me restless again. I tossed and turned in my bed, throwing my covers off, then my sheets, then even kicking off my favorite blue fuzzy blanket. I could find no sanctuary, no respite from the swirling thoughts and events on a wild merry-go-round in my brain.
Philippa was surprisingly cool. She had listened to the limited retelling from Dragon quietly and without incredulity. At the end of his recitation, she had stared into the distance for a very long time (totally typical reaction from her), and then said only and simply, “ok.” Then she had shaken hands with Baert and Dragon (nerd), and she thanked them for trusting her with this information. Then she went to bed! Just like that! Meanwhile, I was a cacophony of mental stimulation.
I tried breathwork. I tried reading. Neither worked. Breathing only harkened back the very real events in which those breathing exercises had been absolutely necessary – like shooting through a compressed portal into another dimension or braving the injustices of Beecher Junior High. In either case, remembering the success of the breathing exercises ironically stressed me out more and sent my heartrate and breathing racing at this moment.
I tried to talk it out, imagining myself in a therapist’s tidy office sorting through these experiences. Yeah, I snorted aloud, I’m going to talk about this with my therapist. Like, hey doc, here’s a new one ….
Even my favorite books weren’t of any help either. They used to be such a glorious escape – I would march into a new fantasy land to help the hero or heroine vanquish their foe with formidable weapons and cunning. These favorite stories now felt too real and familiar. But what did my quest have? I had no sword, no shield, no magic wand. I had … well, I had an old book and some weird sticky bouncy balls.
I laughed. I would definitely read my own story. I rolled out of bed and grabbed some stray socks on the floor for my cold feet. (Mental note: cite this exact moment as the reason why there are “always socks on the floor,” according to my mom.)
I looked to the corner of my room where I left my phone plugged in. I didn’t know what else to do to get my brain to shut up; some mindless scrolling or terrible games ought to do the trick. I groaned, remembering my mom had confiscated it after a few too many late nights. I had only been using its flashlight so I could keep reading in the dark – who did she think I was texting? My text circle included her, Philippa … an art camp friend from a few summers ago … um, I’m sure there must be more … .
A list. A list would help right now! I grabbed a clean sheet of paper and drew two lines intersecting each other. I frowned. For one who has such an artistic propensity, these sure were some godawful wiggly lines. Never mind. I listed everyone and everything I had come in contact with over the past week and put them in the Friend column or the Foe column.
My head shot up. My door moved open ever so slightly. The hairs on my arms stood on end. Before I could hide my work, Philippa tumbled in, tripping on her own robe. She caught herself midair, her arms out in a T, her feet planted squarely, like a gymnast who just barely stuck the landing.
“Sssshhhh!” I hissed at her.
“I know!” she snapped, standing upright, “wait, what are you working on? I want to see!”
She shoved my door shut and lunged across the room. Grace never being her strong suit, she hit the edge of my bookcase; my towers of carefully stacked books and precariously balanced knickknacks danced and swayed. Philippa stood, frozen, as the bookcase steadied. Grinning in the dim light, Philippa hopped up and threw her arms out.
“Ha! Am I a ninja or what?” she cried. Her right arm smacked into my trophy from fencing camp. It toppled over, hitting a stack of books. The books slid to the side, hitting a small thunderegg I had gotten from our trip to the Grand Canyon. The thunderegg hit a small model of the Deathstar, which slid off the far edge of my bookcase and crashed onto the record player case below it.
“Philippa! Honestly! You were in here for, like, 20 seconds, and everything’s ruined!”
I scurried over to salvage the pieces of my precious model, hitting my knees against something pointy along the way. My mom might have a point about the need to keep my room just a tiny bit tidier, I thought as I swallowed the pain from the mystery jabs as I crawled.
“Eve? Egg, is everything ok?”
My mom! She was coming down the hall! I started toward my bed, then saw Philippa in my nightlight corner reading my top-secret list. Bed, list, bed, list – what do I do? In a panic, I dove for my list, wrestling with Philippa. Our whispered argument of give-its and give-it-backs was immediately halted by the door opening.
In the hall light, I saw my mom’s face gaze toward my empty bed. Her lovely but tired expression turned to worry, then as she saw my sister and me in the corner, she did the most peculiar thing. She smiled.
“You are such sweet girls. Are you drawing? Writing? Whatever it is, I’m sure it is brilliant,” she started back into the hall, blowing us a kiss. “Try to get back to your own beds in ten, yes? I just love you both.”
As soon as the door closed, which took an eternity, Philippa and I were back to whispered wrestling.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I hissed.
“Why am I on the Foe list?!” Philippa shot back. “I’m probably the heroine!”
“You are definitely not the heroine,” I hissed louder. “If anything, you’re the jester.”
“There’s not a jester on your list,” Philippa countered.
Grabbing the purple pen I had been using, I dramatically wrote in J-E-S-T-E-R in large letters, underlined it, and wrote “Flea” after it with little squiggly lines emanating from it just to irritate her.
“You could at least spell it correctly!”
I smiled then. I rather enjoyed that this was her response. My sister, loathsomely ungraceful, aloof, and goofy though she was, was generally incapable of any real zingers. I scribbled out the passive-aggressive spelling and wrote her in name in its entirety. She smiled and sighed contentedly as though she had won.
“Hey! Wait! You still have me listed as the jester!” Philippa then blurted out.
I erupted into giggles.
“I thought you wouldn’t notice,” I chuckled, so very self-entertained. “Anyway,” I continued, “I really have to tackle this.”
My attention went back to my list, which was now graced with a few doodles of fire-breathing dragons. Philippa leaned in anxiously. I shifted uncomfortably.
“It’s just that, well, Phlee,” I tried to choose my words carefully. “All of this was presented to me, and I, err, until you have your own dragon …. I mean, don’t you think there’s a reason all of this happened to me and not to us?”
Philippa was quiet for a long time. I watched her face, anxious to deduce how she was feeling or, more importantly, how she was going to react. A fiery storming out at this hour would be a bit caustic. And I really couldn’t handle more of her crying and shrieking, especially now that my mom was within earshot.
“Ok,” she said simply.
“’Ok’?” I repeated back to her, dumbfounded.
“Ok,” she said again.
Slowly she got up, checking over her shoulder lest another bookcase incident occur. She stood calmly, smoothed out the front of her robe and retied its sash.
“Have fun. I’ll be studying,” she said evenly, walking warily through the darkened room toward the door. “Oh, and when Mom’s crying her eyes out again because you’re chilling with Uncle Seb, don’t come whining to me about it.”
There it was. The upper hand. How she loved it!
“Wait, what? Phlee! She spoke to Uncle Seb? When?!” My frantic whispers fell dead in my room as my sister pulled my door shut behind her.
I closed my eyes and slumped forward, feeling very deflated. I stared at the list on my lap. Lists usually made me feel better, more in control, but this one only served to overwhelm. Its contents were too bizarre, its goals and objectives unknown.
“Well, this has been a giant waste of time,” I muttered, grabbing my blanket and heading back to bed.
What was Philippa talking about? Did my mom know something? My whole body stiffened. Did my mom know … everything? She hadn’t brought up her encounter with Dragon. What had Dragon said – or done – to her? I shuddered and pulled my blanket higher around my neck. I could talk to my mom. I could talk to my sister. I could maturely discourse. Or not.
I nestled into my covers and rubbed my face against my pillow, something I had for as long as I could remember. I didn’t realize it was odd until I was at a sleepover a few years back, when, after performing my little pillow ritual, I had looked up to see six pairs of girls’ eyes staring at me judgingly. All six girls burst into giggles, incredulous of my pillow face routine. They had pronounced me a weirdo, nicknamed me Pillow Face, and the sleepover invitations slowly subsided after that. I frowned, remembering this, and fished around my bed for my trusty stuffed dragon. Bartholomew would help me relax.
Surprisingly, sleep settled over me.
But after what felt like maybe six minutes, my eyes shot open. I was covered in sweat, my mouth was dry. My muscles hurt; my head was pounding. I sat up in damp sheets. I caught the glow of the clock on my desk staring at me: 2:47 a.m.
“Ok, so I was asleep longer than six minutes,” I said aloud, “but what was that – that dream, that nightmare?”
In those four-ish hours of sleep, my brain traveled. Back to that tube city, back to the little seat in Uncle Seb’s plane, back to hovering next to the rows of Jonahs outfitted with yellow stones, back to the faces turning and yellow eyes opening simultaneously. This last image stirred and brightened and refocused. Again and again it replayed – rows of yellow eyes staring, staring.
Suddenly my heart raced. These mad events churned over and began to connect. Sweat trickled down my forehead. Its saltiness dribbled into my eyes, but the stinging didn’t bother me. Ideas flowed, roared. The yellow stones on the tubes, the tubes of Jonahs, Jonah at the park, the yellow stone at the park … that feeling of heaviness, that feeling I couldn’t move … it happened every time I was near the stone, no, it happened every time I was near Jonah … I gasped. They were connected! Oh my god, they are connected – Jonah controls the stone, controls peri … peridiote! Holy moly. I’ve figured it out!
“Dragon!” I yelled aloud, totally forgetting the late hour or that yelling could alarm my mom (or worse, bring Philippa back to my room to break more of my stuff). “Dragon! I know you must hear me! Dragon!” Silence. “Dragon! Dragon?” I whimpered pathetically as the adrenaline subsided and sleep took hold once more.
He never came. The night came and went, and I must have fallen back asleep at some point during my pathetic imploring for him.
I awoke to the sound of a street cleaner braking loudly across the street. In my delirium, I thought it was my school bus. I always hated that there was a bus stop directly across from my house. It felt so intrusive – my house on display, my address full knowledge to everyone riding that bus. I jolted upright and peered out the window, catching the street cleaner shuffle off down the street in the predawn light. A dark face appeared upside down in my window.
“Oh, good, you’re awake!”
“Dragon!” I yelled. I heaved my body against my window frame to force the old squeaky monstrosity open.
Dragon appeared next to me and gave the window a quick push. It squeaked and opened.
“Oh, right,” I said sheepishly, looking at him. “I forget that you can, like, go through walls and stuff.”
“Sshhh, quieter, Everchild, for it is not fully day,” Dragon said.
“Where were you last night? Oh, Dragon! You wouldn’t believe what I figured out!”
“Do tell, but quieter, please! Most are still sleeping.”
“I had this dream, well, it felt like a dream, it was more of a memory-nightmare-thing and, you won’t believe this part. Can you toss me that water bottle?”
“Here you are. Do lower your voice, however, Evechild.”
“Ah, that’s good water. Dragon, all of the yellow stones, they’re controlled BY JONAH.”
Dragon looked around, nervously.
“Dragon, it was Jonah. Right? Wait, did you know that already? Why wouldn’t you tell me? Or did I figure it out? I did, I didn’t I. What do we do now? Go catch him?”
I stood there, panting like a dog, and awaited Dragon’s congratulatory remarks of admiration over my keen deducing.
He stayed quiet, grave, even.
“You’re not safe,” he said finally. “We must go.”