Alma
Page 11
CHAPTER THREE
Sammy could hardly wait to get to bed to see if the dream card really worked the way Clio said it would. So as soon as he had finished his arithmetic homework, he said goodnight to his mom and dad.
“What?” Dad exclaimed. “It’s only 7:30.”
Sammy looked at his watch. It was working again. It said 7:30.
“Are you feeling sick?” Mom asked, a look of concern on her face. “Come here and let me feel your forehead.”
“No, I’m feeling fine,” Sammy said. “Honest. I’m tired.”
His parents exchanged curious glances as Sammy climbed the stairs. In his room, he quickly put on his pyjamas. He opened the big red envelope and removed the card from inside.
“It looks pretty ordinary to me,” he said out loud.
The card was white, with faint blue lines on it, almost exactly like the ones Dad wrote recipes on. He had a whole box of them beside the stove. On the lines, people had signed their names and written the date. “Dylan,” Sammy read, “April 26. Megan, November 30.” And nearer the bottom of the first column, “Brendan, April 16.”
Sammy hesitated before writing his name, for he was still doubtful, but he had promised. So he signed in black ink under the last name on the list with his favourite fountain pen.
He slipped the card under his pillow, climbed into bed, pulled up the covers and turned out the lamp. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to make himself go to sleep. But it wouldn’t work. Thoughts marched around inside his mind, tramping up and down, making an awful racket. After a while, Sammy gave up trying to force himself to dream. And right away, he fell asleep.
And what a dream he had.
Sammy found himself, in his bathing suit, standing on a long, bouncy diving board made of licorice. He jounced once, then plunged into a lake of sweet dark chocolate. He didn’t need to open his mouth—he could taste through his skin as he swam on his back. He came to an island mounded high with pineapples, mangoes and plums, peaches and cherries, oranges and tangerines, grapes and raspberries. Sammy crawled from the lake onto a beach of granulated sugar. He bathed in cola, then ginger ale, then root beer, all the while tasting, tasting, through every pore. He slid down a slippery chute of toffee, landing in a bin of whipped cream. He ran along a nougat road, skidded through strawberry jam, and bumped into a table loaded with cakes, custards and pastries, tarts and jellies, flans and puddings, eclairs and turnovers and doughnuts.
In the morning, Sammy reluctantly got out of bed. In the bathroom mirror, he noticed a smudge of caramel frosting on his lip. He licked it off. It tasted good.
“Sammy! Breakfast!” his mother called up to him.
“Not today, Mom,” he said. “I’m not hungry.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Sammy was in trouble again.
Over the past weeks, Sammy had visited the Dream-ary every Saturday morning. It was easy, because as soon as he passed through the door at the end of the dark hall in the library basement, time stood still. He could take as long as he wanted to choose a dream. When he returned to the library, no one even knew he had been gone.
One day after school let out, Sammy had raced home on his bike, shooting down the street, swooping into the driveway as fast as he could without losing control. As he approached the garage’s double door he thought, Mom and Dad will be happy that I remembered to put my bike away. He carefully aimed the bike to pass exactly between his dad’s new car and the garage wall.
But.
He had forgotten the carrier his dad had mounted on the bike behind his seat.
The carrier that held his backpack.
The carrier that was a little bit wider than his handlebars.
Screeeeeeeee!
Now Sammy waited in his room while his mom and dad decided how to punish him. He didn’t have to wait long.
“Sammy! Come down here,” his mother called.
“Now!” added his father.
Sammy stood in the kitchen before his parents, whose faces were dark and stern, whose arms were crossed on their chests, whose mouths were turned down at the corners.
“No more bicycle!” said his mother.
“Come home right after school every day and stay home,” commanded his father.
“But—,” Sammy tried.
“No buts!” said both of his parents together.
It was two weeks before Sammy got permission to go to the library again. He walked along the street on Saturday morning, kicking a can along the gutter, gloomy and grumpy.
Bet my grandparents didn’t treat them like that, Sammy thought. Bet my parents wish they could get rid of me. Bet they never wanted me, he concluded, not for the first time.
In the Dream-ary, Sammy passed row on row of boxes. “Sports.” “Treats.” “Friends.” Tried them already, he said to himself. “Hobbies.” “Pets.” He couldn’t decide what to borrow today. Maybe I’ll borrow desserts again, he decided. He knew exactly where to find the box. It was up a ladder to the gallery and along a bit.
But as he walked down the row, he brushed against an overloaded table, sending a box crashing to the floor.
“What noise was that, whatwhatwhat?” called Clio from high atop a ladder at the back of the shop.
“Er, nothing,” Sammy replied, picking up the envelopes and stuffing them back into the box as quickly as he could. But one card had slipped from its envelope and flipped underneath the table. Sammy meant to leave it where it had fallen, but he decided that would be rude, so he got down on his knees, crawled through the thick dust under the table, picked up the card and carefully, scrabbling backwards like a lobster, returned to the narrow aisle between the tables. He stood up.
And that was when he looked at the card. “CHILDREN” was stamped on the front.
Why would anyone want to dream about children? Sammy wondered. He turned the card over. There were lots of signatures, so many the card was almost full. Sammy noticed “125” on the top right-hand corner.
Wow, he thought. This is the 125th card for children dreams. The dessert card is only number 34. A lot of people wanted to dream about children. He ran his eye over the names.
And saw some writing he recognized.
His mother’s name, and right beneath it, his father’s. And their names were repeated. The dates showed that they had borrowed the card on many occasions—before Sammy was born.
Beginning where his heart was, Sammy felt a wonderful warm glow spread through him, and he said to himself, Mom and Dad did want me.
THE END
Alma closed the book and slowly turned it over in her hands. She ran her fingers along the spine and read the words on the cover once again. Her mother sat across the kitchen table from her, beaming with pride, the rope of lustrous chestnut hair resting on the threadbare collar of her dress.
“You know what, my girl?” Clara said.
“What, Mom?”
“I don’t think you’re twoderempty.”
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Maya Mavjee for her support of this and other projects, to Meg Taylor for her enthusiastic and valued assistance, to John Pearce for his guiding hand and, as always, to Ting-xing Ye.
About the Author
William Bell is the award-winning author of eleven books for young people, including Zack, which won the Mr. Christie’s Book Award, and Stones, which is a CLA YA Book of the Year. Bell lives in Orillia, Ontario, with writer Ting-xing Ye.
ALSO BY WILLIAM BELL
Stones
Garnet Havelock know what it’s like to be on the outside, not one of the crowd. Now, in his final year of high school, he’s just marking time, waiting to get out into the real world.
Then a mysterious girl transfers to his school and Garnet thinks he might have found the woman of his dreams—if only he could get her to talk to him.
At the same time, Garnet becomes caught up in a mystery centred in his community. As he and Raphaella draw closer to the truth, they uncover a horrifying chapter in the town�
��s history, and learn how deep-seated prejudices and persecution from the past can still reverberate in the present.
SEAL BOOKS / ISBN: 0-7704-2875-4
ALSO BY WILLIAM BELL
Zack
Uprooted by his parents’ move to the outskirts of a small Ontario town, friendless and at the lowest point of his life, Zack undertakes research into the life of Richard Pierpoint, former African slave, soldier of the American Revolution as well as the War of 1812, and the pioneer farmer who cleared the land on which Zack’s house now stands. Pierpoint’s story inspires Zack to go to Mississippi to look for his maternal grandfather. What Zack discovers shakes the foundation of all he once believed.
SEAL BOOKS / ISBN: 0-7704-2860-6
ALSO BY WILLIAM BELL
Forbidden City
Seventeen-year-old Alex Jackson is thrilled when his father, a cameraman with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, asks Alex to join him on assignment in China. Not only will he get some time off from school, but Alex, who is a Chinese history buff, knows this trip is the chance of a lifetime.
Alex and his dad could not have predicted that they would get caught up in the historic events that begin to sweep China in the spring of 1989. As students and civilians demonstrate for democracy in Tian An Men Square, Alex experiences the thrill of being a reporter. However, his excitement turns to horror and dismay as the movement becomes violent. Alex and his father know they must communicate the story to the rest of the world, but at what cost to their own lives?
SEAL BOOKS / ISBN: 0-7704-2813-4
Copyright © 2003 William Bell
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ALMA
Seal Books/published by arrangement with Doubleday Canada
Doubleday Canada edition published 2003
Seal Books edition published May 2005
eISBN: 978-0-385-67390-7
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