The Cure for Dreaming (7 page)

Percy combed his hand through his hair. “Yes, sir.”

Mr. Dircksen then pointed a bony finger at me. “You, in the back there. I forgot your name.”

I choked on my own saliva.

“What is your name?” he asked in a voice that slapped me on the back and made me cough out the words.

“Olivia Mead.”

“Miss Mead”—Mr. Dircksen tapped his reader against his
opened hand—“do
you
require a firm reminder of the first rule of this classroom?”

“N-n-no, sir.” I shook my head until the classroom went fuzzy.

“Good. Now, where were we before this interruption?”

I clutched my desk, doubled over, and spent the rest of the class trying to remember how to breathe.

AT PROMPTLY ONE O'CLOCK, MR. DIRCKSEN EXCUSED US.
I grabbed my book bag and hustled out to the hallway ahead of my classmates, hoping for a whiff of fresh air, but all I inhaled was the smell of pencil shavings and other students. Even worse, Henri Reverie's eyes haunted me from another black poster that someone had pinned with thumbtacks to the burlap-covered bulletin board across the hall, next to a notice for the school's banjo club. The dramatic yellow letters—all capitals, all screaming to be seen—peeked at me from between the passing hair bows and the male heads with severe parts combed down the middle.

THE MESMERIZING HENRI REVERIE

“I'm glad he didn't wallop your head, too,” said Percy from behind me.

I spun around, my book bag sliding to my elbow.

Percy walked toward me, his satchel slung over one shoulder, his hair falling into his eyes. He rubbed his ear
again. “I'd use a word to describe teachers like him, but that would guarantee I'd get the paddle.”

“I'm so sorry about that. Here”—I dug into my bag and tugged out
Dracula
—“keep it. It's yours now.”

“Keep it?” he asked. “But you love it.”

“It's the least I can do.”

He flipped the novel over and studied the cover illustration of Dracula's angular castle perched atop a lumpy hill. “I like the way the little bats are soaring around the towers. It looks like a corker of a book.” His eyes returned to mine. “But I don't know. I think you owe me more than just a ghost story. Don't you?”

I shrank back. “I—I—I don't—”

He cracked a smile and nudged my arm with his elbow. “Don't look so terrified, Olivia. I just meant I think you need to work even harder to persuade your father to let me take you to that party.” He reached out and stroked a piece of my hair and, with it, my cheek. “Will you do that for me, Sleeping Beauty?”

“Yes, of course.” I peeled my eyes away from his red ear. “I'd be happy to.”

“Good.” He dropped his hand to his side. “Tell him I won't bite, unlike”—he patted the novel—“your friend Dracula here.”

He tucked the book into his satchel and wandered away.

Frannie's face came into view from around the corner to the stairwell, and as she approached she peeked over her
shoulder at Percy disappearing down the steps. Without slowing her stride, she grabbed me by the elbow and steered me toward the music room at the opposite end of the second floor.

“So,” she said, “was he kind to you when he drove you home last night?”

“Very kind. But something awful happened to him just now.”

“What?”

We passed a boy named Stuart from English who was pantomiming Mr. Dircksen's attack on Percy to a group of his friends in front of the library.

I lowered my voice. “Mr. Dircksen smacked Percy in the head in front of the class . . . and he threatened to send him down to the principal for a paddling. Percy and I had just been exchanging whispers about
Dracula
.”

“A paddling on the backside?” Frannie lifted her chin, her eyebrows raised. “Well, now. That's highly appropriate.”

I stopped and shook her arm off mine. “Why on earth do you hate Percy?”

“It's nothing,” she said, but her face went red and splotchy.

I took her by the arm and pulled her aside, one door down from Stuart and his friends.

“It doesn't seem like nothing, Frannie.”

“I just . . .” She shifted her weight between her feet. “I just think he's a snob, that's all. And snobs are only fun in Austen novels.”

“Are you sure you don't have a particular reason for hating him?”

“Just watch yourself with him—that's all I'm going to say.” She hooked her arm again through mine and pulled me toward the opened chorus room doors. “I've heard he flits from girl to girl and doesn't care about their reputations. Watch out for his hands.”

“His hands?” I asked.

“On your bottom, you ninny. I've heard he's a grabber.”

She tugged me into the music room, and we sealed the subject of Percy closed.

I OPENED MY MOUTH AS FAR AS MY JAW COULD STRETCH
and joined my girls' chorus sisters in rehearsing “Silent Night” for the Christmas concert.

In the middle of the second verse, just as my vibrato was gaining strength and feeling good in my chest, my friend Kate entered the room with a folded piece of paper tucked between her fingers. Her new black shoes with buttons on the sides clip-clopped across the floor to the beat of the metronome sitting on Mr. Bennington's piano.

Mr. Bennington stopped conducting and scratched his waxy mustache. “Let us take a short break, ladies.”

Kate handed the teacher the note. Mr. Bennington pulled his wire reading glasses out of his striped coat pocket and squinted through the lenses, as if he couldn't quite decipher the words.

“It's for Olivia,” said Kate.

My insides liquefied. I wondered why the devil someone was sending
me
a message in the middle of the school day.

“Olivia.” Mr. Bennington peeked up at me. “Come read this note and then return to your position.”

“Yes, sir.” I climbed down from the risers, out of the depths of the deepest altos stuck in the back, and took the piece of paper. Kate patted my back as if I were receiving a summons to the gallows and clip-clopped out of the room.

I unfolded the note.

“Let us take it from the beginning,” said Mr. Bennington.

My classmates cleared their throats and stood up tall, while I read two sentences scribbled in Father's squiggly cursive:

My daughter, Olivia Mead, must come to my dental office directly after school. She should NOT go home.

Respectfully,

Dr. Walter Mead

My blood froze. I reread those phrases at least three more times apiece. Our rather somber rendition of “Silent Night” seized the room with a harmony that pricked the little hairs on the back of my neck, and Father's ominous second sentence stared me in the eye.

She should NOT go home.

n Father's downtown office, tucked in the heart of Portland's business district, a door with a frosted glass pane separated his mahogany-lined lobby from the windowless operatory in which he tended to his patients' teeth and gums. I could see him moving beyond the glass—a distorted figure in a trim white coat, bending over the silhouette of a man tipped back in the padded dental chair. Laughter erupted from the patient, first in snickers, then in loud brays and hiccups that told me the man had inhaled a bag of nitrous oxide, otherwise known as good old laughing gas.

I seated myself in a rigid chair in the lobby and stared up at Father's four-foot-wide oil painting of a pair of silver dental forceps shining against a green background. I recalled Percy's utter dread of my father's profession (even though Father worried
I
would scare Percy away), and I slunk down a little farther in my spindle-back seat, wishing Father were a bookstore owner like Frannie's pa, or even a chimney sweep or a sailor. Someone who didn't hang pictures of torture devices on his workplace walls or cause men to suffer from fits of laughter while they shouted out, “No! I'm not ready!”—as was happening beyond the frosted glass beside me.

I eyed the main door to the street and debated bolting home.
I can claim I never received the note
, I realized.
I could say that I
—

The front door opened.

Henri Reverie stepped into the lobby.

I drew a sharp breath and averted my eyes. My shoulders inched toward my ears.
He's come to take away my free will. I knew it!

Henri removed a dark square-crown hat from his head, closed the door, and lowered himself into a chair across from me, below the painting of the forceps. He was dressed in a three-piece suit and tie, all as black as midnight—a shadow with cobalt-blue eyes and blond hair. His complexion was poorer than I remembered, probably due to all the lard-based greasepaint theater people had to wear on their faces,
according to my mother. His slumped posture gave him the shifty look of a peddler trying to pass off bottles of booze as magical cure-alls.

“No!” cried the patient in the operatory.

I gave a start—as did Henri.

“Noooo! I'm not ready! Nooooooo!”

Shrieks and loud smacks and another fit of hysterical laughter came from beyond the glass. Henri grabbed hold of his armrests with whitening fingers, and his knees swerved to his right, toward the door, as if he were about to flee.

A smile twitched at the corners of my lips. I relaxed my shoulders and folded my hands in my lap, for I realized something absolutely delightful: Henri Reverie's fear of my father's dental practice gave me the upper hand in our current situation.

Interesting
.

“Are you here for an appointment, Mr. Reverie?” I asked.

“Stay still, Mr. Dibbs!” yelled Father from beyond the door. “If you don't stop flailing about, I'll need to clamp your wrists to the chair in addition to your head.”

Henri grimaced as if his own head were being clamped to a chair, while Mr. Dibbs cackled and whooped and let loose the screams of a man suffering the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition.