The Great Interactive Dream Machine (9 page)

Coach Renwick looked puzzled. “Josh? I mean sure, he's beginning to show... some stuff. A full summer of soccer, and he'll—”

“I'm afraid Josh can't go to soccer camp,” Mom said.

I blinked.

“Ma'am?” said the coach.

Mom reached over and patted my hand. “I'm sorry, Josh. I know what this means to you.”

She turned to Trip, who was mentally checking me off his roster. “As you may have heard,” Mom said, “Josh has had a minor discipline problem at school. His dad and I mean to nip this in the bud. Josh is going to have to earn my trust back. I mean to keep an eye on him this summer.”

Heather snickered.

Trip was trying to think. “Well, ma'am, we take discipline cases at soccer camp. Buster B—”

“You won't be taking Josh,” Mom said. “He'll be staying in the city. He'll be going to summer school.”

Heather snickered.

“So you see, Coach Renwick,” Mom said, “Josh's summer is sewed up.”

Trip Renwick was getting up to go. Relief was flooding through me. Give me summer school any day. You come home at night.

Heather showed Trip the door and came back. “Send
me
to soccer camp,” she said. “What a stud.” Then the phone rang, and that would be Muffie, so Mom and I were alone. The
TV Guide
was still in my hand.

“Not too disappointed about soccer camp?”

“Mom, I'll take my medicine.”

“We've got another problem,” she said. “Major. Heather's going to Pence summer school.”

“Whoa, Mom. She's planning to spend all summer in the Hamptons with Muffie McInteer. I vote we let her.”

“Heather's not ready for the Hamptons,” Mom said, “and she needs summer school. Her grades are terrible.”

“I can believe it, Mom. Heather thinks the Gettysburg Address is where Lincoln lived. She thinks grammar is your mother. But I don't want to be around when you tell her.”

“Neither do I,” Mom said, “but it's got to be done.”

“Tonight?”

Mom nodded and ran a weary hand around the back of her neck. “I've put it off as long as I can.”

“I think I'll turn in early,” I said.

 

In my room I gave Aaron a jingle. “Seen anything of Trip Renwick?” I said when he picked up.

“He was around earlier,” Aaron said, “but I answered the door and headed him off. The guy must be desperate. What's that screaming in the background?”

“Heather. Mom's just told her she isn't going to the Hamptons. She's going to Pence summer school. I'm going to Huckley summer school, so I don't have to go to soccer camp.”

“How'd you work that?”

“By rifling Hulk's locker and getting caught, basically.”

“Cool,” Aaron said. “Speaking of summer, I'm not going to computer camp.”

More relief flooded through me. “How come?”

“I missed the deadline for applying. We've been so busy lately, it got right by me.”

This happens to Aaron. He's so busy thinking, he doesn't think. This happens a lot.

“Forget about it,” I said. “Go next year. Do summer school with me.”

“Might as well,” Aaron said. “So what else?”

“Muffie says she's getting letters from Hulk.”

“But in her head you
are
Hulk.”

“Believe me, I'm not writing them. Muffie's either writing them to herself or telling big fibs to Heather.”

“Women,” Aaron said.

 

When Heather finally stopped screaming, I crept out of my room. She was barricaded behind her door. Mom was in the living room, just sitting. She's pretty even when she's tired, and she looked pretty tired.

Then it hit me. I come up with a good idea once in a while.

I strolled into the living room. “Bad scene with Heather, Mom?”

“The worst yet.”

“Mom, I'll cut you a deal.”

She sighed. “At least I have one child willing to negotiate.”

“What if I can get Heather to stay home and go to summer school and even be happy about it?”

“Dream on,” Mom said.

“Mom, I can do it. But here's the deal. I'm not grounded anymore, and I don't have to explain about Hulk's dress code because I'll never be able to come up with a good explanation for that. Deal?”

“Deal,” Mom said. “Let's hug on it. But I'll believe it when I see it.”

I went to my room. I had a letter to write.

I did a rough draft. The next day I showed it to Aaron. He did some editing and ran a spell check on it. Then he printed it out on a sheet of Huckley School stationery we found in Mrs. Newbery's desk before homeroom. I told Aaron he'd have to work up a signature and sign it.

We mailed it at lunch.

The rest of the school year was pretty routine. As soon as Heather got her letter from Stink Stuyvesant, she was a new woman. There was hope in her heart, and she even started making her bed. I didn't know how long this could last, but Mom was impressed.

“Josh,” she said, “I hope I never need to know how you did that.”

“I hope you don't either, Mom,” I said. “Really.”

On the last day we have the All-School Field Day in the park. There's the traditional faculty-against-upper-school annual softball game, which Aaron and I snuck out of after the first inning. We went over and sat on our rock and really kicked back.

This was going to be our first real summer in the city. Up till this year, we'd gone away to kid camp. Aaron and I had gone to Camp Big Wampum in the Adirondacks, where it took him years to pass the swim test. Heather had gone to Camp One-a-Bee in the Ramapos.

But all that was behind us. It wasn't the same as being seniors, but it was getting there. I thought summer looked like smooth sailing.

I should have known better.

 

That very night I got a jingle from Aaron.

“Come on up,” he said.

His telephone voice sounded worried. “My parents have gone to bed, so come up the back way. I've left the kitchen door unlocked. We may have a problem.”

“What we?” I said.

But I figured I'd better go.

Even the back stairs seemed more deserted than usual. It was summer in the city, and a lot of people were away. Our building felt big and old around me, like the Dakota. I kept looking over my shoulder. Then I was creeping past Ophelia's dark sleeping shape on the way to Aaron's room.

His head was outlined against the screens. The bluish light turned his red hair purple, and the back of his neck glowed. He never tanned, not even at Camp Big Wampum.

“Take a squint at this,” he said, never moving. He clicked Read Old Mail on his menu bar. E-mail came up:

I couldn't believe my eyes. I couldn't swallow. The hair on my arms would be standing up if I had hair on my arms. I clutched my forehead. Something evil was on the screen.

“Aaron,” I whispered, “somebody's onto us.”

He sat there slumped in his swivel chair. “I feel violated,” he said.

“How could anybody—”

“A thousand ways,” he said. “I could be accessed by any on-line maniac.”

“But they're not just accessing your PC. They're accessing us. That crack about miserable small bodies sounds like Daryl.”

“It could be anybody in the lunchroom that day,” he said. “When Daryl talks, people listen.”

“So that narrows it down to—”

“A lot of people,” Aaron said.

“But who could know about that day when we seniorized? Nobody was around.”

“The Watcher was,” Aaron said in his creepiest voice.

We only had a weekend between the end of school and the start of summer school. I don't remember much about the days, but the nights were killers.

You know that kind of dream when you're in bed so you don't know you're dreaming? I mean you're not falling or anything, so you think you haven't gone to sleep yet, but you have? I had that dream for two nights straight.

 

I'm in bed, covers pulled up, looking down past my feet. There's Aaron—purple hair and the back of his neck glowing against bluish screens. He's busy interfacing with his technopolis. So how did he happen to move all his equipment and his swivel chair down to my bedroom? In dreams you don't ask. And it's very real—you know what I mean.

He's keyboarding like crazy, and it's just like the daytime Aaron. And I'm there in bed, right? Then out of the corner of my eye I see we're not alone. I'm sensing that over in the darkest corner of my room, the closet door is beginning to open. We've all had that dream, but I haven't had it since third grade.

So I think I better mention this to Aaron. That we've got company—that somebody's violating our privacy—that somebody's onto us. I want to be casual. I don't want to make a big deal out of this, so I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I'm screaming down my throat, but there's no sound. Needless to say, I can't move.

All this time the closet door keeps opening. This dream is so real, I can hear the bottom of the door brushing across the rug. I can hear a hinge. Now my whole throat is a Carlsbad Cavern, and I'm screaming down it silently.

Also, I know that if I turn my head to see who's easing the closet door open, something really horrible will happen. I'll turn to stone or something. So I figure if I don't turn my head—or breathe—we're still okay. But I know the closet door is yawning wide. And with this third eye I seem to have in my ear, I see this shape standing there, filling up the whole closet door. I see this figure with my dress code hanging up behind him. I actually hear hangers jingle.

I know who it is, of course. I can just about hear his voice, a real metallic voice, saying,
Fast-forward gamma-force greetings,
because it's The Watcher. It's The Watcher, and he's hacked into my bedroom, and he's the worst thing in the world. He's Mister Death.

And now my neck's in a vise, and some superior force is cranking my head around so I have to look at him and see who he is, though I know that if I can identify him, I'm doomed. Doomed, do you hear?

But I look anyway. It's that kind of dream.

At first I think it's Mr. Thaw from History class. He's that skinny and corpselike. But it's not him. Then I think it's the headmaster. He's that tall, but I don't know if he's bald because he's wearing a big hat, black as a bat, along with a big black shroud. So it's not the headmaster either. And then I don't want to do this, but I'm looking into his face for a positive I.D.

And he doesn't have a face. It's just smooth, shiny skin, glowing bluish from Aaron's screens. But he can see us, and he can seal our fate, and there's no escape.

Then finally I can scream, but Aaron still doesn't hear because it's morning, and I'm awake, sitting straight up. My bed looks like a battlefield, and I'm sweating buckets, and it's daylight. The closet door is closed, but still I'm not sure.

Two nights of this.

 

The third was the night before summer school started. I was doing sit-ups on my bedroom floor, fully dressed, putting off getting into bed and trying to wear myself out completely so I wouldn't dream anything. Mom's light was already out, and Heather was in her room in full eyeliner, waiting for Stink to call.

I couldn't take the pressure anymore. I punched Aaron's number. He answered the first ring, and I told him I was coming up. I'd had it with everything, and it was time to tell him we had to go completely out of business, computerwise.