Dreamfire

by Kit Alloway

  The season? Josh wondered, and then she understood: Someone had told him that Valentine’s Day was her and Ian’s anniversary. She heard that he was worried about her, but his concern didn’t take away her feeling of having been spied upon, gossiped about, maybe even judged.

  No, almost certainly judged.

  “I’ll be fine,” she told Will tartly.

  “Oh,” he replied with another sigh, “I know. Believe me, I know.”

  “You coming?” Haley asked, ducking his head through the doorway.

  “Yes,” Will told him quickly. He brushed his fingers against the back of Josh’s hand as he passed her on his way out the door, and for a long moment afterward she stared at the place where he’d touched her, uncertain what to make of his action. She’d thought he was angry at her—or maybe she was angry at him—or maybe they were both just tired of the distance she was trying to keep between them. The more she tried to push him away, the more she wanted to be close to him.

  Maybe she should tell him everything. Maybe his alienation would be easier to bear than this tension.

  She wandered into the living room and sat down on the couch next to her father. He put his arm around her and she leaned her head against his shoulder.

  “Are you doing okay?” Lauren asked her.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, which was a complete lie, but she didn’t know what good telling the truth would do.

  Winsor’s dad, Alex, sitting in the armchair, said, “You know we’re all here for you, Josh. I know Valentine’s Day was your anniversary, but I don’t want you to think you’re going through this alone. We’re all missing Ian, every one of us who knew him. Especially Haley, I think. Valentine’s Day isn’t just about romantic love, it’s about…”

  Josh tuned him out. The trick with Alex’s soliloquies was to only listen to the first sentence: We’re all here for you, Josh. And Josh did truly appreciate that.

  She watched the news with her father—more about the people in the strange comas that Whim’s blog had been going on about, but no new information—and then decided that it really was time she moved out of the office and back into her bedroom. The last few days, she’d just been too tired to get around to it, and she had so much stuff scattered around the office now that gathering it all up would be a major undertaking.

  After piling all her clothes into a laundry basket, she began the trek upstairs. She reached the second floor landing just as Winsor was attempting to embark it, and Winsor stepped back, crossed her arms, and waited for Josh to pass without bothering to hide her irritation.

  Josh initially felt guilty, but all that anger she had been trying to swallow for months had grown beyond her ability to choke down. Before she’d made it up two more steps, she spun around, hurled the laundry basket onto the landing, and shouted, “Dammit, Winsor!”

  Winsor jumped against the wall when the laundry basket hit the floor, and she stared up at Josh with astonishment and something close to either fear or derision. Maybe both.

  “I can’t do this anymore!” Josh told her. “All right? I just can’t do it. If you want to fight, then let’s fight, because I am sick to death of you walking around tossing your hair and rolling your eyes and acting like you’re too good to be in the room with me. So just say whatever you need to say and let’s get it out there already.”

  Winsor’s blue eyes were wide, but a pitiless half smile played on her lips. “Okay,” she agreed, walking back up the steps to the landing. “Let’s have it out then. You go first.”

  Josh wasn’t ready to go first. She looked at the laundry strewn all over the floor and ran her hand through her hair, and finally she managed to say, “You should have told me how you felt about Ian.”

  “You shouldn’t have acted needy just to keep him.”

  The words felt much like the kidney shot she’d taken a few weeks before. Josh had had no idea that Winsor thought she “acted needy” so Ian would stay with her. “I didn’t! And I know you made him even more paranoid about his scroll. You encouraged him to break up with me!”

  “I told Ian to do what he wanted to do. You should have let him go when he broke up with you.”

  How could Winsor have possibly expected her to let go of Ian, then or ever? To this day, Josh didn’t know who she was without his memory. “You shouldn’t have dated the identical twin brother of the guy you were secretly in love with,” Josh shot back. “You used Haley! How sick is that?”

  “You shouldn’t have opened an archway when you had no idea what you were doing! You think you’re so special, that there’s nothing you can’t do!”

  “Special?” Josh cried. “I’m the opposite of special! The only thing in my life that made me special was that Ian loved me, and you made sure to take that away, didn’t you?”

  “He broke up with you!”

  “Yeah, and it was less than a month before you were seducing him in the forest! He just needed time to get his head on straight. He would have come back to me if you hadn’t thrown yourself at him!”

  “Yeah?” The smile was gone from Winsor’s face. Instead, a dark flush spread across her chest and up her throat. “Well, he’ll never come back to you now, because you got him killed!”

  There. The words had finally been said. Josh and Winsor stared at each other across the landing, and the statement hung between them like the reverberations of a chime that had been struck very hard. Josh felt her chin begin to tremble, and then hot tears poured into her eyes, and she sat down on the stairs and sobbed.

  All the guilt and anger and terrible sadness she had been trying to hold off for months finally overwhelmed her. She had lost Ian—for all of them.

  “Josh,” Winsor said, and then Josh heard her sigh. Her tone had changed from furious to defeated. “Josh. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It’s true,” Josh told her between sobs. “You know it, I know it, everybody knows it! Just no one’s saying it!”

  “Nobody’s thinking it but you,” Winsor insisted. “And—me, and I—I’m only thinking it because—I’m so angry that he’s dead.” Josh looked up in time to see Winsor break into her own tears, and she flung herself down on the step next to Josh. “How dare he go and die and leave us with all this emotional crap we can’t resolve. How dare he die and just not be here anymore! He’s dead, so he’s not here today and he won’t be here tomorrow or the day after, and it’s like he just dropped out, like he just quit the play and we’re all still here trying to put the show on without him! I want to scream at him every moment of every day, and he’s not here to yell at, so yeah, I get angry at you, because it was your idea to open the archway. But we both know nobody ever forced Ian to do a damn thing, and he could have walked away anytime if he hadn’t been such a conceited, hardheaded prick, and if he hadn’t been so hopelessly in love with you that he had to prove he didn’t care about you by impressing you!”

  Winsor put her face in her palms, and her tears ran in rivers between her fingers. She had described how Josh felt about Ian’s loss more perfectly than Josh herself ever could, and Josh wished they had known months earlier that they were experiencing the same things. Still weeping, Josh put her arms around her friend, and they cried together for the first time.

  The door to the Avisharas’ apartment opened and Whim stepped out. He surveyed the two girls, sitting on the stairs, holding each other and bawling, and shook his head. “The dam finally broke, huh?”

  “Shut up, Whim!” Josh and Winsor told him in unison.

  “Women,” Whim muttered, and went back into the apartment.

  When they were alone again, Josh said, “I’m sorry.”

  “I know that!” Winsor snapped, sounding just as angry as she had before. She used splayed fingers to push dark, wet strands of hair out of her face. “Don’t you think I know that, Josh? You are the most miserably sorry thing I’ve ever seen. You’re punishing yourself like you shot him in the face, and that’s driving me as crazy as anything, this martyr-for-your-sins bit,
and how you’re dream walking like you have a death wish, and poor Will tiptoeing around trying not to ask for anything from you.”

  Josh winced. She knew Winsor was right about how she had acted, and she hated it.

  “Let me tell you, Josh, if I really wanted to punish you, I could have just seduced Will. The boy’s so lonely here he’s begging for it.” She glanced at Josh and added, “Oh, don’t look so shocked. You’re the one who thinks I’m a whore.”

  “I never said that,” Josh protested, trying to shake off the shock she felt.

  “Yeah, but you thought it. Everybody’s thinking it. I’m the girl who slept with identical twin brothers. For a while people at school were calling me Mrs. McKarr, can you believe that?”

  Despite everything else between them, Josh felt bad for Winsor. “How did it even get out at school?”

  “Oh, it was Whim, I know it was. He loves gossip more than he loves any of us.”

  Josh wanted to say she was sorry again, but she didn’t know how Winsor would react. She put an arm around her friend’s shoulders instead. “I wish you’d come and talked to me.”

  Winsor laughed grimly. “When?”

  “Whenever. Through all of it. I know I’m not good at talking, but I could have at least listened.”

  Winsor’s jaw relaxed a little. “Well, I’m talking to you now.”

  “Do you…” Josh began, and then started over. “Do you want to keep talking, and maybe eat a bunch of ice cream?”

  “You and your sweets,” Winsor said, but a ghost of a smile had crept onto her face. “Take your laundry upstairs. I’ll go get the ice cream and meet you in your room.”

  “All right.” Josh hesitated an instant, then hugged Winsor quickly before rising. “I’ll see you upstairs.”

  Josh both smiled and sniffled as she carried the clothes basket up to the third floor. She knew that this was still going to be a hard night, that she and Winsor had a lot of difficult things to say to each other, but at least they were talking again.

  As she crossed the empty apartment, she paused outside the open door to Will’s bedroom. Is Winsor right? she wondered, peering into the dark room. Is he lonely here? Have I let him be lonely?

  She set down the laundry hamper and turned on the overhead light. Will’s room was unnaturally tidy for a teenage guy’s. He’d made his bed perfectly. The clothing in the hamper had been loosely folded. Stepping inside, Josh realized that he’d put all his self-help books back in the cardboard box with his name on the side that he’d brought from the county home.

  He still thinks I’m going to send him back, she thought, and a fresh wave of regret washed over her. Absently, she ran her finger down the spines of the books. I am the worst tea—

  Her body hardened as though iron had cooled in her veins.

  On the spine of one book, written with a felt-tip permanent marker, was the name Hianselian Ambrose Donovan Micharainosa.

  Josh yanked the book out of the box. She snapped the journal open and saw the note taped inside; for a moment, she didn’t recognize her own handwriting.

  How dare you, Will?

  Journal in her arms, she flew out of his room and into her own, determined to drive to the high school right then and confront him. This was beyond a betrayal of trust; it was an insult; it was—

  She flipped on the overhead light in her bedroom and stopped short on the threshold, faced with such a sight that she stopped thinking entirely.

  The bedroom was strewn with clothes. They appeared to have exploded out of a duffel bag in the corner like lava from a volcano. Her dresser drawers were open, and her things had been taken out, rearranged, dug through. School papers that had been rotting in her desk for years were scattered across the floor.

  From behind her, Winsor said, “I see Haley didn’t inherit Ian’s organizational skills.”

  Josh turned to see Winsor holding two pints of ice cream, two spoons, and a squeeze bottle of chocolate sauce. Her throat was dry, making it hard to speak. “What the hell happened in here?”

  “Well, between your messiness and Haley’s, your room is”—Winsor shrugged—“a mess.”

  “Why has Haley even been in my room?” Josh demanded, stepping over an open shoebox of loose photographs.

  Winsor frowned. “Didn’t Del tell you? He’s been staying in here.”

  Josh was shaking so hard her voice trembled. “You let Haley stay in my room?”

  “It wasn’t my idea,” Winsor told her. She set the ice cream on the dresser like a peace offering and then stepped back. “But there’s no furniture in his apartment and you were staying downstairs.”

  “I don’t care! Look at this, Winsor. He didn’t just stay here—he tore the place apart like he had a search warrant. He even moved the furniture!”

  Winsor looked around thoughtfully. “No, he moved it back to where it was before Ian died.”

  Josh gawked at the room. She reached out to steady herself against the dresser and then noted that it had been moved two feet farther from the window—to where it had sat a year before—and she wrenched her hand back. “God, Winsor—why is he acting like this?”

  “He’s gone mad.” Winsor picked up a glass bottle from the desktop. “Here’s what’s left of Ian’s cologne.”

  Reluctantly, Josh followed Winsor’s lead and began putting the room back in order. Her belongings appeared to have been rearranged at random, as if Haley had tried to put them away but had forgotten where they went. She found a blouse in her nightstand and a deck of playing cards under her pillows.

  “There’s something really wrong with Haley,” she said, wondering how her friend had become so out of touch with reality.

  “Yeah,” Winsor agreed. “He was always weird, but at least he was consistently weird. This is just crazy.”

  A few minutes later, Josh found the journal she’d discovered in Will’s room. She’d forgotten all about it when she saw her bedroom and must have set it on the bedside table unconsciously. Now she picked it up again and rubbed her thumbs against the cover. The fabric felt like sandpaper against her skin.

  “What’s that?” Winsor asked.

  Josh swallowed as she held it out. “I think it’s Ian journal. I mean, it must be his. It has his name on it.”

  Winsor took the book hesitantly. She turned it over but didn’t open the cover. “You read this?” she asked.

  “No. I found it in Will’s room a minute ago.”

  For a moment Winsor looked like she was going to smile again. “That boy’s got guts,” she said instead.

  “Well, he’s going to regret that once I get a hold of him.” Josh glanced around again, debating whether she still wanted to go to the high school to find Will. In the end, she decided that she did. Haley would have to be dealt with, but she wanted to talk to him when she wasn’t furious. He was a fragile guy, and she knew that if she started yelling, he would just shut down.

  “I’m going to the dance,” she said, taking the journal back from Winsor.

  “To yell at Will? Tonight?”

  “Yeah. Want to come?”

  Winsor shook her head. Josh shrugged and started stepping back across the wreckage toward the door. Halfway there, her knees buckled, and she sat down hard on a sweatshirt and a latch-hook rug.

  “Josh?” Winsor asked. “Is your knee okay?”

  Josh’s hand trembled as she reached out to push away another piece of clothing. Distantly, she noticed that it was the skirt she’d worn on her seventeenth birthday. Beneath was a piece of parchment weighted down at either end with a textbook to battle seventeen years of being rolled up.

  “Josh?” Winsor asked again, leaning down next to her. When she saw the scroll, she immediately looked away. “Oh!”

  “Win,” Josh whispered, “I didn’t open this.”

  “What?” Winsor’s surprise overrode her manners, and she slid down next to Josh.

  Josh couldn’t stop her eyes from reading the words.

  Joshlyn Dustine Hazel W
eavaros

  Eldest of her family’s five,

  she’ll only live to see one die.

  One mother lost to the Dream,

  One lover lost in between.

  Avishara and Weavaros:

  two families’ flags that still fly close

  until sundered by betrayal

  of each other and the Veil.

  Half-past her birthday, seventeen,

  an apprentice to spoon-feed.

  Blessed with talent majuscule,

  she’ll earn a scholarship to school.

  Among the dream-walking elite,

  a love to gladden her heartbeat.

  Home and children, girl and boy,

  a family that brings her joy.

  A happy life, a good career,

  only her grandfather to fear.

  The falcon is e’er a threat,

  but within her epithet

  she’ll read her fate desired:

  “’Twas in the Dream that she expired.”

  “Josh,” Winsor said, “did Haley open this?”

  Josh shook her head, then nodded, then shrugged. “He must have. I didn’t.” Her mouth tasted like chalk dust. She ran her finger along one edge of the parchment. Anger was beginning to seep through the numbness again. “I have to go,” she said, and stood up.

  “Don’t you want to … I don’t know, absorb this for a minute?”

  Josh stopped in the doorway to look back at her. “What’s to absorb? I mean, I’m going to get into Kasari Academy; that’s great.”

  “But he … Haley read it. He broke the seal on your birthright.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m so angry at him I can’t even feel it.”

  “He’s sick,” Winsor said. “He’s really, really sick. Be angry, but don’t be angry at him.”

  Josh swallowed. One rage at a time—she had Will to hate just then. “All right.” She heard how numb her voice sounded.

  Winsor reread the scroll as she rolled it up. “The wording in this is so odd. And the rhymes seem so … simplistic. I know each scroll is different, but this doesn’t sound like Young Ben. Maybe someone else wrote it.”