Chapter Seven

 

I put on my seatbelt and survey the alien landscape of Lucas’s domain. There are a few spiral notebooks, a library book, and a Community College catalogue on the floor by my feet—the same one Mom ninja’d me with this morning. A tiny dreamcatcher sways from the rearview mirror, and a phone charger dangles from the dashboard. A backpack and a rolled sleeping bag sit behind his seat, along with some empty Piggly Wiggly cups, a quart of oil, a bag of trash from Blake’s, and a roll of those blue paper towels mechanics use.

As if reading my mind, he comments, “Sorry, the truck’s a mess. I haven’t cleaned it since I got back from Santa Fe.” His eyes gleam in triumph. “But I sold that sculpture.”

“Hey, that’s great! Are you taking this one up next weekend?”

He laughs out loud and looks over at me. “No, I haven’t even started this one. I get the metal from the auto shop here, but I do most of the work at home. Then I bring it back here for the finish. They have tools I need.”

“Wow, that’s a relief. I was kind of wondering, but I didn’t want to say anything, because what if it’s like, your greatest piece ever, and to me it just looks like a hunk of metal?”

He laughs again. As we drive down Valley Road, the mangled fender makes scrapey clunking noises whenever we stop or start. The entrance to Zia Square is ahead on the right, but Lucas turns left.

“So, where are we going?”

“Out to the levee, but I want to drop this stuff off at home first.”

“Home” turns out to be a small stucco house about a mile west of the square. Black-eyed Susans and purple coneflowers cluster around the mailbox, which reads “WOLFSONG” in faded letters. A short wrought-iron fence surrounds the yard, and two metal wolves guard the gate, their heads tilted to the sky. These are not stamped-metal roadside tourist wolves, but battered ribbons, twists and knots of metal transformed into fur and throats and ears and tails.

“Did you make those?” I can’t stop looking at them. “They’re beautiful.”

Lucas nods. “Thanks. I make all kinds of animals.”

Within a few minutes, his tools, a welding tank, and the future work of art are out of the truck, and we head to the levee. My mind races, searching for something to say.

“So, how long have you and Una lived here? You didn’t go to Zia High, did you? “

Zia High has about 500 students total. He is a couple of years older than me, but if Lucas Wolfsong went to my school, I would definitely remember. So would Lorena, and all the Peppers too.

“No, we lived here when I was in elementary school, when my dad was stationed at White Sands. When he was deployed to Iraq, we moved to the reservation for a while. Then, California. After my mom, I went to live with Una in Albuquerque.” His eyes watch the road, but for a split second they wander a thousand miles away.

“We lived in Whiteriver for a summer with my grandmother,” I say, remembering the reservation’s cool mountain pines and Grandma Lily’s tiny, tidy home. “She still lives there, but we hardly ever go. Don’t you miss it?”

“My parents grew up there, but we moved around a lot, so it’s not really my home. You know how it is.”

I know exactly how it is. The time we lived in Wildwood, not quite three years, was the longest we ever lived anywhere. For military kids, “home” is wherever you are.

“We came back here to my grandfather’s house a few months ago. This place never changes—just as quiet as ever.” He glances over at me and smiles. “But things are definitely looking up.”

Things are looking up? What things? Just when I can almost relax around him, my heart ignites with pleasure, setting my cheeks on another slow burn.

We arrive at the long straight road that runs along the levee. Since it’s not technically a “road,” you don’t technically need a license to drive on it. The river is low, but large, soggy-looking clouds are stacked up on the horizon, gathering behind the mountains. Lucas gets out of the truck, and I follow. When we meet in the front, Lucas nods his approval at the clouds.

“Nagóltįįh. It’s going to rain.”

I almost never hear Apache unless we go up to the Mescalero Reservation or to Grandma Lily’s. I only know a little bit, but it always makes me homesick for a place I never really lived.

“I hope.”

“If you stand still and watch, you can almost see the clouds grow,” he observes. “You can smell it even before you see the clouds. The trees, all the cactus—everything alive—it’s like they know for hours. Even before the clouds come, they open up all their pores, waiting. Like the whole valley is holding her breath.” He breathes in. “Can you smell it?”

I take a deep, even breath. It smells like the desert, of sage and mesquite. But under the scorched desert smell, something else lurks. Anticipation? Something the slightest bit… wet.

“You’re right, Lucas, I can smell it.”

“Not everyone can. Just us—the desert people.” He turns toward me. “You ready?”

“For rain? Always.” I nod, watching the clouds. He’s right—they’re rolling upward, blooming thick and pulsing even as we stand here. Slippery magic.

“Driving. Remember?”

“Oh, driving. Yes. Ready!”

While he explains how to adjust the mirrors, my brain spins cartwheels. He loosens his seatbelt a little and sits close to me, his arm behind me on the seat as he leans in and slowly coaxes me down the levee road. He smells like warm skin and clean clothes, and I can hardly keep my mind on the road. I clutch the steering wheel, white-knuckling it at first, but his voice relaxes me as he keeps talking low in my ear.

“You’re doing great. You’re a natural. Whoops, careful. Don’t look at me. Look where you’re going. That’s it. You’ve got this.”

Almost an hour later, I decide Lucas is right: things are definitely looking up. I have driven seven whole miles with his arm practically around me. I park in a spot by the bridge, and I park straight, too. Well, almost. The clouds in the west have turned dark, bruised-looking—and they’re a lot closer. A cold breeze, the ancient signal that we have about ten minutes before all hell breaks loose, stirs the dust in the parking lot. We switch seats and decide to go back to Zia Square for slushees. Thunder rumbles in the distance.

I eyeball the books on the floor and nudge them with my toe. “Are you taking other classes?”

“Nah, not right now. Those are my dream books.”

“Your what?”

“Dream books.” He hesitates like he’s not sure he should keep talking, then takes a breath. “I write down my dreams whenever I can remember them. There’s a book there about what they mean. Well, one of them. I have a few.” He sighs. “They aren’t much help. They’re compiled by anthropologists and come from all around the Nations, so they’re pretty generic.”

I pick up The Native American Dreambook, and it falls open to a dog-eared page: “Eagles, Hawks, Birds of Prey.”

Lucas glances over at the page. “‘Birds are considered spirit messengers,’” he quotes, echoing Lorena in an exaggerated, careful tone, like he’s narrating a documentary for kindergartners.

I tear my eyes away from the pen-and-ink drawings of birds and feathers—long, silky, familiar-looking feathers—and ask, “Do you know what other people’s dreams mean? You can interpret dreams?”

He laughs. “No, I totally suck at it, but Una can. My dad used to call her The Dreamcatcher.”

My gaze jumps to the one hanging from the mirror, and his meets mine in the reflection.

“He said sometimes a dreamcatcher is a person. Una doesn’t need books. She just knows.” This doesn’t surprise me at all. Sometimes people do. I never just know anything, but it certainly fits Una.

“So, you’re having weird dreams?”

Lucas doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even seem to be breathing, and an odd, tingly feeling works its way up my neck.

Finally, he clears his throat. “Yeah. It’s hard to explain, but I’ve been dreaming about my dad. You know he’s MIA, right?”

The tingly feeling reaches into my hair like sharp fingernails. “Mom told me, yeah.”

“Well, he was kind of like Una, but different. Do you know what lucid dreaming is?”

My mouth goes dry and my throat closes up, but I manage to whisper, “Yes. When you can control some things in your dreams.”

Is he a lucid dreamer too? And he’s dreaming about—

“My dad could do that. He taught me some before he left, but I’m not very good at it. Not like him. He could go places and do things in his dreams.”

“My dad could do that too.” I stare at him, my heart hammering almost as loud as the approaching thunder.

Lucas doesn’t say anything as we pull into the gravel alley behind Déjà Vu. Fat drops splat on the windshield. I can’t breathe; it feels like my heart might leap out of my chest. Lucas stops the truck, his face completely still. He looks straight ahead, exhales slowly, then turns to look at me. His eyes are two dark wells of confusion. “I know this sounds crazy, but sometimes I think he’s still alive.”

My breath’s trapped in my throat. Trying not to panic, I finally strangle, “Why do you think that? I know he’s MIA, but it’s been—”

“Seven years. I know. Like your dad, Vivian. They went missing the same week.”

I shake my head. Mom and Una have known each other for a couple of months, but somehow he must have gotten the story wrong.

I hate even saying the words. “My dad’s not missing, Lucas. He was killed in action.” The raindrops pelt the truck in earnest now, and my racing pulse matches the staccato taps on the roof.

He nods, and his mouth briefly forms a grim, twisted line. “That’s what they told us too. He broke his leg, and after they put on his cast, Joseph Wolfsong somehow supposedly wandered out of Bagdad Hospital without anyone seeing him. Yeah, right—you know how many people he’d have to go through to get out of there?” He grips the steering wheel. “Then a car with an IED explodes a few blocks outside the zone, and his tags are found at the scene. Nothing else. So officially he’s MIA—missing, presumed dead.”

Hearing his father’s name jolts me. Apaches don’t usually say the names of the dead—but he looks so bitter, so lost. Loss and bitterness have regular battles in my heart. I swallow, hoping the hard ball in my throat doesn’t get any bigger.

“But Lucas, why do you think he’s alive? After they told us about Dad, there were times I was sure they were wrong, and he would come back. I just knew it would all be a terrible mistake. But he didn’t. It wasn’t.” I close my eyes, and for a moment the grainy video replays in my head the way it played over and over on every TV channel: the chopper spiraling down wildly through the dark, greasy smoke, sinking behind some trees, and the huge ball of fire blazing afterward. My thoughts race as thunder blows open the sky above us, and the splattering drops become a roaring downpour.

What if it was a mistake? What if he’s really out there? The dream. That dreamwalk.

Determination pushes the pain and confusion out of his eyes as Lucas shakes his head.

“Because it’s different. It’s like he’s really there. He even said it was a different kind of dream. He called it dreamwalking.”

The hair on the back of my neck stands up. The prickly feeling curls around my shoulders and the top of my head. I clutch the seat on either side of my knees with icy hands and try to control my jagged breathing. I look over at him, and his eyes meet mine, soft and concerned in his angular face. Some of the dizziness recedes, and I can breathe again, so I ask, wobbly, “Why… why are you telling me about this?” I keep my eyes glued to him. Now, instead of not being able to look at him, I can’t look away.

His hand is strong and warm as he lays it on top of mine and intertwines our fingers. Our hands fit like locking puzzle pieces, and for a split second, I can’t tell where each of our hands begin and end. “Because—”

BAM!

The back door to Déjà Vu flies open, and the wind slams it into the wall. My gaze darts from Lucas to the porch. Mom is framed in the doorway, and through the downpour, she waves for us to come in.

“Come on, get in here, you two! It’s raining cats and dogs, and it’s not stopping for a while,” she calls out, just barely audible over the roar of the storm. A shadow moves behind her, and Jackson Connor’s face appears in the doorframe over Mom’s shoulder. I groan softly. Him again?

Our hands slip apart, but I grab his wrist. “You better tell me,” I whisper fiercely.

“I will, I swear. As soon as we can get out of here.”

Lightning crackles through the sky and thunder explodes like a cannon. I take a deep breath. Our eyes lock, as he counts, “One, two, three—go!” We bolt out of the truck and up the porch steps, through a barrage of cold, stinging rain-bullets. Soaked, we spill through the doorway into the Déjà Vu kitchen.