Foreverland Is Dead

start digging through the memories and working them out. To start remembering.
    When she said a part of her was fond of Mr. Williams, Linda called it Stockholm Syndrome. Cyn doesn’t like the way it feels—wanting to kill him and save him at the same time.
    “ Little by little,” Linda had reminded her. “We heal little by little.”
    The girls climb the green slope toward a split boulder with a picturesque bristlecone pine nudging the fracture wider. The ancient-looking branches are loaded with seed-bearing cones and short needles.
    Unlike the dream, it’s full of life.
    Why did Patricia choose this as the gate? Was it because it was so far from the cabins? Cyn doesn’t think that’s it. She couldn’t keep them from leaving the dream, but used their fears to trap them. Ultimately, the girls could leave at any time. They chose to stay in the dream by refusing to face their fears.
    In the dream, the tree was dead.
    But it was so difficult to see through the illusion when they were immersed in it. Cyn hadn’t slept more than an hour at a time since escaping, afraid she’d awake in the bunkhouse, marks on the wall. And how does she know this isn’t a dream? What if dreams are endless layers, each another dimension of reality? Which one is real?
    When they’re all peeled away, what will be in the middle?
    She looks at her hands, turns them over. Linda had said that will help to ground herself, remind her she’s in the flesh. In the dream, you doubt. Here, you know.
    But Linda wasn’t there. She wasn’t seduced by the sights and sounds. The suffering.
    Cyn touches the sensitive hole in her forehead. The stent is still there. Maybe they can remove it one day, but she doubts it. It will be there forever, Patricia’s parting gift, something to remember her by. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. In the dream, there was no hole. She can always look at that instead of her hands.
    The girls reach the top of the hill. Jen lays the bundle of flowers on the stone. The flowers from their earlier trips are still there, dry and crumbling, the seeds blowing on the ground where they will bloom again. They’d done this several times over the last couple of weeks to honor all the girls that are lost in the Nowhere.
    Sandy is out there .
    Miranda forgot what she’d done. She woke up with no memories in a young body with blonde hair. Why would she believe that it wasn’t her body? She brought Sandy out to the Fountain of Youth and destroyed her identity so she could take the body. Whatever they are—a soul, an identity, an essence—can be moved in and out of bodies.
    Sandy was pushed out and Miranda moved in.
    Maybe the Fountain of Youth program intentionally made her forget what she’d done. Maybe it was easier that way, to forget what she’d done to Sandy. To forget she’s a murderer.
    Miranda started fresh. Her essence, her soul, got a new body to make more memories. We are not our memories, that’s not who we are. Cyn even suspects Miranda had some of Sandy’s memories, convinced herself she was innocent. She was using the stolen memories to ease the guilt. How would she know? How would any of us know who we really are if we get someone else’s memories?
    Doesn’t matter. Whatever Miranda is, it’s in Sandy’s body.
    So she’s a murderer. And a thief.
    All the girls, all their souls, are lost in the Nowhere and Thomas promised to find them, get them out. But how will they get out? They don’t have bodies anymore.
    The distant thumping gets louder.
    The girls look up. A helicopter banks to the east. Jen waves. They can’t see her, but that’s not why she’s doing it. The helicopter is carrying Patricia to a lab far away. A universe is inside her, a world that contains Sid, Miranda, and Mr. Williams.
    Mr. Graham.
    Somewhere in the real world his wife is hoping to find him. She’ll be expecting to reunite with her husband, expecting him to be inside a young man’s body, one that he sponsored.
    She’ll be disappointed. But at least she’s not trapped in the Nowhere.
    A utility vehicle putters out of the trees. Linda steers it around a dip in the ground. Roc sits in the passenger’s seat.
    Cyn avoids looking at her. They don’t like each other any more in the skin than they did in the dream. Roc would’ve killed them, and Cyn can’t forgive her for that. A part of her wants to send her back to the dream with the old man and Miranda, because she’s a piece of garbage.
    But that’s how the old women