I wrote a story in a dream and then I forgot and I wrote a story about writing a story in a dream and forgetting and writing a story about writing the dream story

I don't think I can even explain how weird it was to write this story. I kept finding everything just where it had to be. Extremely big stuff, like the symbolism of Beatrice holding Nadia's hand. That just happened to work out that way. When I finished the story and got done crying and went back to the start to translate it I was spooked to find I had written the bit about the hand holding early on. I think over a year ago. I know I didn't remember it at all. Just a massive coincidence. And the tiniest things, like Nadia's two friends both ending up with the sort of long names that people tend to shorten, especially if they're good friends, but Nadia never does, just showing that particular microscopic detail of her character in a way I would not have bothered changing any character names to do on purpose. And the middle things, like I decide the theater department is in a separate building from the castle, not for any reason, it's just how I pictured it, and then Nadia comes up with that plan that hinges on showing clearly she's going there instead of home to the castle. That was damn lucky. And there was the way I wrote the bit about subconsciously writing symbolism of your own life that, itself, subconsciously symbolizes what was going on in my life while I wrote it.

And on top of a hundred things like that, there's big style and theme stuff like how the story is about writing a story about a dream of a story and it feels, to me at least, very dreamlike in its structure. The ending is, well, you'll see. Let's just say I think the way I managed to make a harmony between form and function in this story about trying to create a story with a harmony between form and function in a way where that harmony in itself harmonizes, and it resonates with the theme of mixing fiction and reality too, and then the story comes full circle into - if you can believe in all this synchronicity nonsense - literally blending fiction and reality to help itself be written.

To quote Nadia myself, "I have no idea how I did this, I must be really smart."

I'm going on and on, I know. I could talk about writing this story for longer than it took to write it. But I realize, as one final touch of coincidence, all this is probably not important to anyone  else but me. Just like a dream.

But more specifically then. This is a story about unfinished ends, about not having sex, about being scared, about not getting things, about losing. It's about being haunted by ghosts you never even notice as they direct the course of your life. It's about being Autistic and Asexual and trying to connect with everyone through a thick glass wall.

It contains frank and potentially incompetent - please feel free to correct me - depictions and discussions of: a lot of sex and violence, rape, abuse of minority genders and sexual orientations, trauma, people dealing with trauma in unhealthy ways, drinking, mental and physical disability, poverty, boarding schools, death, maybe suicide? Possible suicide. Nobody quite knows. The narrator is avoiding thinking about it.

I'm just trying to be exhaustive with this content warning. It's really a mostly happy ridiculously cute nerdy lesbian love story. Really it is.

LITTLE HEARTS

(Big dreams)

In my dream I write a perfect story. My thoughts fly so light, so high. Everything fits together with everything else. The story is just two pages long because it's all it needs: short enough to be open in its entirety, to let the reader see the whole of it all at the same time. And it is a whole, a single thing connecting together without breaks. Every word of the story, and every word I leave out, works together with every other word. It even runs over the pages in an elegant style. It is an ideal artwork, what I imagine Wagner dreamed of when he talked about "together art", where every part, every theme, every character, every paragraph, every letter comes in the exact right place to combine with every other part in a way which when I'm awake I'd never even notice without someone explaining it to me, much less appreciate, much less create myself.

I realize I'm dreaming at some point, when I move around and change words on the paper like on a computer screen, and I manage with an act of will to stay calm enough not to immediately wake up. I don't usually have such self control, but I am apparently someone completely different in this dream. I study my whole, perfect story and wonder if this is how it feels to not have Autism spectrum disorders. It's for real, it's not the work of a dream, the words don't change when I look away. It's a few hundred words in just the right order and I have them all in my head. I wake up calm and satisfied and lie still in the sunlight and think my story. The last sentence is a little rushed, I notice now. There's space left on the page to word the sentence a little more naturally, make the last word maybe three percent less sentimental, so I edit while I prepare to get up and turn on my laptop and get the story down.

And the story disappears while I struggle to get on my feet, where all dreams go when we wake up. It makes me sad in a way I can't put in words now. A feeling like yellowed old love letters left unsent. As a writer I enjoy my torment on a low, unwelcome level and think about how to leverage the emotion in my next story, but it still won't be as good as the story in my dream.

It's a little cheap to write about failing to write anyway. So I don't think any more about the dream. I think. Beatrice bangs on the bathroom door to let me know I've spent too long in the shower though it feels like no time has passed so I guess my brain is occupied with something.

'Good morning roomie', I say when I open the door for Beatrice.

'Nadia', says Beatrice in a joking tone. 'You took two minutes longer than usual so I just wanted to make sure you hadn't fallen and broken your head.'

'Thanks for the consideration', I say, and we switch places. I didn't know I was so predictable. Our cavernous room is a little muggy even though it's late summer and sizzling hot outside. The thick stone walls would maybe need nine summers without a winter to warm up fully. Not much trouble except just when I get out of the shower, but now I decide to try something new. I open the window.

I climb onto the desk among books and pencils to reach the windowsill, and I climb halfway into it – on my knees, gently pushing Beatrice's decorative vases aside – to reach the window, and it opens with a loud noise but no great trouble and lets in a pleasant breeze of hot air and a laugh from below. In the garden down there stands a boy I don't recognize and stares at me. I climb back in with blushing cheeks and aching hard nipples, happy to be living high up on the third floor. Happy he didn't have a camera. Happy nobody in the school knows who I am and even if a rumor started I'd certainly never hear of it.

And I hurry to get clothes on and don't care how the shirt stings against the nipples and walk quickly away to the dining hall, hungry and eager to put a distance between myself and the third floor flasher.

The school is an old castle high up on a mountain in north Arma, with student boarding, and the dining room is even a grandiose high-ceilinged hall, but it's not any magical castle come to life from fairy tales, and we have to stand in line and pick up food ourselves from an entirely unmagical buffet. I collect a small mound of cold burnt toast and assorted cheeses and cold cuts and two juice bottles for myself and Beatrice, and sit down at a small table by the wall and start eating with one hand and scratch loose thoughts down in a notebook with the other. I may be predictable in many ways, I think in writing. I may have to learn to be comfortable with that.

To live a whole live of regular days, I write, that's the hard stuff. Some thinker once said any goon can handle a crisis, and any dog can fight when it's cornered, but it is how you manage common, boring drudgery day after day that really shows your strength. I think they had a point. To live like every day means something, to believe in things even when the sirens go silent.

Just then, when I don't know how to continue, Beatrice sits down opposite me and starts buttering toast and I drop the pen and stare down at the paper, vaguely aware of chewing and swallowing.

'Looks like I interrupted you', she says. 'I didn't mean to. Are you getting anything good?'

'Oh no, don't worry. Don't think I was headed to any original insight.' I flip the book so Beatrice can read.

'The way I read it', she says after a minute of humming and eating, 'you want me to drag you out on adventures more often.'

'I don't understand, yes when you say that it sounds fun, but I really don't get how you could get that out of this', I say, and give up the hope of figuring out myself what I wanted to say.

'A wild guess I admit.' She points at the writing with a butter knife. 'But this sounds good. If you can expound, make something cohesive, or it doesn't have to have an apparent meaning, it can just be pure poetry.'

'Philosophy or poetry, the eternal question. Or maybe one can do both at the same time. Imagine how popular Plato would be if he rhymed.'

'Huh, I rather think Plato got so popular because he did just one thing. He was an incurable navel-gazer, but a dedicated navel-gazer. I doubt rhymes would add a lot to the allegory of the shadows on the cave wall.'

I take this as an opening to talk about my dream of the perfect short story and try to explain that thought about harmony, and Beatrice is very patient and sympathetic to how hard it is for me to see such connections in particular, how it wouldn't occur to me poetry and philosophy might just not make any kind of whole between them but could even distract from each other.

She is sympathetic, but she doesn't understand what I want to say, and I think so hard about how I'm supposed to say it at last I notice I myself don't understand what I want to say, and give up with a sigh. The story of my life.

'At least I'm lucky to have you for a roommate', I say, lifting my gaze to see her in the eyes for a short moment. I want her to see I'm grateful, see my frustration isn't directed at her and everything else too heavy to say out loud.

'Yeah, I'm wonderful', says Beatrice, and puts a hand on my arm. Comfort, faith, mercy, trust, care, so easy and straightforward for her to express. I soak it in and close my eyes and sigh again, in relief.

'What have I said about laying hands on Nadia?' says Danny's voice from above suddenly. Beatrice's fingers twitch in a way I don't quite like, but stay on my forearm. Danny kids like he always does, and I wonder if he really always is as insincere as he thinks he is.

'You said it was okay in witness' view?' says Beatrice, cheerful, unbothered.

'Yeah this is sort of straddling the line right. No offense Nadia, it's nothing personal, you're just far too pretty.' Danny sweeps Beatrice up onto her feet in a theatrical kiss. I study them just in case I'd ever have to do anything similar, until they ask me to get a room, pretending annoyance.

After breakfast and lessons – Beatrice has theoretical physics and music history, while I get through two educational hours of literature without needing to say a word – we meet at the northwestern gate to get some adventure in. Somewhat nervous I find Danny has joined in and Danny's sister Mona and Beatrice's friend Mara and a strange girl who Beatrice introduces as Rafaela from physics. 'She's bi and has ADHD and just came to school and doesn't know anyone, so you should have a lot in common.' She looks uncomfortable, or maybe I'm just projecting. Beatrice leads us to the park, and I take my shoes and socks off to feel the sun-warm grass under my feet.

'Doubt anyone wants to steal my sweaty shoes', I say to no one in particular and leave them by a green bush so I don't have to drag them around.

'If they go away we can just look for someone wearing your shoes', says Rafaela, who's stayed behind with me.

We resume walking, without rushing to catch up with the others. The grass is thick and soft and nice and my feet want to linger in it with every step. Mostly moss, I note.

'So you're studying for writer?' says Rafaela. 'Though that's not a course you can pick right?'

'Yes, I take classes for fun. And to get welfare. The only way to learn to write books is writing books, you know.'

'I want to be a doctor. A lot of work, but one at least only have to follow books that are already written. Don't know how I'd make it if I had to do it, just you and a blank page.'

I realize Rafaela shows interest in what I do. In me. It makes me very nervous. I give her big dark eyes a brief flickering glance and look away when I notice her looking at me. It's surely no more than common courtesy, but I wish I could give at least that much back.

'A baby is like an unwritten page huh', I say, the only thing I can think. 'If, if you want to be a pediatrician.'

'Haven't thought about that but, ha, when you mention it I think I definitely don't want to be in pediatrics. Might have to do with that. I like it full, um, things with potential already realised.'

'You might not like me then, I have hardly started a book yet, it's more a little opposite, I like having all opportunities left. It seems dangerous to waste them.'

And we reach Beatrice and the others, waiting at a gap in a tall, dense hedge near the far edge of the castle garden. After seventeen years in this school there are still many places I've never been, and this maze is one of them. It must be the adventure Beatrice had planned.

'Does everyone have their lunch with them?' she says, and we raise our diverse bags, and step into the shadows. It isn't a particularly adventurous maze, the hedges within are mostly barely waist height, but I'm fascinated. We walk slow and look around. Here and there stand statues of naked men, stone benches, a leaning fountain, small fruit trees. Nothing reaching over the tall outer hedges. It feels a little like its own world. The sound and the light from outside gets muted in the dance of the leaves, the air is a little cooler (but still delightfully hot), the grass is more wild. The winding paths between the hedges vaguely reminds me of a dream I had when I was little. It needs just a thick mist and a monster hunting us.

'I'm thinking of a fable', says Rafaela in a low voice, leaning almost on my shoulder. 'What you said before. A rich man bought gold for all his money and dug it down behind his house in a nugget. And then he went out there and dug it up every night to look at it. One day someone had stolen it, and when he complains to the neighbor the neighbor says he could take a big rock and paint it yellow and dig that down instead. Since he'd never have spent the gold anyway it would be the same thing. I don't mean, I don't know you, it's not some barb or anything. Just something to look out for. It's good to have savings, but if one takes it too far, never spends anything, then one could as well have nothing. I'll stop talking now.'

'Haha, no I wouldn't like to go so far. Actually I get a little scared of that sometimes. I get this feeling I want to save stuff, I want to save words in the language banks and I don't speak enough, I see just how dumb it is but I can't stop it. I guess it's a little compulsion.'

'I'd like to hear anything you have to say.'

'You can read my stories, that's where all the good stuff comes out. Everything worth saving.'

I write the address to my blog on a paper slip for her, though I don't know how serious she is when she talks about reading when she needs a break from reading medical texts.

And the feeling of unreality grows when we get to the door and I remember another dream. A gate bar an opening in one of the tall hedges, we can see more maze through it, but it's locked and the iron bars look unyielding.

'No way around', says Beatrice, with her hand grasping a bar. 'Or over or through, unless someone has a saw in their back pocket so we can wreck some vegetables. Weird.'

'I think I dreamed about this', I say. 'It's just like, or wait, there was seven people here. Or should I say, does anyone care?' No one disagrees in five seconds or so, so I continue: 'It was a very strange dream just this morning. I dreamed I wrote a story, very short, but very good. It's not important. But the story was about this door, which I didn't know existed in reality. It was just something I made up. Seven friends found a door, none of them knew it was there, and they never opened it, but all of their lives changed in different ways by seeing the door, even if it was just because of doing it with the other six, it was a point that ruled, decided the course their lives would have. A little exciting right?'

'Yeah I'd like to read this, what, short story?' says Beatrice.

'But how will it happen now that you've told us?' says Rafaela, while I doubt if I should try to explain how I can't remember what made the short story so good. 'Sure we can't purposely force a life altering moment just like that?'

'Well, no, I think that's just make believe', I say. 'And yes I should try to write it down. Just thought it was pretty weird. It looks just like I pictured it when I wrote it. In my dream.'

On some unspoken signal we sit down to eat lunch, in the grass by the gate. Beatrice, Mona and Danny squeeze themselves onto a bench for some reason I can't fathom. I take a paper bag with chicken legs and carrots out of my backpack, and a water bottle. Rafaela offers me a scoop of potato salad in exchange for a leg, and I receive a large and full spoon and she spills when she tries to get it into my mouth, and I don't quite manage to keep from laughing with my mouth full, though I hold most of the food in place with my hand. At the same time I'm feeding Rafaela with my other hand, without really thinking about it.

It makes a lovely mess and we both end up washing off with my water and rubbing our hands and faces in the grass.

'The quality of a meal depends largely on the company', I say, quoting some snotty manual of etiquette I read once a long time ago. 'This may be the best lunch I've ever had.'

'Then what am I, chopped liver?' says Beatrice with an exaggerated wounded tone, and we laugh a little more. The wordplay or reference or whatever it classifies as hit me especially hard, and when I try to apologize I drop to my back and squirm and giggle until Beatrice pours a splash of water in my face.

'No but the biggest mystery today', says Beatrice, when we have caught our breaths, 'seems to be little Nadia has made a new friend.'

'Yes how is it possible?' I say and look Rafaela straight in the eye. It's easy to be so brave when Beatrice holds my hand.

'I think I'm going to like it here', says Rafaela, before looking down, sharply, and turning to the schoolhouse, invisible beyond the walls. 'Uh I mean here at the school. Not here as in with you, not that, I mean, I wouldn't mind meeting again.'

I think she's blushing, and I have a strong impulse to hug her until she turns calm and happy. A wish for her to never feel a lack of comfort or safety. But I do nothing and time passes away and we have lessons to go to. I have biology lab next but I decide it would be better to stay here and try to write.

Without the others here the maze feels very lonely. Secluded. I've never been able to work so entirely undisturbed, except for a couple of times when Beatrice has been traveling and I've been able to lock the door to our room without thinking of her. It's freeing. I think I live with a lot of stress, which now fades. I lean back against the bush with my backpack in between so it doesn't sting and think for a moment, with my notebook in my lap, and watch the old iron gate. I have no illusions about remembering the some one hundred fifty perfect sentences of the short story in my dream, but I remember the broad strokes of the story and it might not turn out bad, if I can just focus. Give up the fantasy of making it perfect. Let it take as much space as it needs. Develop. Decompress. Let the characters breathe.

It doesn't have to be here. It doesn't have to be us. It would, I don't even know the word. Smug, self-involved, conceited, unimaginative, cheesy. I don't need to know the word for it, I know only it's something that would be easy to write badly. A secret door hidden in a maze, a group of beautiful young gifted students without a real problem anywhere in their lives? Places and characters obviously borrowed from the writer's own life? It would be very difficult to make that into a story with characters any reader would care about. I don't need that degree of difficulty today.

It could be a little world in a big city, I think. Warren of alleyways where the sunlight hardly reaches through smoke and exhaust. Things get a little dim. Maybe the gate is there one day and then gone, maybe someone bricked it over, maybe she just got lost. She. Our hero. She can be a baker, a librarian, no, an out of work old soldier, that's perfect. I don't know where the image comes from, I just lie down and accept it.

Not that old. She looks like she's pushing fifty but is barely over thirty. Life is hard for veterans. She has lived on the street some since she came back from the war. Can't keep a job with her panic attacks. Doesn't have many friends. An alcoholic priest, an old lady who thinks she's a witch, a trans girl way too young to be homeless. And three more. A younger brother? A younger sister who tries to take care of her a bit even though it strains their relationship so none of them can see how much better it is for her when they just are with each other without expectations. I should write this down, I'm going to fall asleep and then I'll have to think it all out again from the start.

But then something tickles the sole of my foot and takes all my attention. Thoughts of spiders and snakes come to me but I decide it's a butterfly, or a black ant, something harmless that just wants to keep me company. Maybe even a little bird. I sigh happily and slip closer to sleep. There's something special about being touched, that I think most people don't know to appreciate. Those who have friends and family who touch them every day. This tiniest living thing moving over my skin – now climbing over my foot, up to the ankle – releases tons of serotonin in my brain.

The feathery touch vanishes and returns under my nose, and I jerk and snort in pure reflex, and catch sight of Rafaela's dark silhouette leaning over me with a glittering smile and a long blade of grass in her hand.

'Relaxing from the MTV generation I see?' she says.

'Haha, believe it or not but I'm working hard.' Uneasy relationship. Sisters. Homeless child, witch, priest, soldier, I remember everything, no wasted time here. 'What's up?'

'I have no more lessons today so I thought I'd see if you wanted company. If you were still here. Or possibly needed help to get out of her before missing dinner.' She sits down by my side and leans back on her elbows and bends her neck until her fluffy hair touches the grass and the soft line of her chest and throat and chin in profile dressed in the shadows of the leaves makes me lose my breath. 'No hurry yet of course.'

'Yes', I say and look for words while I sit up and try not to stare. 'It, it's fun to see you. I should try to get something down on paper, just.'

'Don't let me get in the way. It's nice here, I could fall asleep too.'

Rafaela lies down flat on the ground with her hands over her head. Her body's lines are still fascinating in ways I wish I could write about, but not so inconceivably perfect. I sit with my legs folded and rest the notebook on my thigh and start writing about Ilyana, as I think I'll call her. Sergeant Ilyana Carolina. I find I breathe more loudly than the scrape of the pen and I'm sure I'm disturbing Rafaela and I tense up to stop it. There are fifty different things I want to say and I can't think of one that would be harmless. I have a growing lump in my belly and I can't write or breathe and I think this is ging to continue every time I see her if I don't say something so it's best to do something about it now.

'I'm asexual but when I see you I want to learn painting so I can paint you', I say, and take a deep shivering breath.

'Oh', says Rafaela, and looks sideways up at me with a face I don't recognize. 'Yeah, yeah, Beatrice mentioned that, I thought it was. Say, that was a hard thing for you to admit, I can see, can I admit an embarrassing thing to you?'

'I want nothing more.'

'I've had a, probably extremely prejudiced fantasy about seducing you, just a fantasy, I know it doesn't work that way, it just feels like a waste you don't, I'm an idiot.'

'Haha, impure thoughts? About me? It's allowed. There are those who would look down on you for telling me about it, you might not want to do that in mixed company, but I'm glad you shared. I, I hope we can have an. Intimate relationship. With a free and frank exchange of ideas.'

'That sounds sweet. But without hugging?'

'Hugs are great. I've never had sex but I'm not against it, would certainly like to try it. If you want.'

'I may have misunderstood this asexuality thing.'

'It's not uncommon. I have an easier time than some, I lack only sexual attraction. Not sexual lust, not romantic attraction.'

I suddenly realize we're sitting very close, leaned forward, almost forehead against forehead. Rafaela shows me that face again, almost sad.

'Just curious', I say. 'Can you say what affect you're experiencing right now?'

'Longing', says Rafaela, without hesitation.

'I think I feel the same. Conscious of the distance between us, eager to get closer, share everything, get to know everything. Do you also have five thousand questions you'd like to ask?'

'Yeah definitely. Have you thought of somewhere to begin?'

'Umm.' I think about what questions ought to be first, and realize the fifty things I had in mind are just about me, and I think carefully to come up with one single specific thing I want to know about her. The silence grows and Rafaela keeps looking at me with longing all over her face. Should I ask where she's from, if she has family, that stuff neurotypical people want to know? If she's read a good movie or seen a good book recently? If anyone has told her how beautiful she is? We may have passed all boundaries for personal information, but how do I know for sure? Should I ask something about the rules for this kind of conversation? 'What do you dream, Rafaela?' I manage to say and immediately wish I could sink into the earth.

'Hm. Dreams like at night or more ambitions?'

'What kind is more important to you?'

'I often dream about men. Men who, hm, don't act like any men I've met. They're tender. Like to hug. Hold me as softly as any woman. Look at me like, like you're looking at me now. Attractive men, in short.'

'Sounds nice. Unlikely, if not impossible, but what's the point of dreaming of things that are possible?'

'There's always hope. Mm. Not that I work hard to find such boys. Girls are better, mostly. I'm just a little curious about dicks. It might be the same way you feel about sex.'

We almost miss dinner after all, consumed by our conversation in a way I've never experienced. We talk about attractions and sexuality and sex in the most immodest way, until we get to the dining hall and all the people within hearing range make me shy. For being five years my junior Rafaela has lived ten years more, judging by her stories. She had a twin sister who died when she was one, had cancer in the ovaries and lived in hospital for several years, her parents sold their house to get her specialist care and after all that they kicked her our for being in love with a girl.

She was fifteen. I can't resist swearing in front of the whole dining hall to take revenge on them. My parents may have abandoned me right from the start, but I have at least always been able to count on them not being there. This betrayal makes me angrier than I thought possible. Although before I can stand up and throw things Rafaela explains if I turn them into spaghetti sauce she'll just be forced by the doctor's oath to help them and that would be silly when we can just leave them alone with their hate instead.

'I never have to deal with them again, but they have to live with their own fake lying asses and conditional love without a break. I hope they live forever', she says, with so much venom in her voice I notice it.

So I sit still and chew on a lump of meat that seems to grow in my mouth. Fortunately my friends (well, Beatrice and her friends) sit down with us and carry the conversation for me.

From their questions I learn such important things as: Rafaela likes to paint and dance, though she's bad at it, and watching movies; her favorite color is dark blue, she would like to own a cat and she hates dressing nicely and sequels to movies with the same name as the original. She also gets to know similar things about me (I like sunflower yellow), I can't complain when they spare me the trouble, but when they talk about how much I love James Joyce and never stop talking about his books I have to clarify this is about one conversation I had with Danny once that the poor neurotypicals seem to have gotten stuck on, and also it was a little sarcastic.

We leave the easy, quick to laugh company, Rafaela and I, and go to speak of serious things. I like that they are there, like having them in my life, when I have to relax from life. But it feels like wasting time sometimes. They talk in circles forever without communicating, it might sound elitist but I couldn't stop thinking about the time running away and never coming back, and it's time that right now feels important to spend with Rafaela, I don't want to sit seventy years from now and regret every minute I wasn't fully present with her.

I tell this while I show the way to the library, where we lay claim on a free group room and sit down in a big soft couch, and I realize halfway through it's way too much, too personal, too soon – I could hardly talk about it with Beatrice even – but I don't know how to conclude the thought without sounding like an extra pretentious version of "I hate small talk", and I'm scared it sounds like that anyway, and I try to squeeze in an aside about how I really don't understand social interactions in a group at all and I'm not trying to criticize it, and at last I take a leaf from Rafaela and say 'I'll stop talking now.'

'I agree', says Rafaela, after a small silence, followed by a longer silence. 'I mean, not that you have to stop talking, but the rest. I could listen to you talk all day. But yeah, "let me live fully, deliberately, for real" and all that. When I've crammed the names of all the muscles in the hand we should, hm, do something. Didn't I read the school has a movie theater?'

And I leave Rafaela to her books and turn on the ancient computer in the corner and start writing The Unopened Door in an email to myself, in spite of the great distraction of feeling understood. I don't know what tone or voice the story should have to sound like itself so I just describe the events and setting and characters, short, dry, distanced, self-aware. More a manuscript than a story. But a powerful mood still comes through, dripping with big city misery I confabulate out of practically thin air. Loneliness, emptiness, hunger, hot grinding steel, shadow and smoke. It's easier to picture than putting into words.

At some point I notice Rafaela hanging over my shoulder, but I continue for about another page before I lose courage or if it's my concentration. In either case I can't get another word out and Rafaela makes a longing sound. I send the letter and open it and rise with an inviting surrendering gesture, and Rafaela reads from the top while I look around and find an illustrated tome on sex and relationships someone has hidden behind the back of the couch and amuse myself by flipping through a few pages and writing on the inside of the cover (in pencil in a light hand, I'm not a monster), "When you hold this book in your hands think about the five thousand horny students who held it before you."

'So everything's good with the muscles?' I say when Rafaela looks up.

'You have to let me make this a comic', says Rafaela.

I blink. 'Allow you? It's, that's the best thing I've heard.'

We make a print-out and head to Rafaela's room, eight floors up in the castle. She lives alone, in a hot little room with a slanted roof and dust in the water pipes, furnished with a bed and a desk and a lonely moving box. From it she digs up a sketchbook and a pen case, and then I look over her shoulder when she uses these simple means to conjure the characters from my imagination. She brings them alive, so simple, so uncomplicated, just some flowing lines in ink giving Ilyana and them personal expressions and body language and everything I would have never thought of. I dare not breathe. My eyes are burning.

'I don't know what I'm doing at all here', says Rafaela. 'Never really tried drawing comics and I don't know if this is anything like the direction you had in mind?'

I grasp her shoulder in a way I hope is encouraging and struggle to get words out. We share a nervous laugh, and then we try to talk through the story and its presentation in general terms. I lie down on Rafaela's bed and close my eyes just to not get distracted while we build up a world far beyond the scope of the story, just because it's fun to talk about. I float in a shapeless space where only my and Rafaela's disembodied voices exist and it's like flying and after a while I realize I'm unconsciously weaving stuff about myself into the story and symbolically accidentally talking about things I didn't even know about myself, much elss had words for, and when I say I think Ilyana's love for Eileen is really about me loving her the only surprise for Rafaela is finding out I didn't do that on purpose.

Somewhere in the bright emptiness a heavenly body approaches. We pull closer, roll toward each other when our gravity wells mix and we sink down in the mattress. Rafaela runs a finger over my eyelids, at least I think it's a finger, and I shiver, involuntarily.

'I don't know how to react when you touch me', I say, without moving.

'Ah, I'm sorry, is that not good?'' says Rafaela, and her hand disappears.

'No, yes, I like it. Keep going, if you please. If, if you want me to do something you have to tell me, I want for you to know how amazing it feels when you do it with me but I don't know what's okay here.'

'Wow. We're talking about, just to be clear, this is not a metaphor for sex or relationships, it's this important to you just to, to touch? With our clothes on?'

'Yes. It's untried ground.'

So Rafaela teaches me about hugging and petting until it feels forced.

'This is exhausting', she says. 'I just wanted to fuck and here we are in the middle of a mess of consent and mindfulness and responsibility and unexamined personal boundaries and.'

'I like when you talk dirty', I say. My hand rests on Rafaela's cheek. 'I am exhausting to be with, I know, I'm sorry. It's the same for me.'

'What don't I do for love.'

'It's so frustrating, I would dearly like to do this all night, maybe, like, get used to being with you, but I don't think either of us have the strength for it, do we?'

'No sleeping may be good too. I'm losing focus anyway, I won't be any fun company in fifteen minutes.'

And we part, after a little bit of complaining about the human shell's weakness and praising of Rafaela's art. My mental exhaustion sink into the body and I stagger down to my room where Beatrice lies awake. She pretends she's been extremely worried for me to, she tells me, hide how she's been a little worried in a way grown people on a school with all kinds of modern safety equipment are hardly allowed to be for each other. I hug her and tell her she gets to care as much as she can for me, and before she worries about my change in behavior I tell her it's been the best day of my life, and it would never have happened without my best friend Beatrice.

And I lie down and listen to the rain, through the open window, and let go.

The next day Rafaela and I make plans and talk my painting teacher into letting us make the comic as an "independent study", giving Rafaela access to one of the modern computers in the art department with specialized hard- and software for drawing. After school and homework we have an hour of computer time when Rafaela with maniacal speed scans her drawings and transforms them, gives them bold lines and color and light and substance I can hardly believe when I see it. Shape and color bleeds over the page and mix into something that seems not to come from this world. She gives the comic a shifting loose flowing style perfectly suited to the story's attempt to mix dream and reality.

I hang onto her shoulder and watch and try to make meaningful comments though it's mostly unbridled praise, and push keys when she asks me so she can use her left arm to hold onto me, and we talk about understanding and being understood, and when we're chased from the computer by the next group we continue without stopping until the middle of the night while we wander around the school. We go through the observatory (and peek at a couple of stars) and the thin little forest Rafaela hasn't seen before and end up in one of my favorite spots, the hanging garden the biologists built up and then abandoned some five years ago. Now it's just a giant set of stairs on the mountain's southern side covered in mixed wild-grown plants where I never see another person.

Until now. Alone in the moonlit jungle it seems less heavy to look at each other, less heavy to touch each other without having to think of a thousand things, less heavy to speak honestly. Occasional, fat, warm raindrops caress our faces as Rafaela teaches me to kiss. It feels indescribably good (she thought, writerly) but I don't seem to feel the same as Rafaela, who sobs and gasps for air and pulls softly seeking at our clothes, sick with longing. I sigh and help her unbutton my shirt but then she suddenly stands still, in front of me on her knees with hands around my neck, with her eyes stuck on my face though I gesture faintly to pull them downward.

'You're not hot for this at all are you?' she says.

'I'm not un-hot', I say in a tone I expect sounds confused. 'I mean, it's nice, maybe I'm not just as horny as you are, but.'

'Ah, I think you are, cause I'm not anymore.' She snuggles up to my chest and I don't understand why she's upset but I realize I don't have to understand precisely to see that she is and comfort her, and I put my arms around her and slide down onto the soft damp ground.

'Just a moment of weakness', she says, whispering against my throat. 'No harm done. We, we can do what you want, I want too much, I'm not thinking straight.'

'I trust you. But, hmm. I want to lie still here and hug. Breathe the free air.'

'It's good. Peaceful.' Rafaela talks quietly, slowly, as if she was scared of cracking like glass. 'I don't think I was ready honestly. I'm glad it went down this way.'

'I'm so, so glad you're here. It's important to you what we do together and when and what we don't do, I get that, but you have to know it matters little to me. I'm with you if you want to take it careful or close our eyes and roll around in the grass or whatever. Or if you change your mind mid-foreplay.'

'That feels good. I have, it was a long time since I had anyone "with me". I. Um. Thank you.'

I don't know how I became the steady one taking care of the fragile Rafaela here, and I worry it'll be obvious I don't know what I'm doing, but I lie still and stroke her back and her lovely thick hair and hum comforting noises and don't think about the single layer of fabric separating our bodies or the wet stuff dripping down my ribs, don't think about my and Rafaela's sweat mixed with rain and tears. I hold Rafaela and look up at the moon, a wide sliver straight above us, and don't think about the sudden, aching, burning hunger kindling in my belly and further down.

'From what I've heard it gets better the longer we wait', I say.

'It depends a lot on how hard it is to wait', says Rafaela. 'Haha it's funny cause I'm already in agony.'

I continue to hold her and don't regret lacking the courage to talk about my own arousal that would surely just lead to a respectful but exhausting conversation and tangled reasoning to get out of having sex neither of us want to have whatever our bodies may think about it. I just hold her and think about the wonderful, uninhibited, curious, intense, trusting, unstoppable, breakable lonely little person in my arms in the midst of all this living beauty and now my eyes and my throat ache instead out of love for her and I don't have to work at not thinking about sex.

And the sun rises and a knife-sharp rainbow crosses the pink sky and a spiderweb casts a brilliant bright shadow over us and I pull at the wide leaf of a flower until water runs over our faces and we get up and go to our rooms. I realize slowly it's Saturday and the weekend usually lined with distracting breaks in my schedule has become even more dissolved and stretches out before me like a blank page full of possibilities.

I may need routines on a basic neuropsychological level but I love to be free from them.

I feel clean, empty, still as a glass without water, when I sneak into the room and meet Beatrice stepping out of the shower. I still have my shirt unbuttoned, it feels nice and I had imagined nobody in the building was awake at this hour, and she's wearing a towel that's not covering anything, and I turn my head away so hard it hurts my neck a little.

'Do my eyes deceive me', says Beatrice, holding back a laugh. 'Or are you blushing Nadia? What's happened?'

'Must something have happened, can't I just have developed a normal aversion to nudity just because?' I glance quickly in Beatrice's direction, when she's in bed and covered in her sheet, and catch an unconcerned, curious smile. 'Yes yes I have sex on my brain. And I know I look like I have a sexy story to tell. And I'd probably be shy to tell it even though I wanted. But no, no sex. It was much better.' I leave her to think on that while I go to the bathroom and I feel very prankish.

Showering seems somewhat superfluous until I'm reminded how properly hot water feels and notice how cold I am. I melt into a pile on the floor and wonder if Beatrice would be worried if I slept here. Almost certainly.

'I am terribly curious', she says, when I finally stand up and shuffle into bed. 'If you want to talk. But I'm tired as a car and I guess you are too so, shall we talk later?'

'Would be good. Feels like we have hardly seen each other in weeks. But to cover the basics. Life is wonderful. Romantically, artistically, psychologically, everything. I am. With Rafaela I'm not alone.'

'The basics. Good. That's good. I'm happy. That you're happy. I miss you. It's silly, right, it's my problem, I have things I can do about it. I just want you to know. You're important.'

I make a surprised sound in answer and Beatrice says no more and I wonder if she'll remember what she said or know I heard it and I want to cry.

The next evening, when we have finished sleeping, some kind of party happens in the theater building and Rafaela and I go there looking for adventure. Everyone is there, that is to say, Beatrice, Danny, Mona and Mara, and Mara's girlfriend Ako who no one has met, visiting from the capital. I have not mentioned Mara is a hundred and eight centimeters tall, it's not something I usually think about, but it's hard not to when I see her with Ako who introduces herself as 'Ako Hi Ee, two hundred fifty six centimeters.'

She's the second tallest human in medical history, Mara tells us, sitting on Ako's shoulder. It's such a joy to see them together, how Mara climbs over Ako – she stands on her hand and reaches the stage lights without trouble – how they share an icecream drink, about one part to eight, how they dance, Mara weightless half a meter from the floor in hands that seem to hardly touch her. But it isn't their size difference that fascinates me but how well they work together, how they move with total awareness of what the other one does. They have been together since they were the same size (says Mara when Beatrice asks how they met or even managed to see each other) and maybe that explains all of it. Maybe that's how it works to have family.

My eyes are drawn to them maybe a little more often than customary, but I still have a lot of difficulty taking them away from Rafaela. We walk around in lazy circles and greet people neither of us know and taste different drinks – she likes beer and I wonder at how we can agree on anything – and it feels so radically different from other parties I've been at. Just to be with her. I'm not watching from outside anymore, I'm here. We play with a big group of strangers and improvise some silliness up on the stage, all unplanned, all informal, the audience may be smaller than the troupe but they laugh freely and we laugh with them and I don't know what's going on and it's amazing. We touch each other and everyone can see how much we're in love and they're happy for us (I think) and it's amazing. We squeeze deep into an overfull worn-down couch stinking of old beer and Rafaela sits in my lap to have less contact with the couch and we do nothing, think nothing, just listen to the music, and even that is amazing.

And I walk in the garden outside, alone. The memory comes a little behind, blurry. Rafaela was talking to Ako about something I was annoyed at not being able to follow and I decided I wanted a scoop of fresh air and we joke about the sweet misery of parting. I laugh to myself and take a gulp out of my bottle. Ice cold sweet sparkling cider on the inside, hot damp dark air on the outside, a delicious mix. I'm more than a little dizzy, but what of it?

I sit in the grass and pour a little out for my old friend the iron gate. I tread outside of time, for a limitless moment there is just the gate and the mysterious world locked behind it. In reality maybe five minutes pass and then someone sits down next to me with a loud grunt.

'Oops', he says. 'Nadia. I seem to be pretty drunk. Hardly saw you there. I can go if you want to be alone.' Danny. It might just be my prejudice but I think he sounds overly, a little deliberately unconcerned.

'It's a free country.' My own unconcernedness surely sounds even more fake. But I'm also drunk and maybe bold enough to attempt a normal adult conversation. 'How are you? I don't know if we've ever had a talk without Beatrice.'

'No, when you mention it. I was scared of being alone with you, this was before I knew you, a year ago maybe. Kept waiting for the "If you hurt her I'll break your legs" talk.'

'Huh, I thought that was implied, not something you really said.'

'No, you never say the obvious thing, do you? It's what I like about you Nads. You don't do anything the usual way.'

'I didn't think anybody paid that much notice to me.' His hand rests on my leg and I don't know what to do with that situation so I do nothing.

'You might not know how noticeable you are', he says, leaning his shoulder against mine. It might be normal to touch each other like this, I might be stupid to worry what Beatrice would think if she saw us. 'I mean, seriously, I don't know what you'd do to me if I made Bea sad. But, but, I have been good with her, right? I'm asking for critique of my boyfriend performance here.'

'I've never liked you, Danny', I say. 'I think you're controlling, cruel, you sabotage her self-esteem and act like she's your property and just pretend you're joking and I'm scared to say anything because maybe it's just me reading the worst into it because I don't like she doesn't have as much time for me or don't like things changing in general.'

After a while I realize he's staring at me and turn my head to look at him. His face is so close. He sucks in a breath when our eyes meet. 'You're so jealous'', he says. 'And you've no empathy. You could maybe say I raped you to get me out of her life, now that we're finally alone together. But maybe you're just scared she'd think you're making it up to get her to yourself.'

I am scared of that. But my survival instinct is strong, it works hard and it protects me and I immediately have a plan the same moment his hand glides up between my legs. While speaking of lacking empathy Danny acts as soon as he's reasoned his way to thinking he can get away with raping me.

He climbs onto me, puts a hand on my shoulder to push me down. I see my opening and slam my knee against the inside of his left knee as hard as I possibly can. It makes a sharp knocking sound, maybe a little crunching, and he opens his eyes wide and screams without words and I don't even have to help him get off me, he shrivels up on the ground all by himself and I leap up and hobble away. I can't quite put weight on my own leg, but I make it all the way to the maze entrance before he can even stand up and I have to wait to keep him in sight. If he doesn't follow me I'm going to need another plan.

But he comes, forcefully shuffling, leaning on the outer wall. It takes him on a longer path, but it's clearly faster than if he tried to walk straight to me and climb over the low hedges without support like I did and much faster than following the path. I back away when he gets close, away from the hedges, and give him the finger and hope he's angry and greedy enough to believe I'm thinking he can't follow me here.

He is. He throws himself at me in an attack he must think comes as a surprise, and I throw myself away and we both fall in the grass. He crawls after me without making a sound, face full of so much hate I can see it, and I have to kick his hands away when I stand up. I limp on as fast as I can, more jumping on one leg, around the corner back to the party, back to my friends as he must be expecting, and when he can't see me anymore I start walking, slowly so no one who might spot me will see my bad knee, past the front door and around back. I remember every stone of the theater building though I haven't acted in about four years. Many intense memories of the stage, of course.

The back door stands open to let people out to smoke, as I expected, and I nod to the group of five smokers and go in, through the storage, through backstage, and peek through the curtains out over the party. Ako is easy to find in the crowd and the others sit with her, they don't seem to have moved, and I wait around two minutes until Danny comes in. One may have to know he's injured to notice his limp, he walks with impressive ease but with a calm which to me looks hysterically forced, ready to play the part of "What the fuck are you talking about, I haven't seen you all day", but then he sees I'm not there and turns on his heels in a panic and falls over and gets spotted.

It's better than I had hoped, or at least faster. He must think my only options were either going to my room and hide or going here and hope to convince Beatrice of the truth, and he saw me go here, he thinks, so he must think his sister and his girlfriend and everyone else now rushing to his side have just heard he tried to rape me and now are hiding me to protect me from him. I confess I feel a pure sadistic pleasure when I hear him roaring 'I didn't do it' in a superbly wounded tone and see the panic in his face when he sees me step out on the stage and wave to him.

And he's still not getting it. 'You, you lie', he screams and points with his whole hand to me, so hurt. 'I'd never touch you you stinking lying whore.'

I say nothing, just stare at him with all the hate and disgust I can summon. My hands hang straight down my side, a brutally efficient rhetorical trick I learned here when we played Shakespeare in period costumes without pockets, and they all come up on the stage and he continues to deny the very specific accusations he thinks I've made until it dawns on him how I've cheated him and he tries to change his story so I tricked him by saying how I was going to accuse him before kicking his leg off and running and everyone in the building can see straight through him.

Rafaela and Beatrice and Mona step over to my side and put various arms around my shoulders, and Mara follows them immediately, I see, after exchanging a quick look and a light touch of the hands with Ako that apparently means she's carrying Ako's support with her while Ako stands like a grim standing stone with a hand on Danny's shoulder, and Danny stops talking at last and looks like someone understanding he has no friends here.

'If we looked for DNA in the crotch of my jeans', I say, with my hands still at my side, and a high clear voice since I am after all standing on the stage, 'do you think we'd find any trace of the skin oil on your hand?'

'That, what does that mean?' says Danny. It means nothing. You seduced me isn't that it? Couldn't live without dick anymore.'

'My dear little man', says Ako, in her dark rumbling voice. 'Try to stick to a single story at least.'

'Even better try to shut your mouth', says Mona. 'You're done, don't you get it? You don't talk to me or my friends again. You walk away. You call mom and dad. If I hear a story from them tomorrow that fits with what Nadia has to say then I won't cut your penis off while you sleep.'

I didn't know Mona had such a gift for words. I squeeze her hand, while Danny limps toward the door and a wide road opens up for him through the sea of people. 'He's not your fault', I say.

'No but he's my responsibility', says Mona. 'And similar expressions but with more Bible quotes.'

'I'm not my brother's –' says Beatrice. 'Right, you said that. Such a quotable quote. The context, though. Cain says it when he's murdered Abel. The point is one shouldn't do as he does. One should care for one's family. It must be heavy, I can't imagine. But you have us, Mona, you're not alone. I'm babbling.'

'No, it's, thanks', says Mona, distracted. 'Um. Are you okay, Nadia?'

'Sure. I feel all your support, it's incredible, you're incredible ladies, yes I can even feel your support from over there Ako.' I turn to the audience, it takes a mental strain to remember this isn't a show, but we still have taken over probably fifty people's nice evening and it feels in my bones that we owe them closure and I raise my arms in something that looks like a victorious gesture or just a call for attention but when I keep holding them up and turn my wrists in it becomes a grand apologizing gesture. (I should get back to the theater, I belong here.)

'I apologize', I say, and somebody immediately cries, in a muted voice, it's not my fault, and I give the audience a happy nod. 'No one came here tonight to watch a bunch of drama, but that's how it went down and we can't change that. Danny Leto should never be left alone with a woman, that's a lesson I think we're all benefiting from and won't hesitate to pass on.' I realize now Beatrice has been alone with him both once and fifty times and I give her a concerned look over my shoulder and she smiles a crooked smile and rolls her eyes in a gesture that says it's too complicated to talk through right now. 'The question before us now is only if we should let him sabotage our party, or just remember how that asshole just now categorically destroyed himself and laugh at him and party on.'

The party decides to party, the music starts up again like a signal, Gloria Gaynor sings of surviving, how fitting, and we six who have partied enough vanish into the shadows behind the curtains, to the makeup room with the big mirrors and the harsh lighting where the actors traditionally decompress after the show. Rafaela holds me fiercely and I notice she's shaking and I hug her back and try to tell how it wasn't that bad, to calm her.

'What actually happened?' says Mona, while Ako pulls all of us into a group hug. 'I mean, if you want to talk.'

I tell them, as I float between their arms with my eyes closed. I try to say just what happened, not by any particular concern for Danny's genitals' future but just because after his despeate lies the truth seems important, even though it maybe makes me sound cowardly and malevolent and merciless when I talk of my fear and my unprovoked criticism and my destructive and manipulative defense. But it's clear to everyone if I hadn't done precisely what I did he would have pushed me down on the ground and raped me and lied about it and even if I had had the guts to talk which I'm not at all sure about it would be word against word and though the women here would cast him out there would be doubts and he would be able to do it again somewhere else.

And I realize they think I'm a hero, and they respect what they see as courage to overcome such deep fear and clearsightedness to sense the predator behind the proper facade and skill in battle. And I think a hero can't break down just because she can't stop thinking how close it was, how little would have been needed for it to go completely differently, how easily she could have missed just a little bit with the knee and been stuck, how his heavy body would press the air out of her so she couldn't scream and how she would twist around in panic with her belly full of sour revulsion when he tore her pants up. I saw his erection one time, when I walked around wrapped in my own thoughts and wandered into the bathroom just when he pushed Beatrice up against the wall, and I can feel just how the hard tip would push in and I wouldn't be able to help how my body reacted and I would think about Rafaela's kisses and about Beatrice's moans and pass out from lack of oxygen and disgust before I can bite his throat and he would think I enjoyed it and I want to throw up.

But I hug my friends harder instead and say how I can't tell them how much it helps me they are here, knowing I'm surrounded by girls who believe you without hesitation, who stands up to creeps no matter what it costs. I'll never be scared of telling any of them any hard stuff, I promise.

'You'll never have to be afraid of me disbelieving you at least', says Beatrice, when we're done hugging and have relocated to our room, just her and me and Rafaela. 'You're so honest people would hardly believe it. What you said, all that you told Danny he didn't want to hear, you said that just because he asked did you?'

It's true. I had thought about how I dared do that, no matter how much courage I may have drank.

'If you aren't ready to hear the truth you shouldn't ask Nadia, then', says Rafaela, and hugs my arm. She doesn't say much more, she feels tired and incoherent, but she struggles to keep her eyes open and be with us.

And we get to the truth of how badly I'm doing with what almost happened and I can finally cry, and Beatrice tells me she actually had wanted to break up since at least half a year but put it off just because it felt like more trouble than keeping it up, she has been able to tell herself it's an easy relationship without any demands with fantastic sex (to speak honestly) and have never thought he's actually unpleasant to be around almost all the time. Never thought it seems like a bother to break it off because she's scared of making him upset. There was warning signs, she can tell now, and she promises to ask my honest onion about any dude she as much as looks at.

And we watch violent movies about women saving each other until we fall asleep, all three piled together in the two single beds stood together. So simple to give comfort, just by physical contact. So desperately I need to touch them, both of them, to not fall into the space between us. The infinite empty space between human hearts where we can do such terrible things to each other.

And the next day I go with Beatrice to the counselor, Emma, and tell her what happened. She has heard rumors, and Danny apparently left the school by a taxi sometime before seven in the morning, not that he could have been allowed to stay, as far as Emma can see. So much for the practical problems. The more immediate, and more difficult to take up with Emma who I've talked to maybe ten times in my life, is if I can get therapy.

It does in fact work mostly practically, when we've decided I have all the emotional support I could wish. I learn a few words like "trauma" and "intrusive thoughts" (the unwelcome fantasy of how I could have been raped is one), useful tools to conceptualize the problem; get a few numbers to call if my friends should be unavailable or just to give them a break, sign a form that basically classes me as a sensitive student with great allowances for missing lessons and exams and things of that nature; practice self-hypnosis as a technology for gaining self-aware control of my thoughts, and demonstrate self-defense to the two women. I mean to make a special note the inside of the knee joint is not an ideal point of attack to disable an opponent, it has weak points but they're impossible to target precisely, and I mean to show this by whacking my knuckles hard against my own knee, and I manage to produce incredible pain and have to sit down.

But when we're done laughing I go through the basics a little more seriously. The outside of the lower arm has thick, hard, flat bone directly under the skin (I demonstrate by knocking with my knuckles again and hurt my knuckles) and is the best part of the body to punch into someone else's body if you can reach, to do more damage to them than yourself. Elbows, knees, foreheads, fingers, teeth, eyes, throats, groins, all the important parts. The thing that matters, I say, and Beatrice nods already – she has heard this lecture before – is not anatomical knowledge, not technique, not speed. One doesn't win fights by being stronger or tougher or having a bigger reach than the other guy. The thing that matters is being prepared. One wins fights by being more ready than the other guy to permanently destroy their body. If you're ready you can lunge and push your thumb with your full body weight behind it all the way through the other party's eye before they start fighting, and then you win.

It calms me to just say these things out loud, just as we wanted, but Emma also takes notes in great seriousness and it feels inspiring.

So armed we go to eat lunch. I leave Beatrice to walk alone up to Rafaela and fetch her and it works, I breathe steadily and barely think of anything unpleasant, I'm fully aware of the stairs and hallways around me and try to add them to my mental map of the school while I try to remember the way I've only gone twice before, both times very preoccupied with Rafaela's company.

I don't like to be alone but it's still my natural state.

Rafaela understands me, I think. She wanted to be alone to draw and she's contrary when I mention lunch.

'It's not that I don't want to break', she says. 'Not that I want to, our comic is getting real good. But ugh, crowds.'

But I lure her with kisses and my new benefits badge that means we can build a hill of tiny tacos for two on my plate and wave to Beatrice and I estimate half of the school who looks at me with starry eyes as we walk by and escape back to my room to eat. We use my room, because it's closer, it's a little bigger, and Rafaela wants to marry my shower with "water that smells like water".

I'm scared of the day when I might have to borrow her shower.

But today is our day, and when we have stilled the worst hunger and exchanged the biggest news we go to the bathroom together. (I check the door lock twice.) Slowly, gently, tenderly, bit by bit we study each others' bodies in the harsh light while we wash each other. She makes me feel beautiful. I make her feel, she says, paroxysms of pleasure greater than she thought was possible, so powerful and so long lasting she worries about brain damage, when I dig my fingers in to the roots of her hair and massage in my cheap shampoo.

We don't have sex. We have too much fun getting to know each other. Though I want to, it feels correct to have that experience for real in a healthy way to erase the sick fantasy. It doesn't take a professor of psychology to figure out it doesn't work that way. Not for neurotypical people and almost certainly not for me either.

And Rafaela isn't in the mood either. She likes this relaxed, unassuming intimacy and joke about asexual brainwashing. I embrace her from behind at some point, sitting on our knees with the hot water rushing over us, just hold her in my arms and close my eyes and cry because I want time to stop. I've never experienced this complete calm together with another human.

'I know what you mean and everything but if time freezes we can never finish the comic', says Rafaela.

'So much for that moment', I say, pretending to laugh so it doesn't hurt so much.

'Sorry. I seem to need to suck you into my ADHD world.'

'That's okay. I wouldn't want to leave you alone there. It's okay to be drawn into a more frustrating reality by someone you love.'

'That's a rule now? Not that I want to disagree.'

'Can I ask you something?'

'Oh, this is going to be good.'

'Rafaela. In your long experience with relationships, romantic, can you tell me if. Is it always like this?'

'Like, what? Absolute trust, absolute dedication, respect, communication, belonging, sharing dreams? No this is all new to me.'

We sit there for so long Beatrice finishes all her innumerable social obligations and come in and knock on the door. We can soon convince her everyone's feeling well, and less soon she's not interrupting something. It may be because it takes us more than five minutes to stand up, dry off, put clothes on and leave the heavy mists of the bathroom, wrinkly, damp and shuffling forward on legs that feel as if they're soft boiled. Our tacos are a little congealed but still good and we resume eating while Beatrice and Rafaela get into a conversation about the biology teacher and I sit fascinated and watch them. I try to understand the mechanics of a normal human conversation and can't follow what they're saying at all and that in itself is probably a part of the problem.

Rafaela mentions she should get back to drawing but her room is too depressing and here is a little too crowded and we end up going out in the sun all three together. Both pleasant and practical. I lead us, without the others seeming to notice, to the iron gate, just to pick up the bottle I dropped yesterday, three eternities ago. It's still a good place, private, protected from the wind, just a little shade from the sun, thick grass the gardening department seem to have forgotten to keep in its place. And the unopened door. I was scared the others would think it was traumatic for me to be here but they don't seem to make the connection. Of course they didn't see it.

And I have seen such big great things happen because of this place, for me and both my friends. I lean back and study the girls I love, Rafaela on her belly, feet crossed over mine and nose in her sketchbook, filled with the joy of creation, Beatrice lying on the stone bench with a history book open on her belly, free from her bad boyfriend. And I want to paint them even though I can't paint, capture their image in some way words aren't enough for. I'm beside myself with love, but the words are within, I paraphrase some comedian in my thoughts. But I take my notebook and try anyway.

Because my words is all I have.

Something of reality comes out in the story, as if by itself. The priest and the soldier drink together, or the soldier rather drinks so there's less for the priest, and they talk about a battle they witnessed, the many tragedies and cruelties they saw, but also powerful acts of dignity and compassion. It's elegant and poetic and emotionally credible and a clear and strong metaphor for my weekend and I know Rafaela will love visualizing it and I don't understand how it can be so good so easily and I feel terribly smart.

'Is this the nerd parking lot?' says a cheerful voice from nowhere and takes me rudely out of the half hypnotic writing state. I look up at Mara, and blink in surprise, and look further up until my neck hurts to look at Ako who's completely blotting out the sun.

'It's here', says Beatrice, in the same light tone, barely glancing up from her book. 'Park your nerd butts.'

'We have some nerdy experiments to do first', says Ako. 'So this is the famous mysterious gateway. Obviously I could tear the doorframe out of the foundation but of course we don't want to break anything.' She touches her fingers to the gate with what I hope is just pretend gentleness, to the hedge growing over it where she has to raise her hand over her shoulder to reach. 'I guess I could climb it but it would be a chore to do it without messing up the hedge, I can lift you over but then you couldn't get out. Or, think think think.' She gets her arms through the bars, and I try not to be jealous of her creativity when I get her plan to reach in to lift Mara up from the other side, but Ako twists and bothers without getting her elbows through and the two sit down, maybe a little disappointed.

'Worth a try of course', says Mara. 'Just out of scientific curiosity. But what could there actually be in there that's exciting enough?'

'I choose to believe it's the groundskeepers' spare storage', I say. 'Clippers, rakes, maybe even a compost heap.'

'Wait', says Rafaela. 'I'm the strongest of the rest of us and pretty compact. I'll just check one thing but can you, Ako, lift both me and Mara you think?'

She gets a leg in between the bars with some trouble, and when she takes her pants off and lies on her back she can push both legs in to the hips. So they make some test lifts that only show Ako is much stronger than anyone would expect, and have a laugh and frighten everyone else by standing on each others' shoulders to reach close to five meters up ('If she falls then throw me to Hell just as long as you catch her' 'What did you think I was going to do?'), and determine there's nothing to see on the other side of the gate but more maze, and get to work.

The logistics are less complicated than they are to explain. Ako parks Mara on the prickly hedge on top of the door and lifts Rafaela horizontally with one hand on her polka dot panty-covered rear for support and one hand on her chest for balance. (I fail to see how sexual it looks before they apologize to me.) Ako kneels slightly to make Rafaela's outstretched legs go through the gate by its upper edge. Mara climbs down on Rafaela's strong legs and Ako lifts them down, slowly to avoid scraping Rafaela's thighs.

It should just be a little funny brain dead passtime, but Mara steps down looking formal and concentrated as if it was the first step on the Moon and we all watch under tense silence. No one thinks about Rafaela's feet already being on the ground, in our heads she's still on this side. Mara is the one who's crossed the abyss, our emissary, the adventurer, the visitor in the unknown. In our heads she is in another world.

And she immediately looks anxious, pleading. 'Well', she says, in a strange bright voice. 'There's nothing actually to do here I guess, nothing we haven't seen if I don't go walking until I get lost and help me I don't know what it is but something's wrong, I didn't feel it until I touched down, it feels so uncomfortable, can we go now?'

She already clings to Rafaela's legs, and reach through the gate and take her hand while Ako sends them up again. The tense silence returns but for all wrong reasons, it feels so strained and I'm positive something has to go wrong, sweet little Mara will fall and break both arms and be stuck in there, break her neck, break Rafaela's back. Ako shines wet with sweat, I notice, and I rifle through my bag for some towel, handkerchief, something fabric. I find only paper napkins that seem insultingly small and I tear up my shirt, have no time for buttons, bunch it up and reach up to wipe off her hands. Or the one hand I can reach. She nods, silent, concentrated, and I keep going over her bare arms and belly, where I can reach, just to make her a little less uncomfortable, while the return journey goes on more or less as planned. Rafaela insists she can go faster, and finds strength to bend her legs to get Mara higher up and make her climb easier, and then she stands on the hedge again looking very relieved. She puts her arms out as if for an embrace but stands still unconcerned while Ako lowers Rafaela down until her feet reaches the ground again and she takes hold of the gate to untangle herself, and then Ako stands up straight just in time to catch Mara who throws herself headfirst at her.

'Don't be scared', says Ako, and pushes Mara to her chest with both hands, and twirls around so her long thin braids seem to wrap around the short girl, and I hope it's just my stupid preconceptions that make me think the gesture looks motherly. 'We don't know what happened, it doesn't matter, it's over.'

'I think it was nothing', says Mara. 'A moment of uncertainty that spun out of control.' Ako carefully puts her down, and keeps a hand around her neck while Mara turns to our congregation with an uncertain smile. 'But I'm glad everyone took it, took me seriously. You, Nadia, you've got to let me mend that shirt.'

I blink and thumb over the ragged gray shirt I managed to tie back together somewhat to cover myself. The arms are a little short, the pockets are too small, it's never been among my favorites and I was settled on keeping it just for those occasions when I could let my breasts hang out. But I realize she just wants to be nice and I say only I didn't know she could sew.

And Ako admires Mara's small fingers with ambiguous words even I can follow and chuckle at and we walk together to speak of Mara's promises of mending clothes. When Beatrice and Rafaela have both gone through intricate discussions of clothes and things that are wrong with them and agreed on how and when Mara can fix a pair of pants for each of them I dare mention how this shirt is after all quite old, and I am more short on pants, I so happen to have a pair I like except for a big hole in the crotch, now since Mara wants to help and all. She has patches for just such occasions, apparently, so everything works out without me embarrassing myself.

And we reach the castle and split up to collect pants and meet in Mara's room, a cozy cool narrow stretched basement room she has gotten to borrow for Ako's sake, with an ocean of pillows and blankets taking up half of it, as Ako explains is much easier for everyone than constructing or shipping around a real bed for her. Only when we get there Mara remembers her sewing kit is back in her regular room on the fifth floor and we split up again, with the idea we all have work to do.

Back in Rafaela's room at last, sweaty and dusty, we continue to assemble our comic. Words and pictures have to be plotted, formulated, sketched, laid out, ideally in the same self-evident sweetly harmonizing balance as the text I have gotten down, but it's harder, more dimensions to balance. Rafaela does most of it, she can sketch out two perspectives on the same scene to try them out and I can't even tell the difference but she can immediately say which works best. Occasionally she needs my judgment, and more rarely I can contribute a phrasing that saves a couple of words of text and makes a word balloon a more practical size or a word choice that looks a little better on the page or stuff like that. I at least have the important job of lettering, so the dialogue looks a tiny bit more organic than if we just wrote it on the computer.

I fill pages with word balloons with just side directions showing where they're supposed to go. I find it a little ironic in some half-assed way my little uppercase ink letters is the only thing the reader will see that's produced mechanically, everything else Rafaela paints over digitally. Though Rafaela suggests that's more a romantic notion than any meaningful difference, we're going to scan the ink and reproduce it digitally, adjust light balance so it's more readable and all sorts of thing.

'Welcome to the computer age, haha. You know I've only used to paint by hand, I read about how image manipulation programs worked and wished for a computer that could do it but it was just theory until now.'

'The future is already here, just unevenly distributed', I say, almost certain I'm quoting somebody. A little dizzy. I go for the window and manage to force it open, with a squeak that sounds very familiar, and soak in the fresh air. I guess it's my mission in life to open windows in dusty castles.

'I was scared to try that myself', says Rafaela, apologetic. She of course hasn't been here since kindergarten like some people, I think. Gotten used to our nameless castle's little nooks and crannies. I maybe look incredibly forgiving, or maybe she's happy about the air circulation, but she leans toward me with a look that's begging to kiss me. I blink and smile and pull her closer and she pushes her lips against mine in a way that tingles down to my toes and I lie down cause standing up seems too heavy suddenly and I pull her down on top of me with my hands around the small of her back and she keeps kissing, I don't know how to answer but her lips and tongue dance over my mouth and my cheeks and my chin and my neck with little quick light impressions and the cooling breeze from the window seems to melt away and it's hard to think about anything but the tingling sensation growing and gathering in my midsection, but the desire to touch her, to get closer.

But Rafaela has sense to pull the brake when my hands probe under her shirt. She rolls off me and we lie side by side and gasp for a long time.

'Where did that come from?' I say, laughing.

'Ah, I'm just in love', says Rafaela. 'And horny and distracted and frustrated. It's a pain to draw this sex scene.'

'I didn't think of that, we could just cut it short. Tasteful or what's it called, suggestive.'

'No it's a good scene. And I'm mostly melodramatic. It's a sweet torture.'

'One day we'll fuck like greased baboons', I say, as dramatically as I can, while I turn to her and stroke her cheek. I would have just added "but not this day" but she starts laughing so loud I think Beatrice might hear it through the windows, five floors down.

And so we go back to work.

The next day Ako leaves. They like her on the freighters, she says, so she gets to travel for free, and if she had sailor education she could even get paid.

And the next day Mona leaves. Her mother has had a stroke of the brain and she doesn't know if she's going to have to bury the mom, take care of the dad, put the brother's head on a stick or some combination of the above.

And the next day Mara leaves, for unclear reasons She talks about Ako needing her and having learned all she needs, though Beatrice tells me it's probably mostly about money. Ako needs so much money just to live. I don't know what to do with the burning sour feeling of injustice.

And Beatrice doesn't know what to do with herself. It maybe seems more mysterious to me, I've always thought her friends were counted in hundreds, but she's confused and sad herself when she discovers there's only me and Rafaela left. She has at least saved the best for last, she jokes when we put off our plans to spend the day with her. Jokes fully sincerely, I suspect. We put Beatrice's and my bed together again and sit in a pile with a big bowl of candy and watch old shows on our tiny little teevee until she stops being sad, or at least until she goes to sleep.

But the day after that she wants to take care of herself and I hang with Rafaela and don't give Beatrice one thought until, late at night, I find Beatrice on her back in the shower. She has blood in her eyes, staring up into the thin water streams with a confused, surprised expression, and water in her mouth running over. I have a vague idea of not disturbing any evidence and leave the water running, but it seems wrong. It's cold and soaks in my pants when I sit down with her. I stroke my fingers over her neck and think about looking for a pulse, but she's stiff and cold and I don't have to be a medical student to understand she's gone. The world wobbles and I'm sure I'm dreaming and I bend down and hold on to Beatrice and labor to keep breathing. I realize I should say something t someone before I start feeling the grief but for one thing I seem to have forgotten how legs work and also I have an entirely irrational but powerful feeling she's not entirely dead as long as I stay with her. I consider just screaming until the neighbors wake up but immediately think of a less awful alternative.

I turn off the shower and turn on the teevee with the volume up all the way and take a bath towel and put it over her and sit down again and take her hand. I can hardly move it, she's stiff as if she was frozen solid, and as the swearing starts from the neighboring rooms I begin to understand Beatrice will never hold my hand again. So unfair, so meaningless, so wasteful, I think, as if to justifying being sad. Finally someone bangs on the door and I get up and turn the teevee off and open up and I can't see who it is for all the tears but I ask for help and I get it.

Strange how organized they are, I think when someone goes to wake up the counselor, someone goes to the biology teacher and someone goes straight to the principal, someone states confidently we're looking at a crushed skull, someone else goes to call an ambulance and someone – Torr, as I struggle to recall – follows me to Rafaela, and kindly retires when we reach her door and I say I can handle the rest and thanks so much. I think I sound in low spirits but collected. Rafaela has not had time to go to sleep and takes ten seconds to open the door when I knock.

'Forgot your bag?' she says, completely unsurprised to see me.

'I, no, it's', I mumble. Hard to breathe again. She catches sight of my dripping wet clothes and backs up to let me in and puts her arms around me when I take one step. 'It's be. Beatrice. She died.'

Rafaela doesn't deny and doesn't wonder and doesn't pull away. She doesn't ask how, when, where or who. She doesn't think what I'm doing here or what we're doing now. She doesn't even say "I'm sorry" or any of those meaningless expected expressions. She seems to immediately see those things either lack answers or lack meaning, and she just holds me and cries with me and says nothing and I don't understand how I can feel so much love and so much sorrow at the same time.

She asks what happened, at last, when my body is too worn out to keep exploding and I hold together, still, slack even, in her arms. Though she immediately changes her mind and says she doesn't need to know that. 'You don't need to say anything. You don't need to think, not right now. Think only about how to keep breathing, and think about how I love you.'

I can't think of anything else, not floating in the dark with Rafaela's naked body pushed tightly against mine, and her hand gently stroking my neck, up and down. I can feel her trembling, she's fighting back tears herself, but she stays calm for me, and I start crying again, and I don't understand why.

There's much I don't understand the next days. I'm constantly numb with shock. I remember nothing of the funeral, except Rafaela being there. She's never more than an arm's length away from me, and when I wonder why she just says what else is she supposed to do. I ask her to marry me, and we do that one weekend in the capital. We have a pair of municipal councilmen who happened to walk nearby for witnesses.

There is no one else left.

A little over six months after that week we begin publishing The Unopened Door on the school's website and gain five readers on the first day. The sad ending where everyone but Ilyana dies we have changed even though it's not as good, the story's only concession to the struggles of reality. Our few readers are generous and we can soon buy a proper website and after a year a computer that does everything Rafaela needs to draw, and we go north to the highland where there aren't a lot of people and doctors are in high demand. After a time we have a little house with a large garden, and a little village full of people going to Rafaela to stay healthy, and I publish my books on our website, and sometimes our comics, and sometimes we're rewarded for them.

I write many more stories, many better written, many making people write to tell me how important the stories have been to them. But none of them gets close to the one I wrote in my dream that time.

In my opinion none of them are even as complete as the story I wrote about the story I forgot.