‘Do you ever have strange dreams?’ Cy asked Lauren as he caught up with her. ‘Only when you’re in them, Sproglet,’ Lauren answered. She held one hand out in front of her, fingers splayed. ‘What do you think of that colour of nail varnish?’
Cy’s brain quickly registered two points.
a) His older sister had asked him for his opinion about something, and,
b) She had called him ‘Sproglet’.
These were favourable omens. She must be in a reasonably good mood, Cy thought. Normally Lauren paid him less attention than the weather report. Occasionally when she had no other option but to talk to him, she would get his attention by snapping her fingers, or by flicking his ear. She would also call him by her own specially created names, which ranged from semi-friendly to downright rude, depending on how she felt. He knew that if she had just now, called him Beast, Man-Cub, or Tiny Turd, then there would have been no point in continuing the conversation. Occasionally he was Cyberman, which meant that she was almost on speaking terms with him. But this morning she had used Sproglet. Sproglet was good. It meant that she was prepared to accept that, for the time being at any rate, he was at the same stage of evolutionary development as herself. Walking upright, and able to communicate verbally.
‘It’s called Screaming Sapphire,’ she told him, flashing her fingertips under his nose.
Cy regarded the hideous bright blue nails offered for his inspection. He had been told that lying was wrong but, hey . . . so was hurting the feelings of another living creature. And if the creature was his sister, whose rages were spectacular and often directed at him, well lying seemed the lesser evil.
‘Brilliant,’ Cy said, thinking that, technically, it was actually true. ‘I had a weird dream, last night,’ he went on. ‘And when I woke up . . .’ He paused.
‘Yeah,’ said Lauren, ‘that’s the annoying thing about dreams. Either something horrible is happening and you want it to finish, and it won’t. Or else you wake up too early . . . Like the other night? I dreamt I was with Cartwheel and Baz at this tremendous gig. The warm-up group had gone off, BearBoyz had just come on, and the lead singer, Declan, you know him, don’t you? He’s the one with the really cute fringe, cut to just above his eyes . . . and he . . .’
‘No.’ Cy cut in immediately. He would never get to speak if she started wittering on about any of the new Boy Bands. She wouldn’t stop until they had reached school, infinity and beyond. She might never stop. She and her two friends could go on for days about any or all of the Boy Bands. He knew this for a fact. Because one time, when they had been having a sleepover at his house, he had listened outside Lauren’s bedroom door, practically all night to see if they had any good secrets. And all they had talked about for hours and hours was Declan’s fringe, and whether he looked better with his hair swept back, which showed off his high forehead, or flicked down which emphasized his eyes. ‘No,’ said Cy again. ‘Not like that. This morning I woke up actually inside my dream.’
Lauren looked at him. ‘Then you weren’t awake,’ she said. ‘You were still asleep. You just thought you were awake. That happens. Sometimes Mum calls me. I get up and get dressed, and then she comes in and I’m still in bed. It’s just that I’ve dreamt that I’ve done something I needed to do, or should be doing.’
‘No, I’ve had that too,’ Cy said. ‘This was different, completely different. When I woke up the dream was drifting away. I felt it fading, sort of saw wisps of it in my room. It was at a really exciting bit, and I was so frustrated at waking up that I grabbed at it and pulled it back. And then . . . and then . . . I fell into the dream. The dream wasn’t in me, not inside my head in the normal way, like it’s supposed to happen. I was inside the dream . . . And because of this I was in control, so . . . I could do what I wanted to.’
Lauren had stopped to listen. She peered at Cy closely. ‘You’re not doing anything stupid,’ she said, ‘like smoking funny cigarettes?’
‘No!’ said Cy in exasperation. ‘Just listen, will you? It really happened. Honestly. There was this character there, like a small dwarf. He told me he was a Dream Master. He kept trying to get me to leave, and go out of the dream, and when I wouldn’t, he got angry. That’s when I realized that in this case, I had some kind of control that you don’t usually have in dreams.’
‘So, what happened?’ asked Lauren.
‘Well, actually . . . I woke up. I think.’
‘Aw, for heaven’s sakes!’ said Lauren. ‘That’s pathetic! You had me going there for a minute.’ She punched her brother’s arm. ‘Good story though. You might be able to use it in class. Keep it in mind, ’cos you know, how useless you are at writing.’
‘No, I’m not,’ said Cy at once. ‘Grampa says I’ve a good imagination.’
‘Yeah, you can certainly make things up,’ agreed Lauren. ‘I meant the actual pen on the paper bit. So that other people can read it. Except in your case they can’t. Squirrelly Squiggle hasn’t a look in.’
‘Well,’ said Cy stubbornly, ‘what I told you a minute ago wasn’t a story. It happened like I said.’
‘Of course it did,’ said Lauren soothingly. She had just caught sight of her friends on the pavement ahead and was no longer interested. ‘Boys are weird,’ he heard her tell her friends as she caught up with them. ‘Seriously weird.’
‘There are some exceptions,’ giggled Cathy, the tallest of the group, whom they called Cartwheel. She opened her rucksack and pulled out a magazine.
‘Get it?’ said Barbara known as Baz. She nudged Lauren. ‘Get it? Exceptions . . . X-Septyons!!!!!’
‘Look!’ Cartwheel had opened the magazine at the centre spread. She showed them the colour photograph of four youths. ‘The X-Septyons!’
‘Wow!’ said Lauren. ‘Can I have that for my bedroom wall?’
‘Dream on!’ said Cartwheel.
Dream on, thought Cy as the girls went off through the gates of the High School, and he wandered further down the road to his own school. He wished he could. He stuck his hand in his pocket and felt again the gritty grains of sand. Was this the sign the Dream Master had said he would leave?