Chapter Fourteen

 

“EEEEEEEEW!”

The piercing shriek of a banshee slices between us, slamming my heart back into my body, and we leap apart, up and off of the bed. Covering his face with his hands, Brian staggers through the doorway, screeching, “My eyes! My eyes!”

“Shut up, Brian! Stop yelling!”

Eyes still covered, Brian groans, “Gross! How could you do that in my room?” He drops his arms and glares at me, then Lucas, then back at me, and demands, “What are you doing in here, anyway?”

The clock by Brian’s bed says 4:37. “Where’s Mom? Did she pick you up?”

“I don’t know. No, I walked from the bus. Why are you in here?”

“Sorry, Bri,” Lucas jumps in smoothly, “We needed to look something up on your tablet. We only came in for a few minutes.”

“Yeah, right. What were you looking up, kissing lessons? Yuck!” He stomps over to his desk and carefully places Spider-Man back on duty.

“No, it was some stuff from Duke. I thought we could find it using their server,” I explain. Our gazes lock over Brian’s indignant head, and I wonder if Lucas is as dizzy and dazed from that kiss as I am. I can still feel his lips against mine, taste the limes, taste him.

“Mom says you can’t have boys in your room.”

“Well, as you can see, this isn’t my room,” I remind him primly.

“Brian, these models are amazing,” Lucas jumps in again, looking up at the dangling spacecraft. “How long have you been making them?”

“Since I was four.” Brian follows his gaze up and points to one of the rockets. “That one, the Redstone Rocket, was the first one I made. It was pretty easy. The Mars Rover was the hardest.” I think we are out of the woods, maybe, but he crosses his arms, not quite ready to be detoured. “So. What were you guys looking for?”

I have to tell him something. Something he will believe.

“Some stuff about dreams,” I venture. Lucas looks at me, his face cautious. “You know those weird dreams I have sometimes.”

Brian’s eyes narrow, still suspicious but interested. “Yeah… the lucid dreams.”

“Well, Duke did a bunch of mind experiments in the ’70s, and some of them were about dreams. I was thinking there might be something about them. But there wasn’t—and then the Wi-Fi went out, as usual.”

He rolls his eyes, sighing. “You have to keep the tablet on the desk, or you’ll lose the signal.”

“Yeah, I figured that out. But we did find this one thing about how to read your dog’s mind.”

Brian snorts. “That’s easy. ‘Feed me! Take me for a walk! Whose butt am I smelling?’”

Lucas laughs out loud at Brian’s doggy wit, and I find myself actually giggling. He is finally appeased. “Well, okay. But stay out of my room.”

We solemnly promise, and then I hear the garage door opening. Mom’s home. I snatch the printouts off the bed, fold them quickly, then stuff them in my back pocket. I motion Lucas toward the kitchen, grab the tea glasses, and almost trip over a small, yellow plastic box on the floor in the hall. It has pea-sized holes in the top and sides and a Space Camp logo on it.

“What’s this?”

“Hey, be careful!” Brian steps into the hall, picks up the box, and peers into one of the holes. It’s not empty. There’s a small shadow inside, and it’s… moving. He offers the box to me. “It’s a tarantula for my experiment. Wanna see it?”

I hold my hands up in front of me and step back. “No hairy Jurassic spiders for me.”

“He can’t hurt you,” he reminds me. “He’s not one of those South American ones.”

I don’t care what continent he’s from, but Lucas accepts the box, peers in, and pronounces it, “Cool.”

Wait. Experiment? As in, let a tarantula loose in the house and see what happens?

“What kind of experiment?” I demand.

“The effects of zero gravity on an exoskeleton,” Brian explains. “They have a zero-gravity chamber, and we get to use it Friday. We went out in the desert today to gather our subjects. Everyone caught crickets, and I caught some too, but I used mine to lure Hamlet into a paper bag.”

“Hamlet?” Lucas looks at me and raises an eyebrow, which tugs on a spot deep in my chest.

“Hamlet and Ophelia.” A tarantula-hamster couple is probably just as doomed as Shakespeare’s tragic prince and princess.

“Well yeah, but also because Prince Hamlet wonders about life and his existence. Nothing is as it seems,” Brian warns the unsuspecting arachnid through the holes. He snickers and adds, “Especially in zero gravity.”

“I’m sure this guy will be wondering about the same things.” Lucas nods his approval. Brian moves Hamlet to a secure location in his room while we head into the kitchen.

The kitchen door pops open. Mom comes in carrying several brightly-colored raffia grocery bags—no planet-killing plastic or paper for her—and plops them on the table with her purse.

“Whew, it’s a scorcher! Hi, Lucas.” Her face is radiant with perspiration. She’s the only person I know who looks good while sweating. But, remembering the sheen on Lucas’s arms and face when he wrestled that hunk of car accident into the truck, I think maybe there are two of them now.

“Hello, Mrs.—” Cut short by a meaningful look from Mom, he amends, “I mean, Summer.”

“Hi, Mom. Want some tea?” I volunteer.

“Definitely. Would you put this stuff away while I change?” She disappears down the hall, stopping to say hello to Brian, and closes her door.

We unpack the bags full of the usual fruits and veggies, salad stuff, and a pound of grass-fed organic hamburger from happy cows—at least, happy when they were still alive and blissfully unaware of their impending doom—plus jasmine rice, hummus, a slice from a wheel of Brie, and some whole wheat crackers. Healthy but minimal, and I’m glad I brought home those Macaroonies.

I refill our glasses with ice, plus one for Mom, and squeeze fresh lime over the ice. As the tangy smell reaches my nose, a bullet of pleasure ricochets through my whole body. Am I going to relive that kiss every time I smell limes? I sure hope so. I also wonder if it’s the first one, as in the first of many?

I peek at Lucas, who has wandered over to Ophelia’s cage with one final sunflower seed. The moment my gaze lands on him, he glances up at me quickly, as if I’d touched him, and he doesn’t move his gaze away. A slow smile lights his eyes, softening his sharp cheekbones, and something in that look says there will definitely be more kisses. Way more.

Our gazes break apart when Mom breezes back into the kitchen, wearing something gauzy and cool. She is smiling too, not a soft, contented smile like Lucas, but that familiar, cat-who-found-the-cream smile.

“Mom, can Lucas stay for dinner?” I know, you aren’t supposed to ask in front of the guest, but my Ninja Mom Early Warning System is on red alert. That smile means art classes and aura workshops. My only defense is to get her talking, especially now that he is here. He did all the research this morning, and he deserves to hear about Stargate too.

“Certainly.” She takes a long drink of her tea. “Is your aunt back yet? Do you have plans for dinner?”

“She texted she’d be back later tonight,” Lucas says. “So no, I don’t have any actual plans.”

“Well, you do now,” Mom quips cheerfully. “We need to move Ophelia out of the dining room, though. We are celebrating tonight, and company is on the way.”

“Mom! Celebrating what? What company?”

I don’t believe this. What about the dreamwalk? Stargate? Brian? Did today even happen?

“Now Vivi, I haven’t forgotten about our talk, but there’s plenty of time for that later.” Her voice is reassuring, but she swooshes by me into the dining room and doesn’t look at me. Lucas does though, and he looks as perplexed as I feel. “Brian, come out here and set the table. Lucas, would you please move Ophelia into Brian’s room?”

“Not my room. I have an experimental subject in there, and he can’t be disturbed,” Brian announces, and I have this flash of him all grown up, in a lab coat and safety glasses, surrounded by test tubes, shadowy machines, and laser thingies, dissecting the secrets of existence.

“Okay, my room.” I lead the way with Lucas behind me, carefully carrying Ophelia’s cage. He sets Ophelia down on the long, low dresser, then straightens up and scans around.

“It’s nice in here,” he says. “It looks like your painting.”

I guess it does because my room is all deep shades of blue and green with bits of purple and gold. There are a few paintings on my walls, mostly of mountains, and a few sketches of fractal patterns, which look like lightning or tree branches.

Lucas stares intently at my desk and my pictures of the family—Mom and Dad on the beach, another one of Brian and me building a sandcastle covered with dribbles. There’s one Mom took before Dad left for the last time, with me, Brian, and Dad in the narrow shafts of sunlight of the Pine Barrens. There’s a big one from the summer we lived in Whiteriver with Grandma Lily and the cousins.

“There we are, the whole Night Hawk nest,” I say, but it’s not the pictures that have his attention.

“Where did you get this jacket?” He steps over to where the jacket rests gently on my chair and rubs his thumb on a worn shoulder seam.

“It was in that box Una brought last week.” I haven’t told him about the jacket or the hawk feather that lives in the lining, but I can’t explain that now—not with Mom and Brian here and “company” on the way. Or maybe I should, and we can all join together in a happy truth fest about dreamwalking, hawk feathers, and the Stargate Project. “This sounds crazy, but I think it was my dad’s. It feels like him.”

Lucas is frowning, sorting through memories but coming up empty. “I’ve seen it before. I know I have.”

“Did you help her pack that box of clothes? It was in there.”

“Nope.” He shakes his head. “But I’ll probably remember at two in the morning.”

The doorbell chimes. Brian yells that he’ll get it.

“Oh, yay. Company,” I sigh.

We face each other, and he smiles that lopsided smile, and my heart starts thrumming (WAYmoreWAYmoreWAYmore), and he is so close, looking at me with those dark eyes, and to hell with the rule of no-boys-in-my-room. I want to kiss him again, right here right now yes—

“Hellooooo!” The rattle of multiple bags shakes the moment apart. That voice. Déjà vu. I mean Déjà Vu all over again. It can’t be, but it is. This time in my house.

The “company” is Jackson Connor. Aghast, I swear under my breath.

“Tacos!” Brian announces gleefully from the living room. “Tacos from Tacos Del Fuego! Awesome!”

“Can you stand it?” I sputter. “She’ll never talk about Stargate with him around.”

“I can stand it if you can. For our people.” He winks. “You know, us dreamwalkers.”

I nod and groan. “Let’s get this over with.” I head for the door, but Lucas takes hold of my hand, stopping me in my tracks.

“Wait.” He pulls me back gently to him. “Thank you for the dreamwalk. It was amazing. I owe you about twenty driving lessons. Can you go after class tomorrow?”

I nod and close the door on my way out—better to trap that moment for reliving later. We head for the kitchen, dropping hands to pick up plates and load them with food: tacos, rice, beans, tostadas, and the nuclear salsa that is Del Fuego’s specialty. But I can’t eat. I still taste that kiss, and I don’t want to taste anything else. I sit at the dining room table, poke a few grains of rice into the beans, and nibble the edge of a taco.

“Okay, everybody, I told you we are celebrating,” Mom begins cheerily. “Today is a landmark in the career of our future famous artist—that would be you, Vivian—because today, Vivian sold her first painting.”

“I did?” I sit up straight. “Which one?” Mom’s right. This is big. I’ve sold a few sketches and a watercolor, but never one of the bigger ones. They’ve been hanging in Déjà Vu for months.

“Jack came in this afternoon after you left and bought Dreamland.” Mom smiles at me, and a beaming Jackson Connor reaches across the table to hand me an envelope.

What is the word for simultaneously happy, stunned, and horrified? Is there one? Uneasy, I look in the envelope, and inside are three crisp $100 bills.

“No, no, this isn’t right.” I stare at Mom, confused. “That’s the smallest one. It’s only $150.”

“It’s the best one,” Jackson Connor assures everyone, “and I think it’s worth much more. I want to hang it in my new office as soon as the dust settles.”

He stares at me, all seventy-two teeth gleaming in the dining room light. A layer of expectation settles around the perfect, yacht-club wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. He’s waiting for me to say something grateful, and despite the envelope of cash in my hand, that look makes me feel like somehow he’s won and I’ve lost, when I don’t even know what the contest was.

A sour bubble of distrust percolates under my rib cage. Beneath the table, Lucas takes my left hand and squeezes it, as if he can feel that bubble threatening to rise and pop. Okay, okay… But Dreamland?

Deep breath. He’s not that bad. Remember the apology?

“Umm, wow. Thank you, Mr. Con—I mean, Jack. This is very nice of you.”

The satisfied glint in his eyes tells me I’m right.

Jackass Connor: 1, Vivian Night Hawk: 0.

I know from past experience that these tacos are delicious, but the next bite is nothing more than a thin, crispy cardboard shell filled with ground and shredded wet newspaper. The beans are just warmer, goopier newspaper with cheese on top. I finally quit forcing myself and marvel at Brian and Lucas, who scarf down their food while cheerful non-conversation ping-pongs around the dining room, bouncing off my defensive force field.

Jackass Connor exclaims over the salsa and makes jovial, clichéd threats about moving here permanently just for the Mexican food, and Brian chatters excitedly about Hamlet the Space Spider, but I notice Mom is not eating either. She is talking and smiling, her fork activity is fluid, and a molecule of rice or bean passes her lips from time to time, but her net calorie intake is probably in the single digits.

Brian wants to show Jackson Connor his experimental spider and leads him happily to his room, while Lucas and I clear the table. Mom shoos us away from the mess, and as she loads the dishwasher, he and I sit at the kitchen table. My head whirls with all of the things competing for my attention: Stargate, Brian, Dreamland, Dad, and Lucas’s right foot being an inch from my left.

The foot wins, at least for now, and I slide my left sneaker over just enough to touch the edge of his boot. He nudges back just the littlest bit, and I peek at his face, golden in the warm light of the lamp, and then look away to keep from melting right out of my chair.

“So, Vivian, how does it feel? Your first big sale!” Mom looks over, smiling.

“I don’t know. Pretty good, but also kind of weird,” I answer honestly.

“I felt weird when I sold my first sculpture,” Lucas remembers. “It was the idea that something of mine was living at someone else’s house—not as a gift or even with somebody I knew. Just a little piece of me, somewhere else. I got over that pretty quick, though.”

“Because of the money?” I push my shoe forward again so our feet are touching, matched up from heel to toe. Even through shoes, I feel him.

He smiles and pushes his foot gently against mine. “The money helps. But also, I decided it wasn’t about a piece of me being gone; it was about me being out there a little farther. It was adding to me, not subtracting. Does that make sense?”

Mom pauses in her counter wipe-down to nod approvingly. “Absolutely. Sharing your gift is empowering, whether there’s money involved or not.”

“I guess,” is my lame response. Well, I was distracted. I had no idea playing footsie was so mentally challenging. How is it possible that our two feet—not even actual feet, but shoes—barely touching can completely disrupt my brain circuitry?

Brian laughs, and Jackson Connor exclaims something as they step into the hall, returning to the dining room. Finally. I’d better get my scrambled thoughts together because as soon as he leaves, we are having that talk. Me, Mom, and Lucas.

Then I hear the distinctive, solid click-clack of bones being dumped on the table.

“Dominoes! Who’s in?” Brian calls happily. Uh-oh.

He learned regular, double-six dominoes before he was three, and when he was five, Mom got him a double-nine set. He mastered that in a week. Sometimes Mom will play him, but I gave up trying to win long ago. Now he has a new, unsuspecting player. Fresh meat.

Lucas looks at me, and I shrug. This could go one of two ways. Most likely, Brian will find every possible multiple of five before Jackson Connor even finishes looking at his dominoes and sweep every game. Or, if the man is actually good at this, it will take a little longer, but Brian will prevail. Either way, Jackson Connor isn’t leaving for a while.

A sigh escapes me, and Mom gives me a pointed look. “I’ll play.” She hangs up the dish towel and goes into the dining room. Irritation buzzes through me.

Well, goody for you.

Lucas’s phone buzzes with a text. “Una’s back,” he says quietly. “Want to go to my house?”

“Yes!”

Good. Maybe Una will have some answers. And if I don’t get out of here pretty quick, I’m going to scream.