“We need to talk.” Jamal awoke to the sound of his lawyer rapping on the bars of his cell. Mr. Irons was dressed in a sharp suit and tie, smelled of leather and cinnamon. “But you got a visitor. Hurry now, I have an appointment at the federal courthouse.”
Jamal dragged himself up from the hard cot. He had finally slept last night, had suffered no dreams, but after a week of terrible nights it felt almost more exhausting to be rested.
He said to Mr. Irons, “I can’t shower or nothing first?”
“They’re transporting you to the jail in Austin tomorrow. They have showers there.” Irons dug into his suit pocket. “I brought you these.”
Jamal accepted a pack of wet towelettes his lawyer passed through the bars.
He let the deputy cuff him and lead him down the hall past a drunk who had screamed half the night and a woman curled in the corner of her cell. She raised her gray head as he passed.
“It’s back,” she said, staring Jamal straight in the eye. “It never left.”
Jamal stepped into the interview room and saw Kimbra Lott and for a moment he was happier than he’d been in weeks. She had straightened her hair and made up her face and painted her nails a bright Bison green. Of course. The Stable Shootout was tonight.
A foil packet waited for him on the table. Jamal slid out the cookies he knew awaited him inside—he noticed that someone at the department had already opened them for him—and tried to laugh at the name written in icing across their crust: KT.
“Don’t mind the name,” Kimbra said. “I figure you deserve them more.”
“Did your dad make these?” Jamal asked. Mr. Lott was famous for his Bison spirit.
“The man can’t help himself.”
A brief silence came over them. Jamal took a bite of the cookie: he hadn’t eaten anything decent since his breakfast yesterday at home.
He waited a moment to raise the cookie and asked, “Has anyone heard from KT?”
Kimbra glanced back at the one-way glass. Jamal wondered if Mr. Irons had warned her about the men who would be listening on the other side. If he had, her face betrayed no concern. She said only, “I hear he got home last night.”
“He did? Where was he?”
“Dallas, I think.”
“He hasn’t texted you?”
She shrugged.
Jamal pushed the cookie aside. “That guy treats you like shit, you know.”
Kimbra only shrugged again. “What can you do?”
God, Jamal thought, and not for the first time: if only he had spent last weekend with Kimbra instead of Bethany. He’d always had a soft spot for the girl, for her sly little smiles and the eyes that said she was too smart for you but she’d politely endure your company anyway. The fact she had come here just to bring him a pack of cookies was perhaps the kindest thing anyone had ever done for him. Jamal fought a sudden, foreign urge to weep.
“Hey,” Kimbra said softly. “Have you been having weird dreams?”
It feeds
Jamal flinched. For some reason he thought of the words he’d seen scribbled beneath Dylan’s face yesterday. “Sometimes.”
“I think everybody has. You heard what happened at the bank yesterday, right? And some guy’s house blew up. Of course everyone’s fronting like there’s nothing wrong. Like we always do here.” Kimbra hesitated. “What’s in yours?”
“My what?” he said, though he knew what she meant.
Kimbra only cocked her head.
Jamal toyed with his cookie. A cold slick of sweat ran down his neck. “Lights. Just...lights. Way out in the dark.”
“Not a woman with long hair, watching you from a window?”
“What? No.”
Kimbra let out a relieved little sigh. “Thank God. April swears we’ve all been dreaming the same thing.”
“But they started Friday night, didn’t they?”
The girl’s attention had already moved on. She glanced at the one-way glass again, at the microphone bolted to the table. She lowered her voice. “Have you ever heard of the Bright Lands?”
Yes. Oh yes. “Is that what you came here to ask me?”
“I brought you a snack.” She narrowed her eyes. “Is that a yes?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you—”
“It’s stupid. Don’t ask about that.”
Mr. Irons opened the door of the little room. “That’s all we have time for today.”
“Is it a place you go to? Or just some kind of party?” Kimbra made no move to rise.
Jamal stared at the table.
“They didn’t talk about it in the locker room or anything?”
“Thank you, young lady,” Irons said. “You can leave now.”
Jamal stared at Kimbra. She was too clever to bullshit. Clever enough to get herself hurt.
“Just—don’t ask people about that,” Jamal said in a low voice. The big deputy hooked a hand under Kimbra’s elbow. “Don’t let those guys fuck you up.”
But Kimbra had stopped listening. She didn’t say goodbye. She shook off the deputy and stepped through a door where nothing awaited but a black night, an empty sky, an awful dome of lights—bad lights, wrong lights—trembling on the far horizon. The girl takes a step toward the lights, stops, turns back to give him a quizzical look and—
A blink of the eye and the sight was gone, the sheriff station’s hallway returned to its proper place outside the door, and Jamal could only give Kimbra a little wave and watch her go. No big deal. His dream hadn’t left him, after all. It had only followed him into his waking life.