Dream Boy (4 page)

Talon and Serena wanted to catch the final set of the Pacers, but I asked them to drop me at home first.

Now that they knew why I was acting certifiable, they were gentler with me.

“Call us if anything happens,” Serena said.

“
Anything
.” Talon nodded.

“I love you guys,” I said.

“Back atcha.”

“And don’t, you know, don’t tell anyone.” It was one of those things that seemed unnecessary to say, but I said it anyway.

“Not even Will?” Talon raised one eyebrow without raising the other.

“Not anyone.”

I slipped out of the car and Serena backed slowly down my driveway.

I’d never kept secrets from Will, not on purpose. I told him whatever, no matter how weird it was—like my nightmare where the Pigeon Lady tried to kidnap me in her helicopter. (Cynthia Rêve says helicopters represent transformation. I forget what she says about pigeons.) But I wasn’t quite ready to open myself up to Will’s questions. Josh, or Martin—I suppose if he was a real boy with real flesh I would have to start calling him that—was just for me.

The front door wasn’t locked, so I didn’t have to use my key.

“I’m home,” I yelled.

“Up here,” called my mom, but I already knew that. She was lying against the pillows, wearing a flannel nightgown that made her look like Old Mother Hubbard. “You’re home early,” she said.

I shrugged.

“You look flushed.” She reached out and felt my forehead. There was a lot of that going around. “How was the game?”

“We only saw part of it. Mostly I just drove around with Talon and Serena.”

“I don’t like you guys just driving around,” she said. “You need a destination.”

“Where’s Nick?”

“He went to a movie with Jeremy. He’ll be home soon.”

“Whatcha watching?”

“
Bride
of
Frankenstein
,” she said. “The old one with Boris Karloff. Spooky…You want to watch the end with me?”

What I wanted, for the first time in American teenhood, was to go to sleep early. Because if I couldn’t talk to the boy of my dreams at the football game, maybe he’d be waiting for me there. In my head. But as much as I
wanted
to go to sleep, I was too wired, and if I went into my room I would just stare at the ceiling, which I had painted with lavender unicorns in the seventh grade, and which I hadn’t gotten around to repainting even though they were god-awful. Plus, we were reading
Frankenstein
for English; maybe this would count as SparkNotes.

“Come on,” Mom said. “It’s a good one.”

She was right. It was good. Lots of crazy hair, heartbreak, and fire. Nick came home during the storm scene and added some extra sound effects. Will texted me as the credits rolled.

I faked a yawn and gave my mother a kiss on her forehead. “I’m going to bed,” I said.

“You sure you’re not coming down with something?”

“Growing pains,” I told her.

“I thought you looked taller. Sleep tight, sweetie.”

“I will.”

“Sleep tight, sweetie,” Nick echoed.

“You, too, brother dearest,” I said. I looked at my phone on my way to my room and read Will’s message:
Where are you?

I sat down on my bed.
Bed
, I texted back.

Why not HERE?
Will wrote.

He must have gone to the Pacers show, too. The fact that he was asking meant Talon and Serena hadn’t said anything. Good.

Tired
, I wrote.

Oh
. I don’t think Will understood what the word “tired” even meant. He’s one of those people, like Thomas Edison, who only needs three hours of sleep a night. A second later, he wrote:
Good night then.

Night
, I wrote back.

They’re playing Kerosene!
he wrote a minute later. “Kerosene” was my favorite Pacers song ever.

See you tomorrow?
he wrote.

Night
, he sent again.

My phone stopped vibrating. I got into a T-shirt, flicked off the light switch, and tried to jump into my bed before the room got dark, which was something my grandma taught me when I was little. She said it took a second or so for darkness to come after you turned off the light, and that sometimes you could beat it to bed. I spent two years trying before I realized it was just a trick to get me into bed faster. But I never stopped racing the light switch.

I lay in bed a long time, thinking about J—Martin. He had said my name. He knew me.

I squeezed my eyes tight and willed myself to dream. But my heart was pumping too hard for sleep. The game had to be over by now. Martin was probably in the shower. Had he looked for me?

Oh my God. What if he saw Stephanie Gonzales in her cheerleading uniform? “Give me a Z-I-R-K-L-E.”

What if he saw Macy, who already knew he’d been to Egypt and who knows what else?

What if—

• • •

“Annabelle. Hey, Annabelle.”

The sun was breathing a white-hot glare through my window as Nick yelled into my closed door. “Annnabelllle!”

“What?”

“Mom says, ‘Do you want French toast?’”

“Mom’s making French toast?” It had been a while since my mother had cooked anything.

“You want some?”

Even though I knew that French toast was just my mother’s way of dealing with stale bread, it was still a treat. “Tell her yes,” I said.

“I was only supposed to deliver one message,” Nick said. “You tell her.”

I opened the door to my room. My brother was already dressed in his soccer uniform. He didn’t have sweats on, even though it was cold out. He was the type of kid who wore shorts even when it was snowing.

“MOM,” I yelled, right in Nick’s face. “I WANT FRENCH TOAST, TOO.”

“Okay!” she shouted back.

I stopped in the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I had little raccoon eyes and the imprint of a ring on my right cheek. I rubbed the spot and went downstairs. My mother was at the stove, humming.

“Sleep well?” she asked.

I could lie and say “yes,” but as soon as she looked at me she’d know the truth.

“Same as always,” I said.

“Sorry, honey.”

“Girl hungry,” Nick said, pointing at me. He put his hand to his mouth and made eating motions. “You eat? Me eat!” Then he pulled up his shirt and squeezed his belly button so it talked. “Me like food!”

“Shut up,” I said.

“Don’t say ‘shut up’ at the breakfast table,” said my mother.

“But—” I said.

“Eat your French toast.”

“Brother, darling?” I said, in my sweetest voice. “Will you please pass the syrup if it’s not too much trouble?”

Nick picked up the bottle of syrup and waved it over his head. “Uga uga!” He was still in caveman mode. Sometimes he’s like a
Saturday Night Live
skit. He just doesn’t know when to stop.

“Mom!” I said.

“Pass her the syrup, Nicholas.”

“I was gonna.”

My mom smiled and took her own plate to the table. “There,” she said.

Nick looked past her out the window.

“What are you looking at?” she said.

“Some guy,” he said.

“Where?” my mother turned and looked over her shoulder.

“The dude on the bike,” Nick said. “He’s gone, but he’ll be back. He’s ridden by our house like a dozen times this morning.”

My insides went all electric, like someone had plugged me in.

“Maybe he’s in training,” my mother said. “The Ridge Top Bike Race is soon.”

But I had another idea. I shoveled in my French toast but I kept my eyes on the street.

“There he is,” Nick said.

He had on a helmet again, but this time I could see his face. Martin. He slowed down a little as he passed in front of our house, and raised his head from where it had been bent low over the handlebars. I slumped down in my chair and hoped he couldn’t see me.

“Maybe he’s lost,” my mother said.

Martin sped up then, like he had someplace to be.

“I’m going to get dressed,” I said, finishing the last of the French toast in two bites.

“You just sat down. Don’t you want another piece?”

“Later.” I sprinted upstairs, pulled on my favorite jeans and a brown T-shirt, then changed to a blue one with little buttons. What was I wearing in that dream (at least for the clothes-wearing portion of it)? I couldn’t remember. No, wait. White. I changed into a long-sleeved white V-neck with a little leprechaun on the pocket and the words “Erin Go Bragh” on a pot of gold. It was six months until St. Patty’s day, but that was the only white shirt I could dig up other than one of my dad’s old undershirts, which I still wore sometimes when Mom was at work. Anyway, the leprechaun shirt made my boobs look bigger than usual, which wasn’t much, but was something. I ran to the bathroom and brushed my teeth until my mouth smelled like a candy cane. Then I combed my hair back into a ponytail—pulling out a couple wisps to make it more romantic. There was nothing I could do about the dark circles without some sort of miracle cream. Besides, I didn’t have time.

I ran downstairs again. “I’m going outside for a minute,” I said.

“Bring in the garbage can while you’re out there,” my mother called. “I forgot to do it last night.”

I slammed the front door without answering. There was no sign of Martin. Not up the street. Not down.

I sat on the porch step for a minute, hoping he’d circle back around. Then I moved to the swing. I should have worn a sweater. It wasn’t arctic, but it was chilly, and the air made my neck feel longer than usual, more exposed.

How much time did it take to go around the block? Five minutes later he still hadn’t shown up. My mom rapped once on the kitchen window. “Gar-bage,” she mouthed.

“O-K,” I mouthed back, and walked toward the curb to get it. I grabbed the can by the handle and pulled it back on its rollers so I could drag it up the driveway. My back was to the street when I heard the sound of the air moving, and the slight buzz of bicycle brakes. I stopped walking and let go of the can, but I didn’t turn around. Not yet. Not until I heard his voice.

“Hey.”

That was it. I turned.

I wanted to touch him, to see if he was real. Instead I jammed my hands into my pockets and willed them to stay there.

He got off his bike and set it in the grass like it was a piece of china. Then he took off his helmet.

“Hey,” he said again.

I didn’t know how to start.
I
was
looking
for
you
, I thought.

“Same here,” he said. His smile shifted into a sort of grin.

Wait. Did he—? I started over. “Do I know you?”

“You tell me.”

We were like dogs in the park, sniffing each other.

“You’re in my chemistry class,” I began. “Or you will be.”

He nodded.

“You’re…Martin?”

“You’re Annabelle.”

Now it was my turn to nod.

“You’ve been to Egypt,” I said.

“Word gets around fast at your school.” He took a step toward me.

“It’s your school, too, right? Don’t you play football?”

Another step. “It appears so.”

He was right next to me. If I’d leaned in just a little, my head could have been on his shoulder, but I stayed upright. He reached toward me and I stood stock-still. Then his hand went past me. “I’ve got this,” he said, as he grabbed the garbage can. “Where does it go?”

I pointed up the driveway, toward the carport, and followed him as he put the can near the wall. He dusted off his hands.

“Are you real?” I froze when I realized I actually said the words out loud.

“It appears so,” he repeated, as if he couldn’t quite believe it himself. He looked me right in the eyes. My stomach flipped. “Here.” He reached for my wrist and pulled me closer, laying my palm flat against his chest. I could feel his heart beating,
ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-dum
.

I jerked my hand away as if it burned. Seeing and hearing him was one thing. That could all be explained away. Some sort of super vivid daydream. A total psychotic break that would have my mother on the phone to the mental hospital. But touch was different. The part of me still convinced that none of this could be happening couldn’t argue with the feel of his heartbeat.

“It’s okay,” he said, holding out his hand, palm up. But his eyes were saying more than just
it’s okay
; they were saying,
it’s me
.

I took his wrist, then let out a nervous laugh. It
was
more than okay. It was what I’d been dreaming about.

For a second, I stood in the driveway, holding his outstretched hand. Talon had gotten seriously into palmistry the summer after seventh grade, when her parents were going through their divorce and she planned to run away with the gypsies or the hippies or, at the very least, the carnies, so I knew which lines were which. I studied Martin’s hand. His lifeline—the one that curved around his thumb—was hardly there, just a faint scratch. But the line for fate looked as if it had been seared into his skin, a dark crease cutting across his palm from his wrist to the base of his middle finger.

He turned his hand over and laced his fingers through mine.

“Shall we walk?” he asked.

“Okay.”

We hadn’t gone very far when I gave an involuntary shiver. He stopped. “It’s cold,” he said, and letting go of my hand, he shrugged out of his hooded sweatshirt and passed it to me. Underneath, he was wearing another short-sleeved polo, baby blue this time instead of that vivid blue of his eyes.

“But now
you’ll
be cold,” I said.

He looked down for few seconds at his bare forearms, as if he were concentrating on his own skin.

He shrugged. “I don’t get cold, I guess. At least not yet.”

“Oh,” I said. What the heck was that supposed to mean? I took his sweatshirt and pulled it on. It felt wonderfully warm and it smelled nice, like the pecan cookies my grandma baked that time I stayed at her house when Nick was born. “Thanks.”

I started walking in the direction of the river, which was always my favorite place to go when I needed to clear my head or when I wanted to draw, which pretty much amounted to the same thing. Martin walked beside me, and as we passed the little houses on my street, it occurred to me that if he was here, if he was real, he’d have to live somewhere. Or…
my
God
, if he really was from my dream, maybe he thought he was supposed to live with me! Maybe that was why he kept riding around the block.

“My house isn’t far from here,” he said.

“Did you—” I started, but my voice sounded too sharp, even in my own ears. I softened my tone and tried again, “It almost seems like you know what I’m thinking.”

He tilted his head, considering. “Yeah,” he said. “I do. Cool.”

“You’re kidding, right? You couldn’t…I mean, can you tell what I’m thinking now?” I tried to call up something unlikely. A mermaid? A picture frame without any picture in it? Will across the lunch table with burrito on his face?

He frowned. “That’s too many,” he said.

“How about now?” I concentrated on the most random thing I could imagine: a box turtle I’d found near Pandapas Pond last fall and kept for a few weeks in a crate in my room. I envisioned the turtle’s mottled shell and bright red eyes. Then I remembered Will had told me red eyes indicated it was a boy-turtle and had teased me about naming him Miss Elizabeth Bennet.

“A turtle named Elizabeth,” Martin said, but he still wasn’t smiling.

My skin prickled. “That’s quite a trick.” The idea of someone going into my brain and picking up stray thoughts
was
kind of cool. But creepy. What if I didn’t want him in there? “How do you do it?”

“It’s not a trick. It’s like part of me is still up there.” He tapped my forehead with his pinky. “I can hear stuff.”

“Could you…could you maybe
not
hear it?”

“Sure,” he said. “Sorry.” He took my hand again and held it as we walked.

After a few seconds, I asked, “Does that mean ‘sure’ you won’t do it, or ‘sure’ you won’t
let
on
that you’re doing it?”

“I’ll try not to do it.”

I’m thinking of a number between one and ten
, I thought, and then looked at him out of the corner of my eye to see if he picked up on it. He seemed not to notice, so I went on, out loud, “So, where
do
you live?”

“Oak Drive,” he said. “There was an old house for sale and I—we—got it.”

“Who’s we?”

“My parents,” he said. “And me.”

“You live with your parents?” I asked, but what I meant was:
you
have
parents?

“It appears so.”

As we walked on, I flipped the idea back and forth in my head: it
appears
he has parents, it
appears
he’s real. He sounded as surprised at all this as I was.

“It’s not—you’re not living in the old Lucas house?” It was the only house on Oak Drive that had been up for sale, but the last time I’d seen it, it was basically uninhabitable. The paint was peeling, the front steps had fallen in, and there was a hole below the porch where groundhogs had chewed through. I’d always thought it was kind of romantic, though, in that shabby Victorian way.

He nodded.

“You’re in that old house with parents?” It was as if everything had shifted overnight. “And you’re really…?” I just let the question sit there, hoping he’d finish the thought for me, but he just nodded again.

“Really…?” I repeated.

“It appears so.”

“You say that a lot.”

“You say ‘really’ a lot.” His grin looked kind of like the one from the dream, but different, too. A little confused.

“But what I mean is: you’re really…
new
here?” I found the idea vaguely freakish and I was half-hoping he was going to tell me no, that this was all just a joke, a segment in one of those prank reality shows.

“You could say that,” he said.

“This is so weird.” I shook my head. “I don’t know what to believe, what’s real and what’s—”

“What’s not? I thought we’d gotten that part straight.” His smile faded into a straight line.

“I didn’t mean you,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” he said.

We turned down the winding side street that ran perpendicular to the river. The front yard of the ranch on the corner was overloaded in that obsessive-compulsive way with concrete birdbaths, fountains, and three-foot-tall statues of mostly half-naked Romans. Beside the cluttered front stoop, a concrete pig received the blessing of the Virgin Mary.

I took a breath, looked up at Martin, and decided to get it over with. “So, how did you get here?” I asked.

He rubbed his bare elbow and looked at me through the corner of his eyes. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

“All I know is…” I lowered my voice, worried that maybe I had this all wrong and he was just some eccentric guy who happened to look like the guy in my dream, and who happened to be biking in my neighborhood, and who happened to be able to read minds, and who happened to examine his own skin like it was a new Sunday suit. I mean, he hadn’t outright said it, had he?
I
was
the
one
in
your
dreams.
And maybe all that other stuff was just coincidence and I was going to sound crazy. “All I know is that you were in my dreams, and then you were in my driveway.”

“But you brought me here, right?”

“Me!? With what? Fairy dust?” I tried to sand down the edges in my voice. “I mean, I didn’t
do
anything. I just dreamed.”

We’d reached the river, which ran low but which still had that comforting rushing sound. The leaves were turning, and a few had already fallen into the water and been trapped by the rocks. On the other side of the bank, the branch from a willow tree had fallen onto the roof of the pump house; it looked like an ugly green wig.

“Well, however I got here, I’m here now,” he said. To prove it, he took my hand and raised it to his cheek. He gave me one of those soulful, smoldering looks that only happen on TV. I could feel a slight stubble beneath my fingertips. And I started not to care so much where he came from; I only cared that he was here, that he was, at that very moment, lowering his lips toward mine for what I could only assume would be the most surreal kiss of all time.

Our lips touched. It was good. More than “good,” which doesn’t have nearly enough syllables. It was poet-good. Rock-star-good. Biker-revolutionary-underwear-model-good.

“Thanks,” he whispered. He drew back and looked deep into my eyes. Then he kissed me again.

“But I didn’t, I didn’t…”

And then I closed my eyes and stopped thinking about all of the things I didn’t. I started thinking about the things that I did.