“I think your head is filled with spiders,” Tess muses, poking me again. This time it hurts, and I swat her hand away. “You know, the big creepy-crawly ones. They’re clambering into your tiny brain and making you all dumb.” Her sky-blue eyes roll around in their sockets. I hold on to the sides of the slide and barrel down to the ground. She follows me, her blond hair whipping after her.


“Good grief,” Tess says after she’s picked herself up. “Why won’t you talk to me?”    

I’ve turned away from her, and now she stands in front of me and squints into my eyes. “Callum told me that when people have eyes like they are really far away, it means the spiders are big and hairy and poisonous.” I try to imagine creatures in my head, and the thought annoys more than scares me. Callum, her brother, is always telling Tess things that aren’t true.    

“I think we better get you to a hospital soon,” Tess gushes, and sprints off the tell her mother.
     

The ground is made of wood chips, tiny pieces that stick in the space between my flip-flops and my feet. The air is hot, and it sifts through my clothing and hits my skin like fire. The sun shines brightly overhead. I silently observe my mother pull her sunglasses out of the bag and put them on. She looks back at me, and smiles a little. I can just see her eyes through the shades. I run over to her and jump up onto the bench beside her, and spot Tess at the other side of the park, frantically waving her arms around and announcing something truly ridiculous about me; I can tell because her mother’s eyes flash down to me, her lips pulling into an amused smile. I look away quickly, not wanting to make her think Tess and I are friends. We aren’t—we never will be. I find my gaze, instead, lurking near an ice cream stand at the edge of the playground. A man stands next to it, handing out colorful balloons to those passing by. I notice a boy my age walking alone. Smiling, he takes a red balloon from the man and walks to the edge of the park near a patch of trees. I don’t know why I am so devoted to watching him, but for some reason he seems like the most interesting person I have seen today—except perhaps for the strange man my mother was in contact with earlier. He sees me looking at him, I think, because when he glances back at me I think his mouth curves into the smallest of a smile. 
   

His hand opens, and the balloon lifts into the sky. It was not an accident, because the boy looks perfectly calm. He winks at me, and in that moment, I know he wants to tell me something—I am absolutely positive of it. ‘Red,’ he mouths. And again— ‘Red’. The balloon steadily floats into the air and the boy lets it. It does not get caught up in the trees like mine always do when I accidentally let them go, rather it seems to avoid the branches and leaves and lifts itself into the sky. Soon, it is just a red dot in the blue.

« « «

It was not a Fragment. I know that because there was no one in the vision telling me to awaken. It is a pure memory, I realize—one of my past life. Your soul and body are fighting for one another, but once you make direct eye contact with someone else, they start to lose and you elapse into the same state as everyone else here: dreaming. I was dreaming. Dreaming a memory. 
   Is it possible? It must be, because I am no longer walking on my own. I feel the way I was when Finn found me lifeless in the desert—someone carries me. My hair sweeps behind me like a waterfall. I know I should be burning from the sun, but I feel strangely peaceful. I am not thirsty, nor hungry. When I blink my eyes open, I see we are walking further away from the Underground, and out into the wilderness.
    

I glance up to see who my savior is. He, in turn, looks down at me.
      

“Hi,” says Laurent. 
   

I try to ask him what he is doing here, but he shushes me. Instead, my head falls back down into the crook of his arm and I stare up into the sky, wondering where he is taking us. Before my eyes fall shut again, I think I see something floating through the sky and dodging between the clouds, symbolizing something beautiful and dangerous at the same time.    

It is a red balloon.