Paranoia (The Night Walkers) (2 page)

Mia frowned but didn’t argue, and since it looked like Finn and Addie were about to, I kept my attention on Mia as she asked, “Who is your backup if we’re all gone? Your replacement-me? Have you been thinking about it?”

“I was thinking last night that we should try using video chat right before you go to bed,” I said with a shrug. Finn and Addie visibly relaxed at just the idea. “I mean, if you’re willing?”

“Of course.” Mia’s response was immediate. She didn’t even need to consider it.

“Thank you.” The words weren’t enough, but I knew she understood how much her help meant to me. It was literally life or death. She saved my life every day. How could two words ever be enough for that?

Addie looked thoughtful. “Do you think that will work? Maybe we should’ve tried it before now … ”

“I have no idea, but it’s worth a try.” I shrugged. “I thought about testing it last night, but if it didn’t work, then it would just have been one extra night of no sleep. Besides, you guys
have
to go; it’s not like you can just decide not to. If it fails, it fails. I’ll be fine. My mom won’t be able to help with the sleep issue like Mia can, but at least her dreams are usually safe and boring. She’s definitely Plan B.”

Finn nodded. “I think that’s the best choice. With your top three options gone.”

Mia rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth jerked up. “You make us sound like contestants on some kind of game show.”

Finn grinned wide and then said, “Sweet! What kind of game show, exactly?”

Mia opened her mouth, but I decided to cut her off before Finn could derail the conversation even further.

“Anyway, yeah. It will be fine.” I tried not to think about the fact that Mom had been on three dates with my physics teacher, Mr. Nelson, in the last month. Or that from the way she’d giggled when he called her on the phone last night, I got the impression she was enjoying herself. That was great; I was happy for her. I just really hoped he didn’t show up in her dreams tomorrow night—or the next five nights after.

I’d learned a long time ago that there are some images that just stick with you, no matter how hard you try to forget.

Mia cleared her throat and her wide eyes didn’t leave mine in the awkward silence that followed. I knew they were all going to keep worrying about me no matter what kind of plan we had, but Mia was in a unique position to understand just how bad it could be for me to be stuck in the wrong dreams. Her nightmares had been a literal hell for both of us for a long while.

Even now, though her bad nights were definitely fewer and farther between, when they did show up … between me not sleeping and her reliving the death of her parents, it made for a rough night all around. On top of that, she’d added a new recurring nightmare featuring the night Jeff attacked us. I didn’t think she’d told Addie or Finn about this one, and it wasn’t my place to share it if she wasn’t ready.

In the seven months since we’d met, Mia and I had survived more than a few nightmares, both in reality and in her head. In some ways, our friendship was brand new and tenuous. In other ways, we’d already survived more together than most friendships ever could. Add in the fact that we both knew she was keeping me alive, and our friendship was unique if nothing else.

“So, uh … should we watch some TV?” Mia asked, changing the subject as she shot me a sympathetic look.

I glanced at the clock on the microwave. “What time do you guys have to head home? Need to pack before the flight to the magic planet or whatever?”

This time all three of them glared at me. Mia because we both knew I’d called it the wrong name on purpose, Finn because we both knew he didn’t want to go, and Addie … I really wasn’t sure. I could probably make a list of reasons why she should be glaring at me and none of them would be the reason she actually was.

I was relieved when Finn’s phone rang and he picked it up with a groan.

“Yeah?” He closed his eyes and grimaced. “I’m sorry, Mom. I meant to say ‘hello.’”

After another moment of silence he said, “Okay, we’re on our way. See you in a few.”

“I guess that answers my question,” I said as Finn got to his feet.

Addie let Mia and Finn walk to the front door in front of us and grabbed my hand, giving it a tight squeeze. It wasn’t much, but these stolen moments were all we had right now and as little as it was, it really did help. I rubbed the back of her hand with my thumb, releasing it only as Finn opened the front door.

Once on the porch, they all turned to face me.

“Have fun, guys.” I plastered a smile on my face and did my best to ignore their worried gazes. “Do me a favor and bring me back some of those mouse ears … I’m planning a Halloween costume.”

Mia rolled her eyes but smiled, making sure to meet my eyes for a second before heading for the car. “Take care of yourself. Text me what time you want to try a video chat.”

“I will.”

She put her right hand on Addie’s back and her left on Finn’s and propelled them down the stairs. Finn muttered under his breath the whole way to the car, but then beat his chest with his fist and gave me one of his weird salutes before Mia started her purple pick-up and drove them away. She seemed to be the only one really looking forward to the trip. Addie stared at the back of Mia’s seat as they left.

Everything I’d seen in her eyes and her expression lately pained me. I hoped when she got back, she’d be more like the old Addie. Her spark was missing, and I couldn’t help but feel that I’d been the one to put it out.

Florida might not be as “magical” as Mrs. Patrick wanted it to be, but after everything we’d gone through this year, my best friends definitely deserved a long vacation away from me.

two

Sunday night I slept in Mia’s dreams. Monday we tried the video chat, but it was no good. I was stuck with my mom’s dreams instead of Mia’s, so we scrapped that idea. Finn kept sending me bizarre Mickey Mouse jokes via text, followed by a panicked phone call if I didn’t respond with “haha” fast enough. Addie called the home phone to make sure I hadn’t run away, and Mia sent me pictures of them on rides to prove they were having fun.

Five days left until they would come home, and I was having considerably less fun. School had been much harder for me since the fire. And although I didn’t think it possible, without my friends it was so much worse. The district had decided to wait until summer to repair the damaged portion of the building, which meant that the halls were overcrowded and the parking lot was filled with trailers to replace the classrooms that had been destroyed. The locker room and the gym were gone, so P.E. consisted mostly of people running on the outside track and then trying to get dressed in an extra trailer. No one could shower, the halls smelled worse than ever, and everyone blamed me.

People stared as I passed, as they had ever since the fire. Some with curiosity, others disdain. Half the people at school thought I was a hero for saving Mia and Finn, so they forgave me for the inconveniences they held me responsible for. Some even treated me with a weird kind of reverence. The other half thought I was a monster who’d gotten away with killing Jeff and setting the school on fire while somehow managing to pin the blame on my innocent victim. They either glared at me in anger or cowered in fear … and some even picked fights or tried to corner me on my way out to my car. No matter their opinions, though, nothing I did could change their minds about what they believed happened that day.

The whole thing struck me as ironic. They didn’t know about Darkness, the frightening piece of my personality that at times had taken me over in the past, but the absolute polarity in the way they treated me reminded me of my other side every single day. Besides taking over my body, Darkness had appeared to me as a nightmarish version of myself. I could see him and hear him as if he were right beside me. I shuddered at the memory. Even though he’d been quiet for a while now, my world wouldn’t let me forget him.

Rather than see their stares as I sat alone in the cafeteria, I took my lunch to the hall that had once ended at the gym. One wall was blackened with smoke and soot and the other wall was completely gone, exposing the interior of the building to the outside air. They’d used a row of desks to block this hall off. We weren’t supposed to be here, which was part of why I came. Most of the time it was a great place to be alone. But that wasn’t the main reason I spent my lunches here.

I came here sometimes to remind myself of the destruction that could happen when I lost touch with the truth. I hadn’t started the fire, but if I hadn’t been so busy suspecting myself, I might have seen how dangerous Jeff was getting sooner. This was the kind of destruction that could happen again if I ever let Darkness regain enough control to fool me, to make me believe the hallucinations he forced on me or his lies.

To make me lose sight of the person I am.

The old shop room lay twenty feet in front of me. The metal beams that formed the walls were like bones, now bent and blackened as they reached for the cloudless sky. The plaster and sheetrock, the skin that had covered them, was gone. It had been scorched to ashes and buried in snow and later dirt. The bones were all that remained and they were scarred, just like Mia, Finn, and me—every living person who’d been in that shop room when it burned. We were all damaged now.

And I
would never
let it happen again.

The first two nights of Mom’s dreams were random bits of memories combined with her brain trying to sort through this week’s to-do list. Boring to the extreme, but not bad. Wednesday night, Mom had a nightmare that featured me being set on fire at the high school.

Man, I missed Mia.

Thursday night, the dream started with Mom’s date with Mr. Nelson. It was detailed and absolutely clear. With vividness like this one had, it was obviously a memory. They went out to dinner and a movie. The flirting made me a little ill but besides that it wasn’t so bad, and it was nice to see how well he treated Mom. When they got back to our house and Mom invited him in, everything got fuzzy around the edges and I knew we’d crossed over into dream territory.

They sat on the couch and he held her hand. When he leaned over to kiss her, I closed my eyes and sat down against the wall but I could still hear them making out. I didn’t want to hear that. I stuck my fingers in my ears and tried to drown out the sound of their smacking lips with my own humming.

A massive crash brought me out of it and I jumped to my feet, struggling to figure out what I’d missed. The living room door was hanging off its hinges and Mom was tugging the strap of her dress back up on her shoulder as she got to her feet. Mr. Nelson stepped in front of her, and they both looked confused. Then a shadow stood in the doorway, and I recognized him even before he walked forward into the light.

Dad wore the same clothes he’d had on the last time I’d seen him—faded black jeans, red polo shirt, and a leather jacket. His hair, his face … everything about him was the same. Not that I thought Mom had seen him over the more than four years since he’d left us, but this dream confirmed it for me. She remembered him the exact same way I did.

He came in and sat in the recliner facing the couch and said only one word: “Continue.”

I felt Mom’s emotions more powerfully at that moment than throughout the rest of the dream. Her attraction to Mr. Nelson was still forming—she enjoyed his company and he made her laugh—but her pain at seeing Dad, even in a dream, was heartbreaking. She got to her feet and tears streamed down her face. Dad stood up when she approached, and she curled up in his arms and cried.

Then I felt the anger. It wasn’t as fresh as other times she’d dreamed about him, but it was still pretty potent. She beat against his chest with her fists.

The rest of the dream faded away—Mr. Nelson, the couch, the room—until there was nothing left but my parents. Dad smoothed his fingers through Mom’s hair and whispered “Shhh … ” until she calmed down and relaxed against him.

“I hate you for leaving me,” she whispered in between sobs.

“I hate me too,” he said softly, and even though he was just an aspect of her dream, the pain written on his face made me feel a little better.

“You never came back.” Mom looked up at him. “I always thought you would.”

“I couldn’t.” He leaned down and placed a kiss on her lips and then took one step away. As we watched, Dad began to age suddenly, rapidly. The skin on his face and hands wrinkled and then his cheeks hollowed out. His hair grew long and gray and then fell out onto his shoulders. Mom screamed again and again as his body decayed and his ice blue eyes, identical to mine, disappeared back into his skull. All that remained was a skeleton wearing Dad’s clothes. Then even that collapsed into a heap on the floor, and we were both thrust out of Mom’s nightmare.

I woke dripping with sweat and could hear Mom screaming all the way across the house. Jumping to my feet, I bolted through the kitchen, narrowly missing a collision with one of the dining chairs. When I reached her room, I threw open the door. She was sitting straight up in bed, shouting words I couldn’t understand.

My heart pounded in my ears as I sat beside her and grabbed her hand. I kept my voice hushed and level. “Mom? It’s okay. It was just a nightmare.”

She blinked a few times at my face and began to calm down. Taking deep, shaking breaths, she wrapped her arms around me and cried into my shoulder. “It—it felt so real.”

“I know, but it’s not. Everything is okay.” I was still shaken by her dream, and I’d known it wasn’t real the whole time. The mind is a cruel trickster, the way nightmares can make a person believe their worst fears have come to get them. I have enough other problems, so I’m not sad that being a Watcher means I mostly miss out on having nightmares of my own.

The irony of the thought struck me and I suppressed a cold laugh. No, my mind played its tricks on me in the daylight … when I was wide awake.

I’d seen plenty of nightmares but never been around to witness the aftermath. It ripped me apart to see Mom so upset. She was so strong—always had been.

Her sobbing subsided and she cleared her throat. I could see the embarrassment on her face when she pulled back. “Sorry, I—I don’t know what happened.”

“Please.” I smiled. “I had my breakdown a few months ago and you wanted one too. It’s okay to just admit it.”

“That must be it.” She grinned and shoved my shoulder lightly, but I could see the gratitude in her eyes. “Now go to bed or you’re grounded.”

“Fine, fine. I’m going.” I stood and walked out the door. As I shut it, I spoke five words of absolute truth. “Hope you sleep well, Mom.”

I woke up early the next morning. The exhaustion I’d been evading for months was back—and it wasn’t pulling any punches. Even rolling out of bed sounded like too much work so I stayed there, listening to Mom hum as she walked around the house. Thinking and floating in and out of the white nothingness that held me whenever my Dreamer was awake. As much as I fought it, my thoughts, just like Mom’s, kept drifting back to Dad. I’d been hoping she might be starting to forget him with Mr. Nelson, to move on.

Just like I wished I could.

I’d been doing pretty well for a while there. My anger had always helped me push aside the sadness that saturated me from the inside out whenever I remembered the good times before Dad left. The times he’d taken me into his lab on the weekends, shown me how he could mix two liquids together and somehow make them burn. The way oil and water would never truly blend. He’d taken us camping and taught me to recognize some of the constellations. Every one of these memories was like reopening an old wound, so holding on to the anger instead made his loss more bearable. Besides, when you were slowly dying of sleep deprivation like I’d been, you didn’t exactly have time to dwell on things from the past you couldn’t change. Better to focus on finding answers to ensure yourself a future.

Turns out, those kinds of quests can be awfully time-consuming.

Then I’d met Jack. Or Blind Skull, as I’d dubbed him because of the emblem on his leather jacket that featured a skull with a patch over each eye. After the school fire, when Jack had showed up at the hospital, he’d introduced himself, told me my dad had sent him, and said he’d be in touch.

That was the last time I’d seen him. It was over five months ago, and just thinking about it pissed me off.

Reaching behind my head, I rolled my pillow into a little ball and fluffed it by punching it a few times as hard as I could. After thirty seconds, some of the seams looked about one hit away from turning my bed into a crime scene from a stuffed animal’s worst nightmare. So I tossed it aside and buried my face in the sheets.

Why? Why couldn’t Dad just leave me alone? Or have his stupid messenger actually do what he’d promised and come back? Or better yet, why the hell did Dad have to leave us in the first place?

I groaned. Sitting up in bed, I gave up on trying to rest anymore. It wasn’t going to happen, and it didn’t do me much good anyway. Stiff pains shot up my neck as I rolled my shoulders, trying to relieve some of the tension I always held there. Only two more days until my friends would be back … only two more days.

Changing into sweats, I pulled on my running shoes. Since the end of soccer season, I’d spent more time running. Physical activity always helped wake me up and burn off frustration. After witnessing Mom’s latest dream, I needed exercise more than I had in a long time. If I hurried, I could get a good run in and still be home in time for school.

While Jack never coming back was one more disappointment in the long list of letdowns courtesy of my dad, I reminded myself that life was good right now. For the first time in almost five years I had a future, thanks to my friends. I had a present, and I liked it. Whether Jack ever showed up with answers or not, I was done letting my dad and my past mess me up.

Even as I thought this, something was still bothering me deep down. Jack had been around every corner last fall, when everything was crazy. In fact, other than myself—or Darkness, I guess—he’d been my lead suspect as Mia’s stalker.

I shuddered at the memory. I tried not to think about that terrifying time very much—doubting myself like that had been horrible. Losing control of myself, of my body,
hours of my time … it wasn’t something I could ever let
happen again. The iron grip I’d held Darkness in ever since had definitely pissed him off, but he never seemed to fade away like I’d hoped. He was always there, watching. Waiting for the next time I’d slip and get too tired. But thanks to Mia, that hadn’t happened again.

And I knew this for sure, because every night I’d been watching the Watcher.

Walking over to my desk, I grabbed the camcorder I’d bought the weekend after the school fire. I stopped the current recording and then pushed rewind, examining every movement I made last night in reverse. When I got to the beginning of the recording, which showed me setting the camcorder up and climbing into bed, I released a tightly held breath. Except for running to Mom’s room after her nightmare, I’d stayed in bed all night.

This was just one more safeguard to keep Darkness from taking over again while I slept. If he regained his freedom this time, I would know about it right away.

Rubbing my palms against my eyes, I powered down the camcorder and yawned. I just had to hold on until my friends came back. I’d spent every night for months in one of their dreams, mostly Mia’s, and so far it was working. The old nightmare images had begun to fade, even those from Dr. Freeburg.

I still didn’t know if I’d killed Mia’s hypnotherapist; I didn’t think I’d ever know. The thought drove me crazy. I’d been both relieved and devastated when I found out they weren’t doing an autopsy on him. Still, what could they discover that would be of any use to me? There wasn’t exactly a known physical result for what happened when someone like me went inside your mind and murdered you in your dream. I just had to hope it had been a heart attack, a coincidence.