“I still don’t understand how you think a dream, of all things, is going to lead you somewhere.”

  “Honestly,” he added “I don’t even understand what the dream meant.”

  “I don’t know either. That’s why i wanted to look it up here.” She waved the book as if he had not seen it whilst sitting down on the floor again.

  Zack pulled out his phone and read Zoe’s text outloud: “Yes it was a dream. She told me I had to find ‘Hal’ to climb ‘Mount Dominus’ where I could only see the ‘Valley of Depths’ from the top and then I had to travel there to smash the ‘Crystal of Gibralator’.”

  Zack did not read her second following message, “I remembered!! I remembered!!” He did not understand her text then nor now, and did not broach the question.

  Zoe read the title of the book outload to the room which had an audience of one: Zack. “Magical Places and Where to Find Them: An Encyclepedia of Imaginary Locations in Contemporary Fiction and Antiquitiy Writings by Herbert Groover, Psy. D.”

  “What does Psy. D. mean?” Zack said devilishy curious.

  Zoe replied with a shrug of the shoulders.

  “Have you tried looking in an actual geography book?” Zack the Brainiac asked, motioning for Zoe to let him look in the book. He was becoming more and more curious with Zoe’s quest.

  “I mean, yeah. I searched online…” She defended herself.

  “Yes,” he lectured “but most mountains have multiple names for their smaller ranges. What if ‘Mount Dominus’ is one of the smaller peaks?”

  “What? Yeah, I had considered that.” Zoe spoke in lies.

  Zack visibly frowned in frustration.

  “Okay, okay. I didn’t know that.”

  “I’m just trying to help.”

  “I know, I know. I really appreciate the support right now. I just don’t feel like it’s a physical place. It feels more magical, more ‘inner,’” Zoe squiggled together two fingers simultaneously in both hands.

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  “I just have this invisible feeling, it feels like there’s this invisible compass pointing the way. And it’s only pointing, nothing’s moving, and only you can move yourself. But there’s a path forward, a clearing for you to take.”

  Zack had zoned out when Zoe began to talk about feelings and inner-body phenomena.

  “Yeah,” he thoughtlessly replied, “water takes the path of least resistance.”

  “Exactly!” Zoe said, happy to be understood on what to her was a complex and foreign subject. The interstitial space of life is foreign to us until we begin to penetrate into it and live from it. Then it is just a stepping stone to even greater mysteries – you coud call it, an odyssey of consciousness.

  “I knew you’d understand! You’ve always been so smart!!” Enthusiasm pouring out of Zoe and her momentarily forgotten crushed heart.

  Zack blushed.

  Zoe now lunged on him for a third hug. It was, in a way, becoming easier for him to bear – but Zack was not sure if it was not the familiar numbness reasserting its hegemony on his emotional life.

  He did not know what he was feeling but he knew it was a novel experience he partially wanted more of because it made him feel different. Like he did not have to be Zack anymore but could become someone else. Someone perhaps maturer or stronger or “taller.”

  It was at this juncture that Zoe’s father had walked in on the two kids.

  Benjamin feigning coughs, “ahh-hum, ahh-hum.”

  Zack’s stomach jumped up into his throat. He let go of Zoe though he had not really been gripping her much to begin with during this interaction.

  Zoe did not let go of Zack instead screamed at her father “what?!” while locking him tighter into her arms.

  Zack was definitely overcome with numbness if he had not experienced it before.

  “Nothing,” Benjamin said. “It’s time to go.”

  “That’s not a nothing. That’s a something,” Zoe began to argue with her father.

  Benny ignored her, pointing at the door.

  “Ughh. Sorry sir.” Zack finally replied, unpeeling himself from Zoe’s grip with all the nimblness and dexterity of a housecat.

  “I told you two you only had 30 minutes.”

  “No you didn’t!”

  “Yes he did,” Zack said looing alarmed at Zoe. He didn’t want Zoe’s father to think he was a bad influence and then never see her again.

  “Dad!!” Zoe shouted in protestations. She hated that word and had not used it in a long time. Her father who she only saw infrequently though they lived in the same city.

  “Okay, well, Zoe,” Zack said in mechanical tone. “I will be seeing you.”

  Zoe gave him a look that was an amalgamation of confusion, betrayal, and ‘w-t-f.’ She wanted reinforcements.

  “So I am your father,” Benjamin quipped.

  “Not today. Not never.” She silently brooded.

  She let go of the will to try and tell him they were not done. She knew it was hopeless.

  “Okay, Zoe, take care,” Zack continued mechanically and wide-eyed, like he was being forced to walk the plank on a pirate ship in the middle of a sea barren of civilization. He patted her awkwardly on the shoulder.

  Zoe’s confusion and irritation escalated into anger.

  “I don’t know why he’s so weird sometimes,” she thought about Zack.

  Zack reached for his bookbag and headed out the door.

  Zoe continued her protestations silently with menancing glances between the both of them.

  “And this is exactly why I can’t stay here,” she thought.