“No,” I said. “I don’t care where you take me.”

The man seemed shocked at that. It was a strange kind of shock that rested on his face. Instead of being cold and aggravated like he was when we were at the border, he seemed softer now.

“How can you not care?” he asked with something that resembled pity clinging to his voice. “You are a beautiful young woman who has just been abandoned alone in a foreign country. Your lover is on the other side of the border and you are being carried away by a strange man who you don’t know, and who tricked you into coming across to Canada. Any woman in her right mind would be terrified at this prospect.”

I let my eyes roll around in my head before shifting my stare from the blueish sky to the man’s blueish eyes.

“Maybe I’m not in my right mind anymore,” I said.

I stared at him long enough to make him uncomfortable.

“You’re not well,” he said under his breath as I laid my head against his chest and closed my eyes. “I can’t just set you at the side of the road in this condition.”

In the past, my dreams about my mother often gave me a sense of peace or purpose. There were a few that were unsettling, and a couple that made me think there was a clue to be uncovered or a mystery to solve. But for the most part, they made me feel comforted and steady.

This time, I didn’t even realize that I had fallen asleep. It was crazy to have fallen asleep in the arms of a stranger who carried me down a cold street to some unknown destination. I had read a science journal article once about how the brain will shut itself off in self-preservation if it encounters a pain that is too much for it to process and tolerate. That’s what happens when people are involved in some sort of horrific and painful accident and the reason why they don’t remember feeling the pain afterward. I think it might also be what happens when people die. I hope that was what happened when my mother died—I hoped that she didn’t feel any pain.

I guessed that’s what happened to my brain while I was being carried. Sure, I had been through terrible things before. Things that would be considered much more terrible than this. But this was an entirely different kind of terrible. This was the kind of terrible that comes when you think that you are so close to getting what you want and finally being free, only to have the happiness gutted straight out of you, and to be left with nothing but unknowns. This was the worst kind of terrible there was.

When my brain shut off, everything else around me seemed to just dissolve away as if it had never really existed at all. I no longer felt the steady rhythm of being carried that was caused by the man’s footsteps beneath me. I no longer saw the moving clouds above me. And I no longer felt the pain of losing the man that I was so desperately in love with that it pulled the very breath out of my lungs. Instead—I saw my mother.

She tried to comfort me in my dream, but that only made it worse. That was how I knew it was bad. My mom would tell be to be strong, and to be brave, and that I had to toughen up and forge ahead. She would tell me those things even in the most dire of circumstances because she knew it’s what I needed in order to keep pressing on. But this time, she simply said, “It will be okay” and hugged me in that weird way that only happens in dreamscapes, where your mind wants to feel the embrace but really can’t because it isn’t truly there. My mother wouldn’t have said that to me if she thought there was any hope left, not even my dream mother.

This dream wasn’t a message of comfort or strength or hope. This message was one of defeat.

When I finally opened my eyes, I looked around without moving my head. It was too much to take in and I had trouble processing all of it—the soft white fabric that was touching my skin, the glowing light of candles that was flickering against the walls, even the smell of a robust coffee that wafted on the air in ribbons of rich scent.

I had no idea where I was, or how I had gotten into these pajamas, or what had happened to me at all. I was confused and teetering between being numb and feeling way too much at once. I was just about to lose myself into a fit of sobbing when I thought about Michael being too far away for me to get to, when I heard a voice next to me and turned my head to see who it was.

“Don’t be afraid,” the man said. “I didn’t do anything to you aside from put you into pajamas and lay you in this bed.”

It was the border patrol guard and he looked entirely different now that he wasn’t in his uniform anymore. He was in jeans and a T-shirt, and he looked more like a normal guy now.

“Where am I?” I asked as I sat up in the bed and took the coffee cup that he was handing me.

The coffee smelled delicious, and strong. I suddenly felt my stomach growl and remembered that it had been quite a while since I had eaten anything.

“You’re in my home,” he said as he looked at me.

His expression was hard to read.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you were borderline delirious and hysterical, and you had nowhere else to go.”

I started to open my mouth to say thank you, but then I remembered that he was the one who called me through the gate to begin with. This man tricked me into being separated from Michael, and then he carried me away from the gate at his command.

“Why did you do it?” I asked.

“I already just answered that,” he said.

“No, that’s not what I meant. I mean, why did you trick me into coming onto Canadian soil? And then why did you pull me away from my friends?”

“I tricked you because I owed Frank a favor,” he said simply, as if it was an easy cut-and-dry question. “And I pulled you away because after my favor was paid, I chose to listen to your friend’s request and save your life.”

“You didn’t save my life,” I growled at him. “You killed me.”

“That seems a bit dramatic.”

“Imagine if you had been pulled away from the one person in the world that you loved more than anything. Don’t you think that would feel a bit dramatic?” I asked spitefully.

“I wouldn’t know,” he said as he took a sharp breath in. “I’ve never loved anyone.”

He turned around to leave the bedroom that I was in without saying anything further.

“Wait,” I called after him. “Can you help me?”

I knew it was a desperate plea and that this guy likely wouldn’t do the first thing to help me get back to Michael and the others, but I had to at least ask.

“Help you with what?” he asked as he turned back around.

“I need to get back to America, to my friends.”

“I thought that you and your friends were trying to outrun some people and come here to Canada? Isn’t that why you came to the border to begin with?”

“Yes,” I nodded. “But as you can very well see, that didn’t quite go smashingly for us. I just need to get back to my friends. I don’t care which side of the border I’m on when I do it. I will gladly go back to the States if you could just help me be reunited with them.”

“Why do that?” he asked. “When you could just as easily bring them all here.”

14

I didn’t understand Trevor (that was his name according to what he told me over coffee). He seemed like a decent guy, but he was also the entire reason I was stuck here now.

He seemed to have no regret for tricking me into crossing into Canada, but he also seemed not to have wanted to do it in the first place. And now, he acted as if he was both doing his duty by looking after the “stray American”, and also offering to break even more rules to help me bring Michael, Adam, and Rob here. On top of it all, he had very carefully made me comfortable in his own bed instead of ditching me on the side of the road like I would have expected him to do. This man was a complete paradox.

“What do you mean about bringing them here?” I asked as we sat across from each other at the kitchen table.

Trevor pushed a plate of toast and eggs in front of me and topped off my coffee with some fresh, hot caffeine. I hadn’t even noticed that the white pajama shirt I was wearing was pretty translucent, until I could see the reflection of my nipples showing through the fabric in the glass orange juice pitcher. Trevor didn’t even seem to notice, which was strange for a guy. I was glad about it though, because the last thing I was in the mood to do right now was to try and fend off any unwanted advances. Still, it was a little weird and I wanted to know what his motive was.

“There are other entry points along the border,” he said in answer to my question. “Some of them legal, and some not so much.”

“Are you suggesting that they sneak into Canada through an illegal entry point?”

“Yes.”