Dream Girl

by Lauren Mechling

  Très interessant.

  How had I been so stupid?

  First the duffel bag dream, then the one with the fruit. And the basketball one from a while ago. Who cared if Sheila and the BDLs had been playing with a basketball in school the other day? Far more interesting was the fact that Rye had been wearing knee-length socks.

  Knee-length tube socks.

  Just like the socks the Soyles manufactured.

  Ooh la la!

  Just then another revelation dislodged from the dark side of my brain: the pregnancy dream had featured babies and mannequins. Just like what Andy had said Rye wanted to see in London. Which meant…the maternity dress Sheila had been wearing didn’t mean bupkes. The dreams had been alerting me to Rye all along.

  So she was the real baddie. As for Sheila, well, she just sucked.

  My heart did a little whoop-de-whoop. And then I felt a thud in my stomach. I knew exactly who this guy was. He fit Becca’s description perfectly.

  I could hear the blood thumping in my eardrums as I ran down the street and back to the campus. Breathless and elated, I arrived just in time for Cheri-Lee’s event—a reading called “Beyond the Language School.”

  The last in a three-person lineup, Cheri-Lee glissaded up to the lectern like a movie star.

  “Ground breaking,” she began breathily, deep lines forming in her forehead. “Bread baking. Wheat chaffing…”

  With all these Rye-related questions circling around in my head, it was hard to concentrate on the poem, but I could tell by the audience members’ rapt expressions that Cheri-Lee’s reading was a huge success. All but one of the questions during the question-and-answer session were directed at her, and she sold out of her books during the signing portion of the event.

  Looked as if I wasn’t the only one who was having a good day.

  “I’m absolutely drained,” Cheri-Lee said afterward. “Do you mind if I take a time-out to recuperate during the next panel?”

  “Not at all.” I parked the poetic star at a table in the café and told her I had to go to the bathroom.

  “Do you need help finding it?” she asked, but I was already far ahead of her.

  I had to get away from the crowd and call Kiki. She’d undoubtedly have some advice for me about what to do now that I’d made this breakthrough.

  I found a bank of pay phones on the second floor, in a carpeted hallway off the game room. Waiting for Kiki to pick up, I made a mental note to start dropping hints her way that a cell phone would make an awesome sixteenth-birthday present.

  Kiki answered after several rings, and I immediately launched into a description of the make-out session I’d seen on the bench.

  “You say her beau was plump and pinheaded? Sounds like a real Valentino.”

  “He’s no Andy, that’s for sure.”

  “Well, well, well, there’s no accounting for taste…. Now I should get back to Clem. He and I were just sitting down to watch Prime Suspect. It’s lady detective hour over here.”

  “Here, too!”

  “Helen Mirren is at the conference?”

  “No! Don’t you get it?” I turned around to make sure nobody was coming from behind, and I hunched over with the phone cradled in the crook of my neck. “I had a black-and-white dream about coming here, so I hitched a ride. Then I see Rye getting it on with some guy I’ve never laid eyes on before. And it’s got to be Otto Soyle, I just know it.” My speech was gaining momentum. “You know how everyone jokes about how Rye never gave Andy the time of day before this summer?”

  “Yes?” She sounded slightly vexed.

  “Well, this explains it. It all makes sense. Rye’s an imposter! She doesn’t really like him. She’s just using him to infiltrate the family.”

  And in the five months she’d been dating Andy, Rye must have been able to pick up so many of the Shuttleworths’ particulars—their travel plans, their bank statements, the contents of their kitchen cabinets, and so on. With all that knowledge, it would be easy-peasy for the Soyles to prey on my friend’s weaknesses. The text messages were just the icing on the cake.

  “Ah, I see….” Kiki murmured a “Thank you,” and I could picture Clem handing her a dirty martini. “So did you get any evidence? Did you bring a camera?”

  My heart dipped. “Only an eyewitness account. But I have to tell the Shuttleworths what I saw, right?”

  “Now, there’s a thought.” She sounded appalled. “You know the girl running around with Andy isn’t in it for real. That’s mystery number one. But you still haven’t figured out what she’s got up her sleeve. Isn’t that the important question?”

  “But I can just tell them to send her packing.”

  “You could.” I could hear in her tone that she was humoring me. “But don’t you think it would be wise to find out what she’s up to? Even if you told them to shake her loose and they listened to you, what good would that do?”

  “They’d be rid of her.”

  “Yes, but have you stopped to consider she might already have information that could put your friends in danger?” I was nodding, even though she couldn’t see me.

  “Now, if you will please excuse me, this program is heating up. Clem’s telling me a dead body just turned up in the mail chute. I should go and be a good host.”

  “Right.” I sighed.

  “Don’t worry, my dear,” she said soothingly. “You’re going to be just fine.”

  Easy for her to say. Just thinking about all the dreaming ahead made me tired.

  { 26 }

  Our Own Happiness

  Louis woke me up with a phone call on Sunday morning.

  “Everything okay?” I asked. It was 7:53, a good six hours before his regular weekend wake-up time.

  “Yeah, just great.” His voice had a hard edge to it. “Robyn dumped me on my head.”

  “What? She can’t do that—I haven’t even met her yet.”

  Louis coughed. “Sorry it’s inconvenient for you.”

  “I’m sorry. That came out wrong…. Look, at least now you’ll have the time to hang out more. I can finally introduce you to Becca.”

  “Yeah, there are so many things I can do now. Make tortellini from scratch. Reread all my childhood books. Learn how to macramé.”

  My heart sank a little for my friend. “Louis! It’s going to be fine.”

  “Whatever. I gotta go. I haven’t slept much.”

  “Hold on,” I said, but the dial tone spoke back.

  I swaddled myself in my robe and wandered into the main room. My mind was still in a vegetal early-morning state, and the fog didn’t lift for a few minutes, not until I was nearing the bottom of my cereal bowl. I was tempted to call Becca and make plans to hang out, and it killed me to think that I couldn’t. Even if I didn’t say anything about what I’d seen in New Jersey, I’d surely act weird.

  How could I not after the Google search on Otto Soyle I’d done the night before? A picture that went along with a New York Post story about the steakhouse fire showed the entire Soyle family, and it was confirmed: the bloated pea-head who’d been kissing Rye was none other than the infamous Otto.

  Now, how was I going to figure out what he and Rye were up to? If only my dreams came to me at all hours of the day.

  And then, as I was pouring the excess milk down the drain, lightning struck. I would spend the day on the couch, watching bad TV. If I could find programming that was dozy enough, I’d drowse off—my only chance at getting answers.

  Unfortunately, even back-to-back episodes of New York on Nine Bucks didn’t transport me anywhere other than to a bialy factory in Queens. I went into my room, lay on my back with my hand mirror, and picked up Agatha’s A Murder Is Announced. I got to page sixty without the slightest onset of sleepiness—in fact, I felt more awake than before. I put the book down and spent the rest of the afternoon staring, in the mirror at my cameo.

  Soon enough the world was back to black-and-white.

  I was standing on top of a tower that was
easily a couple of miles in the air, a height that normally would have terrified me. But pillowy clouds were obscuring the sharp drop to the ground, and I felt perfectly safe.

  I had an enormous pair of binoculars hanging from a chain around my neck. I brought them to my face. The tower overlooked a body of water, and through the fog I could make out a flock of vultures in the distance. They circled and then alighted on a giant clock sculpture across the water. I watched as they streamed into the lattice face of the clock and out through the back.

  The clock’s hour and minute hands rotated with no discernable rhythm, haphazardly speeding up and slowing down. And then, as the fog thickened and the sky grew a deeper gray, the hands stopped at six-thirty and the flock of birds shot away.

  Finally!

  Not that I had any idea what any of it meant, but I had no doubt I would soon.

  I showed up for school Monday morning ready for anything, and I had my black sunglasses and digital camera stuffed in my bag. I was confident everything would work out; my only worry was bumping into Becca. What was I supposed to tell her if she asked about my weekend? That I’d hitched a ride to New Jersey to snoop on her brother’s girlfriend and then devoted the rest of my time vegging out so I could envision a flock of vultures?

  I steered clear of my locker and managed to avoid her all morning, but when the entire tenth grade was herded into a surprise special assembly during the last period of the day, she singled me out and plunked down in the seat next to me.

  “Any idea what’s going on?” She turned around to glare at the kid behind her, who was kicking the back of her seat.

  “Nothing much.” I tried to affect a jaded tone.

  “Not with you, C, but this.” She gestured at the hundreds of full seats in the auditorium.

  “Oh,” I said with a start. “I don’t know, but it feels like we’re in trouble, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Becca said excitedly. “Maybe somebody cut class for the first time in Hudson’s history.”

  “Could be the start of a nasty epidemic.”

  Biting back a smile, I watched as Dr. Arnold came to the stage and began addressing us. Turned out a Spanish teacher had taken one of his students to Miami for the weekend, and our assistant principal wanted the rest of us to come forward if any of our teachers had asked us out on a date or weekend getaway.

  “Loving gestures or amorous intentions,” Becca said afterward, mimicking Dr. Arnold’s nasal drawl as we walked down the hall. It was only 3:35, and the atmosphere was more gray and lifeless than it had any right to be.

  “If only,” I said, scanning a mental index of all my teachers. “We could use a little more love and tenderness around here.”

  As we proceeded toward the main entrance, I could hear Ian’s suitcase thumping behind us.

  “So what are you up to now?” Her expression was hopeful.

  “Now?” I kicked aside a pair of socks that must have fallen out of somebody’s locker. I needed to buy time until I thought of an excuse. “I, uh, have to do this thing with my brother.”

  “Don’t be angry at me because I forgot to call you this weekend,” she said. “I’m sorry, I was just so busy—on Saturday I got roped into going shopping for the wedding, and then Mom’s college roommate from Smith came to visit, and it was a huge production.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, trying to contain my amusement. She thought I was mad at her? “So, did the whole family go shopping together?”

  “Yeah, my mom wanted to approve of any final decisions, so she made everyone come.”

  “Rye, too?” God, I was so unsmooth.

  “No, Rye couldn’t make it,” Becca said, choosing not to acknowledge my Rye fixation. “She was in Vermont for the weekend, meeting with her academic advisor. She said she timed her trip up to Bennington there to coincide with some secret society dinner.”

  “She probably made that up and just had pizza,” I said.

  Becca looked perplexed.

  “Just kidding.” My neck felt hot.

  “Okaaay…”

  We kept walking through the hall, and neither of us said anything more until we’d made our way outside.

  “Why don’t we just have a seat up here?” Becca’s suggestion caught me by surprise, but then I understood. The BDLs were perched on the bottom of the stairs. She didn’t feel like dealing with them.

  But there was no escaping. In no time they were greeting us with phony smiles and waves. “It’s Betty and Veronica!” taunted Sheila.

  “And Dumb and the Dumbers,” I said under my breath.

  Now that I was sure Sheila didn’t pose any real threat, I was able to see her and her friends for what they really were: a bunch of creeps. So what if Sheila had once been nice, or if she was actually sad and insecure in some hidden pocket of her true being? She was cruel to my friends and me and countless others. She needed to be stopped, plain and simple.

  “Hey, Claire.” Ian had caught up to us and was digging into his suitcase. “I almost forgot to give you this. Do you want to keep it?” He tried to pass me “The Adventures of Evil Radish,” but Becca was quicker and snatched it away.

  “Get the hell out of here,” she said while flipping through the book. “You turned those bitches into a bunch of radishes!”

  “Evil radishes,” I added. “Wait—how did you figure out it was them so fast?”

  “Could it be more obvious? How many radishes out there torment their fellow vegetables and wear tutus?”

  I looked down the stairs to see that curly-haired Lauren had risen to engulf a disoriented-looking boy in a mammoth hug.

  “Brilliant stuff,” Becca went on. “It’s too bad everyone from Hudson can’t have a copy.”

  And then it hit me. “Why not?” I turned to Ian. “We can make copies at Kinko’s and leave ‘Evil Radish’ piles in the halls. We can have our own Happiness League.”

  Ian looked excited, but only for a few seconds. “There’s no way. Do you know how much color copies cost?”

  “I’m sure there’s a way around it.” I squinted at him, wondering how he had made it this far without figuring out that Becca was a ketchup heiress.

  And Becca took her cue. She tugged a folder of sheet music out of her bag and inserted the comic book in the middle. “I’ll take care of it,” she said. “Trust me. I have some, um…”

  “Kinko’s connections?” Ian asked incredulously.

  “Exactly,” Becca and I responded at the same time.

  { 27 }

  Eye of the Tiger

  That evening I got the full story from Louis, or as full a story you can get from somebody who’s riding ahead of you on the Hudson River bike path at twenty-eight miles an hour. Louis wasn’t usually amenable to last-minute invitations, but somehow I’d managed to convince him to meet me for a bike ride.

  Still, the details of Louis’s breakup were coming out too slowly for my tastes.

  “Were you fighting?” I asked as we neared Chambers Street.

  “Sort of.” He sounded deflated and shot ahead. Ten minutes later we pulled over to watch a group of spandex-clad racers shoot past.

  “What happened then?” I pressed.

  He looked up at the sky. “Sex, okay?”

  “Care to be a little more specific?” I tried to suppress a grin. Louis and I had known each other for an eternity, and yet the closest we had ever come to talking about this kind of thing was, well, never. “She didn’t want to do it?” I probed.

  “No, that’s not it.” He sounded aggravated.

  “You didn’t want to do it?”

  “Of course I wanted to.” Louis looked at me as if I should understand what he was getting at. I didn’t.

  “Okay,” I said. “Care to lay out what the problem was?”

  “We both wanted to, but then she freaked out and said she could tell the only reason I was going out with her was to use her for the experience.”

  “What is she, crazy?” I asked. Then I remembered they�
�d met at their shrink’s office. Oops.

  “Anyway, I found out the real story,” he said, reentering traffic. “She decided to get back together with her ex-boyfriend. And she keeps calling me. It’s annoying.”

  “That is annoying. Tell her to take a hike!” I yelled supportively and swerved out of the way to avoid ramming into a little girl who was wobbling around on her Rollerblades.

  I looked out across the harbor and watched a flock of birds swoop over the Jersey City skyline. They plunged down onto the Colgate Clock, an enormous sculpture of a timepiece that faces Manhattan. I’d passed the clock thousands of times, but this time something clicked inside me. It said six o’clock.

  I stared at the clock and shivered.

  I had half an hour to get there before it would be the time in my dream.

  “Hey!” Louis was riding back toward me. “You coming?”

  “Mind if we take a little detour? I just remembered I need to do something.”

  He screwed his face. “Huh?”

  “It’s, uh, for a class. We’re supposed to learn about different city landmarks. And I chose that one.” I pointed across the water.

  “But that’s not even in the city. It’s in New Jersey, Lemonhead.”

  “It’s visible from the city. That counts, too.” I kicked off. “There’s a ferry that goes across the water. You in?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t be such a girlie-man. Follow me.”

  We kept riding down through Battery Park until we found the Jersey City ferry stop, where a rickety-looking boat the size of a small house seemed to be waiting for us.

  “Beautiful,” I said.

  Louis sighed. “If you say so.”

  The boat ride cost a dollar. It was quick, but not quick enough for Louis, who got seasick. When we docked on the other side, I left him to recover behind a Dumpster and went to find him a bottle of water.