Chapter Four

 

We walk. The forest bows low and steps back before us, the twinkling trees and bushes creating an instant path wherever we go. Our feet barely touch the ground, leaving a trail of luminescence over the mountains. Against a lighter sky, the forest gives way to scrub pines and leafy acacia, and the ground is a deep, sandy red. Gigantic spires of blood-and-gold sandstone loom over us.

-Dad, where are we?

-My part of Dreamland, sweetheart.

Huge boulders of white quartz and turquoise dot the landscape, while tiny pieces of glittering, black obsidian pave a faint web of trails across the red sand, as far as the eye can see. I have never been here before, and it’s breathtaking.

-We can get into each other’s dreams? For real?

Dad squeezes my hand.

-For us, this is as real as when we are awake. Hold onto my hand and watch your footing. It can be tricky when you first step into someone else’s dream, but it gets easier. He’s right; this place feels odd, as if the gravity here is somehow… uneven.

-But Dad, what is this? This is no ordinary dream, or even a vivid nightmare.

-It’s the next step, honey. It’s called dreamwalking. Some of us are born with it, like you and me. Others learn how. Even for us, it takes a lot of time and practice. You were always able to do everything, Vivi. You’re very strong, but you’re going to have to be even stronger now. Things are happening quickly.

-What things?

-It’s Brian. It’s not safe for him anymore. They’re looking for him, and they may be there already. We can only walk like this for a short time before they know we’re here, so I have to talk fast. A curly wisp of Baby Brian smell tickles my nose.

-‘They’ who? Who is it?

A high-pitched beep beep beep wrenches us apart. I spin out through the stars and crash-land into my bed as the garbage truck outside shifts gears and roars forward from the front of our house to the neighbor’s. Sunlight pushes against my blinds. The clock reads 7:50. My brain scrambles for a moment—then I sit straight up in bed.

What happened? That dream! The exhilarating, sharp smell of evergreen trees, the cool breeze, and the glittering stars are always part of Dreamland. But that strange silvery glow that outlined every living thing… and Dad. Not the I-miss-you-Dad, the one I feel in my heart every day; this was different. He was listening to me and talking back. He was breathing.

So glad I found you. I knew we could do this.

Kitchen noises drift in with the smell of coffee. Mom and Brian are getting ready for work and Space Camp. The blender whirls. The day has begun, but half of my brain lingers deep in the glittering, dark warmth of my dream.

Dad.

I grab some boy shorts and a bra from my drawer and hunt for my cutoffs. I dig out an ancient pink tank top, stick my feet in my favorite pink checkered Vans, and then turn to pull the covers up on my bed. There it is, stretched out delicately across the maple headboard as if nothing happened last night. That feather. My heart jumps and Lorena’s words echo in my head. Hawks are spirit messengers.

I groan aloud. “Stop!” I am not going to get all freaked out over this one weird dream. But that thunderbolt yesterday, whatever it was, and now this. Are they related?

How can they not be related? Lorena counters in my head.

“Shut. Up,” I tell her through clenched teeth.

The jacket rests patiently on the chair. I still don’t want to hang it up in the closet, so it can live there for a few more days. As I put the feather back in its nest, Dad’s voice whispers in my head. We can do this again—this. What did he call it?

Dreamwalking.

I close my bedroom door and head for the kitchen, the strong coffee fumes already clearing the fog from my head.

Brian. Something about Brian.

“Rise and shine,” Mom greets me cheerfully from the table. A magazine lies open in front of her, next to her phone. The morning sun streams in, tinting her cloud of light brown hair Irish-princess-red, and coffee steams in one of her favorite handmade mugs.

Brian is already dressed for Space Camp in a neon green New Mexico International Spaceport shirt and cargo pants. His wavy hair has been braided and gelled into temporary submission, and his backpack lies by the door, the jagged edge of a cat tail wrapper sticking out by the zipper’s end.

“Hey, V.”

“Hey, B.”

Mom swirls a tall glass of… something. Pale green froth with little specks of some darker stuff, possibly seaweed. Ugh. Brian’s got some wheat toast and is shoveling scrambled eggs into his mouth, so all is not lost. But a small glass of the green slime sits ominously in front of him.

“What’s that?” I ask, as neutrally as possible. Too curious, and she might make me try it. Too suspicious… and she might make me try it.

“A Noni-juice cleanse I’m doing for a few days. It has kelp and yogurt, some protein powder, aloe, honey, chia seeds, and a few blueberries. Want some?” I look at Brian. His glass has the telltale slime track of one swallow. He shrugs almost imperceptibly. Translation: it’s pretty bad but didn’t make him gag outright.

“I’ll taste some of Brian’s.” I pop bread in the toaster and grab the jar of peanut butter and a handful of blueberries. “What’s on the list for today?”

“Weed the chile garden and get some water on the flowers before they die, please.” She flips a page, and the cover catches my eye—it’s not a magazine, but the catalogue from Cottonwood Springs Community College. “Summer Continuing Education.” Mom catches me looking and smiles her enchanting You-Are-Going-To-Love-This smile.

Uh-oh.

“Vivi, you did such a wonderful job on the sign. People commented on it all day long. It gave me an idea.”

Oh, no. Last summer’s “idea” was going to Las Cruces for a class on auras: seeing them, interpreting them, healing them, photographing them. Mom and I went every week to the Karma Collision, a bigger version of Déjà Vu, where a dozen earnest people studied everything about auras. Well, a dozen minus me, the aura infidel. I gave it an honest try anyway, for Mom’s sake, but I never saw a single one. Mom practiced relentlessly and declared that Brian’s aura is mostly yellow with streaks of bright green. According to her, my aura is purple and gold—a deeper version of her lavender and yellow—and such a vibrant color combination shows strong intuition. Right now, that purple and gold intuition wants me to jump on my bike and ride like the wind.

“You have such a strong sense of color, honey. I’m thinking you could paint a mural for the front wall. Something people could see from all around the square.”

Cautious, I pause my urge to flee. “What kind of mural?”

“Whatever you want. Something celestial, like the sign. Something with a welcoming energy, you know?”

My toast pops up. I slather peanut butter on both pieces and take a bite. “Hmmm.”

“I know you’ve never done anything that big, but what do you think?”

The peanut butter glues my mouth together, and I grab Brian’s glass, swallowing a shot of Mom’s concoction. Contrary to what his shrug indicated, this stuff is hideous. Sour and grassy, with a bitter aftertaste. Didn’t she say there was honey in this? My “bleccch” face begins forming, but Brian shoots me a criminally innocent look, so I shift gears and give him the “I’ll get-you-later” squint instead. Gah, this stuff is so gross! But I swallow and shake my head.

“Mom, you have outdone yourself there.” I put down Brian’s glass and pick up a coffee mug, hoping to scald out the taste of the fungus juice. “But, yeah, I could do that. I could make a few sketches and see what you think, but I’m not exactly sure about how to paint them on a stone wall.”

“Yes, I was thinking about that too. I think a little professional advice would help, don’t you?

More peanut butter toast, so I just nod. “Mmm-hmm.” Then I freeze. Too late. Ninja Mom has struck again.

“I’m so glad you agree. I signed you up for this painting class at Community College.” Mom smiles, pointing to a spot in the catalogue. “I just reserved your spot and paid them. You’ll need to go online later today and finish the registration part.”

“But Mom, what about work?” I protest feebly through the peanut butter, even though it’s a lost cause.

Mom waves away my protest. “The class is Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, starting next week. You can work Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, just like we planned. It’s perfect!” She beams triumphantly and finishes her Noni Fungus Ninja Slime. “I’ll leave the laptop here, so you can finish registering today.” She tilts her head toward Brian and says, “Go brush your teeth, and let’s go.” Standing up, she adds, “You guys also need to clean the patio when Brian gets home.”

Brian turns to me. Our eyes lock and widen, and we both chime merrily, “Yes, Mother!” like the subservient little patio-cleaners we are.

A few minutes later, they are out the door, and I have the whole day ahead of me with a very short to-do list. Lots of time to think about the mural and the art class. I’m not against taking the class. I just hate it when someone else decides what I need to do and hooks me into doing it. It’s the principle of the thing. I like making my own decisions, the way I do in my dreams. But lately, even Dreamland has been as slippery as New Mexico magic—until Dad showed up.

I have lots of time today to think about that too.

I feed Ophelia a corner of my peanut butter toast and a blueberry. She gobbles the toast and noses the berry suspiciously before hiding it under her hamster wheel. I refill my coffee and slip out into the backyard. The air is still cool and fresh, with only a hint of the blistering heat to come. The neighbor’s enormous cottonwood tree shades half of the yard, while their also- enormous orange tomcat lolls in a sunny spot, blinking his slanted green eyes at me.

“Hey, Rufus.”

“Meh.” He acknowledges me languidly and closes his eyes.

I water the jalapenos, the marigolds, and the hot-pink zinnias. As I pull weeds, I retrace my steps through last night’s dream. This dream—this “dreamwalk,” as Dad called it—was rich and three-dimensional, clearer than any lucid dream and stronger than any nightmare I’ve ever had. His warm hand molded around mine as if he was awake and alive. I felt it.

I roll up the hose and brush the dirt from my knees. There’s a faint bruise from yesterday alongside a thin, pale permanent question mark from that New Jersey bike lesson. As I look at the dirt on my palms, the garden shimmers and dissolves as the sun goes dim. My hands turn clean and small, wrinkly from my bath and holding on to warm covers. I’m in my old bedroom, and the only light filters in from the soft golden night-light in the hall. The scent of lavender bubbles lingers in the bathroom, and the tang of the ocean drifts through the window.

Dad leans over my bed and kisses my forehead. He smells faintly of dark, scratchy cigar smoke.

“Ready for Dreamland?” he asks as he always does. I yawn and nod. Sleep is creeping up on me, soft and fuzzy.

“Where are you going tonight?”

“Six Flags!” Mom and Dad took me there for my birthday, before Baby Brian came. Ferris wheel, funnel cake, and fireworks. The Six Flags in Dreamland is almost as fun.

Even in the dark, Dad’s smile breaks through. “Will you try again tonight, Vivi?”

“It’s hard,” I tell him. He wants me to stop in the middle of a dream and look at my hand. I thought it would be easy, but it’s not. Most of the time, I can’t remember to do it, and when I do, it feels like I’m pushing a heavy chair across the living room with my forehead. Then I wake up.

“You can do it, Vivi, I know you can. When you reach for the cotton candy, look right at your hand.”

“Funnel cake,” I correct him sleepily, as I nod off.

Startled, I open my eyes to the bright sunlight and cobalt sky, and there are my hands, just as they were, dirty and pale against the background of green grass. The vision departs as quickly as it came.

This is what I always knew you could do.

Dad always had ideas about where to go and what to do in dreams, not just how to change the bad ones. He told me how to fly to Grandma Lily’s in Arizona, and how to go to Six Flags. Be a hawk, he would say. Float up to the sky. Keep your eyes open, look at where you want to go, and push like crazy. It took me months before I could find my hand, though—find it and still stay in the dream. But I finally got it, and after I did it a few more times, I realized I could do more than just go places, more than just sculpt and paint the layers of Dreamland. The wild animals that live in Dreamland, the strays who wander in from somewhere—I can make them do things. Come. Go. Find this, show me that. Every command produces specks of radiant color and pulses of light.

Nobody knows this, but sometimes if I push very carefully, smoothly—like slipping a heavy deadbolt into its slot—I can push people too. Not Mom. Not Brian. But kids from school, the guy at the Dreamland Six Flags Ferris Wheel—sometimes even Lorena—I can make them say and do things.

In Dreamland, I make things happen.

I wash my hands in the kitchen sink and grab a hat from a peg inside the garage. Before I register for Mom’s art class, I’m going to need fortification from Blake’s Lotaburger—home of the world’s best take-out green chile cheeseburgers.

As I sail down Valley Road on my bike, the sun simmers in the sky, burning away the last wisps of my dreams and memories. I fly past the turn to Brian’s bus stop and enter the pecan orchard. It’s been irrigated, and the black trunks spangled with luminous green leaves are reflected upside down in a green, gold, and black mirror of still water, creating a parallel world. By tomorrow, that second world will have sunk into the dirt, but today it’s the Magic Forest.

When I pass the Piggly Wiggly, I scan the parking lot for the Mysterious Handsome Stranger. His eyes. His smile. His hands… well okay, everything about him is totally hot, and I can’t help hoping he wasn’t just passing through.

Like I told Una yesterday, I don’t have admirers. I did have a boyfriend last year for a few months. Rick’s dad was in the Air Force, and we had a bond that all military kids have—“gone” means something different for us than it does for civilian kids, and the TV news from far away matters. We made out a few times and texted nonstop. Being clueless, I had to have Lori coach me on everything. She is a fearless flirt, while I’m pretty much tongue-tied after, “Hi,” if I really like a guy.

Rick asked me to homecoming and bought me a mum the size of a war drum, strung with teddy bears, feathers, and bells. When he hung it around my neck, I felt uneasily like the prize cow at the county fair, but at least everyone knew I had a boyfriend.

Halfway through the homecoming dance, we went out to the car where Rick flashed his cute smile and produced a flask from under the seat.

“Look what I got for us,” he said, waving it proudly. “Fireball.” A few swallows later—I had one, he had four—we had a difference of opinion about where his hands belonged. Things went downhill pretty fast after that, but Lori and her date gave me a ride home, the World’s Biggest Mum went into the trash, and my love life was over before it had even begun. Mom declared she knew Rick was up to no good all along, because matching a Taurus (me) with a Capricorn (him) was just asking for trouble.

I haven’t gone out with anyone since, but some astrological drama might be worth the risk with the Mysterious Handsome Stranger. For a brief, deranged moment, I will him to simply appear on the road. Better yet, he should just show up at my house.

My stomach growls me back to reality and I push MHS out of my mind. Pedaling quickly to Blake’s, I wish for the millionth time that I had that Dreamland power in real life—the power to make people do what I want. But right now, I’ll settle for a cheeseburger.