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*wildly vivid dreams*

“W AKE UP, DEAR!”

I gasped and opened my eyes.

Auntie Bev was smiling at me from the front seat like I was an amusing little kid, and I could see my house through the windshield in front of her. “Those must’ve been some burgers. You were both sleeping like the dead.”

Wait. The entire thing had been a dream?

I felt a little unsteady, a little out of it. So none of it had happened?

No Flord visit?

No Nana Marie?

No kissing?

I looked at Jackson, sitting beside Auntie Bev, and he was watching me with a strange expression on his face.

He was watching me like he knew what I’d been dreaming.

Oh my God, did I say his name or make kissing faces in my sleep?

“Th-thanks for the ride,” I managed, reaching for the door handle. “Bye.”

I got out and went into the house, and I was relieved to hear that my mom and Noah were in the kitchen. I was too tired to deal with talking. I half expected my mom to hear me and yell, Is that you, Em? , but Noah was saying something, so she must not have heard the door.

I went straight to my room, quietly shut the door, and fell onto my bed. I toed off my shoes but didn’t even bother with changing; I just pulled the comforter over me and my clothes, my eyes immediately closing.

Our house was small, so I could hear Noah and my mom as they watched TV. It was quiet and diluted, muted white noise that lulled me toward sleep with only random words and the occasional laugh breaking through the haze.

“Thanks again for running that silly little errand for me last year, and for keeping it a secret,” I heard my mom say as I rolled over and snuggled into my pillow.

“Thanks for getting me out of school so I could do it,” Noah said, and I could hear the grin in his voice. “I’ll be your messenger boy anytime I get to ditch class and go to the park.”

I opened my eyes.

“Never again,” I heard her say, and I could tell she was smiling, too. She said something else that made Noah do his low-pitched chuckle, but I couldn’t hear what it was because the laugh track on the TV went loud for a second.

But then I heard her say, “That was a once-in-a-lifetime secret field trip, you little brat.”

Field trip? I flopped onto my back and stared up at the ceiling as I listened. Surely this was something else and I was taking it out of context, but it kind of sounded like—

“Don’t you mean a once-in-a-four-hundred-forty-four-years secret field trip?” Noah teased with a laugh in his voice, making me sit straight up in my bed.

Field trip.

Park.

Messenger boy.

Four hundred forty-four years.

“Shut up and watch the show, kid,” my mom said, and then I heard the kitchen sink turn on. I listened hard, but the only conversation I heard after that was between Phil and Claire Dunphy on Modern Family .

There was no way for me to know for sure what they were talking about, but I had a strong suspicion I knew.

The packet Noah tossed into the portal had belonged to my mom, not him.

Suddenly, I found myself grinning in the dark, feeling like maybe my most important wish would be coming true after all.

When my alarm went off the next morning, I sat up in my bed and glanced at the clock: 7:00 AM . I always meant to get up at six so I’d have time to attempt makeup or straighten my hair, but every single day, my body refused to live until it hit the seven o’clock hour.

I thought about yesterday while I showered. I was disappointed by the fact that Archie had retired and Hamburger Man was no help, because now we’d never know if there was another way to reverse the wishes, but I was handling it okay.

It could be the fact that I’d had that dream.

I’d never had a dream feel so real. I could remember every detail, right down to the color of the flowers in Hyorithipithidian, the smell of Nana’s sweater as she’d hugged me, the feel of Jackson’s lips on mine.

Gahhhhh—that kiss!

It’d only been a dream, but it’d been a dreamy kiss.

It made me excited to see Jackson at school because now I knew, without a doubt, that I had more-than-friends feelings for him. Was it weird that a dream had been the thing to show me how I really felt?

Yes.

Was I glad that it had?

Also yes.

I just wished I knew how he felt about me .

I probably wouldn’t ever tell anyone—about the dream or my feelings—because Jackson was too important to me. He was my very best friend, so I couldn’t risk freaking him out by telling him I’d kissed the crap out of him in a dream and now I like -liked him.

So I’d simply be his very best friend.

Somehow, in the morning light, that seemed like a pretty good thing.

And the good night’s sleep—or maybe the closure—brought with it a new outlook on my life and my friends. Kennedy and Allie had new people and new activities; that was a fact.

But they hadn’t really done anything to me. They’d included me like always—the mall trip, our daily lunches—and couldn’t really help it if their new friends didn’t know their old friend, right? I was going to try harder to find my place in all of that, and hopefully they would, too.

And if there wasn’t a place for me there, I’d be sad but it’d be okay, because I also had new people.

Jackson Matthews was my friend.

My best friend.

He’d become my favorite person to hang out with, and why should it matter if people didn’t get it because he was a guy? His friendship was worth the side-eye and nonbelievers.

I didn’t see him until science, but when our eyes met as I entered the classroom and walked toward our lab table, that dream was all over my brain.

“Hey,” I said, grinning at him and sitting down on my stool.

“Hey,” he said, grinning back.

What is this? It felt like the smile that two people would share the morning after their first kiss. His blue eyes were searching my face, my cheeks were warm, and I had the ridiculous urge to reminisce about things that hadn’t really happened.

I definitely felt more for him than I had the last time we sat in that classroom.

A lot more.

Mr. Shields started talking, thank goodness, because I wasn’t sure I knew how to look at Jackson without showing him the 3,962 new feelings I was having toward him.

“Let’s go over the assignment together, because a lot of you were way off in your answers.” He launched into the first problem, and I spaced out. My brain was stuck on that dream and kept replaying parts of it, over and over.

It had been so vivid , so seemingly real, that I couldn’t let it go. Fae lords in red robes, racing hamburger trucks, Nana Marie, holograms of wish lists—I got completely lost in my own head.

So I was absolutely unprepared to hear:

“Miss Rockford? Hello?”

I looked up and was immediately mortified to see Mr. Shields staring directly at me while everyone in the room looked my way.

“Um, can you, uh, repeat that?”

I heard a few snickers and felt my cheeks go red. “Mr. Matthews doesn’t have number four, apparently, so I was hoping that perhaps you might. Do you have Jackson’s number four?”

Jackson’s number four is to get his first kiss out of the way without embarrassing himself. That thought raced through my mind and my eyes darted over to my lab partner.

Who was staring at me with wide eyes, almost as if remembering the very same thing.

But he couldn’t be, right?

No way could he know what I’d dreamed.

That was ridiculous.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have number four, either.”

“Mr. Shields?” The office was calling via the overhead speaker. “Can you please send Jackson Matthews to the office?”

He swallowed and watched me for another minute before mouthing the words dentist appointment .

“Saved by the proverbial bell, Mr. Matthews,” Mr. Shields said sarcastically, and I didn’t look at Jackson as he grabbed his stuff and left.

Saved by the proverbial bell, indeed.