by Cyn Balog
“Don’t touch—”
“I know!” His voice is a frustrated whisper. He starts to move his hands again. I want to tell him, Gently, gently, but I know he’d meet any of my attempts to help with the same unpleasantness, so I bite my tongue.
Another fifteen minutes pass. It’s excruciating. I am told there will come a day when, as a human, I won’t put the needs and worries of these women before mine, but right now that seems utterly impossible.
She turns onto her side and then sits straight up in bed, checking the clock. I, too, check the clock; it’s likely Vicki or Evangeline is waiting for us. When Julia looks around the room, Mr. Colburn jumps backward, then studies her. Waves a hand in front of her face. She doesn’t flinch. He waves his hand again, more fiercely this time, then screams, “Hello!” loudly enough to rattle my bones. No response. He shakes his head. “Wow. She really can’t see or hear me.”
I motion with my chin. “Keep to your work.”
He steps back, his face stone. Giving up. Clearly he isn’t used to being ignored.
I move to the bed and begin to run a hand over her, and within minutes, she is asleep. “See?” I say. “You were almost there.”
He glowers. “She really, really doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Yes, but she might dream of you,” I offer as consolation, though I know that Julia’s dreams have rarely, if ever, been of him. It’s most always those magnificent buildings, their tops hiding amongst the clouds. “Would you like to see her dreams?”
He cocks his head. “I can do that?”
“Sometimes. Just close your eyes, and think of her sleeping there.” He does as I tell him to, and I do the same. “Can you …”
He’s silent for a moment. “Oh, yeah … cool. She’s … at the food court. At Sweetie Pi’s. That’s where she works. She’s making … ha. She’s making an egg cream. This is her dream? Seriously?”
“Yes.” I watch the scene as he narrates it. So that is her place of employment. In all those times of visiting that place in her dreams, I’d never realized that. As she fills a cup with seltzer, I see someone approach. At first I think it is Mr. Colburn, which startles me; I have not yet shown him how to insert himself into her dreams. But then I realize it is another young man.
“What the—” Mr. Colburn breathes. “What the hell is he doing in Julia’s dream?”
“Who is he?” I ask.
“My best—” he begins, his words clipped, but he stops midsentence as the young man drifts across the counter so that the space between him and Julia is nonexistent. His open mouth meets hers. He kisses her so ravenously, pressing his body against her with such force, that I can barely watch. I feel my face growing hot for her and have to pull myself out of it when I feel the heat radiating off Julia’s skin.
“No, Bret!” a voice mumbles. Julia’s.
Mr. Colburn’s eyes spring open. Julia turns to the other side, clutching her pillow, still sleeping, still unaware of our presence. “Julia …,” my student says, bowing low to her ear. “Julia!”
“She cannot hear you,” I remind him. I’m glad I haven’t yet told him he can speak to her in her dreams; from the look on his face, he is far too unstable.
His hands tremble. His voice is ragged. “Why? Why was he in her dream? Why was he kissing her?”
I give him a smile to cut the tension. “When was the last time you were able to control what you dreamt of? It means nothing.”
He processes that for a moment and then rubs his eyes.
“It’s got to mean something.”
“Trust me. It doesn’t.” I say this only to calm him; any fool who has ever had a dream knows that sometimes they do have meaning. But only Julia knows what exactly it means. Thank goodness, his face softens. I check the clock at her bedside. “And we must be going on to our other charges.”
He slowly follows me out the window but then stops to watch Julia before he passes into the night. For the first time, that happy-go-lucky grin has been replaced by a troubled frown.
“What are you thinking?” I ask him.
He doesn’t answer, but I know. I know he is wondering if joining the Sandmen was the right decision after all.
CHAPTER 9
Julia
“How you holding up, Jules?” my locker neighbor Ebony asks when I stop to throw my bag into my locker.
“Fine, thanks,” I say. It’s the same answer I’ve given to every one of the three dozen people who have asked me the same thing. Maybe I should come up with something wittier. After all, I know the drill: they don’t really want to know the answer. If I said something else, their eyes would glaze over.
Monday morning, all eyes are still on me. People step aside in the hallway as I pass. The funeral was weeks ago. I wonder how long it will be before they stop thinking of me as Front-Page Julia and start thinking of me as Julia again. Maybe that won’t ever happen; after all, I was known as the victim for years after that incident when I was seven. That is, until I met Griffin. I remember the first time he kissed me. He stroked my cheek, right by the scars, and his hand felt like sandpaper. I shuddered. “I bet you’re wondering how I got those, huh?” I whispered to him.
He grinned and whispered back, “Nope. I’m wondering why someone so smoking hot would be so stupid as to care about something so small. You need to keep your hair out of your face.” From then on, he was constantly pushing my hair behind my ear so that it wouldn’t fall down over my cheeks. We never talked about my past. I find myself wishing that he were here again, just to tell me what I’m having a hard time remembering now. What was it he used to say? It’s all in the past. Leave it there.
I wish everyone would follow Griffin’s advice. It’s the last week of the school year, so in another three days, I won’t see most of these people for months. I wonder how much of my past can be erased in a little less than three months. Maybe by the time I come back, I can just be Julia again.
Yeah. Fat chance.
I wonder what I’ll have to do this time to be thought of as normal again. Before, it was Griffin who made me normal. Now … maybe I need to attach myself to a new guy. And the logical choice is Bret. I think about last night’s dream for the hundredth time this morning and shudder. Though my brain is telling me that makes sense, my heart seems to want to run in the other direction.
All the students are walking around with that extra spring in their steps that comes with knowing summer vacation is just around the corner. Grades are in, so teachers aren’t really teaching, students aren’t really learning, and most of the seniors are nowhere to be found. That means Bret is probably somewhere else.
Thank God.
I have no interest in seeing him; after all, I saw enough of him in my dream to last several lifetimes. And there was something else about that dream, something weird, that I can’t put my finger on….
I slam my locker door shut. Dreams are just dreams. I am not thinking about this right now.
Ebony smiles at me. “Are you going to Mike Nash’s graduation party this Wednesday?”
She’s the first person who hasn’t run away as soon as the “How are you holding up?” question was posed, who hasn’t expected me to be in mourning for the remainder of my teenage years. “Um … well, I don’t know.”
“You should. You shouldn’t just coop yourself up inside. It might lift your spirits.” She studies me. “You look really beat, so getting out might do you some good.”
I check my reflection in her locker mirror. She’s right; I do. My cheeks look eggshell pale and my eyes are rimmed in red. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
That’s an understatement. I think I slept better the weeks after Griffin’s death, which probably makes me evil and heartless, but it’s true. Last night, it took me forever to get to sleep. Something was just not right—different, as if I were on new, scratchy sheets. Then, after that dream, I decided I didn’t want to sleep. At all. Ever again. It wasn’t just that Bret had his tongue down my throat, though
just thinking about that now makes me tremble. There was something else really uncomfortable about the dream, but I can’t remember what it was.
“A bunch of us are going, if you want to come along …,” she says, and I’m starting to think, Well, why the hell not? when I suddenly see him coming toward me in the busy hall. Oh, great.
Bret waves at me immediately, as if he’s been searching for me. I feel my face getting hot. Ebony’s standing next to me, oblivious to my meltdown, saying something about the party, but I’m completely lost. Especially when Bret stops at my locker and we’re standing toes to toes.
It was just a dream. Get a grip, I think.
Still, I can’t meet his eyes. “Hey there,” I say as brightly as I can.
He leans his shoulder against the row of lockers. “Wow. You look like crud.”
The image of our bodies pressed together pops into my head and I snarl at him, “You look like crap.”
“Great, that was the effect I was going for.”
Bret’s grin turns wicked as his eyes fall on Ebony, like Who are you and what are you doing with my property? Despite the noise in the halls, an uncomfortable silence sets in.
Ebony narrows her eyes at him, then gives me a smile. “I forgot. If you go anywhere, I guess it would be with your other hip tumor.” She motions in Bret’s direction, slams her locker, and saunters away.
“No, wait—” I start, but Bret moves between us and laughs.
“So, crud-face, what’s up?”
“Um, nothing,” I say, suddenly wishing I were in bio. It says a lot when you’d rather be sitting in bio than talking with your friend. I watch Ebony head down the hall without looking back, and I hiss, “Do you think maybe … just maybe … I could have a conversation with someone other than you?”
It comes out meaner than I expected, and I immediately feel guilty.
“With who?” He tilts his head, then hitches a thumb in Ebony’s direction. “With her? I don’t even know who she is.”
“So? I do. She’s in my class. And we were talking about going to a graduation party on Wednesday.”
His eyes narrow. “But you’re not graduating.”
“So?”
He puts an arm around my shoulder, and I nearly jump from the tingles it sends down my arms. “Okay, fine. If you want me to take you to a party, all you need to do is ask.”
“I—I don’t …,” I stammer, fists clenched. I don’t want you, I think. Then I sigh. “I’m just … tired. I need to get to class.”
“Let me walk you.”
I shake my head. “No, I have two feet. They work, too.”
“Oh, come on. Is it so bad that I want to make sure you’re okay?”
“That’s nice, but I’m fine.”
“Right. You say you are. You’re starting to do that girly, emotional, freak-out thing, and it’s breaking my heart. I want the old Julia back.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be the old Julia anymore,” I mutter. The old Julia would take the abuse and dish out some more. But lately I’ve just been too exhausted to even bother trying to be smooth and quick-witted around Bret, which reminds me how impossible that dream was. I expected that if I kissed a guy in a dream, it would be fairy tale–like, blissful. This was like kissing a Hoover. And it didn’t help that Griffin was standing there, stone-faced, watching us the entire time.
Griffin.
Suddenly, it hits me. Griffin was in my dream. Had he ever been in one of my dreams before? No, not that I can remember. But now, now that he’s dead, for the first time ever, I dreamt about him.
He was wearing a tuxedo, like he wore to prom. He was watching me, as if on the other side of a barrier he couldn’t break through.
And he was not the happy, carefree Griffin.
Far from it.
The hallway seems to blur and spin, like I’m on a carousel. I look down at my hands. They’re trembling. Bret must sense it, because he reaches out and steadies me with a firm hand on my shoulder. “Someone skipped breakfast,” he jokes. But I am far from in a joking mood.
I take a breath. Dreams are just dreams.
Right?
CHAPTER 10
Eron
It’s a beautiful, bright day and the shade of the oak I’m resting in feels heavenly. The windows are open in Julia’s home and her pink lace curtains sway in the breeze, carrying her perfumed scent, like the smell of clean laundry, out to me. I smile to myself, thinking of wash day as a child, when my mother would hand me a basket of freshly laundered sheets to fold, and I would fall asleep in them, inhaling their sweet scent. I don’t notice the absence of the incessant chirping of the birds that has always been my background noise until a grating voice nearly knocks me off my branch.
“What are you doing up there?”
I straighten and peer to the ground, between the branches, for the first time in a long while feeling rather dizzy. A bald man with a bulbous nose and ruddy cheeks is scowling at me. He’s wearing a white T-shirt and gardening gloves. Again, I’m nearly knocked off my branch when a realization floods over me.
He can see me.
I quickly scramble down to the grass to meet him. When I am on the ground, I stand a full head taller than he. “My good sir!” I say cordially, knowing full well how inappropriate a stranger hiding in Julia’s tree must seem. I remove my hat and hold it in front of me. “Pleased to meet you. I am Eron DeMarchelle.”
At that moment I note the large, rather threatening pruning shears in his hands. He jabs them at me. The scowl has deepened.
“And you are …?” I prompt.
He takes a step backward. “Calling the police.”
“No. No. No. You see …” I turn my hat in my hands. This is not how I expected my first day as a human to go. “I understand it may look strange … me in that tree … but I assure you, I was only …”
I swallow. What, exactly, was I doing?
He leans forward, squinting all the more, waiting for an explanation.
“I thought that perhaps my kite had flown into this tree.”
The sharpness in his features doesn’t diminish. “Kite?”
“Uh. Yes.” I’m not sure where the excuse came from; I never owned a kite when I lived in the city, as many a child had lost them in the clotheslines. But did they not fly kites these days?
He looks up into the tree’s branches. “Aren’t you a little old to be flying kites?”
I smile sheepishly.
He points the shears at me menacingly. “You’d better get out of here. If I see you in this neighborhood again, I will call the police.”
“Yes. Yes, sir,” I say, heading across the lawn, toward the street. If Chimere were watching, she’d giggle and say, Making friends already, are we?
When I am out of the view of the gardener, I marvel at the pavement, at the way the morning sun makes its surface glitter like a chest of jewels. It’s been over a hundred years since I’ve been in a sun this brilliant; usually I’d spend the daylight hours hidden in the shade of the trees. In the dying orange rays of daytime, things take on a more somber, muted quality. Everything now is so much more intense I can’t help blinking furiously.
A middle-aged man in shiny underpants lumbers toward me on the sidewalk. His face is ruddy, and he is breathing hard. His blank, unseeing eyes suddenly fix on me and narrow. It’s been years since humans have looked at me, and I shiver from the thrill of it. I tip my hat and say, “Good morning,” but the man does not reply. That is when I notice a small round device in his ear; the man must be hard of hearing. “Good morning!” I shout. But the man simply sneers and jogs on.
Chimere’s voice rings in my ears. Oh, yes. You fit in quite gloriously here.
I shrug and continue down the path, squinting in the light. Everything—the rooftops of the neighborhood colonials, the leaves on the trees, the identical black mailboxes—everything glints as though it were winking at me, welcoming me. Or perhaps warning me.
I pull a crumpled paper from my ves
t pocket and study it, though I know perfectly well what it says: V. Harmon, 26 Hart Avenue, 2B. I memorized that information, for it holds the key to my human livelihood. How could I possibly survive more than a few days as a human without money, without a place to live? V. Harmon is a former Sandman who offered up a room and some other items to help get me on my feet. Though I’ve never met him, I know he will be welcoming; he received the same kindness from another former Sandman when he returned to human life. It will be nice to have one friend in this world, one understanding soul to confide in.
At the entrance to Julia’s development, there are a few people standing at a small glass-enclosed shelter. It’s a motley crew, a pretty woman with a baby, an old lady in a flowered dress, and a young man, perhaps my age, reading a magazine. The two women stare me up and down, looking shocked, and I’m certain it’s because of my dress. A dark three-piece suit, a top hat, and spats are too formal and stuffy for such a warm day. Perhaps V. Harmon will have some more fashionable attire for me to wear.
I steal a look at the young man’s wardrobe. A vulgar black cotton shirt, sleeveless, like underclothes. It says Save the Trees—Eat a Beaver on it. Blue jeans, the kind I wore in the factory. The young man doesn’t look up. He slouches forward, rocking his head back and forth to some inaudible rhythm, a black nest of hair cluttering up his face. He, too, has wires coming from his ears; it’s strange how so many young people these days have hearing problems. I lean over to him and enunciate, “Good day. Would you happen to know where 26 Hart Avenue, 2B, might be?”
The man turns to me. “Up yours, homo.”
The lady with the baby taps me on the shoulder. “It’s about ten blocks down that way,” she says tentatively, inspecting me as she points down the street. Just then a frightening sight—a huge, hulking metal monster—screeches to a halt before me. I jump back, but the woman motions to it as two doors groan open. “This bus stops there.”
