Now
SIMON AWOKE WITH a gasp, and immediately sat up in bed.
What he thought was his bed, until he surveyed the dark surroundings and remembered he was in jail, and Lump was over there at his desk, asleep in a chair.
Good thing Lump had given him the crayons he’d asked for. They were resting on the floor where Lump had scooted them between the bars earlier. Must have meant there were no hard feelings, even though Simon was sure he’d broken Lump’s face earlier. Or maybe Lump feared him, which was funny, because Simon would never hurt a fly.
Unless Simon said so.
Because you weren’t supposed to touch a girl that way when a girl didn’t want to be touched, especially Beth, so Lump had left him no choice.
Before his dream—which he knew now to be much more than a dream—left him to become memory dust, Simon picked up the crayons from the floor, opened his Lalaland book to a fresh, clean page, and started coloring what he’d just seen and done. He wished he could have gone back, because bad things were coming, but he knew it couldn’t work like that.
But they needed him over there, now more than ever.
In a world full of fuzzy, that much now was clear.