"Alex WHAT??!!"

Liz giggled in uncertain embarassment. Isabel had come by her room at the Crashdown late that night to share the latest confusing news - how she and Michael had found a picture that looked exactly like Michael among Laurie's things at the mental hospital. How they had started talking about Alex neither of them could say.

"Tell me!" Isabel repeated, gesturing imperatively with the glass of chocolate milk in her hand. Her eyes were fixed intently on Liz's nervous face.

"He... Alex is in a long-distance relationship with this girl he met in Sweden," Liz said carefully. "Why are you so..." Liz looked speculatively at Isabel's face, flushed slightly with emotion. "Isabel Evans, you're jealous aren't you? After all of this 'No, Alex, we can never be more than friends' garbage, Alex has found somebody else and you're totally jealous. You so want him," Liz taunted. She'd had a little too much chocolate syrup herself.

"I am NOT jealous," Isabel shot back. "I am..." As she searched for the right word, her righteous indignation drained away. "I am an idiot, aren't I?" she finished lamely, looking penitently over toward the other girl.

"Big idiot," Liz agreed slowly. "We tried to tell you, but..."

"I know." With a single swallow, Isabel drained her glass, then disconsolately set about mixing another. "I guess, on some deep level, that I never stopped feeling for Alex," she bemoaned. "It was just so hard... not knowing what to do, not knowing what my destiny was, being scared for me and scared for him..." She sniffled, unable to quite hold back a tear, and seeming arrogantly embarassed about it. "It was easier to just let him go, you know? But I never accepted that... that the day would come when he'd move on, when he'd go and find some girl who wasn't me." Isabel paused, then let loose a short bark of laughter. "God, listen to me. I must sound like such a totally self-involved princess, rambling on and on about my dumper's remorse."

"Only a little," Liz assured her. "But let me tell you. The way Alex looked at you when you first stepped out onto that balcony for the Sweden party, I know one thing for sure. You haven't lost your last chance with him."

"I haven't??" Isabel took a few seconds to digest that. "Well, thank you, Liz. I needed to hear this - all of this." She stood up, all stately dignity, and crossed over to the window. "I'll return the favor, Liz: how long do you have before your last chance with Max?? Think about that." She ducked her head down, lifted a leg up to step outside, and then she was gone.

Liz smiled wanly. "And what makes you think I haven't already given up ALL my chances??" she said to the empty air. But still, the other girl's words had had an effect. To have never accepted that the guy from your past would move on... that hit too close to home...

* * * * * *

Oh why? Should I care if you,
've found somebody new,
And you look like you're in love

And why - should I care if she
Looks a lot like me,
And she's all you've ever dreamed of.

Isabel turned the music down and got ready for bed very carefully. She was wearing her coral silk pajama's, which brought a wistful smile to her face as she remembered the first time she had looked into Alex's dream. She had actually peeked a few other times since then - carefully, though Alex didn't seem to know that. He had forgotten about those dreams.

I didn't care, enough to keep you around.
So tell me baby, why should I care now?

I was the one who let you go!
I never told you that I loved you.
I couldn't promise anything,
The way you needed me to.

Tonight she had planned something a little different. The incident with Laurie had gotten her thinking about her powers. When she had said that her experience with Laurie was more like being dreamwalked than dreamwalking, that was true on one level. But whenever Isabel dreamwalked someone, she always found herself surrounded by 'their' dream scenery, whearas when Laurie had come so forcefully into Isabel's sleep, she had definitely brought her own images with her. That was what had inspired Isabel's imagination.

Oh, my heart was never really there,
So why should I care?
Why should I care??
I just do.

So why? Should I care if I
Ain' nothin in your eyes?
What you felt for me is gone...

God, she hoped this worked. What Isabel had read about directed dreaming didn't exactly fill her with confidence. Then again, if need counted for anything, she couldn't possibly fail.

And why, should I feel that way
Now that it's too late-
To change what I did wrong...?

* * * * * *

Alex wandered down the first-floor hallway of his house. "Hello, is anybody here??" The house seemed deserted.

He noticed that the door to his father's den was shut, and that the simple hook-and-eye latch was on the other side, securing the door closed from outside. Weird. Someone had even gone to the trouble of drilling new holes.

"Dad?" Alex called out again. "Were you trying some home repair and got yourself stuck? Or is Mom playing a trick on you?!" There was no answer, but Alex reached up and undid the latch, drawing the door slowly open.

There was no-one inside. The windows, as ever, were firmly shut and sealed over withburglarproof mesh. Alex stepped forward into the room, only dimly aware that he shouldn't be poking around his father's private space now that the immediate goal of trying to find him had proved fruitless.

A vast quantity of disorderly sheets of paper were spread out over his father's desk, all blank, along with Dad's old-fashioned pen, a bottle of lemon juice, and a glass. Alex gave the desk a cursory glance and moved on.

A typical high-school locker stood at the side of the room, and Alex gave this more attention, trying a half-dozen combinations on the padlock before allowing frustration to get the better of him. "Damnit, Dad, what do you have in there??" Grabbing a flashlight from a nearby shelf, Alex peered through the grille on the front door of the locker. Two short beady-eyed birds with heavy black wings gawked back at him. "Penguins. Um... okay Dad," Alex muttered to his absent parent.

All of a sudden, a door APPEARED in the far wall of the room. No, not appeared - it morphed out of the wall, as if a patch of wall had suddenly decided to stop being a wall and start being a door. "Molecular manipulation?" Alex wondered to himself, going to investigate. As soon as he turned the knob, the door flung itself open, (opening away from him,) and a gust of wind urged Alex towards the portal without actually moving him.

Through the door was a shifting warp of blue and white colors, their speed betraying a maelstrom of activity beyond, but Alex was oddly unafraid. "Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained," he muttered to himself over the sound of the vortex, and stepped across the threshold.

After an instant of feeling like he was being blown across a galaxy by warp-speed winds, Alex's feet touched ground again on the far side of another doorway. The door slowly swung closed and clicked behind him, sealing off the void.

To his surprise, Alex was standing in a picturesque chalet, or possibly a romantic cabin on the roomy side. Dozens of candles were lit on every available surface, and outside a HUGE picture window, the Northern lights shone down.

"What's going on? How did I get here??" Alex asked himself in a mutter. The question brought on an answer by automatic elimination. "Would have to be a dream. Really bright, Alex, the penguins didn't even clue you in. You had to warp across space back to Sweden to realize that this was all still your dream." He scoffed at himself.

"Not exactly your dream," a new voice announced. Alex turned to look for the new speaker, and his pulse quickened. An Isabel figuer was standing near the bottom of a staircase, holding a bottle in one hand and two glasses in the other. She was wearing a stylish red wintersuit that hugged the lines of her figure without being too obvious about them, and leather snowboots. A soft red headband helped brush her lovely blonde hair back from her face, and it fell down like a gleaming cascade of frozen gold. Her perfect lips were curled ever so slightly in a nervous but attractive expression.

The moment Alex had caught sight of the Iabel image, her words had gone completely out of his head. Other thoughts slowly started to percolate through his head. So he was dreaming of Isabel again? Was that a bad sign? Shouldn't Leanna be the girl of his dreams now? He really thought that he'd put Isabel behind him. Well, just because she showed up in one of his dreams didn't mean that Alex still had a crush on her. But given that she had shown up dressed like this...

"Hello??" The Isabel figure jogged him out of his thoughts, waving the glasses at him. "Alex?? So, how do you like being in MY dream?"

Huh? Her dream?? For a second, Alex flashed back to the Red King riddle in 'through the Looking glass.' Could it be possible that he was the subconscious dream figment of ISABEL'S mind??

No, dream figments didn't have self-awareness, he had to assume. Or memories. Which left... "Are you dreamwalking me, Isabel?" he asked with some confusion.

Isabel, (somehow he did believe that she was the genuine article now,) stepped down into the living room and put down her burdens on a coffee table. "Well Alex, to be precise, you're dreamwalking me. I tried my best to make a pathway from your own dream into mine, and I guess it worked." She waved in the direction from whic Alex had entered the Chalet.

Of course! That warp gateway - a bridge between dream realms. "Cool," he muttered. "So, to what do I owe the invite? Just an opportunity for you to stretch your powers?"

"No," Isabel answered simply. She stepped up to him, touching the back of his left hand with her soft, supple fingers. Letting her gaze wander slowly and enticingly up Alex's body until her eyes finally made his.

Alex's skin was overheated, but he made a valiant attempt to keep his mind cool. "You found ut about Leanna," he accused her softly.

"I did," Isabel admitted, almost as softly. Her eyes still hadn't wavered from their intent stare into Alex's, and he flinched and turned away in embarassment.

"It figures," he mumbled vaguely. "I finally find someone else I really like, and that's what gets you interested." Alex turned back to Isabel's general direction and raised his voice slightly, but he still didn't re-establish eye contact. "So, what? You figure that you can snap your fingers and I'll come trotting back?? It doesn't work that way this time, Is. Not if the only reason you're in the game is jealousy." He took a deep breath as if fortifying his heart, and finally looked straight back at Isabel. He seemed unsure and yet determined at the same time.

"It isn't just jealousy," Isabel answered. "I... I guess I can see why you'd think that, Alex, but it's just not." Her voice was growing more impassioned. "Alex, I've never stopped having feelings for you. I wish it hadn't taken this to give me the courage to act. But it was. I'm not going to lie to you about that."

Alex thought about that for a second. "So. What do you think happens now?"

"Whatever you say happens," Isabel told him evenly. "I want you back, Alex - not that we really... Well, you know what I mean, But I'm going to push you. Have I lost my chance, Alex??"

Alex considered a moment, trying to keep his guard up, but it sagged. "You've still got a chance, Is, yeah. But we've got to take this slow. Leanna's really a great person, and I don't want to be sneaking around behind her back or anything."

Isabel nodded slowly. "Okay." Stepping up to Alex again, she took his head in her hands and brought her lips to his for a chaste kiss goodnight.

At least, that was how it had started, and how both teenagers had expected it to end. But something as Alex's warm, guy-like breath filtered past Isabel's sweet, spicy lips. The kiss grew longer and deeper, and two bodies pressed against each other in every square inch they could. Burning to be one.

When they finally pulled apart and got their wandering hands back where they belonged, Isabel looked up at Alex with a hint of a quirky grin. "Taking it slow??"

"Don't think I have enough willpower," he admitted. "I wonder how much long distance rates to Sweden are?"