David sat up with a cry and threw back the sweaty bedclothes. His heart was racing. That dream again. But — no, not exactly the same dream. A sudden spasm of pain through his temples made him cry out once more. He looked at his phone on the bedside shelf. It was 5:02 A.M.
“Oh, great!” There was no way he’d get back to sleep now.
David swung his feet onto the ground and massaged the sides of his head. He’d had a nightmare. He hadn’t had one of those for ages, not since … well, not for ages. But did it mean something that his Eddie dream had been involved? Nightmares happened if you ate too much cheese, didn’t they? David didn’t even like cheese.
“Could’ve done without all that, Eddie.”
David stood up and felt his head throb again. A nightmare and a headache too. What a way to start the day. It was cold in his room — the heating hadn’t switched on yet — so he grabbed a blanket, wrapped himself in it, and stepped out onto the dark landing. He stood, listening. Had he really cried out loud? Had anyone heard him?
There was a click from the door across the landing. David saw the glitter from dozens of stickers catch the dim streetlight as his little sister’s door opened a crack.
“Nothing, Phil — taking a pee. Go back to sleep.”
Philippa peeped around the door as if she was talking to a friend who might become an enemy at any moment. She guarded her room like a fortress.
“She’ll know if you’ve been in the kitchen,” she said.
“I’m not going to the kitchen. Go back to bed!”
Philippa’s door closed.
David waited for a moment and heard the faint rustle of his sister’s enormous duvet, then silence. There was no sign that his mum had heard anything, so he had that at least to be thankful for as he crept downstairs to the kitchen.
The floor was icy cold. David poured out a glass of orange juice and sat on a high stool, lifting his bare feet into the blanket. One of his mother’s tattered old books was on the bar, but he pushed it aside without interest. He sat there for ages, trying not to look at the clock.
David had been dreaming about Eddie for well over a year now, but nothing like this had ever happened. It was weird. No, what was really weird was having these bizarre dreams in the first place. David didn’t think dreams meant anything, but sometimes he couldn’t help wondering. Surely it wasn’t normal to meet a complete stranger in a dream and then go on meeting him almost every night, until it actually felt like he’d become a close friend. Okay, some kids had imaginary friends, but since he’d just turned fourteen surely he was far too old for all that.
No, it was only a dream, and now it had turned into a nightmare. And who was that other boy, the one with the wicked laugh who had seemed to just vanish into nothing? The whole thing had been different this time. Perhaps that meant the dream was finished for good. David hoped so, until he realized that would mean never seeing Eddie again. Then he didn’t know what to think.
“Stupid dream,” he muttered, sipping the chilled juice from his glass. His headache was still bad but seemed to be clearing. “Stupid Eddie.”
“I thought so,” came a sudden, hissy voice from the kitchen door, and Philippa walked in. She was wearing her purple bathrobe and an irritatingly smug expression. “Give me some too.”
“Some what?”
“Cake.”
“I’m not eating anything, Phil. I just can’t sleep, that’s all. Go back to bed.”
“Because of Dad?” said Philippa. She hopped up onto the stool next to David and gave him a look. David found his sister’s looks difficult to return — she always seemed to know more about how he was feeling than she should.
“No. It’s got nothing to do with Dad,” David said. “I had a bad dream, that’s all.”
“Was it the dream?” said Philippa. “Why didn’t you say? That’s got everything to do with Dad. It started when he died.”
David sighed. Why had he ever told Philippa about Eddie? She never forgot the slightest detail and was forever coming up with theories about him. She was the kind of person who believed that dreams were full of symbols and hidden meanings.
“Was it different this time, then?” said Philippa as she jumped down to fetch the cake tin. David could tell there was no way she was going to bed now.
“Look, Phizzy, just leave it. I don’t want to talk about it. Okay?”
“He was my dad as well,” said Philippa, digging straight into the whole cake with a tablespoon. “If you’re getting something about him, I want to know it too.”
“What do you mean, ‘getting something’? Don’t start all that again.”
“David, dreams can tell us about how we really feel. You never cried enough when Dad died, so the sadness is coming out another way. It’s obvious,” Philippa said, showering her brother with crumbs in the middle of the last word.
David couldn’t help smiling. Phizzy was the most irritating person on the planet, but she was still his own little sister — noisy, yes, and always smelling of sugar, but somehow he didn’t mind her talking to him as much as he made out. And she was the strongest link he had left with his father. Their father.
“Phil, you haven’t told anyone about my dream, have you? It’s just that, well, they’re saying things at school again. About me.”
“David, I’ll never tell anyone. Never!” Philippa said, and in such a way that David had to believe her. She was looking at him with her biggest eyes. “It’s a special thing, too special to be told. It’s our secret. I mean, a real secret. Eddie is your dream friend.”
David winced. He’d been close to changing his mind about the cake, but hearing Eddie’s name spoken out loud and in such a childish way made him cringe with embarrassment.
“Just don’t tell anyone, yeah? Don’t talk about it.”
“I won’t,” said Philippa. “Not even to Mum.”
“Though she’d understand, Davy,” said Philippa, examining her sticky spoon. “She’d love to hear that something’s still happening with Dad. She might be happier if —”
“Happier?” David almost laughed. “If you tell her any of this, you’ll just set her off again.”
Philippa narrowed her eyes at him, the spoon stuck firmly in her mouth.
“At least Mum showed her feelings,” she mumbled, “unlike my idiot, tough-guy brother.”
“Just keep it to yourself, okay?” David snapped.
“But why not tell her?” said Philippa, waving the spoon. “You aren’t the only one who misses Dad, you know.”
David slammed the lid back onto the cake tin.
“There’re nearly two hours to go before you have to get up, Phil. So why don’t you take that cake to bed and read one of your stupid books?”
To his surprise, Philippa seemed to like the idea.
“I can always blame you when Mum finds the pan empty,” she said, and she hopped down from the stool, grabbed David’s glass of juice, and drank it all in one gulp.
“G’night,” she said. “Or good morning.”
“Whatever.”
David watched his sister cross the still-dark kitchen to the door. She had a teddy bear tucked firmly under one arm. David recognized it as one his dad had once given him, but that was a long, long time ago. As he expected, his sister turned at the doorway in order to get the last word in.
“Davy?”
“What?” said David with a tired voice.
“These weird dreams you’ve been having? Have you tried asking Eddie about them?”
“Oh, go away, Phizzy!”
Five minutes later David crept back to his room and got dressed. There was no point in hanging around the house until school, so he decided to go out on his bike to blast away his sore head for good. At this time in the morning the roads would still be pretty clear and the air fresh.
He wasn’t supposed to go out on his own in the dark, but there was no way he was going to be kept locked up any longer, especially since these days his mother probably wouldn’t notice anyway. And wasn’t the teen in fourteen supposed to mean something? He did take his phone, though. Just in case Mum got up earlier than expected.
It was freezing outside and gray-blue, with the dawn barely begun in the eastern sky — a typical autumn morning in suburban London. There weren’t many people about, and those he saw were wrapped up in their own business, getting into cars or walking to catch trains. David didn’t pay them much attention as he shot out into the street on his bike and raced down the road.
Phil and her stupid theories! She really did think Eddie was some kind of dream symbol of their father, despite the fact that their dad had been a healthy soldier named Richard, not a sickly bespectacled boy named Eddie. And Dad had had light, near-blond hair, whereas Eddie’s, like David’s, was dark brown. Altogether, if Eddie resembled anyone, it was David himself. But it wasn’t like looking in a mirror or anything. David was slim like Eddie, but also wiry and strong. And Eddie had an old-fashioned way of dressing that must cause him a lot of trouble at school. Except that Eddie didn’t seem to go to school. And then there was all the writing …
David stopped the bike with a squeal of brakes. He was doing it again, thinking about Eddie like he was a real person. But Eddie didn’t exist — he was just a figure from a dream, a made-up boy. Yes, the dreams were very vivid, and yes, when he had them he never realized that he was only dreaming. But now, wide-awake and standing in the middle of the road as the rush-hour traffic was about to start, David told himself once again to get a grip.
He kicked up the pedal and raced off again. A van pulled out behind him. He cycled hard for a while and felt the last of his headache clear. Then he became aware that the van was just rolling along behind him even though there was plenty of room to pass. He looked back.
The van sped up immediately. The windows were dark, but David knew that anyone inside would be getting a clear view of him as the van eased past. It turned left and vanished from sight. David cycled on, but when he turned the corner himself he saw that the van was just rolling along again, exactly as if it were waiting for him. So David changed direction. He rattled down a flight of concrete steps, dodged the dumpsters down a back alley, and then zigzagged his way around some posts and back out onto a road. In no time he was jumping onto the sidewalk of his own street.
And the van was parked right outside his house.
David rode his bike down the covered passage to the yard and then dumped it in the shed. When he let himself in, his fingers fumbled with the keys. Stupid Eddie! Stupid dream! And now he was getting paranoid.
He flopped into an armchair and nervously sat out the rest of the time until school, trying to concentrate on the television.