But when I went to university in Vancouver, I realized a lot of people avoided the wilderness because they felt uncertain and unwelcome there. And if anyone knew about feeling uncertain and unwelcome, it was me. It was like a light bulb went off. I was sure the right tours—mytours—could help them see how they fit. I was sure the ideas my profs had praised would have no trouble getting seen.
What happened, of course, was that my dreams got eaten like a wool sweater munched by moths. Every time my proposals got torpedoed or ignored or, worst of all, laughed at, another hole appeared. Every time I emerged from a job interview sweaty and near tears, a chunk fell off. Bite by painful bite, they turned from sturdy fabric to fragile lace, barely there.
“Dreams aren’t practical at my age. I have… targets,” I say.GET MAGIC,an interior voice pipes up, perhaps one notch quieter than a couple of weeks ago.
“Targets…?”
“That’s what I said. You set a target, then after the measurement interval, you look back at market conditions, analyzewhat prevented you from reaching your target, set new targets, repeat.”
When you don’t reach a target, you lose money.
But you keep your heart.
There’s a long silence. In the background, Tobin’s truck rumbles as he accelerates along some road somewhere. We’re both out here, in the twilight, maybe driving toward each other. Maybe getting farther apart.
Then, finally, “When you had a dream, how did it make you feel?”
The man on my radio both is and isn’t Tobin. It’s his voice, but somehow not the person I’ve been afraid to trust.
The same way I’m myself, and also I could be someone brave, who’s willing to try again. Like both versions of me could be true at the same time.
McHuge is clever with the scenarios, damn him.
“It made me feel—” I stop, torn.
At first it felt wonderful, like a treasure I could hold in my hand. But years of “no” turned me uncertain, then frightened, then sick over it, all the time. Failure whispered in my ear: I wasn’t good enough, and everyone knew it but me.
This is my worst, most corrosive fear. Whenever I’ve tried to tell him before, Tobin glossed over it. “I believe in you,” he’d say, and order me a new textbook so I could make a better business case next time. We planned my victories together, but I cried over my failures by myself. We stopped talking about starting our own tour company.
Tonight feels different. But is it? I want to tell and not tell, take a risk and be safe at the same time. I can’t give myself to him anymore. Not until he gives himself to me.
“If you want to talk dreams, we could discuss yours.”
“That’s not the way the show works, Elsa.” He’s back to the radio personality voice that sounds like a smooth stretch of golden skin with no tender spots to accidentally poke.
It’s all too familiar. I shouldn’t have told him he could pick the scenarios when I was glitching in the bookstore last week. No surprise, he made himself the host, an overproduced personality who reveals none of his own secrets. Same schtick, different day.
“I hate this,” I say, bleeding into Elsa the way I bled into Lola. “I hate it when hosts make it all about the caller, like it’s a good thing. I don’t want to be the only person in this conversation.”
McHuge’s ludicrous improv truisms are killing me right now—when you’re uncomfortable, stay in the scene. Go for the hard truth. Listen to the other person; bring yourself.
This is the hardest thing in the world. Maybe too hard for Tobin and me. I breathe in, hold it, hold it, waiting for him to say something.
My breath comes out short and shallow as I reach for the phone.
“Don’t hang up,” he blurts.
Some things about me, he knows so well. Wherever he is, he can tell from one breath that I’m about to end the call.
“I could tell you what my other callers dream about.”
Great. Now we’re talking about neither one of us.
“If that’s what you can do.” I swing into a roadside rest stop to make a U-turn. The flood of memories distracted me from my battery, and now it’s so damn low I’m barely going to make it home.
“I—uh,theytend to dream about pretty basic stuff. Wife. Family. Like, three, four kids, so it’s not just one kid carrying their parents’ expectations all alone.”
Goddammit, Tobin. How dare he bring to mind pictures of him as a kid in old-fashioned short pants, hands at his side but fingers curled into claws, waiting to tear the tie from around his neck.
