Dream Boy (14 page)

Martin had football stuff all afternoon.

“I know it seems dumb, to want to play a game when all of this is going on,” he said, when he caught me coming out of the gym. “But I never…this is my chance to play. To do real things. Please understand.”

“I do,” I said. “But what about—”

“We’re working on it,” he said, squeezing my hand. “I promise. Try not to think about it, okay?”

But by the time the players took the field that night, I’d had a chance to WAY overthink everything Martin had said. Like “we’re working on it.” I was pretty sure the “we” included Stephanie. She had glared at me in the hall after pre calc like everything was my fault. But it’s not like I had asked to be stalked by Little Miss Nightmare with the bleached-out eyes.

Martin said the little girl wasn’t his friend. Maybe. But clearly there was something he was
not
saying, too. In my mind, I kept seeing her on the stump, sewing that freaky doll. The place looked familiar, and not just the way things always look familiar in dreams, like when you’re in a nightclub in Brazil but you know deep down it’s your chemistry class. I was pretty sure I’d been there.

Talon, Serena, and Will had all skipped the game, due respectively to the opera, “the call of the wild,” and a chronic allergy to all things involving the Chilton High football team. So I sat alone and kept my eyes on Martin. “TALK TO ME,” I thought. “I NEED YOU TO TALK TO ME.” Even though he seemed totally wrapped up in the whole run-around-with-a-ball thing, my concentration must have worked at least a little because the minute the game was over, he texted.
Can I see you?

Yes! Where are you?
I typed quickly.

Locker room. Meet at your house?

It was already eleven o’clock. My mom had given me her Volvo for the night, and the green light to stay out a little past curfew, but I knew she wouldn’t be happy about me showing up at that hour with my “gentleman caller,” as she’d titled Martin after we’d watched
Glass
Menagerie
on the classic movie channel. She wasn’t likely to give us much privacy if I did bring him home.

Text me when you get there. Don’t go to door.

At home, I slipped by my mom who, since the announcement of Dad’s wedding, had started crashing on the living room couch, remote control in hand.

“That you?”

“Yeah, Mom. I’m here. Go back to sleep.”

“Ummmhumm,” she mumbled and shifted on her side to hug a throw pillow.

I went upstairs and checked on Nick, but he wasn’t in his bed. Then I remembered him muttering something about spending the night at Jeremy’s. Good. That meant I wouldn’t have to make him an accomplice.

I snuck downstairs to the basement. I rarely spent time there, unless Mom made me do the laundry. My dad had planned to turn it into a game room with a pool table and big-screen TV, but he’d only gotten as far as framing in one of the concrete walls with wallboard before he ditched that project and moved on to something else.

I checked my watch. Midnight. Mom had seen me home, safe and sound. She was, by all appearances, down for the count. I could either sneak Martin into the basement or sneak myself out the same way. Out, I decided. The idea of staying in this graveyard of cardboard boxes and dryer lint was way too depressing.

You there?
I texted Martin.

No answer. Then,
Just pulled up
.

Park down street.

As silently as possible, I climbed up the basement steps that led to the backyard. Leaving the door unlocked, I slipped out, crossed the path that led to the front, and ran down the street to Martin’s car.

“Better drive,” I said as I climbed in the passenger seat. “Mr. Purfoy is a total paranoid. If he sees this car parked in front of his driveway, he’ll call the cops. And if they called my mom, I’d be grounded for a month.”

“Right,” he said. He drove a few blocks over and parked near the river, where we’d spent that first morning together across from the pump house. He turned off the engine and drew me in for a kiss. His hair was still wet from his shower, and he smelled of baby powder. When he pulled away, he grabbed my hand. I liked seeing our hands together, entwined.

“So talk,” I said.

“We won the game.” He looked a little sheepish when he said it, like a kid who had been caught eating cookies in bed.

“Congratulations.” I wanted to smile, but I held it in. I’d been waiting all night for some answers. “So I’ve been thinking. The girl’s not your friend, but you knew her. Right?”

When he didn’t answer at first, I squeezed his hand. “Just tell me the truth.”

“Yeah. I knew her.”

“Who is she?”

“You already said it,” he said. “She’s a nightmare. She had…Well, I knew she was trying to get into your head for some reason. I just—”

“You
knew
she was trying to get me?”

“No, not like that. I swear.” Martin looked down at the floorboard, confused, like he’d suddenly grown someone else’s feet. “I didn’t know she was a nightmare. We were in someone else’s dream, bit parts, and she was asking me about you and if she could come along sometime when I went to see you and I didn’t see the harm. I just thought she wanted out of the waiting room, too, but that she needed help. I figured she’d die soon—”

“Dreams die?”

“Of course they do.”

“But she’s so young.”

“She might
look
young, but she’s older than anyone I’ve ever met. I thought it’d be a nice thing, you know. To give her some time outside. But I swear at the time I didn’t know she was a nightmare.”

“The milky eyes weren’t a clue?” I said, hating that sarcasm was my only weapon. He’d helped a nightmare break into my mind? How do you list
that
on a police report? “What do you think she wants anyway?”

“She wants what every nightmare wants. She wants control.”

Control. That was something I wanted, too. The control to silence Crazy Annabelle. To bring my dad back. To make Martin love me. Is that what a nightmare is, I wondered—just a regular dream that tries to take control? Does that make me a nightmare, too?

Martin ran his free hand through his hair. “We’re all trying to think of a way to stop her, I promise.”

“All?”

“The Chiltonians Formerly Known as Dreams,” he said. “That’s what Paolo calls us.”

“Paolo?”

“Stephanie, Paolo, Macy—”

“What? That’s insane. I’ve known Paolo like for—”

“Think about it,” he said. I did. Most families had been here forever, Chilton born and Chilton bred. But both Macy and Paolo’s families had moved here in the last couple of years. I remembered what Mrs. Muncy said about the real estate market.
Chilton
is
thriving.

“Ernshaw is one of you, isn’t he?” I didn’t know when he’d come to Chilton High, but he had always seemed to me like he might have arrived from a galaxy far, far away. In fact, it wasn’t impossible to imagine that he still visited there pretty regularly.

“Nope, but you’re close,” he said. “Masterson.”

I remembered someone telling me Coach Masterson had transferred here from a high school in California. “That’s one heck of a transfer.”

Through the car window, the sky was cloudless, the stars pale and numerous as goose bumps.

“So you knew Paolo and Macy and Masterson…up there?” I jabbed my finger upward in the air.

“It’s not heaven, Annabelle,” Martin said. “Believe me. It’s the opposite.”

“Right.”

“And I didn’t really know them,” Martin continued. “Well, Masterson, yeah. And I’d seen Macy around, but I wouldn’t say I
knew
her. Stephanie told me about Paolo. I’ve kind of gotten to know him since.”

I’ll bet Will didn’t know that. “Who else?”

“I’ve seen some people around town, but you wouldn’t know them.”

“I don’t even know who’s real anymore,” I said.

“We’re
all
real,” Martin said. “Even the ones who haven’t made it to Chilton.”

I thought about that. “But why Chilton anyway? Why did all of you end up here?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but it’s good that we did. Chilton’s perfect.”

That word again. He talked about my town the same way he talked about me.

“Yeah, well,” I said, “it gets pretty boring once you’ve been here for a while.”

“It’s
because
it’s boring, no offense, that it’s so ideal. For one thing, everyone
in
Chilton dreams—more vividly than in other places. You’d have to or you’d go insane. But no one dreams
of
Chilton, so we can kind of slip in under the radar. It’s like your brother said, ‘the perfect place to live, but no one wants to visit.’ Not even in their sleep.”

“So now it’s…what? Some kind of underground railroad for lost dreams? ‘Next stop, Chilton, Virginia.’”

“It appears so,” he said. “Stephanie thinks that if that girl gets here, it might become an underground railroad for nightmares, too.”

I pictured my town taken over by creepy little girls, fanged skeletons, zombies, snakes. It seemed impossible. But Martin, dreams—all of it had seemed impossible when I went to bed last week.

“What do you think?” I said.

“That Stephanie’s right,” he said. “The girl’s after you, Annabelle. That’s real, too.”

“Why me?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “But there’s something about you. No, don’t argue, there is. I saw it. Even that time on the train. She wants you because you’re special.”

“Give me a break,” I said.

“Look, even if you don’t believe it, the girl does. And that makes it”—he left the pause hanging for a minute, then he finished—“dangerous.”

“For me or for you?”

“For all of us,” he said. “I don’t know. Maybe she’s trying to follow in my footsteps. I’m real. You did that. Maybe she wants to be real, too.”

“I told you I didn’t—”

“The evidence says otherwise. And it’s more than that. What did she say in your dream? She wants to be you. She can’t do that if you’re here.” He said it so simply, like “and she doesn’t care for the color blue.” But I knew how deep it went.

The car seemed suddenly way too small. I flung open my door. “Air.” I stumbled toward the river and started through the woods along the bank. A night bird flew from its branch in a sycamore above me toward the opposite bank of the river, letting out a stuttered chirp.

“Annabelle.” Martin came after me and took my elbow, turning me to face him. “You can try to run away from this, but it won’t help. Like it or not, we’re connected.”

I pulled away and darted across the rocky edge of the river. I didn’t know where I was heading; I only knew I couldn’t stand around listening to what was quite possibly an extended figment of my imagination tell me I was going to be dead at sixteen.

“Hold on, Annabelle!” Martin, who was—damn him, damn me for making him that way—stronger and faster, caught up. I heard the thump of his footsteps right behind me. His hand brushed my shoulder. Just then my foot slipped on a wet rock and I hurtled toward the earth.

I
am
suspended. Floating in deep water. Not wet, but the waves are choppy and the undercurrent is strong. My body rises and falls with a nauseating quickness. I am pulled one way, then shoved the other. I gasp, but the air is thin and I can’t fill my lungs. Am I drowning or dreaming? It feels the same.

I
see
nothing.

But
no, it is more than that. I see the consistency of nothing. The uniformity of it. What surrounds me is a thin, flat gray. In every direction, for miles, gray. There is no horizon, no spot where land meets sky. There is, in fact, no land, no sky. Only this lukewarm air in which my body twists.

“Martin?” My own voice does not reach my ears. It is all just bluster, a wall of wind.

I
hang
like
that, my body warping in the gray. I try running, swimming, jumping, willing myself elsewhere. I think of my mother waking to find my bed empty, the sheets cold. Will she call my dad? Will my dad stop looking for his stupid fish and start looking for me? I ball my hands into fists and beat the air. My body ignores my will, until my will is gone.

And
that’s how I stay. All day. All week. A month? A year? It is impossible to tell how long I hang and twist, impossible to tell how long forever is.

I
make
out
voices
in
the
wind. Chunks of words, different accents, languages. I try to move. I try to hear.

Am
I
in
a
coma? Am I dead? I don’t want an afterlife; I never got enough of the real thing.

Panic
rises
in
my
throat, thick like gravy. There is no way out. Nothing to do but wait. But wait for what?

You have no idea how long it can be
, Martin had said,
waiting for the next dream
.

Is
that
what
I’m waiting for—for someone to dream? To dream me?

I
wonder
if
I
can
break
in, like Martin did. Like the girl has broken into my own dreams? I still my mind and focus on the even rise and fall of breath. The twisting air around my body seems to settle.

I
focus
and
move
toward
space, and then I am standing at the end of a narrow dirt lane. My arms move like arms again. I want to kneel down and kiss the dirt. The lane leads to a cottage, mushroomy and fanciful, like something from
Snow White
. All around are orange flowers, bright as sunbursts, brighter, even, after all of the gray.

My
legs, still jellyish from the waiting, propel me toward the back door. I pass through, into a kitchen with a potbelly stove and a small wooden table where a grandmother pours tea. Across the table, a toddler in a blue knit dress, no older than three, stands on a chair and plays with a wad of dough. She kneads and squeezes. In the far corner, a canary in a white wicker cage warbles twoo-twoo-twhee. And the little girl echoes back, woo-woo-whee.

I
stand
behind
the
girl, uncertain what to do, as they sing again and again. I want to sit down in this bright world and sip tea with a teaspoon of milk, the way my mother makes it. What I want doesn’t matter. I stand on the fringe, watching. The grandmother doesn’t notice me. The girl does. Her look questions, but I don’t answer. I drain out of the scene, pulled backward like a movie on rewind.

Again, I breathe the thin, gray air of in-between, but before I panic, I am somewhere else. Somewhere dark.

An
alley, I realize, my eyes adjusting to the sudden night. I am at the back of a big, run-down brick building, something like an old grocery store. All around me, the world is tinged with gray—all except the back of the store, and, at the far side, a black metal ladder bolted to the brick. I climb. I will do anything just to move.

As
I
go
up, I notice a slice of sky above me, prickling with stars. They blink like heartbeats. The colors aren’t the usual yellow-white of stars, but like fireworks—ruby, magenta, and willow green. I reach the top and climb out onto the roof.

The
night
sky
spreads
out
before
me, an endless banquet of light, all swirling with wisps of life. There is a different color for every one of the million stars. Or no…it isn’t every star, but every constellation that has a distinct shade. As a girl, I had learned to find the dippers, Orion, and the one that makes a drunken W…Cassiopeia? Will said she was a queen who’d been set in the heavens upside down as some sort of punishment. I’ve never been able really to visualize it, though. At least not until this moment. Now, the entire sky is throbbing with color and life. The figures of astrology hover around their star clusters, shifting in and out of focus. Two bears, a swan, Pegasus.

“Oh my God. It’s amazing.” I exhale.

“What was that?” A girl’s voice, familiar, anxious, speaks from somewhere around the middle of the roof.

“What?” A deeper voice, a guy’s, but mellow, serene. Also familiar, a voice like home.

“I thought I heard something.” The girl again.

“I didn’t hear any—a meteor!”

Silver
blazes
down
from
the
sky.

The
girl
mumbles
something
I
can’t make out.

Stepping
catlike, silent, I slink closer to the roof’s center.

In
the
darkness, I can trace the outline of two pairs of legs stretched out on a blanket. They are wearing, I think, jeans, and their feet are bare. The rest is obscured by a metal air vent. There is the sound of kissing, and an odd, unpleasant smell, like burned plastic. Fumbling. More kissing.

“Are you sure?” The guy’s voice.

Suddenly
I
feel
like
the
pervert
in
the
back
row
of
the
movie
theater. It is wrong for me to be here in someone’s private dream, but I have no clue how I got here or how to leave. Taking care to walk quietly, I head back toward the ladder.

As
I
start
to
descend, I look up at the surreal light show above me. Maybe there’s a message in the stars. I feel myself yanked suddenly backward again—like a hand is on my shoulder, tugging me hard.

A
faint
voice. “You okay…? Annabelle? Annabelle?”