Nightmare

by Bonnie Bryant

  She ran upstairs and put her things in her borrowed room. She washed her hands quickly and then went downstairs as fast as she could. Lisa and her parents had started eating already. Mr. Atwood paused to serve up a plate for Carole.

  “I really am sorry,” she said, slipping into her chair.

  “That’s all right, Carole. We understand,” said Mrs. Atwood. “But we do eat at seven-thirty, so perhaps it would be a good idea for you to make a note of that in the future. You shouldn’t have to rush so before dinner. It’s not good for the digestion, you know.”

  Carole gulped. On the one hand, Mrs. Atwood sounded very kind, as if she wasn’t at all annoyed and really did understand that Carole hadn’t meant to be late. On the other hand, Carole was late. She’d kept them waiting, and they’d finally gone ahead and eaten without her. Anxiety swept through her. She wanted to be a good guest. She wanted to be welcome. She was a good guest, she was welcome, but she’d made a mistake and it seemed very difficult to gauge exactly how serious it was. Everybody smiled. At least Mr. and Mrs. Atwood smiled a little. Lisa smiled a lot and continued talking to her parents about the work she’d done on her paper that afternoon. What did the little smiles from Lisa’s parents mean? Would it have been easier on her if they’d been obviously annoyed? When her own father was annoyed with her, Carole always knew it. It was easy to tell with him because he said it right out. With the Atwoods, it wasn’t so simple. The result was that even if they weren’t annoyed with her, she felt as if they were, and that made her more uncomfortable than she would have been if they clearly had been annoyed. Life was complicated when your father was thousands of miles away, gone for an unspecified time to an unknown place!

  Carole took the dinner plate, thanking Mr. Atwood as she did so, and set it down in front of her. It was a piece of baked chicken, some rice and peas. It was a very normal dinner, the kind of thing she and her father often ate, but it was still different. It wasn’t that it was bad. Mrs. Atwood was a good cook and Carole had always enjoyed everything she’d eaten at Lisa’s house. It was more that it was different. “Different” wasn’t what Carole wished she had right then. What she wanted instead was exactly what she almost always had at dinnertime: her father. She wanted to taste his crispy baked chicken, cooked with what he called his special secret seasonings. (Near as Carole could tell, that meant salt and pepper.)

  Just thinking about the nice glow of informal warmth that always radiated through their kitchen when they ate dinner together made Carole’s appetite disappear.

  “I hope you like the chicken, Carole,” Mrs. Atwood said. “It’s a new recipe for me. I had something like it at the Bradley girl’s wedding a few weeks ago, and I thought it was so good, I just had to try to figure out what they’d put on it. I think maybe it could use a little more tarragon.”

  Carole tried to smile. It wasn’t easy when she was feeling so homesick for something as simple as her dad’s baked chicken. “Oh, I’m sure this is delicious,” Carole said. She picked up her knife and fork and took a bite of her dinner. “Very good,” she said, but then she set down her fork.

  “I know it’s always hard when there’s a change in routine,” Mrs. Atwood said warmly. Carole understood that Mrs. Atwood was just trying to reassure her. It wasn’t working, though. What she felt was lonely, even in this room filled with people she normally liked a lot.

  “Oh, Carole,” Mr. Atwood said. “I almost forgot to tell you. You had another call from Sergeant Fowler. It seems she had your father on the other line, and she wanted to connect the two of you up so that you could speak to him.”

  Speak? She could have talked with her dad when she’d been so busy scrolling through the bulletin boards at Stevie’s? How could she have missed that?

  “Is everything okay with him?” Carole asked. “I mean, did Sergeant Fowler say anything about how he was?”

  “It seemed that way to me,” said Mr. Atwood. “Sergeant Fowler seemed cheerful and just disappointed for your father that you weren’t here. Don’t worry, though, dear. I bet he’ll try to call again tomorrow and you can talk to him then.”

  Maybe, Carole thought. But then, how many chances could her dad realistically have to call her from the middle of some desert?

  Carole took another bite of the chicken and wondered if it would have tasted any better if Mrs. Atwood had added the extra tarragon. No, she decided. Homesick tasted like homesick, no matter how much tarragon you put on it.

  “THAT BOOK, The Arms of Krupp, is really interesting,” Lisa said, handing a pot to Carole to dry. “I just about lost track of time while I was at the library reading it. I guess you must have been doing something as interesting at Stevie’s this afternoon.”

  “Sort of … exactly,” Carole said, smiling. The fact was that she and Stevie had been doing exactly what Lisa had been doing—research for her paper—only she and Stevie had found it only sort of interesting. “And speaking of that, Stevie and I came across some things on the Internet that you might be able to use. I’ll give you the list when we go upstairs.”

  “Oh, thanks,” said Lisa. “Say, did you know …”

  Carole knew that Lisa was speaking, but she also knew that she wasn’t going to have to listen very closely. It was annoying that she and Stevie had spent some time and effort to get her material that might be helpful and the only response Lisa had for her was “Oh, thanks.” She’d probably be more grateful when she saw the actual material, and Carole would give it to her in a moment, but her own disappointment at Lisa’s reaction served to make her feel glummer and miss her father more.

  Lisa hadn’t said a thing about Carole’s father, and she hadn’t asked one question about Pine Hollow and how the horses were doing. Those were the things that mattered the most to Carole then. The only thing Lisa wanted to talk about was her paper. Sometimes people said that Carole had a one-track mind—that all she ever thought about or wanted to talk about was horses. It was true that she cared about horses, but it wasn’t true that that was the only thing she cared about. After all, she and Stevie had spent the whole afternoon trying to do something nice for Lisa, and now Lisa didn’t seem to care what they’d done and didn’t care enough about Carole to ask after the things that mattered to her.

  Carole clenched her teeth. She was tired. She was stressed. She was homesick. Maybe Lisa wasn’t being fair to her, but maybe Carole wasn’t being fair to Lisa, either. She put the final pot in the cabinet, wiped some water off the counter, and told Lisa she was tired.

  “It’s been another long day for me. I think I’ll go do a little bit of homework and then get to sleep early. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Sure. It’s okay,” Lisa said. “I’ve got some work to do, too. I brought home some books so that I can start working on my bibliography as well as the research for my paper.”

  “Good night, Lisa” was all Carole could muster at that point. She put the dish towel on the rack to dry and went on up to her temporary room. The list of books and articles that she and Stevie had assembled from the Internet was on top of her book bag. She walked it across the hall and put it on Lisa’s bed, more than a little relieved that Lisa hadn’t come upstairs yet. This didn’t seem to be a very good time to try any more light conversation with Lisa. It seemed like a very good time to be alone.

  On a day when it seemed that few things had gone right, something definitely was going right. The only homework she had was to draw a picture to illustrate the story they’d just read in English class—“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The thing Carole was the very best at drawing was, of course, horses. The thing she was worst at drawing was people’s heads. The headless horseman was practically a custom-made subject for her. She was finished in no time at all. She then put away her books and slipped into her pajamas. She picked up the Dick Francis book she’d borrowed from the library and slid under the covers to read for a while.

  She didn’t read for long. She couldn’t concentrate at all. As soon as the household was quiet a
round her and she had finished all her chores, her mind wandered to her father. How could she have missed his phone call?

  Carole was certain he’d planned the call to coincide with the time she usually got home from Pine Hollow. He knew she should be home. He wanted to talk with her as much as she wanted to talk with him. She wanted to know he was all right. She also wanted some hint, just a tiny inkling, about where he was. She’d looked through every page of the newspaper at the Lakes’ and didn’t see anything that would suggest where the country might be sending Marines. She had listened to the radio news broadcast at Pine Hollow and hadn’t heard anything there, either. She did realize that her father had said his mission was top secret, and she understood that that made it unlikely the Marines were going to announce to any reporters exactly where they’d sent Colonel Hanson, but she was hoping for a hint. The only thing she knew for sure was that it was out of the country, because her father had taken his passport.

  She could almost hear his voice now. “Hi, hon, it’s Dad! How are you?”

  “I’m fine—now that I’ve heard from you, anyway.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Wonderful,” she’d say. And she’d mean it, too. Even when she was homesick, worried about him, and worried about the horses, particularly Delilah and Starlight, just being able to talk to her father would make everything wonderful. Without him, it felt as if everything was wrong and there wasn’t anything she could do about any of it. She was worried, the horses might be sick—might even die! Lisa was distracted about some dumb history paper that she didn’t even have to hand in for six months, and Stevie was more interested in learning about the Underground Railroad than anything else. It felt as if nothing made sense. Nobody was where they were supposed to be. Nothing was going the way it should. Carole’s eyelids drifted closed. Before she knew it, she was asleep, and then she was dreaming. Only it wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare.

  Carole’s father flipped back the flap on the tent and emerged from its dark interior. All around, there was nothing but sand. Gusts of wind picked up clouds of sand and swirled them in eddies like miniature tornadoes. Suddenly a strange, amorphous figure emerged from one of the eddies, or perhaps the eddy turned into this figure.

  “Your wish?” it asked Colonel Hanson.

  “The camels! Bring the camels!” Carole’s father commanded, clapping his hands imperiously.

  “But sir, you ask the impossible—”

  “Impossible?” Colonel Hanson boomed, his voice echoing across the great, hot emptiness around him.

  “They are sick,” the spirit said. “They will not be better for forty-five days. And you must be with them. You must stay. Here. Forever.”

  “But Dad!” Carole said.

  He didn’t hear her. “Well, if that’s the case, then I have to prepare. Men!” he cried out. Marines appeared from all the other tents. “The camels are sick. There is no way for us to get home. We’re here for good, so let’s make the best of it!”

  “But sir, our families!” one young lieutenant cried out.

  “For good!” Colonel Hanson repeated.

  “Dad!” Carole said.

  He still didn’t hear her. He never would, and she knew it.

  Carole felt the terror fill her whole being. Her eyes welled up. Her world was out of control, and there wasn’t anything she could do. Suddenly she sat up, realizing only vaguely that she was in a bed, nowhere near a desert, and nowhere near her father. She shook her head. Her Dick Francis book slid off her chest and onto the floor. The light by her bed was still lit. The clock said 4:00.

  Carole sighed. It was only a dream—a nightmare. She was okay. Even knowing that, though, she still felt all the unhappiness in the dream. Perhaps her father wasn’t stranded in the desert with a herd of sick camels, but there was too much truth in her feelings to find the facts much more comforting than the nightmare.

  She reached for the book and closed it. She turned out the light and pulled up the covers. Maybe her next dream would be a good one.

  ACROSS THE HALL, Lisa wasn’t doing much better. The bell rang. Science was over. Time for history class. As she walked down the hall, she saw Fiona Jamieson ahead of her. Fiona was carrying a huge stack of books. Could it be she was working on her next paper, too? What was she reading? Lisa called her name and jogged to catch up with her. Fiona kept walking. Lisa started running. Fiona kept walking. Lisa sprinted. Fiona kept walking. No matter how fast Lisa made herself go, Fiona, steadily walking, was faster.

  “Grrrr,” came a fierce sound. Lisa stopped running. She woke up. Her little Lhasa apso, Dolly, was standing foursquare at the foot of the bed, growling fiercely at Lisa’s feet under the covers. With a start, Lisa realized that she’d been having a nightmare. She wasn’t really on her way to history class. Fiona wasn’t really ahead of her. But apparently she’d really been running—or at least the lying-down equivalent of running. That’s what had gotten Dolly so upset.

  “It’s okay, Dolly. I’m not going to hurt you,” Lisa said, patting the little dog affectionately. She glanced at the clock on her bedside table. Four A.M.! It was time to get some restful sleep. No more nightmares!

  Dolly settled back down again, and so did Lisa. Restful sleep. How could she ever get restful sleep if the only thing on her mind was going to be her paper—for the next six months?

  “What am I doing?” Lisa asked. Dolly perked up her ears when Lisa spoke, confirming to Lisa that she’d actually said it out loud. This is crazy, she thought. Even at my craziest, I’m not this crazy. I do very well in school. I’m one of the best in school, and I’m proud of it. But I can’t let myself get tied up into all these knots. There must be another way.

  She pulled up the covers and put her head back down on the pillow. Yes, another way, she thought as she drifted back to sleep.

  A FEW HOUSES AWAY, on the second floor, Stevie’s room was almost completely dark—almost, that is, if you didn’t count the flashlight that glowed dimly through the blankets over Stevie’s head. Stevie didn’t care what time it was. She didn’t want to look at her clock. The only thing she wanted to do was read another chapter, or six, of The Path to Freedom. No matter how tired she was in the morning, it would be worth it—worth every yawn, just to have read some more of this truly great book.

  Now, where was she? Oh, yes, she thought. Hallie had just met the man who had given her something to drink. No, that was someone else. Hallie was about to see if the pony in the field could carry—No, that wasn’t a pony, that was a horse, and it belonged to the man who had been angry with the man who had given her a drink. Or did it belong to the man who had given her a drink? Stevie refocused the flashlight on the page she’d been reading. She rubbed her eyes and looked hard at the page. The letters merged with one another. The words started to swim. Stevie couldn’t read them at all! There was something wrong with the book! How could she find out the end of Hallie’s nightmarish journey with Esther if the book was all messed up?

  She shoved the covers back and focused the flashlight on her clock. There was something wrong with the clock, too! It said it was after four o’clock in the morning. That was impossible! Stevie pointed the light at her wristwatch. It said exactly the same thing.

  She knew then that there was nothing wrong with the clock or the book. There was something wrong with her head. The reason the words were all messed up on the page was that her eyes were all messed up in her head. They wanted to sleep! Staying up all night to read wasn’t a smart move, especially on a school night. She clicked off the flashlight, put the book on her bedside table, and closed her eyes.

  “I’ll finish it tomor …,” she muttered to her darkened room. She didn’t finish the word, however. She was already asleep.

  “I’M TOTALLY BEAT,” Carole confided to Lisa and Stevie when the three of them met up at Pine Hollow the next afternoon.

  “Me too,” Lisa said. “I had this awful dream last night.”

  “Maybe you had the same one I had,”
said Carole. “Was it in a desert?”

  “No, in school,” Lisa said.

  “I thought I was the one who had nightmares about school,” said Stevie.

  “Well, you look as if you’d had a nightmare,” Carole teased.

  “I didn’t. I was just reading about one. It’s this great book, see—”

  “I know, I know, The Path to Freedom, by Elizabeth Wallingford Johnson,” Carole supplied. She’d heard a lot about that book over the past few days.

  “You’re going to love it, both of you,” Stevie said.

  “You already told us,” said Lisa.

  It was easy to chat with her friends most of the time, Carole thought. And it was good to chat with them, too. When the three of them were together, things seemed to go right, especially when what they were talking about or doing had to do with horses. Today they weren’t talking about horses, yet, but they were about to ride them.

  Each of them was acutely aware that a large dark cloud hung over Pine Hollow and would for a considerable period. It wasn’t going to help to talk about it. Very soon they’d start getting some of the blood tests back. Then, if everything was okay, maybe they could talk about it. Now, however, it was best to chat about books and nightmares they’d slept through rather than diseases and nightmares they might have to live through.

  “Class begins in fifteen minutes!” Mrs. Reg announced over the PA system. That didn’t give the girls much time. They dropped their books in their cubbies, yanked on their riding clothes and boots, and ran to the tack room to get saddles and bridles for their horses.

  “Last one at the good-luck horseshoe is a rotten egg!” Stevie declared.

  Twelve minutes later all three girls met at the horseshoe. Stevie was the closest to it. Lisa and Carole were right next to each other.

  “So who’s the rotten egg if there’s a tie?” Stevie asked.

  Lisa and Carole decided to be much too cool to race each other.