TWELVE

I unlocked the door of my house, ready to endure whatever Mom was going to dish out. Since I was, like, three hours late and hadn’t bothered to call, it was going to be major. Good thing I had Finny as a buffer.

“Mom?” I said, looking around. “Hello?”

“Is she here?” Finny said.

“Nope,” I said, pulling him into the kitchen. “Let’s take advantage of it.” I grabbed a bag of carrots and cans of ginger ale out of the fridge and headed upstairs, Finny and Balzac following. I flopped on the bed, and Finny stood in front of the collection of black and white postcards, staring.

“Warhol and Nico,” he said, touching one of them. “That’s new. How is it I could notice that but totally miss that you hallucinate?”

“Have episodes,” I said.

“That’s not a scientific term,” Finny said. “Can we say hallucination, just for the sake of the experiment?”

I traced the circles on my bedspread with my finger. “As along as you understand that’s not what they are,” I said.

“You’re going to have to help me with that,” Finny said. “But first: when are we going to redo my room?”

I called my bedroom New York Meets Everywhere Else because it was full of found things like a sad-eyed dog painting, a floppy red felt hat and a collection of vintage sunglasses hanging on a ribbon on the wall. Anything that inspired me, basically. My favorite was a sculpture Dad made out of tin cans, bicycle gears and broken bits of an old Supremes 45 record. It sat next to his beanbag, which was now occupied by Finny, who flipped through a stack of cassettes on the floor.

“Want to listen to Black Holes vs. Sunday Afternoons?”

“Sure,” I said as he put it in my boom box. If we were going to discuss my mental state, we might as well have music to go along with it.

“So what are hallucinations like?” Finny asked, pressing Play and then sinking into the beanbag chair. “Do you see a bright light? Step through an opening?”

“It’s not Narnia,” I said, throwing a pillow at him.

“I don’t know,” he said, ducking. “That’s why I asked.”

I lay on my back and hung my head off the side of the bed, letting all the blood rush to it. Making my face turn red.

“Sometimes I get a headache,” I said. “Or hear things. My body reacts more post-hallucination than pre-hallucination.”

“So there are no warning signs,” he said.

“Nope,” I said. “Welcome to Randomland.”

“Does stress make them worse? Can you leave whenever you want? Can you control them at all?” Finny asked.

I remembered the time Dad tied cans of chili to his ankles with rope. When I asked him what he was doing, he said he was trying to weigh himself down so he could stay with me. At the time, I didn’t understand—I just knew that no matter what he did, he’d disappear anyway. I thought about that instead of the words that were coming out of my mouth.

“I can’t control them, but I’m not alone,” I said. “Dad couldn’t control his hallucinations, either.”

|||||||||||

I was jumping on my mini trampoline when it happened.

Bounce. Bounce. Up in the air, face to the sky, then face-to-face with Daddy holding a red paper parasol, floating in the air. He popped out of nowhere, like in cartoons, and then he landed on the grass.

“Hi, sweet pea,” he said. “Having fun?”

“Hi, Daddy,” I said, still bouncing. “Where did you come from?”

“Somewhere too far for little girls to go,” he said.

“Like Chinatown?”

“Something like that,” he said, twirling his parasol. “I brought this for you.”

I hopped off the trampoline and took the parasol, spinning it above my head.

“It’s magical,” he said. “They call it a Dream Director.”

“Why?”

“Because, according to legend, it directs your dreams.”

“How does it work?” I wanted to know how everything worked.

Dreams have a system, Daddy said. They started in the sky and moved toward our heads, but direction determined whether the dreams were good ones or bad ones. Good dreams were creative and happy and traveled like a triangle, sliding down the side of our heads and going into the ears. But bad dreams were angrier; they shot down out of the sky like rain and headed straight for the middle of the forehead.

My hands flew up to my own forehead. “Does it hurt?”

“Of course not, silly,” he said. “You’re asleep. But that’s why we have the Dream Director. We’ll hang it upside down over your bed so it can catch the bad dreams before they go in.”

“So I’ll only have good dreams?”

“I hope so,” he said, ruffling the top of my head. “Just because I travel a lot doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have the best dreams possible.”

“Why can’t I go with you?” I said, tracing my finger along the edge of the parasol. It was the color of cherries.

“Who would do your job?” he said, kissing my cheek. “You have to stay home so I have someone to bring souvenirs to.”

“So you can remember where you’ve been?”

“Yes, pumpkin pie,” he said, pulling me close and almost crushing the parasol. “But also so you can remember me.”

|||||||||||

Finny stood and looked around my room, his eyes stopping on the parasol in the corner.

“Is that it?”

“Yes,” I said. “One and the same. And no, I’m not going to hang it over my bed.”

Finny touched it and withdrew his hand quickly, like it was on fire.

“You know this changes the game, right?”

“Dad hallucinating or the fact that he brought something back?”

“Both,” Finny said. “But unless your hallucinations are hereditary, the souvenir thing is more important. If this were all happening in your mind, you wouldn’t bring something back.”

“I know,” I said. “Something like this.”

I took the whistle from around my neck and handed it to Finny.

“Whoa,” he said, grinning. “This is from an episode? It’s like holding history.”

Most people would have flipped out on me a long time ago, but Finny just rolled with every new thing I told him, even though each piece was stranger than the last. Maybe Mr. Maxim was right. Physics blew the doors of the mind wide open, giving you plenty of room to wander.

“And every event produces a souvenir?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “They help me know I’m back.” I always checked my pockets immediately.

“You know we have to talk about your dad,” he said.

I fell back on my bed. He still didn’t know exactly what happened after The Cure. Or Walt. I wondered how many more pieces he could hold before he broke.

“Of course,” I said, fake perking up. “Gathering data has to include everything, I get that. But don’t you have enough to work with for now?”

Finny turned the whistle over and over in his hand.

“Definitely,” he said, handing it back to me.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

Finny threw an arm around my shoulder.

“Of course,” he said. “I’m a scientist. I’m a fan of the unexplained.”

Which meant he was fan of me, too.

“SOPHIE SOPHIA!”

We froze as Mom’s voice floated up the stairs.