The other night, I had a dream about one of my biggest high school crushes. Details have since faded from memory, but I haven’t quite shaken the feelings of depression it induced. I knew Deanna during my senior year. She was a beautiful strawberry blonde with rosy cheeks, who often wore polo shirts and stonewashed jeans to the classes we shared, and who, if she saw me during lunch period, would sometimes ask me for a cigarette. The uncertain part of me likes to believe that she wore Tommy Girl perfume, just as that same part likes to believe that our acquaintance extended beyond mere trivialities. Maybe it was her independence that I admired the most, but in my mind, she’s never really left those hallways.

Dreams can be uncomfortable at times. I blame Orhan Pamuk’s Snow: the most unnerving aspect of the novel is that Ka’s fantasies about Ipek, and his tendency to see her on a level far surpassing his own, make perfect sense, even if it’s not always sensible.