Chapter Twenty-Two

 

Two desolate hours later, the soggy mess of my life still refuses to melt into the mattress and take me with it. I have finally run out of tears, lying here motionless on the edge of my black hole of failure, when Brian flushes the toilet and I twitch a little. I’m a total dreamwalking disaster, but it seems I’m not completely paralyzed.

Get up. Do something! urges The Knot, which is also apparently not paralyzed.

Even if it’s wrong? My tired reply rings hollow in my own head.

Especially if it’s wrong! scoffs The Knot. Having my own sarcasm tossed back at me is double mockery.

I used up all of my wrongness last night. I sigh.

My phone buzzes, breaking the evil spell. Lucas. This might be the sign that I will live after all. Warm hope drips into my frozen veins, and I roll up onto one elbow, breaking the surface of this pool of misery with a deep breath. White crystal and gold dream-sparks scatter behind me, trailing my father’s voice. (Lucas can help. I don’t think they know about him.)

LW: Can’t sleep. Weird dream, not sure what it was, but my dad was there.

V: OMG, your dad? I saw mine too. What happened?

LW: It was real fast. He couldn’t stay. He wants me to find something, a picture. I don’t know exactly what but I know where to look.

V: I found Brian, but I don’t think it worked. My dad was there for a few minutes. Groping for words, this is as much as I can say about my catastrophic failure.

I yank my legs out from the tangled pile of sheets and swing them around to the floor. A pair of gold dream-sparks skips across my bed and disappears over the edge.

V: Lucas, our dads were in Stargate together for sure. He told me.

LW: See, we were right! My dad didn’t talk, just showed me in my head… ugh hard to explain, have to do some digging in his stuff. How’s your mom? Una’s worried.

There are noises in the kitchen, but they’re loud and Brian-y spoon and bowl sounds. No voices. No coffee smell. Wide awake now, I hop around the room, yanking on clean bikinis with one hand, texting with the other. This is the one and only advantage to having a dinosaur phone—actual keys instead of a screen.

V: Not much better. This isn’t like her at all. She’s never sick, never tired. She’s kind of confused too.

LW: Confused like how???

V: She wasn’t sure what day it was yesterday. It’s like she’s not completely awake, even when she’s awake.

LW: Like sleepwalking. Like my mom.

I freeze, staring at my phone. Like Elina? No. No, she’s not sleepwalking, just tired.

V: IDK. She says it’s a virus or something. Maybe it’s mono?

LW: Hope that’s it. OK gonna start digging. Hope I find what I’m looking for, whatever it is. See u in a while.

V: Me too. See u there.

I grab some clean jeans out of the drawer. My “KARMA IS A BITCH” shirt doesn’t tempt me; after last night, I need a less depressing message. How about OBEY? Maybe if I wear that one, the universe will listen. Then again, I don’t need the whole universe to listen—just my little brother. I can’t wait until he’s asleep again, either. I have to make him understand now.

I set a record for the fastest casual stroll into the kitchen, bunching my hair into a quick ponytail. Brian stands at the counter, dressed and ready to go, pouring milk on a huge bowl of Cinnamon Crunch.

“Hey, B. Where’s Mom?”

“Hey, V. Getting dressed, I think.” He stops pouring the milk just as it reaches the brim, then leans over and slurps up the excess before moving to the table, where a motionless Hamlet waits in his box. Meditating before his antigravity adventure, I guess.

I grab a bowl and shake out a pile of toasty cinnamon sugar-bombs, plucking one out for Ophelia. Even hamsters deserve Cinnamon Crunch now and then. But Mom would rather buy rat poison than something with this much sugary wonderfulness.

“Where did this stuff come from?”

Brian shrugs and answers with his mouth full. “I froo ’em in the cart an she ’idn’t hay any-hing.” He swallows, considering. “She must really be sick.” His brown eyes have faint dark smudges under them.

“You look tired. Did you sleep okay?” I plop down in the chair across from him, ignoring the hairy spider legs visible through the translucent Hamlet Hotel. “Did you have weird dreams or something?” I crunch my cereal, eyeing him. Please say yes. Please say, ‘I saw you and Dad, and we went from my dream to yours. I could do it again if I tried.’

“You know I never dream,” he reminds me. “I woke up a couple of times, though. I thought I heard someone talking.”

“That’s funny, so did I. What were they saying?” Maybe he heard us. Maybe he heard enough.

But he shrugs. “I don’t know. Someone wanted to go somewhere or something. What did you hear?” His face is solemn, like he really wants to know, and as he looks at me, a spark of gold seems to dart through his brown eyes. This may be my best chance.

This may be your only chance, The Knot reminds me.

“I thought I heard someone calling me. It almost sounded like… Dad. And you were in it too.” I hold my anxious breath for a second. I can’t tell if this means anything to him. Better keep going. “Just one of those dream things. But it reminds me of something Dad told me. If you hear someone calling you in a dream, you can go to them. He said to just push up and fly with the sound. Be a hawk.”

He considers this, kicking the chair leg with his sneaker and chewing. “Can you do that?”

“Sometimes. I was trying to last night.”

“What were you trying last night?” Ninja Mom’s voice arrives just before she appears in the hall entry, yawning and cutting off any further attempt to reach Brian.

Her wild hair is subdued into a thick braid, and she’s wearing an old, flowered blouse over capri jeans.

“I thought we’d get some gardening done today, so come home right after your class. Are we out of coffee?” She sounds better than she has all week. A bubble of relief lifts off my chest, reminding me of just how worried I’ve been.

“I was going to prep the wall for the mural today.”

“Maybe not. Doppler Dan says it’s supposed to rain.” She walks unsteadily to the counter and picks up the Cinnamon Crunch. “Where did this come from?” She turns toward me, but her eyes are out of focus. “Did you buy this?”

“No.” I see why Mom is walking so oddly. She has one ancient, checkered Van on one foot, and a wedge-heeled leather sandal on the other. “Mom, your shoes.”

“You know I don’t want you two eating this stuff. It’s just garbage.” She picks up the box of evil bliss and waves it around.

“You got it yesterday at Albertsons, remember?” Brian pipes up. He notices her shoes and then looks at me, uncertain, but I’m absolutely certain. Something is seriously wrong with her. That happy bubble pops in my chest and sinks back down, adding another layer to The Knot.

“Mom, you have on the wrong shoes. Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m fine, Vivian,” Mom announces. “I am finished being sick, and I have work to do. Now, I know there’s coffee around here somewhere.”

She hobbles across the kitchen—up-down, up-down—a walking hiccup. She opens the oven door and sets the cereal box down firmly on the rack, then hesitates, frowning. Turning toward Brian, Mom stares at something behind his left shoulder, something no one but Mom can see. Brian’s round eyes dart from her to me then back to her.

“We went to Albertson’s yesterday? Didn’t we get coffee?”

“No, just cereal and milk and some fruit.” He drops his gaze to a tiny splat of milk on the table and concentrates on rubbing it in with his finger.

She opens the silverware drawer and rummages around. “Well, that’s ridiculous. I would never forget coffee.”

She’s right. She never would. Or put a box of cereal in the oven, or wear two different shoes, or stare off into space like some kind of zombie, hisses The Knot.

“You’re still tired from being sick.” Panic rises in my throat, but I swallow it back down. “I’ll get some on my way home, okay?” I stand up, collect our bowls, and glance at Brian. “How about I walk Brian to the bus while you change your shoes?” I point to her mismatched feet.

Mom finally looks down, bewilderment rippling across her face. “Well, that’s not going to work. For heaven’s sake. Vivian, why don’t you walk Brian to the bus, and I’ll go change these gloves.” We are silent as she wobbles down the hall and closes her door.

“I guess Mom’s still sick.” His troubled gaze follows me to the sink.

“I’m pretty sure.” I rinse the bowls and put them in the dishwasher, trying to hide my shaking hands. “But she’s a little better, right? She just needs some more rest. You ready?” He nods. “Hamlet ready?”

He picks up the box and peeks through one of the holes. “You ready in there?” The spider waves a leg. “All systems go,” he reports. “Wait, I need my thumb drive,” he adds, and darts through the back hall to his room.

I grab my backpack and peek in Mom’s room. The mismatched shoes are still on, and she is almost asleep again. I carefully slip the shoes off and kiss her on the cheek. “We’re going now. See you later. Get some sleep, okay?”

She nods, already sinking down into the twilight zone. “Love you,” she whispers.

Tears prickle my eyes, but hers are closed, and she can’t see them. “Love you too, Mom.”

Brian is petting Rufus in the driveway when I wheel my bike out of the garage. Two cat tails stick out of his backpack like an old TV antenna, and Hamlet’s box is hooked to the back with a small bungee cord. Rufus bumps his big orange head against my leg, and the three of us walk past the neighbor’s house in silence while my heart and brain are chasing each other in circles, like the clickety-buzz coming from my bike wheels.

I can’t shake the vacant look in Mom’s eyes, or the feeling that this isn’t the flu, or mono, or any other normal virus. Is this what Lucas’s mom had? When he first told me about her, I couldn’t imagine anything that would make a person so disoriented they would walk into an ocean and drown, but now I’m not so sure.

“What’s wrong with Mom?” Brian blurts out as we reach the corner of Valley Road. Rufus has turned back toward his house, stalking a butterfly as it flutters down the side of the road. “She should go to the doctor.”

“She’ll be all right. It’s only been a couple of days,” I lie, pretending Mom hasn’t been careening away from normal for over a week. No cars are coming, so we trot across and head for the next turn that leads to the bus stop.

“No, she was weird last week too. She wasn’t sleeping all the time, but still. She didn’t hardly eat anything, and she kept telling me stuff like ‘be careful.’ Like you,” he remembers and shrugs to shift his backpack a little. “I think it’s African trypanosomiasis.”

“African what?”

“Sleeping sickness. I was reading about it last night. You get it from tsetse flies. Maybe she got bit.”

“Tsetse flies? Aren’t they just in Africa or Brazil or something?”

“Yeah, but they could get here by accident on a plane or a ship. Like that spider in Arachnophobia.” Brian was probably the only kid in America who watched that movie and rooted for the poisonous spiders.

“Maybe.” Inspiration strikes. “Hey, you know what? There was a big web in that dream last night. Huge! I thought it was a bridge, but it was a big gold web, and we were up on it.” Okay, not very subtle, but there’s no time for subtle.

“Cool! Were you scared? You hate spiders.”

“Scared? No, not really.” Scared doesn’t even begin to describe the suffocating terror of being stuck up there, knowing I couldn’t bring my little brother to safety. “It was just a web. No spiders.”

“What did I do in it?”

“You were holding onto my hand real tight. We were going to fly. I was telling you to hang on and stay with me no matter what. Like Dad said, be a hawk.”

He smiles up at me as we reach the last turn. “You’re the expert. If we ever have to fly out of a dream web, I promise to hang on.”

“You swear?” I stop walking. I bore into his eyeballs with my most intense laser stare. “If you have to leave a bad dream, you call me, and I’ll fly you out. I’m not kidding, Brian, promise me you will.”

He goes still, his eyes serious as he raises his right hand. “I solemnly swear we will soar through the air.”

My relief that maybe he got it, maybe it will be okay, wavers as he drops his hand, laughing, and continues down the sidewalk. I scan the deserted street, half a block down to the stop. Brian’s bus isn’t there yet.

“Whoa, there, wait! Security breach. Hamlet’s trying to escape.” Hamlet’s yellow prison is slipping out of the bungee cord, and the flimsy plastic latch is partially open. I snap it shut with a loud click and reposition the box. “Guess he’s rethinking this zero-gravity thing.”

“Don’t worry. You’re going to love it,” Brian assures the would-be fugitive from over his shoulder.

“Hamlet smells weird.”

“He ate a lot of crickets yesterday. He has gas,” he informs me solemnly, then giggles. “You smelled a spider fart.”

Spider farts. Great.

My phone buzzes.

LW: OMW. I found a picture of Jackson Connor.

A picture of Jackson Connor? Where? The growling rumble of the bus drifts from around the corner.

“The bus is coming, so you can just go from here. Remember what I said.”

“Okay, V, see you later.” He marches toward the bench, then stops and turns. “Look up sleeping sickness! I’m pretty sure that’s it.”

I wave, then hop on my bike and pedal furiously to Community College. As soon as I get to the parking lot, I flip open my phone to call Lucas.

No answer. His truck isn’t at the welding dock. I decide to wait under the cottonwood tree and intercept him when he gets here. For a second, I think I hear someone say my name—the way sound sometimes echoes in a crowd—but it’s just the wind and the traffic playing tricks on me. I feel better already. Obviously, Lucas found something—a clue, a connection, maybe even an answer

And he’ll be here any minute.