“Where were you last night?” Pilar asks. I can’t answer for a second, because she looks so wrecked.
“I was … out,” I say.
“Liar!” She’s in tears. “I called your house. Your mom said you were sick.”
“That’s what I meant,” I say. “Pilar, are you okay?”
“Did you hear what happened? Down the hill? What the hell, Dylan!” She’s clutching her books to her chest, her knuckles white from gripping them so tightly.
“I did hear about it, but that’s down the hill. It wasn’t up here.”
“Bullshit! Stop lying! Why are you always lying?”
I step back.
“Why do you pretend like everything’s okay? It’s not okay, Dylan! He’s back! He’s coming back and you just refuse to admit it!”
“I’m sorry,” I say, reaching out to her. She pulls away from me.
“I’m never going to sleep again, Dylan.”
“Yes, you will,” I say. “They’re going to catch him.”
“Are my eyes abnormally big?” she asks.
“No,” I lie. Her bloodshot eyes are almost bulging out of her head.
“Because they feel big. I haven’t slept, Dylan. I can’t sleep. What if he gets Gracie?” She lets go of her books, dropping them to the floor, and grabs my shoulders. “What if he gets my Gracie?”
“Hi, guys,” Cate says, coming up behind Pilar. Cate motions to me with her eyes, flicking them off to the side, anxious for us to get away so she can pepper me with questions. This morning, when I called her, I didn’t let her talk at all, I just told her not to come over this morning, that I needed some time with my mom.
I ignore the way she’s now pulling lightly on the sleeve of my sweatshirt, trying to pull me away, saying, “Dylan, come with me to the bathroom.”
I move out of her reach, my eyes still on Pilar.
Cate sighs at me and then looks at Pilar. “Oh my gosh, Pilar, are you okay?”
Pilar is trying not to cry. “Dylan,” she says.
“Oh, no! Don’t cry, Pilar,” Cate says, pulling Pilar into a hug. Pilar resists, trying to push away, but it’s like she has no strength, and her arms end up hanging limply at her sides. She collapses against Cate, crying.
Why didn’t I think of hugging her?
“I know, I know,” Cate whispers, stroking Pilar’s hair.
Pilar is crying, and I can hear that she’s saying “Stop.”
Cate looks at me over Pilar’s shaking shoulder. Something in Cate’s face. Happiness? At what? Being needed?
“Pilar, would you do me a favor?” Cate says, in a voice so comforting it makes my skin crawl. “Would you come down to the nurse with me? They let you take naps there. Maybe you’ll feel better if you get some sleep.”
Cate smiles at me. “Dylan will come.”
Pilar finally pulls herself away from Cate, and reaches for my hand. Hers is cold. “Okay, let’s go.”
“Good girl,” Cate says, taking Pilar’s other hand. Pilar doesn’t object. I don’t think she even notices.
When we get to the nurse, Cate convinces her to let us “tuck Pilar in.” With Pilar curled under the blanket, looking angry even in her sudden sleep, I turn to follow Cate out of the room. Something clenches the back of my leg, and I turn. Pilar’s staring at me hard with glassy eyes. “Stay here,” she says, giving a tug where she’s squeezing my leg.
“Oh, okay,” I say. I sit down next to her on the cot. Cate makes a move to do the same and Pilar wrinkles her lip. “Not you, princess.”
I look at Pilar, and then at Cate.
“Sure. I have to go to class anyway. Feel better, Pilar,” she says, and I can hear her voice wavering. It’s not till she’s out of the room that Pilar lets go of my leg and lets her head fall back onto the pillow.
“I can’t sleep with all her clucking,” she says, her eyes closed, her face relaxing into a mask of sleep. “Just sit here.”
“What?”
She wrinkles her brow, but keeps her eyes closed. “I don’t care. Sit here and maybe I’ll fall asleep.”
She actually snores. A real, perfectly formed snore that has me clapping my hand over my face to keep from laughing and waking her up. I start to get up and she stirs a little. I’m stuck, which makes me immediately have to pee more than I’ve ever had to pee in my life. I wait a loooooong twenty seconds and then try to get up again. Pilar wrinkles her nose in her sleep. I look up and see the school nurse watching me from where she’s doing paperwork at her desk. She comes over and reaches out her hand, saying in a voice I fear is far too loud, “It’s all right. Back to class. She’ll be out for a while.” I let her pull me up, and Pilar stirs but doesn’t wake. At the entrance to the nurse’s office I ask, “Is she down here a lot?”
She looks at me brightly and doesn’t answer. I don’t make her recite her oath of nurse-patient privilege. I just leave.
I wake up with a gasp just after two a.m. and reach for the phone.
I dial a number. It rings three times before a sleepy voice answers. “Hello?”
“I had a nightmare,” I say, my voice sounding small in the dark of my room. “I didn’t know who else to call.”
“You had a nightmare?” Cate whispers. “About that little boy in the desert?”
“No. I was walking down the hall of the police station, toward the interrogation room, and there’s a mother there, and she sees me walking toward her and somehow she knows that I’m there to see her dead child, and the mother starts screaming and screaming and screaming.”
“Holy crow” Cate whispers. “That gave me goose bumps.”
I hold my own arm out into the glow from my alarm clock. “Me too,” I say.
“That means,” Cate says quietly through a yawn, “that our goose bumps are psychically connected. What number am I thinking of?”
“It’s three in the morning. I can’t think of a number,” I say.
“Oh my God!” Cate croaks.
“What? Were you thinking of the number three?”
“No, nine, which is a multiple of three. Okay, guess again.”
I stretch out under the covers. “Ummm, seven.”
Cate’s quiet for a second. “If by seven you mean four, then you’re totally right! Guess again.”
“Um … four,” I say.
“… teen. Fourteen. Totally right again!” she whisper-yelps. “Okay, let me try you. You are thinking of the number … ten.”
“Nope.”
“Oh, come on! Eleven?”
“Nope.”
“Four?”
“Nope,” I say, laughing into my pillow.
“Three?” She sighs. “Onetwothreefourfivesixseven—”
“Seven,” I say.
“Dude,” Cate says quietly, “I’m totally psychic.”
“Totally.” I giggle. “I’m going back to sleep.”
“Okay, me too. Hey, Dylan?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you dream about them? The kids you’ve seen?”
Her question makes the dark get darker, and my mom’s room seems very far away from my own.
I swallow and whisper, “Sometimes.”
“How come you don’t talk about them more, then? I mean, to me. You can talk to me about it, you know?”
“I know I can,” I say.
“Good!” she says cheerily. “See you tomorrow. Happy Friday!”
We hang up and I pull my covers over my head.
At first I thought that Cate would keep my secret. She would tuck it into her heart and hide it, like I do. But she didn’t. She is biting my secret in half to see what it is made of.
There’s something I didn’t tell her, though. I knew what numbers she was thinking of.