Chapter Thirteen

 

By 3:00, Zia Square is practically deserted. Mom has no more readings scheduled, so I get to leave early. I nest Brian’s bag of Macaroonies carefully in my backpack, using the sketchbook to shield them from being crushed. Lucas is going to meet me at home with whatever he found out about Stargate. Mom will only tell me what she thinks I need to know, but maybe Lucas and I can figure out how it fits with our dads and last night’s dreamwalk.

Was it only last night? It feels like a lifetime ago.

Stepping out on the back porch feels like walking into a fiery kiln, and the thermometer reads 107 degrees. In a few minutes, I’m out on Valley Road, where even the World’s Largest Pecan looks thirsty and exhausted, but I’m heading into the cool relief of the Magic Forest. The speckled sunlight dances through the trees, reminding me of the gossamer sparks in Dreamland, and for a few precious minutes I push my worry aside, ignore The Knot, and enjoy the impossible: Dad may not be just “somewhere safe,” but alive. His luminous smile and low, gentle voice were not the flash photography of memory, but real and solid.

Alive.

The cruise through the canopy of shade and miracles ends too soon. The sun slams into me as I come out the other side, and with it, my mission returns: find out everything I can about the Stargate Project and keep Brian safe. I pedal home with a vengeance.

I park my bike in the garage and stash the Macaroonies. Sticky from the hot ride, I head for my room, peeling off my shirt. I stop in the living room to flip the A/C switch to high and poke the radio on. Smash Mouth’s Walkin’ On The Sun blares out. I love it when the universe agrees with me, and sometimes even old Top 40 songs get it right. I crank up the volume all the way and dance down the hall in my bra, shaking out my braid and singing along.

No one’s supposed to know, but I do know how to dance. Well, a little. Last year Lorena declared that there was no way I could go to homecoming and not be able to dance, so along with flirting and texting, she taught me the Electric Slide and a few salsa moves to save me from crippling embarrassment. I didn’t get to dance much that night, but I still practice sometimes because:

A. You never know, and

B. I only do it when I’m alone. No witnesses.

The song buzzes and chimes, and as I step, turn, and slide along with it, I realize the chiming is not just coming from the song but from the front door. The front door with a narrow window running down the wall right next to it. The window with a tall, dark shadow in it. A shadow with a bronze, muscular arm, thumb hooked on the belt loop of those lean, perfect jeans. He’s not peeking in right this second, but OMG. How much did Lucas see?

A hot wave of embarrassment rolls over me as I switch the radio off and shout, “Be right there!” I run down the hallway to my room and scramble into a clean shirt.

“Hi.” Lucas smiles at me as I open the door. The hand not hooked in the belt loop is holding a few printouts. I pray to the universe he was reading them and didn’t see anything.

I’m now faced with a conundrum. That’s one of Brian’s favorite words. It means a difficult problem. A dilemma. On the one hand, I must watch closely and try to determine how much dancing around Lucas actually witnessed. On the other hand, if I look at him too long, there is the distinct possibility of a heart attack, ending with me melting into the ground like a happy Wicked Witch of the West. Yeah, a conundrum.

“Hey, come in. Sorry I didn’t hear you. Want some iced tea?” I decide that since every time he sees me I embarrass myself, if he saw me dancing without a shirt, at least I got today’s clumsy awkwardness out of the way.

“Sure. You okay?” He looks at me closely, still smiling. I nod, but my flushed cheeks give me away.

“Yeah. It’s just… hot. Come in?”

Lucas follows me into the kitchen, stopping to admire Ophelia on the way. She stands on her hind legs staring at him, preening her creamy fur and quivering. He digs in one of his pockets, produces three sunflower seeds, and drops them in her cage. She squeals with fright and delight, stuffing them into her cheeks immediately.

“She’ll love you forever now,” I comment and dig some glasses out of the cabinet. He brushes by me, sending a spark of lightning from my arm right into my heart. He smells like soap and seems to take up the whole kitchen. Make tea, Vivian, I admonish myself.

“So, what happened last night?” He sits in a kitchen chair, drops the printouts on the round table, and stretches out his long legs, crossing one boot over the other. I drop ice into our glasses, hoping he can’t see my hands shaking.

“A lot, actually. I found my dad. But first, tell me what you saw.” The ice cubes make crackling sounds as the tea splashes into the glasses. “Want limes?”

“Please, yes, I love limes. Okay, I was trying to do what you said. Float, swim, keep my eyes open. That’s a lot of stuff to do when you’re falling asleep. I was trying to imagine that painting of yours. It felt like I was sinking down, not floating—which is pretty much how I fall asleep anyway—but then I started spinning and saw this curtain of stars.”

“That’s how I know I’m almost there,” I observe, placing the glasses carefully on the table and sitting next to him. “Did you go through them? The stars?”

“Not through them. More like inside them. They were everywhere. Then I could see mountains, like the mountains in my dreams, but different. Huge pine trees. Flowers. A lot of colors in the sky too, like a sunset. Purple and gold.” He pauses for a huge swallow of tea. “It was weird. I couldn’t seem to get my footing. I wasn’t exactly touching the ground all the way. It was like walking through water, but with a lot of rocks underneath. I was looking for you, but I didn’t see anyone.” Then Lucas laughed. “For a second or two, I thought I smelled breakfast. Bacon, coffee, and bread. Is that crazy?”

He was there. Lucas was in my dream

“No.” I shake my head, heart pounding. “Not crazy. Then what?”

“Well, I looked around to see where it was coming from, and I saw a hawk circling around, way up near the top of the mountain. I thought maybe it was you, so I headed up there. But then these lights—really small, like sparks—rolled down, across the whole place. It’s hard to describe. Like a wave breaking, kind of purple and pink, swirling past me. Then they pulled back up again, but they changed from purple to white. Clear. So, I just stood there watching, and then everything was outlined, like a million Christmas lights. I looked back up to where the hawk was, and there were two of them, flying over to the other side of the mountain.”

He looks at me eagerly. “Was that it? Did I make it into Dreamland?”

“I think so.” I can’t help but grin. “Everything you saw matches up. I think those hawks were me and my dad.”

I gulp down some tea. “We went to his—his corner of Dreamland, he called it. I always thought Dreamland was just mine, but it seems to be a whole universe, where everyone can make their own world. His is beautiful and huge, like Monument Valley.”

“What did he say? Did you ask him about my dad?” Lucas shifts in his chair, his dark eyes anxious.

I shake my head, and the disappointment on his face makes my heart ache. “I tried to, but the whole thing didn’t last very long. He was telling me about Brian and Stargate. That’s why I wanted to see if there was anything about that—if it’s a real thing.”

He taps the printouts with his index finger. “Oh, it’s a real thing, all right! Wait ‘til you read this. It’s like something out of a movie. There actually was a movie about some of it—and I’m positive both of our dads were involved in this. Are involved,” he corrects himself. “Vivian, did your dad seem… did it feel like he’s… okay?”

“He felt real. He felt solid. I could hear him breathing. So, I asked him.”

“You asked if he’s alive?” His eyes widen in surprise. “What did he say?”

“He said he’s in a safe place.”

“Which could mean anything,” Lucas says cautiously. “But it doesn’t sound like greetings from the grave.”

“Yeah, but where? Where could they even be?” We sit in silence for a moment, thinking.

“God, I have no idea.” He sighs. “Some secret CIA spot. Area 51, maybe?”

“That’s for aliens,” I say, but— “Wait. Isn’t the code name for Area 51—”

He looks at me, and we both say it at the same time:

“Dreamland.”

Goosebumps prickle up my spine and across my arms.

“Okay, now I’m freaked out.” I crunch on an ice cube and reach for the printouts. “He was warning me about Brian, how the Stargate people want to use him somehow. And he said my mom knows about it too. I tried to talk to her this morning, but it turned into a meltdown.”

“Your mom had a meltdown? I can’t even picture that. She’s so calm.”

“No, I did. Jackson Connor showed up, and I was rude to him. Really rude. It was… bad. I ended up having to apologize to him.”

“Ouch. How did that go? He’s not exactly our favorite person.”

Our favorite person? My hand starts shaking again. There’s an “us”?

“That part wasn’t completely terrible. He actually apologized to me. But I didn’t get much out of Mom. She said she’d tell me more about it tonight, but I don’t know how much. Okay, let me read this. I’m glad you printed it out, since our Wi-Fi is so lame.”

“I went to the library. I was going to send it to you, but I wasn’t sure your phone could get any files. I saved the most important parts and the links to the sites. Also, some other sites that might help.”

Lucas scoots his chair close to mine and puts his arm around the back of my chair. How am I supposed to concentrate? His face is so close, his hair almost brushing my cheek…

We bend forward and read together. It’s a series of copy/pasted paragraphs:

 

MKUltra was a U S Govt project that spanned three decades and experimented with mind control, most notably through the use of hallucinogenic drugs. The program also explored attempts by the U.S. military to employ psychic powers as a weapon.

In 1979, the Peoples’ Republic of China publicly reported that several thousand of its children aged 8-14 were capable of telepathy, clairvoyance, or psychokinesis. Sparked by this program, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the US Army simultaneously poured millions of dollars into their own similar research at Fort Meade.

Mind control research continued through the Gulf War, via the Stargate Project, made famous by the novel and movie The Men Who Stare at Goats. The primary focus was remote viewing, with the goal of training an elite force of psychic warriors—some with the power to influence the enemy through dreams

 

There are several more paragraphs, and then:

 

The CIA insists these programs officially ended after the Gulf War, but CIA veterans say the program was active well into the late ’90s. There is little reason to believe it does not continue today under a different name.

 

“Holy guacamole,” I whisper, and slump back in my chair against Lucas’s arm. It’s warm and strong, and he doesn’t move except to drop his hand lightly onto my shoulder. “This is crazy. You think our dads were in this? They were… goat-starers?”

He smiles. “Well, maybe not goat-starers.” He points to one of the sentences, leaning forward. “But this part about getting into people’s dreams. Our dads can both do that.”

“My dad said these people—the CIA, I guess? —think Brian can dreamwalk. They know about my grandmother too. He said they are going after Brian, to get into his mind somehow, and that I can protect him. I have to go into his dreams and hide him. How the hell am I supposed to do that?”

There aren’t a lot of details in that printout, which isn’t a surprise when you’re looking for a secret government program. But most of this isn’t very secret. I remember seeing a video in Psychology class about MK-Ultra when the CIA gave prisoners and even their own agents LSD. And then there’s that goat-staring movie, which I didn’t see, but now I guess I have to.

Lucas’s arm is still around me, and I don’t know which is making me more nervous: the warm closeness of him or the sci-fi insanity I’m seeing on this paper—psychic warriors, remote viewing, influencing the enemy through dreams.

I look at the second page with a list of links where Lucas searched for information. Pages from Wikipedia. The CIA website. Some site called “Cosmic Army.” Fort Meade. A university academic database with papers about psychic research from the 1970s—but the source makes me gasp and sit up straight.

“Lucas! All of these research papers are from Duke University.”

He looks at me, not comprehending. “I didn’t read any of those. But they did psychic research for a while, so I was hoping there might be something about dreamwalking.”

Panic rises in my throat. “Lucas, that’s where Brian is taking all his classes.”

He frowns. “Hmm. It’s probably not related. That Duke program for gifted kids is pretty famous. Didn’t you have to take the PSAT in middle school to see if there were any geniuses?”

Actually, Brian and I both took it one Saturday in October. I was twelve, and he was in kindergarten. The seventh graders took it on big tables in the cafeteria, but he took it alone in the counselors’ office. I could have saved everyone a lot of time if they’d just asked me. Not a single one of my classmates was a genius—least of all me—but I knew he was.

“But what if it’s really screening for… for this?” I wave the papers around, trembling.

Lucas wraps his free hand around mine, intertwining our fingers—and there it is again, that feeling of rightness, of fitting. “That test was all math and reading, remember? Nothing I saw shows any connection between Duke’s research and the CIA. We’ll figure it out, Vivi. They may think they know about my family and probably yours. What they don’t know about is us—but after last night, I do. I’m sure of it.” He smiles triumphantly. “We are dreamwalkers.”

“I want to look at those research papers. I want to see what kind of creepy experiments they were doing at Duke.” Lucas is probably right. Maybe there’s no direct connection between Duke’s research and the Stargate Project, but it seems like the CIA had its own thing going on.

“Is your laptop here?”

“No. But Brian’s tablet is.” I stand up, but I don’t let go of Lucas’s hand. Looking at him makes me weak and shaky, but holding onto him makes me feel strong—another conundrum. I tuck the papers under my arm, grab my tea, and lead him through the back hall to Brian’s room, trying to ignore the fact I’m kind of dragging him into a bedroom. I remind myself to focus on getting the tablet.

Lucas seems even taller in here. He glances around at the posters of scientists and superheroes and nods appreciatively at the spacecraft models hanging from the ceiling. Two space shuttles, a couple of moon landers, one Mars Rover, and three kinds of rockets wobble gently under the A/C, threatening to land on unsuspecting visitors.

“These are really cool. Did he build them?”

“Yeah. All of them. He’s a total space freak. If you want to know anything about any space mission ever, Brian’s your man.” Behind the door, a poster of Neil DeGrasse Tyson smiles in cool astrophysicist agreement.

Lucas ducks his head under the Apollo 11 Lunar Module and sets his glass down on Brian’s desk. On the shelf above, there is a long, narrow diorama of a moonscape. Plaster craters and boulders dot the lunar terrain, while a half-dozen space landers form a semicircle around a tiny NASA dune buggy. Astronaut action figures are positioned strategically around Brian’s moon village, but on a small hill a miniature red and blue Spider-Man triumphantly plants the American flag. On the desk, another Spider-Man—full-sized—stands menacingly on top of Brian’s tablet, warding off intruders. He may be a boy genius, but the genius is still a little boy.

I move the sentinel, grab the computer, and we sit side by side on Brian’s bed. Reluctantly, I let go of Lucas’s hand, but it’s okay because our shoulders are only inches apart and his leg is touching mine. How can I feel weak in the knees when I’m sitting?

The tablet is on, and Brian’s wallpaper is that Escher drawing of all the staircases twisting into each other, going nowhere. His playlist is open, full of jazz songs, but I only recognize a few names.

“He’s an unusual kid,” Lucas observes. “Not too many nine-year-olds listen to Thelonious Monk or Bill Evans.”

“It started when he saw the Charlie Brown Christmas show when he was two. He loved the music, ran around singing it, so Mom got him a CD of the soundtrack. He turned into a total jazz freak.” A tiny lump gathers in the back of my throat. The idea of some CIA goons trying to infiltrate and use his mind—

I look at Lucas, tears blurring the angles of his face “If anything happens to him…”

“Nothing will happen. We’ll make sure of it.”

I tap the Duke icon, and their in-house search engine opens. “I don’t know what we can find, but there should be something. These links are from their own database.”

I type in one of them. Lots of numbers, dot-edu, slashes, more numbers, and “clairvoyance.” The screen blinks and then fills with words and charts, all in about size-two font. Ugh. I scroll down through dozens of pages from the Duke University Department of Psychic Woo. If I find anything important, how will I even recognize it?

“Words… words… chart. More words. Looks like a huge file. How can someone write a hundred pages about ESP and make it look so boring?”

He leans over the tablet. “Search for the Stargate Project,” he suggests. “If there’s any connection, it could be buried anywhere. But probably not in”—he peers at the title and grins— “Human-Canine Clairvoyance Protocols.”

“How to read your dog’s mind—be a dog whisperer? Well, that’s definitely not it!”

I abandon the list of links on the bedspread and type “Stargate Project.” Wheels turn. The screen blinks. Sorry, no items match your search. Okay, “Dreamwalking,” even though I know it’s futile. This time we get two screen blinks, but the same indifferent message. The Wi-Fi drops from three bars to just one.

“Wi-Fi’s tired,” I announce and close the server, sighing. “Epic fail.”

“This is not failure,” he protests. He stands up, ducking his head to avoid a large rocket, and drains the last bit of amber liquid from his glass. “We found out what the project was, at least. And we were able to dreamwalk. I’ve never gone into someone else’s dreams before.” His eyes gleam with mischief as he looks down at me. “You were dreaming about me when you weren’t even there.”

I roll my eyes as if that didn’t make my heart race. Not one bit. “So, what happened while I was gone?”

Really, what does a dream look like when the dreamer isn’t around?

Lucas leans back, perching on the edge of the desk. “It was dark. I kept going up the mountain, but it was even harder after the hawks—you guys—were gone. I could barely see the path, like wearing sunglasses at night. There were animals around, kind of glowing? So I sort of knew which way to go.” He tips his glass and crunches on a piece of ice. “But I thought I saw you again, right before I woke up. Even after I woke up, I kept seeing purple sparks for a few minutes.”

“I thought I saw you too.” I pause, remembering the blue glow and the passing scent of Downy. “You were way down below. But it wasn’t you exactly. I was looking for you, or maybe a wolf, but what I saw was a swirl of bright blue fireflies. It just… felt like it was you.” I don’t mention that I could smell him. Dreamwalking, webs of fireflies and hawks are okay, but “I smelled you in my dream” crosses a weird line.

He nods as if this makes sense. “Cobalt blue, my favorite color.”

He sits on the bed again and chomps down on another ice cube. “Okay, so what do we actually know? A government program that is supposedly over, but really probably isn’t. Our dads are part of it or at least know about it. Your mom knows about it too. Your dad says they want Brian because they think he’s a dreamwalker, but he’s not—and we are. My dad? I don’t know what he wants. He wasn’t around last night, and I don’t know how to find him.” He tilts his head at me speculatively. “How did you find yours?”

“I couldn’t, at first. I was calling him and concentrating on him. That’s probably why you smelled breakfast. Sometimes smells come with the memories. But nothing was really happening, until… okay, you know how you saw the purple lights? Those are usually all around Dreamland whenever I’m there. I guess it’s some kind of energy that’s part of me, like the blue ones I saw coming from you. Well, when my dad was there before, that whole web of light changed to silver. Bright white, like diamonds. So, I thought if I could change the colors, maybe it would bring him.”

“And you did it. I saw them change. But how do you do that?” He shakes his head. “It can’t be as easy as just thinking about it.”

“No, actually it’s really hard. I concentrated on just one small bit of the web. I… pushed it. I can’t explain it any other way. I pushed really hard on one spot, and it hardly moved. Then it kind of gave way and… I don’t know, it turned over.”

“You push with what—your thoughts?

“Yes. From right here.” Impulsively, I reach out and brush his thick hair aside, touching the center of his forehead with two fingers. “It’s hard, but that’s all it is…” My words fall away as I look from that spot to his eyes, and they are locked on mine, and the lightning between us jolts my whole body.

“Oh!”

Embarrassed, I pull my hand away, but he takes it gently, his gaze never leaving mine. A heat wave spirals up from somewhere around my knees and floods my whole body, but I can’t move or look away. His eyes are soft and dark as he says quietly, “There’s more to this, Vivian.”

My heart is pounding—surely he can hear it?—and suddenly I can hardly breathe. He softly runs one finger down the side of my cheek and up under my chin, leaving a trail of dizzying warmth. I sway toward him and close my eyes as he leans closer. His breath is shaky as his lips brush across my cheek, whispering, “Way more.” His smooth mouth presses gently into mine, and I pull him in deeper as the floor falls away, taking my spinning heart with it.