The Cure for Dreaming (37 page)

“Of course I do. I don't want to keep seeing the world the way it truly is.”

He cocked his head. “Are you sure about that?”

“Help her, Henry.” Genevieve pushed at his shoulder. “Don't you dare leave her stuck like that.”

“I want my mind to be entirely my own,” I added.

“Olivia ‘Scorcher' Mead . . .” Henry cracked a smile, and the corners of his eyes crinkled with amusement. “There's no doubt at all that your mind has remained your own this entire time.”

“Do it quickly, eh, before she needs to go.” Genevieve backed away with her plump black case—the smallest of their bags. “I'll even leave you two alone for a few minutes if you want to be by yourselves.”

“You don't have—”

“Do it.” Genevieve turned and wandered off to the opposite side of the platform.

Henry lowered their two larger bags to the ground beside him, which prompted me to set my Gladstone next to my feet alongside my skirt. We stood up straight and faced each other.

“Close your eyes—they're exceptionally heavy.” He cupped my cheek, and my eyes fell shut, as if lead lined my lashes. “Keep them closed,” he said in a voice soft and lush, and he pulled my body toward him. “Your lids are now stuck together. Try opening them.”

I couldn't.

“Good. Very good. I am now going to stroke the back of your neck with my free hand, and each caress will send you deeper and deeper into hypnosis.” He rubbed his palm down the base of my neck, over the topmost vertebrae. “Do you feel that wonderful sense of relaxation?”

“Yesss,” I whispered from somewhere inside a deep, delicious pocket of darkness.

“Now, listen carefully, because what I am about to say is extremely important.” His breath warmed my ear. “You will see the world the way it has always been. You will ensure your mind remains your own and never, ever allow a hypnotist or a domineering suitor or your father—or anyone else—to alter your thoughts beyond your control. Do you understand?”

“Yesss. My mind . . . will remain . . . my own.”

“You will not allow people like Percy Acklen to make you feel as though you're lesser than they.”

“I . . .” I tried to reach my fingers up to Henry's hand on my cheek, but my arm was built of limp rubber.

“Will you promise, Olivia? Don't let people like him make you feel like dirt.”

“I promise.”

“Your mind will remain your own.”

“Yesss.”

I heard him swallow. “I am going to wake you up now. Are you ready?”

I nodded on the wobbly hinge of my neck.

“I'll count forward to ten—we'll take it slowly. One . . . two . . . three . . .”

“I want . . . to make sure . . . you're going to be . . . all right, too.”

He lowered his hand from my face.
“Pardonnez-moi?”

My eyes stayed shut, still too thick and dense to unseal, and my tongue remained heavy and cumbersome. “I feel . . . the urge . . . to tell you . . . things. Waking up . . . might change . . . my boldness.”

“It won't.”

“You're only . . . eighteen. Hospitalized . . . chest pains. Fatigue. Collapsed. Just eighteen. I can't . . . be with you . . . need to be . . . on my own. But . . . I care . . . about you.”

“I'm all right.”

“No. Not convinced.”

He was silent, and for a moment I just stood there with my arms dangling by my sides, relaxing in the mesmerizing hold of peaceful blackness.

“Are you ready to wake up now?” he asked.

“Swear . . . you'll take care . . . of yourself.”

“I—”

“Swear. Let me speak . . . with less heaviness.”

His thumb traced my jawline. “All right. You're easing upward to a lesser stage of relaxation. Keep rising up . . . up . . . up. Your tongue is no longer heavy. You can talk with clarity.”

My tongue loosened and stretched inside my mouth. I licked my drying lips.

“What did you want to say?” he asked with hesitation.

“There's beauty in this world, Henry, and not everyone dies young. There's so much hope. There's so much work, too—ridiculous amounts of work—but above all, hope. I've seen it out there, alongside the darkness. Look at Frannie and what she did. Look at the times we had together.”

He didn't answer. His hand trembled against my face.

“Henry?”

“I'll count forward,” he said, a quaver in his voice, “slowly, so you can come up gently. One . . . two . . . three . . .”

“Were you listening to me, Henry?”

“Yes.”

“Will you put yourself back together?”

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

“
Mon Dieu
, Olivia”—he emitted a weak flutter of a laugh— “are you hypnotizing me while under hypnosis?”

“We're partners, remember?”

“Yes, I definitely remember.”

“Then let my words persuade you to become the type of person you're not afraid of looking at in the mirror. If you think your life is a farce, Henry, then change it.”

“All right. I'll fix myself up.”

“Promise?”

“Yes. If it means that much to you, then . . . yes.” A self-relaxing breath loosened his voice. “Um . . . where was I?”

“Four,” I said. “And I want you to open up your eyes, too, when we get to ten. Five . . .”

“All right.” He took another breath. “Six . . .”

“Seven,” I said.

“Eight . . .”

“Nine . . .”

He removed his hand from my face. “Ten.”

We awoke, and I took a long look around me. Passengers and porters hurried about, and a train's black smokestack hissed with impatience. In front of me, a boy blinked to keep his eyes dry before letting me go.

“They have to remove her whole breast,” he said. “It's a fairly new procedure, but it's the only thing that will save her. She'll have a better chance than our mother did.”

I cast my eyes down to Genevieve waiting on a bench with her leather bag. “She looks brave.” I peeked back up at him. “And so do you. You'll both be strong for each other.”

He nodded without breathing.

I reached up and kissed his lips, which faltered beneath mine. We clasped our arms around each other and hugged instead, and Henry whispered in my ear,
“Un jour, lorsque tu es prête, on se reverra encore.”

“What does that mean?” I asked with the left side of my face pressed against his shoulder.

“One day, when you are ready, we will meet again.”

No words found their way to my mouth. My eyes welled with tears and turned Genevieve's brown coat and gray skirt, down the way, into blurs.

A blue-capped conductor checked his pocket watch and called out, “All aboard,” and a crowd of people clamored forward to the passenger cars.

Genevieve shot off her bench and jogged past them all to reach me.

“Thank you.” She grabbed my face and kissed my wet cheek. “Thank you for your help. Please send me Frannie's address so I may write to her.”

“Oh, that reminds me”—I pulled a piece of paper out of my coat pocket—“here's my mother's address.” I slipped the paper into Henry's hands. “Please promise to send me a postcard when Genevieve has recovered.”

Everyone bustled past us as if they couldn't get on board quickly enough. Time shoved against me.

Henry grabbed hold of my hand, and I kissed him again—a proper good-bye kiss, just in case we were about to turn into mere memories for each other. He pulled me against him by my waist, and we stayed together until the conductor shouted his last boarding call.

I broke loose and climbed aboard the train without looking back at either of them.

A young black Pullman porter in a white coat greeted me at the head of the aisle. “May I help you with your luggage, miss?”

“Yes, thank you.” I handed him my bag, and for a moment I saw straight through him to the green floral rug running down the aisle.

No
, I told myself, and I rubbed at my eyes.
No—you see the world the way it has always been.

I followed the porter, and four seats in we passed a man with engorged lips and his dissolving wife, whose neck bled in a bright red bloom.

“No! Oh, no.” I turned to leave.

Two young ladies in wide-brimmed hats maneuvered their bags up the aisle and blocked my exit.

“Oh, dear, are you trying to get off?” asked the woman in front, turning sideways.

“I just . . .” I cupped my hand over my forehead and heard the rustle of paper in the left sleeve of my blouse.

“Personally, I think you're traveling in the right direction,” said the second woman, who had a distinctive glow in her cheeks. “This train passes through Idaho, where women voted yesterday. That's where we're headed.”

“I don't know where I'm going.”

I swiveled back around and grabbed hold of the wooden backs of seats to navigate my way down the aisle behind the porter. The floor swayed and bobbed below my feet, as if in a dream. I reached under my left sleeve and drew out a folded piece of paper that had been stuffed up there like the tickets Henry had snuck into my glove while we were in the restaurant with Percy.

Another message, written in the same hand as that previous note, met my eyes.

I believe you have always seen the vampires and the fading souls in the world, Olivia. You just never paid close attention to them before. As I've learned through my own ordeals, once you start viewing the world the way it truly is, it is impossible to ignore both its beauty and its ugliness. Look around you.

You can't stop seeing it, can you?

I glanced up and witnessed a girl near my age with a bruise swelling near her eye. A second later, her body puffed into a thin haze of smoke.

A young bearded man with burning coals for irises glared at the black porter walking by him with my bag, and I swore I saw the man tying a rope into a noose.

My eyes strayed back to the message.

There is some of the unexplainable in me, ma chérie, but there is also a great deal of enchantment in you. Keep telling the world what you see.

Help others to see it, too.

I dropped into an empty seat and slid across the bench to the window. Using my fist, I rubbed a circle against the condensation fogging up the glass.

Down below, Henry and Genevieve roamed the length of
the car with their bags at their sides and craned their necks, as if they were looking for me as well. With a frenzied wave, I caught Henry's eye, and I pressed the letter against the glass. He stopped and gave a small nod.

The train lurched forward, and the Rhodeses stood there on the platform, amid other travelers in black and gray and the faded browns of the autumn leaves. They blended in with the surroundings, and I held my breath in fear of them going one step farther and disappearing.

“Don't fade,” I said. “Please don't fade.”

Time seemed poised to swallow them up, but before the train chugged past them, a switch flipped. Henry and Genevieve ignited into the blaze of colors from their Halloween performance, Henry in his bold crimson vest and Genevieve in her peacock-blue gown. I pushed my palm harder against the glass to see them more clearly—a beautiful, blinding brilliance.

Another light flared to life in the glass—the reflection of a girl with an ordinary face and unremarkable black hair, but she shone like the brightest stage lights of the Metropolitan.

The train clacked onward, gathering speed. My reflection remained, but the Reveries fell out of my view. I felt them around me, though, in the velvet-padded seats, between the strangers. Henry and Genevieve. Frannie and Kate. Agnes, Gerda, and Mr. and Mrs. Harrison. Even Mother and Father. They were all there, everyone a part of me, by my side, making sure I stayed on that train until I reached my destination.