother’s eye and he reached for his shoes, stuffing his feet into them without socks on, “Where we headed to little sister?”
Lapis shrugs, “I sort of have a ghost I’m in love with.”
Her brother cackles, “Sweet. I’ll pack the sandwiches.”
Lapis beams and gets her best outfit ready. Peridot might see her in something other than her pajamas this time.
————
The road trip was long and hot and Lapis spent a lot of it telling bad jokes and trying to explain to her brother the finer details of having a magic-long-distance-relationship.
That, and getting yelled at by their parents via extended phone calls that they answered with a few ‘we’ve run away to the zoo,’ and ‘we’re ransoming ourselves for 200,000 dollars. You’ll get us back in a month.’
There wasn’t much else to do but drive.
Her brother turned Metallica on and made a steady beat on the steering wheel, “So, but like, you don’t get a choice in the matter?” They were still talking about the girl.
Lapis shrugs and looks out the window. “It’s not like that. Or,” She bites her lip, “Or maybe it is. There isn’t exactly a psychics handbook for this.” Her brother bobs his head up and down and turns his hat on backward (for no apparent reason).
“But, it’s just chosen for you? She just pops into your head, badda-boom, Love Actually.”
“One, terrible movie.” Lapis says with her feet on the dashboard, “And nothing’s chosen. That’s why I’m going,” She studies the pale blue summer sky of Tennessee, “I just have to find out, ya know. See if it’s real.”
“Right on.” He takes his hands off the wheel and plays a mid-air drum solo, “She’s cute, right?”
Lapis laughs, “Hell yes.”
They take a long way round to get all the way to California, not to mention spending enough gas money to make her brother’s paycheck look null and seeing enough of the middle-country to know ‘Hell is Real!’ and ‘Jesus Saves!’ Kansas sure did love its signs.
They drove and Lapis slept and maybe her brother knew she might not be coming back this time because he let her have the best driving times and told funny stories about their childhood. She was, after all, almost 18.
They make it to Berkeley in the middle of the day on a Tuesday and Peridot assured her she would be in class and Lapis assured her she wasn’t going anywhere.
Her brother took off for the beach and told her to text him if she got murdered after being dream-catfished. She waved him off and waited in the shade of a short tree. The sky was slowly graying and maybe it was a day for miracles- it seemed it might rain in California.
She lets a few droplets hit her nose and then took a deep breath in as she hears students entering the quad as classes got out.
She turned her head and her eyes were homing beacons, they knew and she knew and time was syrup slow.
Lapis finds her with an unsettling ease.
Peridot stood on the large sidewalk with her mouth open and her eyes on Lapis and Lapis knew for a very long moment that her delusions at 13 were real. She was real.
She watched Peridot shove something into her backpack and she was running, her little arms pumping and the face of utter shock, Lapis started walking. Her nerves like electric guitar strings being plucked and her head pounding.
Another droplet of water hits her nose and Peridot’s arms were open wide, they collide and Lapis wraps her arms around her neck.
“Hey,” She whispers and something shimmers between them like the moment you drink tea that is just a little too hot. Warm, unreal, Peridot hugging her tighter. “Hi.” Peridot lets out a choked sound.
“No one will ever believe us when we tell them how we met.” Peridot said in awe with a little manic laugh at the end, all Lapis could do was shrug in return.
“Good?”
Peridot shook her head and put a weary finger through her hair, “My dream girl…. Literally.”
Lapis laughs because she could and leans into her, “On a scale of one to ‘seriously questionable’ how wrong would it be for me to kiss you before the first date?”
Peridot’s eyes were huge green orbs and her mouth was open, “You don’t consider years of dream-stalking each other to be proper courtship?” She laughs and turns them around in place, almost a dip.
Peridot grasped her chin and she smiles into the touch, the tension is palpable and she drags her face forward, her breath graces her lips before they kissed. The rain pattered on her back and everything was slow and soft.
The kiss is a little soggy, but warmer and more thrilling than she figured a rollercoaster to hell would be. It’s closed mouth but she nips her bottom lip and Peridot buries her hand in her hair as she leaned over.
They part and Lapis tapped their heads together, “Dream girl. I can get behind that.”
Peridot took her hand and laced their fingers together, “It’s only true.”
Lapis grins like a fool, “We have a lot of catching up to do…Such as all your dreams about Nickelback? We need to talk.”
Peridot laughs and draws her closer, “That’s a long story, but first…Want to meet my dad? He has some theories about this thing.”
Lapis blinks and makes a face, “Meet your parents? Moving fast I see. Alright, but that means you have to feed my brother tonight, which can be a big challenge.”
She chuckles and keeps their hands interlocked, they walk back to the school and Lapis feels the water running down her body and holds her hand tightly.
It could wait. Running away could wait and evading any Programs could wait, disappearing could wait, first, first, she was going to kiss her ghost and feel her dreams become surprisingly tangible.