The sky was getting darker. Headlights swept through the gray-and-white streets, making my vision smear. Behind me, I could hear a soft, almost inaudible growl. I glanced back.
The black car. Just a block away.
“He’s right behind us!” I begged my legs to move faster. Faster.
“Jaye?” Rob’s voice seemed to dwindle with each word, like he was on a raft that was quickly drifting away. “Jaye, hang on! There’s . . .”
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t outrun it. The black car crawled up beside me. From the corner of my eye, I could see its crushed black hood, its shattered windshield, flecked with blood.
No. NO. I squeezed my eyes shut.
Blindly, I pounded over an icy patch. My feet skidded beneath me. For a heartbeat, I was sure I was going to fall. I threw out my arms. My vision speckled with dirty black flecks, then narrowed to the beam of one shaky spotlight.
He’d warned me. He had warned me.
“Jaye, wait!” Even farther now. “Stop!”
I couldn’t answer. The ache had sealed my mouth shut.
My lungs screamed as I broke back into a run. The black car surged to keep pace. Don’t look. Don’t look.
Someone was still calling my name.
I didn’t turn.
The sky was deep purple now, and the snow caught in my eyes, and my vision was a blurry pinprick. It could have been anyone. It could have been anything.
When my foot hit another patch of ice, everything went still.
Very slowly, I floated backward, and the slushy pavement reached up to catch me.
The ache that couldn’t swell any bigger cracked open like an egg on the rim of a bowl, and the darkness inside it broke free.
CHAPTER 21
I could smell the roses.
The syrupy scent slid down my throat and into my lungs. Even without looking, I could tell they were red.
Sometimes I got roses after a play. Mom brought them now and then. Dad had given me roses just once, after coming to see me in the chorus of A Christmas Carol at the Guthrie. “Here you go, Drama Queen,” he’d said, handing them over. He obviously hadn’t known what else to say. To him, it looked like I’d just stood around at the back of a patch of floor, wearing a poofy dress and oily makeup, pretending to be a guest at a party where only one person talked out loud at a time.
Roses.
Red roses.
So the show must be over. I had the right kind of empty feeling, that sort of silvery sadness that comes after the curtain call. What play had we done? I dug for memories. Romeo had been there. Several fairies. And Juliet’s nurse. And Hamlet.
Wait.
Wait.
When I opened my eyes, there was only fog. Everything was white and edgeless. No stage. No actors. Just one gigantic blank page.
I blinked again. Dimensions started to form.
A narrow white bed. My feet, under a thin cotton sheet, poking up like two tiny mountains in the distance. Plastic railings on either side. To my right, a little table. A box of tissues. A plastic cup with a bendy straw. A vase of red roses.
Against the white room, they stood out like wounds.
Red petals.
Blood on the snow.
Red droplets on a black stage.
Red.
Red—
I sucked in a breath.
“Jaye?” said a voice.
Someone was sitting in the chair to my left.
I turned my head. The motion set off a grumble of pain that traveled down my neck, out through my arms, into my legs.
The person in the chair stood up.
Square chin. Hazel eyes. Wavy gold hair.
My body jerked back.
My right arm was trapped, taped to a cluster of tubes. My legs refused to move at all.
Pierce stepped closer. He lifted my left hand from its spot on the blankets.
It took every scrap of strength I had, but I yanked my arm back out of his grip.
“Jaye,” he said again. His empty hand hovered in midair. “It’s me. Pierce.”
“No.” The voice that came out of me was weird and raspy and about an octave too low. “Not you.”
Pierce’s hand fell. He blinked down at me, confused.
The air behind him rippled.
Someone stood beside him, an arm around Pierce’s shoulders.
“Having now provided a gentleman of noble parentage,” said Shakespeare, patting Pierce’s arm, “youthful, and nobly trained; stuffed, as they say, with honorable parts—”
“I know what you’re trying to do,” I growled in my weird new voice. “You think you’re being so clever, but I see it. But maybe I don’t want that. Maybe I don’t want the right thing.”
“And how can we know what is right?” asked Ophelia, sitting beside me on the mattress. She touched my arm. Her hand was like a dead eel. “We try to obey them . . .” She trailed off, her eyes sliding away. “I hope all will be well. We must be patient. And yet I cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him in the cold ground . . .”
I yanked my arm away. “Don’t,” I whispered. “Don’t say that.”
“Say what?” asked Pierce.
Puck clambered onto my bed. The fairy crouched above me, squatting on my chest like a nightmare. When I looked close, I could see that his eyes had no pupils, only thousands of tiny, spinning, flickering lights. “Here she lies, curst and sad,” he chanted. “Cupid is a knavish lad, thus to make poor females mad.”
“I’m not crazy,” I breathed. “Just go away. All of you.”
Pierce moved tentatively toward me again. “Jaye . . .”
They were closing in. Shakespeare. Juliet’s nurse, who was fawning over Pierce again. The fairies, the witches, Hamlet with that goddamned broken skull.
“Get away from me!” I screamed the words now. My entire body recoiled, trying to climb out of bed, up the wall, anywhere. “Get away!”
The door clanged open. People in blue uniforms rushed inside, cutting through the crowd. They surrounded me, coming closer and closer, until even Puck and Ophelia began to dissolve.
Behind them, a few steps from the bed, I could see my mother. She was standing very still, as if she was afraid to come any closer. Her eyes were sad. Sad and horrified.
Pierce moved toward her, putting one arm around her shoulders.
The room became an unglued collage. My arms and legs shredded into four separate fragments. My hands, shoving other hands away, tore into two more. I could barely feel the cold, stinging point that slid into my arm somewhere very far away from the rest of me.
With my last speck of energy, I lashed out, my knuckles connecting with the vase of roses. The vase smashed against the wall. Droplets of water showered me, melting holes in the snowy white blanket. Petals tumbled down. The walls dribbled toward the floor, dissolving like soap suds rinsed from a window.
And then there was nothing left.
Nothing but the bed, with me in it.
Empty stage, I thought. Empty stage. Empty stage . . .
Until at last even the bed dissolved, and then my body, and finally, what was left of the light.
CHAPTER 22
The smell of coffee burned through the fog.
I opened my eyes. The light behind the plastic blinds was bright, and the white walls and bed and floor looked solid.
I rolled my head to the right, following the smell. The ache rolled with it.
Sadie sat in one of the vinyl chairs.
She was wearing a dark green sweater and a silvery scarf, and her red-gold hair was wadded up into a loose knot. She looked up from her AP History textbook. “You’re awake?”
“. . . I’m awake.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Not . . . I don’t know.” I t
ried to lift my right hand to my head, but it was bound to the railing with a Velcro strap. IV tubes trailed from a flap inside my elbow. “Just . . . fuzzy.”
“You know where you are?”
“Hospital.” My voice was still rough and strange.
Sadie set her cardboard coffee cup on the bedside table, next to two red roses in a plastic vase. “Do you remember what happened?”
I stared at the roses. “. . . Skiing accident.”
“After that,” she said briskly. “After you went back to school.”
“Oh.” I tried to touch my head again. The restraints jerked, and I lifted my left arm instead. The scar on my forehead was right where I’d left it. “I thought maybe the dream was . . . just . . .” I dropped the arm again. “How long have I been here?”
“Two days. This time.”
“When do I get to leave?”
Sadie’s mouth tightened. She let out an angry breath through her nose. “They’re doing some more tests tomorrow. If those look okay, then I guess you get to come home. Again.” She crossed her arms, looking like the lawyer I was sure she’d be in a few years. “Do you remember what happened that put you back here?”
“Is this a test?”
“I’m supposed to help keep you oriented.” She leaned back in her chair. Her voice was clipped. Sharp. “Plus, I’d just really like to hear it from you. So?”
I swallowed. The hospital smell was starting to crawl out from under the scents of the coffee and the roses. “I was walking home . . .”
“You were walking home?” There was no question in Sadie’s question. “Even though you were supposed to get a ride with Pierce. Even though you promised you wouldn’t do anything stupid.”
“I know. But I was . . .” I followed the fragments. Midsummer rehearsal. Rob, on the other side of a snowy street, turning toward me. Starting to smile. I felt myself start to smile back. “I was meeting somebody.”
“Somebody?”
“. . . Rob Mason.”
“Rob Mason,” Sadie repeated. “That guy you’re not supposed to see? The one who got expelled after less than a week of school?”
“Suspended,” I mumbled.
Sadie’s mouth looked pinched. Her nose looked pinched. Her whole face looked pinched. “So you snuck out of rehearsal to meet him instead of riding with Pierce, like you promised Mom you would do.”
I looked down at my hand resting on the blankets. An ID bracelet was taped crookedly around my wrist. “Where is Mom?”
“I made her go to her office. She’s missed too much work already. You know what her boss is like.” Sadie met my eyes. “And it’s better for her not to be here every single minute.” She folded her hands on top of the textbook. “Back to Monday afternoon. What happened while you were walking to meet this guy?”
“Pierce . . . He drove up behind us. So we ran. I ran.”
“You ran.” Sadie’s voice got even sharper.
“I know. It was stupid. But he kept chasing us. It was like—he was trying to run us down.”
“Jaye.” Sadie gave a weird little laugh. “Pierce saved you.”
“What?”
“Pierce is the one who found you lying there. He’s the one who got you to the hospital.”
“Sadie. No.” Fog started to seep out of the walls again. “He was chasing us. What he did on the stage—to Rob—and his car—and I guess he beat up some guy at a swim meet—”
Sadie frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Some guy from another school. I—I heard he had to get surgery or something . . .”
“Wow. ‘Some guy.’ It sounds like you’ve got all the facts perfectly straight.”
“No, this—I was there, Sadie.” The crushed black car. The icy road. “I was—”
“Pierce noticed that you’d left rehearsal early,” Sadie interrupted, in a loud, carefully paced voice. “He went looking for you, and he found you lying on the sidewalk on Twenty-third Street. He called for help. He called Mom. Then he drove here behind the ambulance and made sure you were safe.”
“But . . . what . . .” My thoughts were boiling. “That’s not what . . . No. I don’t remember—”
“I’m sure you don’t. You were only half-conscious, I guess. He said you were saying some strange things.”
“What about . . .” Steam. Fog. Snow. “What about Rob? Where did he go?”
Sadie shook her head. “You were alone when Pierce found you.”
“What?” My skull was going to shatter. “No. No. He was there. He was with me.”
“Then I don’t know.” She gave a small, bitter shrug. “I guess he took off.”
He took off. He took off?
He took off.
Gone.
If he’d ever really been there.
I was suddenly hollow. All the organs and blood and warmth removed. Nothing left but the bones holding up my skin, and the ache. The ache. That was all.
The room was quiet for a minute. More fog crept in, softening the silence that pressed around us.
“You do this, you know,” Sadie finally said. “You take a situation, and you twist it around and build it up in your head until it’s this huge, awful, dramatic thing.”
Indignation brushed a little of the fog away. “When have I done that?”
She widened her eyes at me. “Always. How unfair your teachers are. How mean people are to your friends. How directors always play favorites. How Pierce is some horrible monster. How Dad was so mean and biased and angry with you—”
“He was angry with me. All the time. Maybe you never saw it, because you were the perfect daughter.” The words came faster, slurring a little. “Or maybe you’re the one who doesn’t remember right, because you don’t want to.”
“Jaye—”
“Sadie. It happened. It got worse and worse. There was something going on at the end. Something big.”
Sadie’s eyebrows tugged together. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t you remember how all his stuff disappeared? How he wasn’t home anymore, even on weekends? He completely stopped speaking to me. He didn’t even come to my very last show before . . .” A lump was growing in my throat. “He just—wasn’t there. I think Pierce was right. I think Dad had moved out.”
“That’s insane,” said Sadie sharply. “You think Mom and Dad would have split up? Why? They were perfect together. They never even had a fight.”
“They did. They just hid it.” I forced the words out. “And I think—I know it was because of me.”
“Jaye.” Sadie’s face was a mask. “Why are you doing this?”
“I don’t know.” I swallowed. The lump was still there, heavy and dangerous. “Sometimes I feel like . . . like maybe he’s still trying to tell me what to do. To make the right choice. And I still keep failing. I know it’s too late. It’s way too late. But someone’s still trying to tell me . . .” I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m imagining that too.” I gave a little laugh, and the lump almost choked me. “Would that be worse? God. I can’t even keep track of who’s right beside me. In the real world.”
I reached out into the space beside the bed.
Sadie took my hand and squeezed it.
“I’m horrible,” I whispered.
“You are not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“You are not horrible, Jaye.” Sadie squeezed my hand again. “You’re just an oversensitive, irresponsible weirdo. But we still like you.”
I couldn’t answer. I just held her hand tighter.
“You know what?” said Sadie, after a second. “You should talk to Pierce. If you want to be nicer to the people who are actually beside you . . .” She swung my hand gently back and forth. “Want me to bring him in?”
My body jolted. “What?”
“He
’s here.” She nodded toward the door. “He’s been here ever since rehearsal got out.”
“He’s outside?”
“In the waiting room. With how you reacted when you saw him yesterday, he wasn’t sure he should come in.”
Ophelia. Puck. Pierce. Red petals. The smashed black car.
“I’ve never seen him so upset,” Sadie was going on. “Seriously. Even with the Dad stuff. I guess last night he sat with Mom and cried.”
Pierce Caplan crying. I couldn’t even picture it. My brain sent up an image of the tragedy mask with Pierce’s wavy hair. “. . . Why?”
“Because. He blames himself. For making you mad at him with that fight, for not keeping you safe in the first place . . .” Sadie’s tone softened. “It’s kind of sweet, actually.”
I looked at the vase with its two red roses.
Pierce Caplan had cried over me. Pierce Caplan was bringing me flowers.
I should have felt something. The thoughts just brushed across me, whipping away like snowflakes. The only thing I wanted to hold on to was that moment on the snowy street, when Rob lifted my hand to his lips.
But the memory was smeared and blurry now, like someone had reached out and run their fingers through it.
Fog. Headache. He took off. Pierce saved you.
You were wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Another thought, one that had been waiting in the background, teetered forward. Two more days. More tests. More time.
“Sadie . . .” I began. “Do you know what’s happening with the play?”
Sadie hesitated. Her eyes flicked away from me. “You should talk to Mom about that.”
An icicle started to drip in my stomach. “Am I out?”
“Jaye.”
“Fine. Okay. I’ll wait.”
“Good.” Sadie got to her feet. “Should I let Pierce in?”
“Oh.” I tried to sit up straighter. “Yes. I guess.”
“Wait.” Sadie leaned forward and fluffed my hair with her fingers. “There. That’s better.”
From the doorway, she turned back to me. “Be nice to him when he comes in, or he might fall apart again.”
“I will.”
I pulled the sheet up over my wrinkled GUTHRIE THEATER T-shirt. Fluffed my hair again. The scar, the shaved spot. Still ugly. Still there.
Dreamers Often Lie Page 21
