Dreameater

Spring in Arizona feels like summer anywhere else. My palms stick to the vinyl seat of the truck as I lift my legs to get some air goin’ beneath my thighs.

Mama looks over briefly, and then clicks her manicured nails against the steering wheel. Rat-a-tat-tat-tat, over and over, like the beat of a song only she can hear. “Honey, I’ll get the A/C fixed next city we stop in. Promise.”

My fidgeting is rubbing off on her, so I settle back into the seat and fight the urge to whine. The clicking dies down, stops. Mama makes a lot of promises, and best I can tell, she tries to keep ’em. She cries when she don’t, when she remembers she made a promise in the first place.

The truck slows, then pulls into the parking lot of a run-down motel. Even the asphalt is covered with brown dust. It lifts off the ground with the wind, and falls over everything, makin’ the bright blue hood of the truck look like the sky just after sunset.

There’s a man waiting for us, leaned against one of the pillars supporting the second-floor balcony. His white tank top is stained yellow at the pits and tucked into torn jeans. He’s got his thumbs hooked into his belt, one knee jutting out like he’s some sort of model, but I know he ain’t and never been. He’s too fat, too ugly, too sweaty and greasy and hairy. I don’t like the look of him, but then, I never do.

He swaggers up to the window while Mama puts the truck into park. She rolls it down when she’s finished and gives him a long look.

“You Linda?” the man asks.

“That’s me,” Mama says.

“You told me you was pretty.”

I bristle at that remark. Mama is pretty. She’s the prettiest woman in the world. But before I can let my mouth run off at him, Mama reaches up and undoes the pins in her hair. She shakes it out in black, shining waves. Something changes about her. Every move she makes is smooth, graceful, like dandelion seeds in a breeze.

The man can’t barely keep his mouth shut. He’s staring at her like a man does at a steak after he hasn’t eaten in three days. He stares so hard he don’t even notice me ’til Mama gets out of the truck. His eyes narrow—thin, dark slits beneath his brow. “You didn’t tell me you got a kid.”

Mama ignores him, turns, and reaches behind my seat. She hands me my worn-out workbook. “Do a page of math, and write a couple pages on the things we’ve seen in Arizona. I won’t be more’n a couple hours.” She rolls up the driver’s side window until there’s just a crack left. “Don’t open the door for anyone.”

The man nods his head in my direction. “Who’s her daddy? Someone like me?”

“No,” Mama says, “not like you.”

It ain’t the leer the man gives me, or even the heat in the cabin of the truck that turns my stomach—it’s the way Mama don’t sound sure. She won’t tell me who my daddy is, but now, for the first time, I wonder if she can’t.

She shuts the door behind her and takes the man’s hand. As soon as she does, the leer and the narrowed eyes fade away. He looks like someone who just won the lottery, all smiles and breathless disbelief. They go up the stairs together and disappear into a room marked with a brass number fifteen.

I may only be eleven, but even I know that Mama ain’t too bright sometimes. Or maybe it’s the forgetting. Forgetting that we’re in the heat of Arizona, not in Oregon. Soon as she’s gone, I open the door and dangle my feet out. Should I even do the workbook pages? Mama don’t score ’em, just draws hearts and smiley faces, and tells me how I’m gonna be so much smarter than her.

Across the street in an empty field, a dad kicks a ball with his kids. Can’t tell the game. They don’t seem to be keeping any sort of score, just kicking it over the dried-out grass, laughing, and falling over one another. When the dad sees me watching, he beckons for me to come join ’em. I duck my head at first, pretending I didn’t see, my gaze focusing on my toes, the cheap flip-flops rubbing black dye onto my skin.

When I shyly lift my head, the dad is still looking in my direction, and this time his three kids are, too, and they all wave at me. Well, why the hell not? The street’s nearly empty, so it ain’t hard to cross.

They’re good people. I can tell by the way they smile at me, the way they shake my hand, tryin’ to make me feel welcome. When I tell ’em my name—Alexis—the daughter says it’s pretty.

Turns out there are no rules, no real game. We just kick the ball back and forth, the dad calling out random directions, and us laughing as we try to follow ’em. It gets to where I’m as bad as Mama, forgetting. I’m forgetting I’m s’posed to be in the truck, with the window rolled up, writing pages. I’m forgetting these people ain’t my kin, that Mama and I got each other, and that’s all we need. I’m just feelin’ the grass against my feet, my breath quick in my throat, the sun hot on my back.

I don’t see her ’til it’s too late. “Alexis!” Mama’s striding ’cross the field in her wedge heels. She’s got her hair pinned up again, and she’s stuffin’ a roll of bills into her jean shorts. She takes me by the upper arm. “Didn’t I tell you to wait in the truck?”

“Sorry, Mama.” I could tell her it was too hot, but it’d just make her feel bad.

“We kept an eye on her,” the dad says. He picks up the ball and tucks it under an arm. He sticks out a hand as he approaches. “I’m David.”

She drops my arm to shake it, but she don’t look like his friendliness makes her comfortable, not the way it made me. “Linda.”

He tilts his head at her. “Alexis—does she have any other family?”

Mama takes my arm again, her nails resting lightly against my skin. “No. Just me and Alexis. Our own little party o’ two!” She lets out a laugh, but I don’t think she actually thinks it’s funny.

David leans in close, and Mama stiffens, her whole body goin’ rigid as a popsicle. “Doesn’t really seem like the sort of life a little girl should have. You want what’s best for her, right?”

When Mama speaks again, her voice is low and cold. “Don’t you be tellin’ me how to raise my daughter.”

I’m suddenly so afraid I can’t barely catch my breath. If he says one more word, if he don’t back down, she’s gonna kill him. She’ll do it right in front of his three kids, and they ain’t never gonna be able to scrub their minds clean again.

So I reach up with my other hand and grab her shirt. “Mama, let’s just go.” For a second, I think she’ll toss off my hand and do him in anyways. “Please,” I add. And just like that, the death goes outta her eyes.

Maybe David saw it too, ’cause when we turn to go, he don’t say anything else. Once we get in the truck, Mama reaches behind her seat and pulls out a flask. She tips it over her mouth and takes a long pull. When she swallows, a shudder runs through her. It ain’t alcohol she’s drinking—truth is, I don’t know what it is, only smelled it once when she was with one of her men. Smelled weird, green and spicy. Whatever it is, seems to help when she’s mad.

Mama lets out a sigh after she swallows, and leans her head ’gainst the steering wheel.

Now, I ain’t a fortuneteller, but I know, sure as I know the sun rises in the east, that she ain’t gonna remember about fixing the A/C.

We come back to the motel once a day for the next four days. I don’t see no one in the field ’cross the street. Part of me’s relieved, and part’s sort of sad. Each time, Mama takes the greasy man’s hand and comes back with a roll of bills.

The last time we come to the motel, it’s dark, past midnight. I fall asleep in the truck, a blanket pulled up to my chin. I wake at the crack of dawn, to the sound of something heavy being thrown into the bed of the truck, then shuffling as it gets covered with tarp.

Mama appears at the driver’s side door. She opens it and slides inside. I pretend not to notice the smear of blood on her chin. She starts drivin’, and sees it soon enough in the rearview mirror. She wipes it off with the back of her hand.

“He weren’t a good man, Alexis,” she says. I don’t know if she means to reassure me, or herself.

“I know, Mama,” I say. “I know.” But I don’t reach out or pat her back or nothin’.

She dumps the body in a canal, and burns the bloody sheet she had him wrapped in. I just watch, and wish I weren’t watchin’, wish I were back in that field, kickin’ that ball with the three kids and David.

We pull onto the interstate, and she drives into New Mexico before we stop for anything more’n a meal or a bathroom break. It’s afternoon. Mama don’t need a lot of sleep, when she sleeps at all. She parks at a Hyatt.

“Alexis.” Mama turns to me, a girlish grin on her face. “Wanna have some fun?”

She gets us a room, payin’ for it with all those rolled-up bills. We order room service, have a pillow fight and watch cartoons, cuddled up on the king-sized bed. I lean against her. She has her hair undone, and I rest my head in it. Mama strokes my face, so lightly I can’t feel her nails. “Honey, you know I love you, right?”

I shift and breathe in her smell. She smells like me. She smells like home. “’Course I do. Love you too.”

When I sleep, I dream of nothing at all.

Who’s she?” the man says. He ain’t fat or ugly, like most of ’em, but when his tongue darts out to lick his lips, I decide he’s ugly after all. “That your sister?”

“My daughter,” Mama says. She moves a little, so she’s standin’ between me and the man. It’s an easy mistake to make. At sixteen, people tell me I look older’n my age, and Mama’s always looked younger.

“I’ll pay double for the both of you,” he says. He’s got the look of a person who got too much money, too fast. His hair’s slicked back, the top two buttons on his shirt open, the watch on his wrist gold, with a black face. And like any person who’s got too much money, I think he actually expects Mama’ll take him up on the offer.

“You stay away from my daughter,” Mama says.

For a second, he looks dismayed, like he just seen someone kick a puppy, but then his face starts gettin’ red. Before he can say anything, Mama lets her hair down. And then he’s like the rest of ’em, practically drooling, fallin’ all over himself just to look her in the eye. Mama takes his hand.

“I’m gonna go ’cross the street,” I tell her. There’s a Marshalls there, and window-shopping sure beats sittin’ in the truck.

She don’t turn, just leads the man towards a room on the first floor of the motel. “That’s fine, honey. Just be back in an hour or so.”

The whole thing gives me the creeps. She hasn’t taken a man for a while now—keeps tellin’ me the next one’ll be the last. Sometimes I wish I were younger, back to a time when I thought this was normal, like everyone’s Mama did the things mine did. I try to shrug off the memory of the man lickin’ his lips as I walk into the store. Maybe I oughtta drink some of Mama’s juice—seems to do the trick for her.

I look ’round the housewares, pretending Mama and I got a house to decorate with all the useless crap they got on the shelves. There’s a little ceramic frog I think’s meant to hold business cards, or maybe just pennies or something. I kinda wish I had the money to buy it, and put it on the dashboard of the truck. Ain’t nothin’ in the truck feels like it’s mine sometimes.

I try on a couple of outfits, even a nice dress—like I got a prom to go to. The blue satin hugs my curves, and I give myself a pouty look in the mirror. I sass Mama sometimes, just to feel like a regular teenager, but I never push too hard, and Mama don’t take it too seriously. She can be scary when she’s really mad.

By the time I put the dress back on the rack, I’m bored. I head to the front of the shop. When I look through the glass doors, I freeze.

There’s cars outside the motel, more’n there was before, black cars. They ain’t parked in any spots, just set up in a semicircle ’round the blue truck. Guys start spillin’ out of ’em, dressed in black, wearin’ vests and helmets, carryin’ guns.

I’m running over there before I can stop myself, my heart poundin’ in my ears, loud as the slap of my flip-flops against the pavement. Some guy without a helmet or a gun puts his hands out to stop me when I set foot in the parking lot, but I ain’t as weak as I look. I barrel into him, puttin’ him off balance, then spin, so he can’t get a grip on me. The men with guns ain’t in their positions yet, so I find a gap between ’em and dash through.

Someone yells somethin’, but I don’t pay attention. I’m focused on the door I saw my Mama go through.

She didn’t even lock it. She must’ve been in a bad way, to get so careless. I open the door and see somethin’ I ain’t never gonna be able to un-see.

Mama’s on the floor, naked, crouched over the man who licked his lips at me not an hour before. His head’s opened up, nice and neat, like someone took a razorblade to a melon. She’s got his brain in her bloody hands, and she’s eatin’ it. Even as she gags on it, she makes these soft sounds of pleasure in the back of her throat.

I can’t say nothin’, all the words stick on my tongue. I can’t even scream. I hear footsteps coming up behind me, the rattle of guns as things click into place. The first guy who gets up next to me ends up retching onto the floor when he sees Mama, his gun limp at his side.

Someone’s forgotten to say “Freeze!” or “Put your hands in the air!”, ’cause even though they got their guns pointed at her, Mama don’t stop eating. A hand grabs my arm from behind, and I let ’em. The world is ending, so it don’t matter who puts their hands on me. They pull me back, away from Mama, away from the men with guns.

It’s the guy from earlier, the one I ran into. “It’s okay,” he says. He looks kinda like David, with dark hair and soft gray eyes. “It’s okay.”

Why’s he tellin’ me it’s gonna be okay? Then I realize I got tears running down my cheeks, and I’m shaking so hard I don’t even feel like me anymore, like I’m just ridin’ in this other girl’s skin and I left the steering up to someone else. I barely even feel it when he puts an arm ’round me and guides me away from the crime scene. Damn, that’s what it is, ain’t it? Funny that I never thought of it as a crime ’til I saw the cops.

He sits me in the passenger side of one of ’em black cars, and tells me to put my head between my legs and to breathe. I try that, and the world slows down. He’s talkin’ over me, talkin’ to someone else, all the while he’s got his hand on my shoulder.

“Call the coroner out here. Tell him we’ve got a body.”

“What about the girl?”

The man’s hand shakes me a little, like he’s trying to wake me up. “Hey sweetie,” he says gently, “how old are you?”

I still can’t talk. Closest I can get is a moan.

When I lift my head, I see Mama bein’ led outta the motel room in cuffs, a sheet wrapped ’round her body. She’s still covered in blood. How’s she gonna cope without her juice, the one that makes her forget, the one that helps her when she’s mad? Right now she’s dull from feeding, her eyes glazed, her steps heavy.

And then the guy’s coaxing my feet into the car, and closin’ the door. In the silence of the cab, I can hear my ragged breathing, like someone tore into my lungs.

The man tries to get me to talk on the way to the station. “I’m Detective Carlson.” “What’s your name?” “Was that your mother?” “How long have you known her?” “Do you have any other family?” I just stare out the window and don’t say a word. I wish he’d crash, and I’d die, right now.

But he don’t.

Some middle-aged lady with a clipboard meets us at the station and asks all the same questions. I keep hopin’ I’ll wake up with Mama next to me, that none of this day happened at all. The lady tells me she’s takin’ me to a foster home and they’re gonna look for my family. By then, I get strength enough to nod. She reaches out, squeezes my hand, and gives me a smile. I wanna wipe it right off her face. If she’d been there, seen Mama eatin’ that man’s brain, she’d never smile again.

I don’t think I will.

My foster parents are nice enough, but I still don’t get the urge to talk to ’em. It’s summer, so they don’t make me go to school. I’m glad for that. I stopped doin’ the workbook pages when I was fifteen.

I hear ’em talking sometimes, like if I can’t talk, I can’t hear neither.

“Has she said anything to you?” my foster mom asks.

“No,” my foster dad says. “She’s traumatized; give her time.”

“Poor thing. I saw the news. Her mother’s been killing men for years, and all in that awful fashion. Can you imagine?”

“I’d rather not.”

I kinda wanna burst in on ’em, tell ’em what a good mother Mama’s been, takin’ care of me herself all these years, but I feel like I’m waiting for something that hasn’t happened yet.

A week after Mama’s arrested, the social worker comes to see me. She asks if I wanna see Mama in prison. I shake my head no. Still waiting.

It takes a month before I know what it is, and I don’t know it ’til I hear it. Mama’s juice wears off slowly, ’til she starts remembering things. Remembering everything. The social worker comes again, and tells me what I’ve been waitin’ for.

Mama’s remembered who my daddy is.

He lives nearby, and for that I’m lucky. Mama’s driven me all over the continental states, one to the next, never stayin’ in one spot long enough to get our bearings. So I’m surprised when it turns out he’s only a couple hours from the foster home I’m stayin’ at. The social worker’s so pleased she found my daddy that when she drives me out there, she’s hummin’ show tunes the whole way.

I think I’m gonna be mad when I see him, or maybe just sad and broken. I ain’t never seen his face—how can I go live with him? She pulls into a long driveway, with potholes in it. The house at the end looks nice enough though, and it’s on a lot of land. I don’t look around too much, ’cause my daddy’s standing on the porch.

I know it as soon as I see him. He’s got long black hair, like Mama, and it’s pulled into a ponytail. He’s got a nose like mine, and the same jaw. When I step outta the car, he walks towards me, his eyes shinin’. He tries to smile and can’t, he’s so choked up.

“Alexis.”

There’s so much meanin’ in that one word. I’m not angry, not even sad or broken. Before I know it, I’m huggin’ him and crying, like I’m in a stupid Hallmark movie. He’s crying too. He pulls back and puts his hands on either side of my face.

“My daughter. You don’t know how long I’ve dreamt of meeting you.”

Suddenly I wanna talk again, ’cause I’ve got questions, so many questions.

It’s not like my heart ain’t still broken, but my daddy does his best. He sets me up in his spare bedroom and cooks dinner. I ain’t had a home-cooked meal in practically forever. He lets me serve myself. He don’t urge me to take more or less, or place things on my plate I’m not sure I want. I can feel him watchin’ me out the corner of his eye, like he’s afraid I’m gonna make a run for it.

“I’ll take you shopping tomorrow,” he tells me, once we start eating. “You’ll need new clothes, shoes.”

I wiggle my toes. I’m still wearin’ those flip-flops, same ones I ran across the street in. Moving my feet makes me realize how cold they are. I don’t know how to thank him when he ain’t done anything yet, so I just focus on eatin’. He talks ’bout how his week was as we eat, his voice deep and steady. I didn’t think I was tense, but as he talks my muscles relax, one at a time.

“How’d you meet my mama?” I ask him, once I’ve taken the edge off my appetite.

“At a laundromat. We lived in the same part of town,” he tells me. His shoulders stiffen up, the way mine do when I’m gettin’ ready to lie. “Your mother was the prettiest thing I ever saw. I won’t say I loved her. I barely got the chance to know her. But I’m glad we had you.”

And there it is, the lie, at the end. It confuses me. It’s not like he seems unhappy I’m here—he seems to really like me, and I think he’s glad to meet me. But he’s hidin’ something. “Did you know she was crazy when you met her?”

A shadow passes over his face. “Alexis—there are things I need to explain to you. Things that you won’t want to hear.”

“Look, you may be my daddy, but you don’t really know me. Mama didn’t tell me nothin’, so I wanna hear what you gotta say.”

He gives me a long look before he stands up. “Hold on, I’ll be right back.”

I don’t eat anything else once he leaves. I don’t have an appetite no more. When he comes back, he’s holdin’ something in his hands. He tips it onto the table and it drops with a rattle of beads. It’s a dreamcatcher—one of those kitschy ones that looks like it’s been made in someone’s fifth-grade craft class. “Do you know what this is?”

I ain’t stupid, so I just glare at him. He laughs. “Yeah, well, I don’t know how much your mother told you about your heritage.” He reaches back and undoes his hair. It’s black as night, shimmering ’neath the chandelier’s light. If I look hard enough, I think I see stars in it.

“I’m a dreamcatcher,” he says. “I can sort of hypnotize people. I make sure they have good dreams, and no bad ones. It has other benefits. I’m stronger, and no one notices me much until I let my hair loose. Dreamcatchers run in my family. They run in your mother’s too.”

“Mama’s family,” I whisper. “How come Mama’s different?”

“I don’t know how much you know about genetics,” my daddy says, “but sometimes things go wrong. When they do, you get disorders—illnesses. Those run in the family too. Your mother isn’t a dreamcatcher. Something’s messed up in her genetic code. She takes all dreams, not just bad ones, and eats them. She’s not dangerous to women, just to men. The more she eats their dreams, the more she wants.” He stops, swallows. “It’s why she did the things she did. Once she’s had a taste of a man’s dreams, she wants the whole thing. She’s a dreameater.”

I’m still puzzlin’ things out, putting things together and seein’ the big picture. “Mama’s juice?”

“A medicine. My brother’s a doctor. He made it for her. It dampens her urge to eat. It doesn’t always work, and it’s not foolproof. And it’s got bad side effects. It makes her forget things, lots of things. But the first few times my brother brewed it up, it worked like a charm. When it stopped working as well, she left, probably started making it herself.”

“She ever eat your dreams?”

“Yes,” he says, and now he’s whisperin’, just like me.

And then the last pieces click together, and I see why he didn’t wanna explain things to me in the first place, why he lied. “If you’re a dreamcatcher, and Mama’s a dreameater, what’s that make me?”

He takes a deep breath, like he’s fortifyin’ himself against his next words. “Like I said, it’s genetic. Your mother wrote to me after you were born, the only letter from her I ever got, before she forgot who I was. When I found out I’d fathered a child, I went to my brother and he helped me figure out the chances. There’s a twenty-five percent chance you didn’t get any of this, twenty-five percent chance you’re a dreamcatcher, and a fifty percent chance you’re a dreameater.”

ILLUSTRATION BY LUCAS DURHAM

Not only am I not hungry anymore, I think I’m gonna puke. Fifty percent chance I’m gonna be just like Mama.

The chair I’m sittin’ in ain’t as comfortable as it looks. I flip a quarter, watch it turn in the air, and catch it when it comes back down. Heads. I do it again. Tails. This is how my life’s been decided. I just don’t know yet which one it’s gonna be. Heads or tails.

“Alexis?”

The lady at the desk’s callin’ my name. Daddy’s waiting outside, in his car. He didn’t think it a good idea for him to get any closer to Mama, not with her craving his dreams. I gotta leave everything in the waiting room, includin’ the quarter I was tossing around.

When I see Mama, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, I feel sorta numb. She’s got her hair in a ponytail. She gives me this sheepish little smile when she sees me. Like being in jail’s not as big a deal as I thought it was.

She picks up her phone on her side of the glass, and I pick up mine. For a while, neither of us says nothin’, and all I hear is her breathing and mine, in-out, in synch.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she says finally.

And just like that, the numbness goes outta me. “Sorry for killin’ all those men, eatin’ their brains, or sorry for getting caught? Sorry for draggin’ me around all those years when I got a daddy? Or sorry you had me at all?”

“Alexis,” she reaches out, touches the glass near my face. I don’t move an inch. Mama looks frail, her fingers delicate, the lines in her face deeper’n I remember.

She opens her mouth, but I ride on over her, ’cause I’m gonna finish what I gotta say before she soothes away my anger. “Daddy told me what you was. He told me what he is, too. And he told me how much a chance I got of bein’ just like you. Fifty percent, Mama. Fifty!”

Her fingers trail down the glass, her eyes distant, like she don’t even hear me.

“Why’d you do it?”

Her eyes focus again. Mama and I’ve spent so much time together, she knows I’m askin’ ’bout me, and not the men. “Lots of reasons, honey. I thought maybe someone’d come up with a cure by the time you were grown. I wanted a baby—I didn’t think it fair I’d be denied having my own children for somethin’ that ain’t my fault. When I was pregnant, I didn’t think it’d be fair to not give you a chance at life. And when you was born, Alexis, it was like the sun risin’ in the sky after a long, cold night. I weren’t lonely no more, and I’ve been lonely a long time.”

“But I’m the one who’s gotta live with this. How long I got?”

“I started feelin’ the urges when I was twenty. Didn’t know what it was ’til I was twenty-two.”

Four more years before I find out what I am. A few years after that, and I might be just where Mama is right now. “It’s not right, what you done.” I wanna say it with strength, but I hear the wobble in my voice.

“Honey, you know I love you, right?”

The funny thing is, even though I’m still angry and feelin’ like I’m gonna cry, I wanna say it back to her. I don’t know if it’s just years of habit, or if it’s ’cause I can’t stop loving her, no matter what. But I bite my tongue, and hang up the phone.

I can’t sleep that night, hard as I try. My daddy offered to do his dreamcatchin’ thing on me, but I ain’t keen on it after all the things I just found out. Besides, I ain’t never had any dreams. I asked Daddy what it meant, if it meant anything at all. He told me it was nothing, and started talkin’ about putting posters on my walls.

Maybe it means I’m like Mama. Or maybe Mama’s been eating ’em so many years my brain’s forgotten how.

I’m tossin’ and turning, so I get out of bed and start walkin’ ’round the house. Turns out Daddy ain’t sleeping neither. He’s in his study, leaning over his desk, polishing something with a little yellow rag.

“Hey,” I say.

He whirls in his chair, lifting what he’s got in his hand, only a little bit, but enough for me to see it. It’s a gun—an ol’ fashioned one, like they used in the Wild West. Soon as he sees me, he lets it fall into his lap, coverin’ it a bit with the rag. I think he knows well as I do it’s a silly move. I already seen it.

I clear my throat, tryin’ to dispel the awkwardness that’s risen up. “You said you was stronger’n most people. How much stronger?” Some of the men Mama took was huge.

“Much stronger.” He turns and lays the gun on the desk.

“But you ain’t got nothin’ on Mama, do you?” I take another step into the room and see the shine of sweat on his upper lip. “You’re afraid that prison’s not gonna hold her.”

“Alexis…” He holds up his hands, warding me off. Huh. So he don’t wanna talk about it. He’s scared. Me? I’ve been scared my whole life, so this ain’t anything new.

“If she gets out and comes for you, you gonna shoot her?”

He just sits there, fixing me with his black eyes. I got no idea what he’s thinkin’.

I point a finger at him. “You remember, that’s my mama you’re thinkin’ of killing. My mama. Someday I might be just like her. You gonna shoot me then too?” I don’t wait for an answer. I go out of the room, my face so hot I’m sure it’s steaming. Part of me wishes I didn’t say those things to my daddy. He’s a good man, and he’s been nice to me. I don’t want Mama to kill him, and he got a right to defend himself. I just don’t know what’s right no more.

I go outside onto the wooden porch, and lean on the railin’. The night air feels good ’gainst my skin. My eyes adjust to the darkness. ’Cross the yard, in the cottage on Daddy’s property, I see the renter’s still awake too. He’s got the curtains open, the lights on, and he’s hunched over a desk, head cradled in his palm as he reads a book. Curly brown hair falls over his eyes. Daddy told me he was a graduate student.

“Alexis.” Daddy’s voice sounds from behind me, but I don’t turn around. His feet shuffle ’gainst the wood, and then he’s next to me, looking out where I’m lookin’. “I don’t want you to worry about your mother, or me either. I want you to think about you.”

I nod in the direction of the cottage. “I wanna be like that someday—learnin’.”

“How about in a couple days?”

I look up at him. “Really?”

He nods. “I’ll see if I can get you a tutor, get you up to speed before school starts. I should have done it earlier, but I didn’t know if you’d be up for it.”

I smile for the first time since I seen Mama crouched over that man’s body. “Yeah, thanks.”

“Come on,” my daddy says. He puts his arm ’round me. “Go get some sleep.”

I lean into him. “Sorry ’bout what I said earlier.”

“Sweetheart, out of everyone, you’ve got things the hardest. Don’t you apologize to me.”

Daddy comes to an agreement with the renter—Josh. Lowers his rent in exchange for him tutoring me. I do my best, but I can’t stop thinking ’bout Mama and Daddy and the gun and the flip of a coin. Josh’s real sweet, and he’s patient even when my mind’s elsewhere.

I go to see Mama again at the end of July. She looks like hell. She’s got dark circles ’neath her eyes, and she walks like she’s still asleep.

I pick up the phone before she even sits down. “Mama, you okay?”

“You still mad at me, honey?”

I am, but she’s the only mama I got. “No.”

“I’m not doin’ so well,” she says. She gives me a confused-lookin’ frown.

“You gotta tell ’em you need your juice.”

“Don’t matter,” Mama says. “They ain’t never gonna let me have it and it’s too late anyway.”

Too late? She grips that phone like a lifeline. Her nails dig into the plastic, and they shave off pieces of it that curl and drop to the table. I reach out, but I can’t touch her, can’t tug on her shirt, like I did that time with David. There ain’t nothing to help her ’cept the sound of my voice. “You need to calm down, Mama. No use gettin’ angry.”

“You know they got men for guards here? Sometimes one of ’em dozes off, and I get just a taste.” She ain’t angry, she’s hungry. “Least when I was out and about I could pick who I fed on. Tried to always pick the bad ones.”

“I know you did.” I keep my voice soft.

“They gonna try to keep me here forever.”

“Mama, you’re gonna get a trial.”

“What, you think I’ll walk outta here?”

“Sure, maybe someday.”

Must be one lie too many, ’cause her lips curl back, her whole face goin’ tight. This what she looks like to those men before she kills ’em? She hurls the phone at the window. I must’ve jumped up, ’cause I’m standing ’bout three feet away, watching Mama make a spectacle of herself, tearin’ and slammin’ at everything in reach. The glass don’t break, but her phone’s in little black pieces, all over the table and floor.

She gets a hold of herself before the guards come and get her. I thank God, Jesus, Buddha, anyone I can think of that she does. I don’t wanna watch her kill no one else.

I bite into the back of my pencil, taste the wood and paint in my mouth. I try to focus on the numbers on the page, but it ain’t easy. Finally, I toss the pencil onto the table. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Sure you can.” Josh gets up and comes ’round to my side. “You’re smart, Alexis. You just need to concentrate.” He puts the pencil next to my paper.

“You really think I’m smart?” Maybe I can do this—be just like all those other teenagers.

“Of course I do. You learn much faster than most of the kids I tutor.”

“Am I gonna be ready once school starts?”

He tilts his head to the side, purses his already-thin lips. “Maybe, maybe not. You’re making a lot of progress. Just don’t be afraid to make mistakes.”

The breath goes outta me and I remember why I couldn’t think in the first place. I am afraid. I’m terrified. I don’t know why I’m sittin’ here with Josh, acting like I’m a normal girl learning math. Seventy-five percent chance I ain’t normal. Fifty percent chance I ain’t anything close to normal.

“Hey, did I say something wrong?” He wrinkles his brow.

Daddy. Mama. The flip of a coin and a gun in the drawer of the desk in the study. “If I asked you to shoot me, right in the head, would you do it?”

His brow wrinkles even more, like he’s one of them pug dogs. “Alexis, why would you say something like that?”

I suck on my upper lip, run my teeth down it. “Don’t know,” I say finally.

I wake to the sound of tappin’ at my window. Rat-a-tat-tat-tat. In two seconds I go from sleepy to wide awake. I’m trying to calm down, tellin’ myself it’s just a branch or a bird or a raccoon, when I hear it again.

I hear it a third time before I decide to get up. A fourth time before I actually do. When I go to the window, I’m breathin’ through my mouth. Can’t seem to get enough air through my nose. I draw back the curtain.

I don’t see nothin’.

But then a hand pops up, the nails tapping ’gainst the window. They’re not painted no more. They gleam ’neath the light of the moon.

“Mama?” I whisper. I open the window, just a crack, so she can hear me. “Mama, that you?”

She rises from where she’s been crouching under my window. “Alexis, honey.” Maybe she tried to clean herself up before she got here, but there’s still dried flakes of blood on her face. She’s got on that undershirt the prisoners wear ’neath the jumpsuit, and a pair of jeans. “You were right, they let me out this mornin’. I walked all the way out here just to see you. Took me damn near forever.”

I didn’t hear nothin’ on the news. She must’ve broke out tonight, and took someone’s car. Probably killed ’em too. “Mama,” I breathe out, “you can’t be here.” I keep real still.

Mama’s swaying back and forth, like she’s drunk. Daddy must be sleepin’, and she’s close enough to eat his dreams. She’ll want the whole thing, and I can’t let her have it.

“But I came so far,” she says.

“Can’t you come back tomorrow morning? I’m still sleepin’.”

Her face goes hard. “No.” She closes her eyes, takes a breath and looks calmer when she opens ’em. “You should come with me, honey. Now I’m out, you don’t have to stay here no more. Could be just like it was before.”

Maybe I can stall her somehow, grab the phone, call 911. “Can I grab a few things, Mama?”

She sways harder, like she needs to piss. “I can’t wait no longer.” She licks her lips. “Did you want me to come in and help you?”

I don’t want her any nearer to my daddy. “No, no. I’m comin’. I’ll come right through the window. Just like old times, right? You, me, and a beat-up truck.”

She lets out a low laugh.

I open the window all the way, and find the edges of the screen. My fingers tremble. I probably won’t see Daddy again. I won’t be goin’ to school in the fall, neither. But maybe that’s the way my life’s gonna be anyways. Me ’n Mama—a couple of dreameaters.

A click sounds behind me. “You leave Alexis alone,” Daddy says. He’s got the gun in his hand, and he points it at Mama. I move to the side, outta the line of fire. I get a trickle of shame in the back of my throat, but I don’t wanna go with Mama, not really. Daddy’s hand shakes a little, but I look in his eye, and I know he won’t budge.

Mama’s face goes tight, like it did when I visited her. She flexes her fingers. “She’s my daughter too. I raised her.”

“You gave her life, Linda. Doesn’t mean you own her.”

She looks at me, her eyes cloudy. “Honey?”

“I just don’t want you to hurt Daddy,” I whisper. “Please.”

But she’s too far gone for that. She snarls, and shreds the screen with one swipe of her hand. She leaps into the house, like the wall below my window ain’t any obstacle at all. Daddy’s still got the gun pointed at her, but he shakes harder now, and he don’t pull the trigger. Maybe he’s thinking ’bout what I said earlier, thinking ’bout how Mama and I look kinda alike.

He kneels, real quick, and slides the gun away. Then he rises, and goes to meet Mama, his jaw set, his hands in fists. He swings at her hard, and gets a hit on her. She flies back, hits my closet, the doors cavin’ in like they’re made of cardboard. I may be stronger’n I look, but I ain’t that strong. Nothin’ I can do but watch.

Mama pushes herself outta the broken doors with a growl, and launches herself at Daddy. She swipes at him, like a cat at a toy. He jumps outta the way, but the third one catches him ’cross the ribs. He lets out a grunt—the green shirt he sleeps in ripping and goin’ dark with his blood. While he’s distracted, she rushes him, shoving him with her shoulder. He falls ’gainst the bed, one hand to his side.

Before she can get too close, he kicks her in the stomach. She don’t go back as far this time. She’s prepared. Daddy can’t get up from the bed ’cause she’s standin’ over him. He tries to shove her. His hands connect, but she’s quicker. She grabs his wrists, her nails slidin’ ’neath his skin. He don’t grunt this time, he groans as the blood starts running down his arms.

I can’t just watch no more. The gun’s slid under my desk. I start crawling towards it. Daddy groans again. He can’t die. Not my daddy. I’m not gonna let Mama do it. Seems like a lifetime, but I finally close my fingers ’round the cool metal and scramble to my feet. Mama’s standin’ over Daddy, and his wrists are bleeding onto my blankets. She got her hands ’round the top of his head.

I lift the gun. “Mama, you get your hands off my daddy.”

She turns, but don’t move her hands. “Alexis, what you doin’?”

“What’s it look like I’m doin’?” My words are tough, but I’m shakin’ way harder than Daddy did. Now I know why he couldn’t shoot her. I’d never have forgiven him if he did.

Her eyes narrow. She turns back ’round, and slides one nail ’neath the skin of his forehead. Daddy screams.

I squeeze the trigger. The gun goes off.

Mama’s absolutely still. Then blood blooms on the back of her shirt. She crumples to the floor.

“Mama?” I must’ve dropped the gun at some point, ’cause I got both hands on her shoulder. I turn her over and grab her head. “Mama?”

She’s still breathin’, and some of the fog’s gone outta her eyes. “Alexis,” she whispers, “you remember, I done the best I can.” Her eyelids start to close.

“Mama,” I say. Her eyes open a bit. “You know I love you, right?”

She don’t answer, but she smiles a little, and then she’s gone.

Josh comes barrelin’ in the door to find me with my dead mama, and Daddy in a bad way. Turns out he called 911 soon as he heard the gun go off. He helps me put pressure on Daddy’s wounds ’til the ambulance gets there. Daddy’s sorta out of it, but he tries to give me a smile as the paramedics load him into the ambulance. They let me sit with him on the way to the hospital.

They whisk my daddy away once we get there, and make me stay in the waiting room. I still got his blood on my clothes, and Mama’s. Smells strongly of copper and antiseptic.

After what seems like forever, someone comes for me—a lady in green, a surgical mask ’round her neck. Her sneakers squeak ’gainst the linoleum.

“Your father’s going to be fine,” she tells me. “He lost a lot of blood, and he’s going to have scars, but he’ll be up and about in no time.”

I sink into the chair with a sigh. She starts to leave, but then turns and looks at me, like she just seen the blood all over me.

“Are you okay?”

I don’t even know how I’m s’posed to answer that question. I’m not okay, not sure I’m ever gonna be. I’m thinking ’bout how I maybe only got four years, how I had to kill my own mama, how I’d rather put the gun to my head than be a dreameater. But then, I might not be a dreameater, I might have more control’n Mama, or Daddy’s brother might come up with a real cure. “I ain’t hurt,” I say finally. It’s close as I can get to the truth. She gives me a quick smile and leaves.

I lean my head back, lookin’ at the white ceiling panels and the fluorescent lights, their pattern stuck into my head. They swirl in front of me, like snow bein’ blown by the wind. Been a long night. I close my eyes, intending to open ’em a second later, but I don’t. I’m in a blizzard, but I ain’t cold at all. I’m grabbin’ the flakes as they pass me by, and they gather on my fingertips, glowin’ bright as the moon. I can’t stop laughing—it’s the craziest and most beautiful thing I ever seen.

For the first time in my life, I’m dreamin’.