Alma (14 page)

Sammy hesitated before writing his name, for he was still doubtful, but he had promised. So he signed in black ink under the last name on the list with his favourite fountain pen.

He slipped the card under his pillow, climbed into bed, pulled up the covers and turned out the lamp. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to make himself go to sleep. But it wouldn’t work. Thoughts marched around inside his mind, tramping up and down, making an awful racket. After a while, Sammy gave up trying to force himself to dream. And right away, he fell asleep.

And what a dream he had.

Sammy found himself, in his bathing suit, standing on a long, bouncy diving board made of licorice. He jounced once, then plunged into a lake of sweet dark chocolate. He didn’t need to open his mouth—he could taste through his skin as he swam on his back. He came to an island mounded high with pineapples, mangoes and plums, peaches and cherries, oranges
and tangerines, grapes and raspberries. Sammy crawled from the lake onto a beach of granulated sugar. He bathed in cola, then ginger ale, then root beer, all the while tasting, tasting, through every pore. He slid down a slippery chute of toffee, landing in a bin of whipped cream. He ran along a nougat road, skidded through strawberry jam, and bumped into a table loaded with cakes, custards and pastries, tarts and jellies, flans and puddings, eclairs and turnovers and doughnuts.

In the morning, Sammy reluctantly got out of bed. In the bathroom mirror, he noticed a smudge of caramel frosting on his lip. He licked it off. It tasted good.

“Sammy! Breakfast!” his mother called up to him.

“Not today, Mom,” he said. “I’m not hungry.”

Sammy was in trouble again.

Over the past weeks, Sammy had visited the Dream-ary every Saturday morning. It was
easy, because as soon as he passed through the door at the end of the dark hall in the library basement, time stood still. He could take as long as he wanted to choose a dream. When he returned to the library, no one even knew he had been gone.

One day after school let out, Sammy had raced home on his bike, shooting down the street, swooping into the driveway as fast as he could without losing control. As he approached the garage’s double door he thought, Mom and Dad will be happy that I remembered to put my bike away. He carefully aimed the bike to pass exactly between his dad’s new car and the garage wall.

But.

He had forgotten the carrier his dad had mounted on the bike behind his seat.

The carrier that held his backpack.

The carrier that was a little bit wider than his handlebars.

Screeeeeeeee!

Now Sammy waited in his room while his mom and dad decided how to punish him. He didn’t have to wait long.

“Sammy! Come down here,” his mother called.

“Now!” added his father.

Sammy stood in the kitchen before his parents, whose faces were dark and stern, whose arms were crossed on their chests, whose mouths were turned down at the corners.

“No more bicycle!” said his mother.

“Come home right after school every day and stay home,” commanded his father.

“But—,” Sammy tried.

“No buts!” said both of his parents together.

It was two weeks before Sammy got permission to go to the library again. He walked along the street on Saturday morning, kicking a can along the gutter, gloomy and grumpy.

Bet my grandparents didn’t treat them like that, Sammy thought. Bet my parents wish they could get rid of me. Bet they never wanted me, he concluded, not for the first time.

In the Dream-ary, Sammy passed row on row of boxes. “Sports.” “Treats.” “Friends.” Tried them already, he said to himself. “Hobbies.” “Pets.” He couldn’t decide what to borrow today. Maybe I’ll borrow desserts again, he decided. He knew exactly where to find the box. It was up a ladder to the gallery and along a bit.

But as he walked down the row, he brushed against an overloaded table, sending a box crashing to the floor.

“What noise was that, whatwhatwhat?” called Clio from high atop a ladder at the back of the shop.

“Er, nothing,” Sammy replied, picking up the envelopes and stuffing them back into the box as quickly as he could. But one card had slipped from its envelope and flipped underneath the table. Sammy meant to leave it where it had fallen, but he decided that would be rude, so he got down on his knees, crawled through the thick dust under the table, picked up the card and carefully, scrabbling backwards like a lobster, returned to the narrow aisle between the tables. He stood up.

And that was when he looked at the card. “CHILDREN” was stamped on the front.

Why would anyone want to dream about children? Sammy wondered. He turned the card over. There were lots of signatures, so many the card was almost full. Sammy noticed “125” on the top right-hand corner.

Wow, he thought. This is the 125th card for children dreams. The dessert card is only number 34. A lot of people wanted to dream
about children. He ran his eye over the names.

And saw some writing he recognized.

His mother’s name, and right beneath it, his father’s. And their names were repeated. The dates showed that they had borrowed the card on many occasions—
before
Sammy was born.

Beginning where his heart was, Sammy felt a wonderful warm glow spread through him, and he said to himself, Mom and Dad
did
want me.

Alma closed the book and slowly turned it over in her hands. She ran her fingers along the spine and read the words on the cover once again. Her mother sat across the kitchen table from her, beaming with pride, the rope of lustrous chestnut hair resting on the threadbare collar of her dress.

“You know what, my girl?” Clara said.

“What, Mom?”

“I don’t think you’re twoderempty.”

Thanks to Maya Mavjee for her support of this and other projects, to Meg Taylor for her enthusiastic and valued assistance, to John Pearce for his guiding hand and, as always, to Ting-xing Ye.

William Bell is the award-winning author of eleven books for young people, including
Zack
, which won the Mr. Christie’s Book Award, and
Stones
, which is a CLA YA Book of the Year. Bell lives in Orillia, Ontario, with writer Ting-xing Ye.

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