Wake (3 page)

Janie perks up. “Who asked you out?”

“Stu. From the body shop.”

“You mean that old guy?”

Carrie bristles. “He’s twenty-two.”

“You’re sixteen! And he looks older than that.”

“Not up close. He’s cute. He has a cute ass.”

“Maybe he plays Dance Dance Revolution at the arcade.”

Carrie giggles. Janie smiles.

“So. You got any liquor around here?” Carrie asks innocently. Janie laughs. “There’s an understatement. Whaddya want, beer?” She looks at the bottles on the table. “Schnapps? Whiskey? Double-stuff vodka?”

“Got any of that cheap grape wine the winos at Selby Park drink?”

“At your service.” Janie hauls herself off the couch and looks for clean glasses. The kitchen is a mess. Janie has barely been here the past two weeks. She finds two sticky, mismatched glasses in the sink and washes them out, then searches through her mother’s stash for her cheap wine assortment. “Ah, here it is. Boone’s Farm, right?” She unscrews the bottle and pours two glasses full, not waiting for an answer from Carrie, and then puts the bottle back in the fridge.

Carrie flips on the TV. She takes a glass from Janie. “Thanks.”

Janie sips the sweet wine and makes a face. “So what are you gonna do about Stu?” She thinks there’s a country song in that sentence somewhere.

“Go out with him.”

“Your dad’s gonna kill you if he finds out.”

“Yeah, well. What else is new?” They both settle on the creaky couch and put their feet on the coffee table, deftly pushing the mess of bottles to the center of it so they can stretch out. The TV drones. The girls sip their wine and get silly. Janie gets up, rummages around in her bedroom, and returns with snacks.

“Gross—you keep Doritos in your bedroom?”

“Emergency stash. For nights such as these.” Since Mother can’t be bothered to buy any actual food at the grocery store when she goes there for booze, Janie thinks.

“Ahh.” Carrie nods.

12:30 a.m.

Janie is asleep on the couch. She doesn’t dream. Never dreams. 5:02 a.m.

Janie, forced awake, catapults into Carrie’s dream. It’s the one by the river. Again. Janie’s been here twice since the first time, when they were thirteen. Janie, blind to the room her physical body is in, tries to stand. If she can feel her way to her bedroom and close the door before she starts going numb, she might get enough distance to break the connection. She feels with her toes for the bottles on the floor, and goes around them. She reaches out for the wall and finds her way into the hallway as she and Carrie are walking through the forest in Carrie’s dream. Janie reaches for the door frames—first her mother’s bedroom (hush, don’t bump the door), then the bathroom, and then her room. She makes it inside, turns, and closes the door just as Carrie and Janie approach the riverbank. The connection is lost.

Janie breathes a sigh of relief. She looks around, blinks in the dark as her eyesight returns, crawls into bed, and sleeps.

9:06 a.m.

When she wakes, both her mother and Carrie are in the kitchen. The living room is cleared of bottles. Carrie is drying a sink full of dishes, and Janie’s mother is fixing her homemade morning drink: vodka and orange juice on ice. On the stove is a skillet covered by a paper plate. Two pieces of buttered toast, two eggs over easy, and a small fortune of crisp bacon rest on a second paper plate, next to the skillet. Janie’s mother picks up a piece of bacon, takes her drink, and disappears back into her bedroom without a word.

“Thanks Carrie—you didn’t have to do this. I was planning on cleaning today.”

Carrie is cheerful. “It’s the least I can do. Did you sleep well? When did you go to bed?”

Janie peeks in the skillet, thinking, discovering hash browns. “Wow! Um…not long ago. It was close to daylight. But I was so tired.”

“You’ve been working ridiculous hours.”

Janie. “Yeah, well. College. One day. How did you sleep?”

“Pretty good…” She hesitates, like she might say something else, but doesn’t. Janie takes a bite of food. She’s famished. “Did you have sweet dreams?”

Carrie glances at Janie, then picks up another dish and wipes it with the towel. “Not really.”

Janie concentrates on the food, but her stomach flips. She waits, until the silence grows awkward. “You want to talk about it?”

Carrie is silent for a long time. “Not really. No,” she says finally.
AND PICKS UP SPEED

August 30, 2004

It is the first day of school. Janie and Carrie are juniors. They wait for the bus on the corner of their street. A handful of other high school kids stand with them. Some are anxious. Some are terribly short. Janie and Carrie ignore the freshmen. The bus is late. Luckily for Cabel Strumheller, the bus is later than he is. Janie and Carrie know Cabel—he’s been trouble in school since ninth grade. Janie doesn’t remember him much before that—word was that he flunked down into their grade. He was often late. Always looked stoned. Now, he looks about six inches taller than he did in the spring. His blue-black hair hangs in greasy ringlets in front of his eyes, and he walks with shoulders curved, as if he were more comfortable being short. He stands away from everyone and smokes a cigarette.

Janie catches his eye by accident, so she nods hello. He looks down at the ground quickly. Blows smoke from his lips. Tosses the cigarette down and grinds it into the gravel. Carrie pokes Janie in the ribs. “Lookie, it’s your boyfriend.”

Janie rolls her eyes. “Be nice.”

Carrie observes him carefully while he’s not looking. “Well. His pox-face cleared up over the summer. Or maybe the new fancy ’do hides it.”

“Stop,” hisses Janie. She’s giggling, and feeling bad about it. But she’s looking at him. He’s got to be about as dirt poor as Janie, judging by his clothes. “He’s just a loner. And quiet.”

“A stoner, maybe, who has a boner for you.”

Janie narrows her eyes, and her face grows sober.

“Carrie, stop it. I’m serious. You’re turning mean like Melinda.” Janie glances at Cabel. His jeans are too short. She knows what it’s like to be teased for not having cool clothes and stuff. She feels herself wanting to defend him.

“He probably has shitty welfare parents, like me.”

Carrie is quiet. “I’m not like Melinda.”

“So why do you hang with her?”

She shrugs and thinks about it for a minute. “I dunno. ’Cause she’s rich.”

Finally the bus comes. The ride is forty-five minutes to school, even though the school is less than five miles away, because of all the stops. Juniors like Janie and Carrie are considered by the unwritten bus rules to be upperclassmen. So they sit near the back. Cabel passes by and falls into the seat behind them. Janie can feel him push his knees up against her back. She peers through the crack between her seat back and the window. Cabel’s chin is propped up by his hand. His eyes are closed, nearly hidden beneath his greasy curls.

“Fuck,” Janie mutters under her breath.

Thankfully, Cabel Strumheller doesn’t dream.

Not on the bus, anyway.

Not in chemistry class, either.

Or English.

Nor does anyone else. Janie arrives home after the first day of school, relieved. October 16, 2004, 7:42 p.m.

Carrie and Stu knock on Janie’s bedroom window. She opens it a crack. Stu’s dressed up, wearing a thin, black leather tie, and Carrie has on a slinky black dress with a shawl and a hideously large orchid pinned to it.

“I saw your light on in here,” explains Carrie, regarding the unusual visit. “Come to the homecoming dance, with us, Janers! We’re not staying long. Please?”

Janie sighs. “You know I don’t have anything to wear.”

Carrie holds up a silver spaghetti-strap dress so Janie can see it. “Here—I bet this’ll fit you. I got it from Melinda. She’ll die if she sees you in it instead of me. And I’ve got shoes that’ll go with it.” Carrie grins evilly.

“I haven’t washed my hair or anything.”

“You look fine, Janie,” Stu says. “Come on. Don’t make me sit there with a bunch of teenybopper airheads all night. Have pity on an old man.”

Janie smirks. Carrie slaps Stu on the arm.

She meets them at the front door, takes the dress, and heads over to Carrie’s ten minutes later.

9:12 p.m.

Janie drinks her third cup of punch while Stu and Carrie dance for the billionth time. She sits down at a table, alone.

9:18 p.m.

A sophomore boy, known only to Janie as “the brainiac,” asks Janie to dance. She regards him for a moment. “Why the fuck not,” she says. She’s a head taller than him. He rests his head on her chest and grabs her ass.

She pushes him off her, muttering under her breath, finds Carrie, and tells her she has a ride home and she’s leaving now.

Carrie waves blissfully from Stu’s arms.

Janie attacks the back door of the school gym and finds herself in a heavy cloud of smoke. She realizes she’s found the Goths’ hangout. Who knew?

“Oof,” someone says. She keeps walking, muttering “sorry” to whomever it was she hit with the flying door.

After a mile wearing Carrie’s heels, her feet are killing her. She takes off the shoes and walks in the grassy yards, watching the houses evolve from nice to nasty as she goes along. The grass is already wet with dew, and the yards are getting messier. Her feet are freezing. Someone falls in step beside her, so quietly that she doesn’t notice him until he’s there. He’s carrying a skateboard. A second and third follow suit, then lay their boards down and push off, hanging slightly in front of Janie.

“Jeez!” she says, surrounded. “Scare a girl half to death, why don’t you.”

Cabel Strumheller shrugs. The other guys move ahead. “Long walk,” says Cabel. “You, uh”—he clears his throat—“okay?”

“Fine,” she says. “You?” She doesn’t remember ever hearing him speak before.

“Get on.” He sets his board down, taking Janie’s shoes from her hand. “You’ll rip your feet to shreds. There’s glass an’ shit.”

Janie looks at the board, and then up at him. He’s wearing a knit beanie with a hole in it. “I don’t know how.”

He flashes a half grin. Shoves a long black lock of hair under the beanie. “Just stand. Bend. Balance. I’ll push you.”

She blinks. Gets on the board.

Weird.

This is not happening.

They don’t talk.

The guys weave in and out the rest of the way, and take off at the corner by Janie’s house. Cabel pushes her to her front porch so she can hop off. He sets her shoes on the step, picks up the board, nods, and catches up with his friends.

“Thanks, Cabel,” Janie says, but he’s gone in the dark already. “That was sweet,” she adds, to no one.

They don’t acknowledge each other, or the event, for a very long time.
IN EARNEST

February 1, 2005

Janie is seventeen.

A boy named Jack Tomlinson falls asleep in English class. Janie watches his head nodding from across the room. She begins to sweat, even though the room is cold. It is 11:41 a.m. Seven minutes until the bell rings for lunch. Too much time. She stands, gathers her books, and rushes for the door. “I feel sick,” she says to the teacher. The teacher nods understandingly. Melinda Jeffers snickers from the back row. Janie leaves the room and shuts the door. She leans against the cool tile wall, takes a deep breath, goes into the girls’ bathroom, and hides in a stall.

Nobody ever sleeps in the bathroom.

Flashback—January 9, 1998

It’s Janie’s tenth birthday. Tanya Weersma falls asleep in school, her head on her pencil box. She is floating, gliding. And then she is falling. Falling into a gorge. The face of a cliff streams by at a dizzying speed. Tanya looks at Janie and screams. Janie closes her eyes and feels sick. They startle at the same time. The fourth graders all laugh. Janie decides not to hand out her precious birthday treat, after all.

That was after the train ride and the man in the underwear. Janie’s had only a few close calls in school before high school. But the older she gets, the more often her classmates sleep in school. And the more kids sleep, the more of a mess it makes for Janie. She has to get away, wake them up, or risk the consequences. A year and a half to go.

And then.

College. A roommate.

Janie puts her head in her hands.

She leaves the bathroom after lunch and goes to her next class, grabbing a Snickers bar on her way.

For two weeks afterward, Melinda Jeffers and her rich friends make puking noises when they pass Janie in the hall.

June 15, 2005

Janie is seventeen. She’s working her ass off, taking as many shifts as she can. Old Mr. Reed is dying at the nursing home.

His dreams grow constant and terrible.

He doesn’t wake easily.

As his body fades, the pull of his dreams grows eerily stronger. Now, if his door is open, Janie can’t enter that wing.

She hadn’t planned for this.

She makes an odd request on every shift. “If you cover the east wing, I’ll take the rest.”

The other aides think she’s afraid to see Mr. Reed die.

Janie doesn’t have a problem with that.

June 21, 2005, 9:39 p.m.

Heather Home is short-staffed. It’s summer. Three patients on the cusp of death. Two have Alzheimer’s. One dreams, screams, and cries.

Someone has to empty bedpans. Hand out the night meds. Straighten up the rooms for the day.

Janie approaches with caution. She stands in the west wing, looking into the east wing, and memorizes it. The right-hand wall has five doorways and six sets of handrails. The last door on the right is Mr. Reed. Ten steps farther is a wall, and the emergency exit door. Some days, a cart stands between doorways three and four. Some days, wheelchairs collect anonymously between doorways one and two. A stretcher often rests in the east wing, but usually it’s on the left side. Janie would have to get a glimpse before entering the hallway, no matter the day. Because some days, most days, people travel up and down the hallway without pattern. And Janie doesn’t want to run into anyone in case she goes blind. Tonight, the hallway is clear. Janie noted earlier that the Silva family came for a visit in the fourth room. She checks the record book and sees that they signed out. There are no other visitors recorded. It grows late. For Janie, it’s either get the work done, or get fired. She enters the east wing, grabs the hall bar, and nearly doubles over. 9:41 p.m.