“Thank you,” he whispered in my ear before releasing me so that my girlfriend could come over and get her share of the hugs.
“We can be together now,” she said with wonder in her eyes. In my worry about Reeves’s well-being, I had actually forgotten about the true motivation for all this. What a daunting, dizzying concept. This was something I wanted but was in no way prepared for. My thoughts were scattered like birdseed.
“There’s so much I have to show you about being human. We can wait for my acceptance letter together.”
“Have you ever had ice cream?” Reeves asked her, hopping up and down in his seat.
She shook her head no, but did so in such an excited fashion that the gesture seemed positive.
“You must. Take her to get ice cream right away, Victoria,” he demanded with absolute authority, and I agreed that would be on the top of our to-do list.
“You can come to school with me, but I’m not sure if you want to.” My head was whirling with ideas that seemed necessary to discuss at the time. “Where are you going to stay? This is permanent, isn’t it?” I trailed off. This was too much to absorb.
She pulled me back into the hug, the impact of which was dulled by Reeves’s disgusted noises in the background.
“We’ll figure it out. And before that, I’ll make sure to pop into the dreams of a few of those admissions officers.”
Ashlinn winked, and whatever part of me would have admonished her for the sneakiness of it all was crushed by the need for everything to keep going right. It seemed like the world was starting to allow my elation, and an acceptance letter would help all of us in the long run. I giggled and continued to rejoice.
“Come on, Ashlinn,” Reeves said, exasperated. “I wanna start learning now.”
She turned to him, the pink light shining over one side of her face.
“Patience, okay? We’ll start when she wakes up. You won’t have too much longer to wait by the looks of things.”
“When will I get to see you again?” I asked. Hopefully she’d be able to become human sooner rather than later.
“Oh, we’ll take a few strolls through your subconscious in the coming days, I’m sure. Not too positive how long his training will take on your timescale, but it’ll give you something to look forward to.”
If I could wait for a garden to grow, then I could sure as hell wait for this.
“I’ll be counting down every second. Visit me. You also,” I said, pointing to my brother. “And why don’t you think about popping around Mother’s dreams sometime? She could use it.” Maybe that would ease her pain slightly.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied with a little mock salute.
The last image I could recall of that dream involved Reeves and Ashlinn, hand in hand, walking out the front flap of the circus tent. I awoke in a different world.
Eighteen
ELLIE’S BASEMENT was closing in around me. In the dark the wooden beams of her unfinished ceiling with screws protruding at every angle seemed terrifying. At first I couldn’t figure out where I was.
I was in a strange place, and soon Ashlinn would be returning. How’s that for a morning?
“Holy shit,” I whispered, and a head swung over the bed next to me.
“I’ll say” came Ellie’s voice, and I screamed. She was partially illuminated by the light of her cell phone. “Whoa, I know I’m not much to look at in the morning, but my parents will think I’m murdering you.”
“Sorry, I was just a bit disoriented.” I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. That dream had truly just happened and every other issue seemed minuscule in comparison to such a tremendous win.
“And stupidly happy it would appear.”
“Yeah, I am. Good dream, I guess. Have you been up long?” I asked, using my elbows to sit up. The small slit-like windows running around the top edge of her basement walls let in hardly any light, not enough to determine the time of day by.
“Nah, just about a half an hour. It’s before nine. You’re easy in comparison to some of the girls from my chem class. They come over and sleep ’til one, and I’m just stuck lying here as my phone dies from too much Pac-Man.”
She got out of bed, stumbling over me in the process. After some shouts of pain from both of us, she managed to leap over the roadblock of my body and use her phone as a dim flashlight to climb the stairs and turn the actual lights on. At least this time she didn’t ask me to do it. The fluorescent lights made me blink blearily as I ran my hands through my hair. Ellie’s was spiked every which way, but then again, she does that on purpose.
“We can probably take the bandage off now,” I said, trying to divert her from my excitement as she wandered back over to my pile of blankets. There was so much to think about, but this was not the place.
“Go for it.”
She turned to stand in front of me, expecting me to do the honors. I kneeled behind her and started to take the tape away.
“Careful.”
“Sorry, can’t help you much there.”
I tried to peel it off more slowly as Ellie twitched.
“It hurts,” she whined.
“You got a freaking tattoo, and now you’re complaining about the tape. Unbelievable.” And with that I just got it over with and tore off the bandage. Ellie gasped like someone had poured ice water over her head and turned back to me.
“Why you little—”
“It looks amazing,” I exclaimed. “Give me your phone. I’ll show you a picture.”
The news that this permanent work of art wasn’t dreadful seemed to excite her enough, and she handed me her cell. The picture was a bit shaky, and the results were still inflamed, but she might as well have been looking at the Sistine Chapel with her reaction.
“This was the best decision ever. Do you think my parents would catch on if I set this as my screensaver? I am the sexiest bitch alive. I swear to God I’m going to tattoo every inch of my body.”
“Whoa there. Let’s get you a job first, okay?”
“We’ll see.”
“Does it hurt?” I asked. The skin was still angrily red.
“Not nearly as bad. I’ll totally be able to drive you home. Might as well get going.”
I changed back into my clothes from the day before, wondering why I had even bothered to snatch her pajamas to start with, and we left after a breakfast of cereal and Pepsi. Ellie didn’t bother to put on normal clothes, just shoes because she didn’t trust her ability to work the pedals in slippers or barefoot, and we drove the few miles to my house.
“See you soon,” Ellie told me as I was getting out of her car.
“Yeah, you probably will.”
“And look, I’m sorry about what I said last night.”
Wouldn’t she be surprised when Ashlinn came back. Hopefully she’d go easy on the girl.
I nodded and waved good-bye. She drove off, and I gave thanks for the fact that she hadn’t played “Green Tambourine” once in the past two days.
Mother was home and let me in the house. She was pulling her sweater tightly around her form, yet I dragged her into a hug anyway. That was new, and she tried to stifle her surprise.
Waiting for Ashlinn made every day cheerier and full of anticipation. I practiced pirouettes on my hardwood floor as plans of what to do with her flitted through my mind. At night she no longer shied away from my dreams although our “dates” were infrequent due to her need to train Reeves.
One morning I came downstairs to Mother holding her mug at the kitchen table, and she smiled into it. That was something I hadn’t seen in quite some time. I could guess the reason for her near-joy.
“Good morning. You seem cheery.”
I noticed something a bit more lifelike in her eyes.
“You know what? I almost am. Last night I had a dream about Reeves, and it wasn’t a bad one. Not about the crash or anything, like usual.” She ran her fingers up and down the mug’s handle. “He just stood there, looking so perfect and exactly how he al
ways had. I feel like I should be upset, but I don’t know. I saw my boy again, and he was completely okay.”
I walked over and put my hand on her shoulder. “My dreams about him are starting to get better too. I think we’re going to be okay ourselves.”
And in that moment, we definitely were.
The next time Reeves showed up in my dreams, I thanked him for visiting her. He came all by himself that night, and the pride in his own abilities after doing so was beyond endearing. Other nights he and Ashlinn built corn mazes and tree forts and symphony halls in my head. Sometimes he seemed a bit glum, and I had to assume it was because of Dad. There were more good-byes, although unnecessary, and a little over a week later, I met them both in a dream together.
We were standing at the edge of a forested cliff, looking over a waterfall. Cornflower-blue water was pouring to the ground like a rain of gemstones, turning to mist before hitting the distant rocks. Reeves was at the edge, wearing a suit of stars and deep blue midnights with a stiff white umbrella at his side. They were a handsome pair, and he looked older. It made the fact I’d never see him truly age that much more despairing.
“Look at you,” I said, feeling almost maternal over the boy, like it was his first day of kindergarten and I wasn’t ready to send him out into the cruel world.
“I know. They should parade me down a runway like this.”
Better than being sent to a grave. The next suit I see him in won’t be like this.
“I’m scared,” I whispered, and Ashlinn left his side to wrap an arm around my shoulders.
“But you’re also brave. Be there for your mother. We’ll be looking out for you.”
The splashing water drowned out any bird call or rustling leaves, yet I could hear her voice perfectly.
“Do you trust me?” she asked, as if the answer weren’t obvious.
“More than anything.”
Ashlinn took my hand in hers and began backing up toward the edge of the cliff. I assumed she would stop before reaching the brink, but instead she kept pulling me along before blindly teetering back and stepping off.
There was no trepidation or shock in her eyes the whole time, as we fell together. The air was rushing around like a million hair dryers set on high, and there was no sight or sound. The only feeling was the anchors of her hands in mine.
And before we could hit the ground, Ashlinn caught me.
Nineteen
THREE DAYS passed and ended with a funeral. I had procrastinated on preparing for Reeves’s death, not that there was much anyone could do to brace themselves for mortality, and when I found myself sitting on my bedroom floor after the news came from Mother, it felt like all my insides had been scraped out. I was hollow.
When Dad died I had wept for days, extending into long months, but now I was floating. Like an out-of-body experience. Someone needed to reassure me that everything was, in fact, okay, because it sure didn’t feel that way. Mother’s universe had collapsed, and that was reason enough to grieve.
The doctors said Reeves’s heart just gave out, that they didn’t know what went wrong. There wasn’t any sign of secondary infection. I held my mother on the couch through violent tears, and her body was a tortured animal in my arms. She must have had such different expectations for the way her life would turn out; whatever dreams had been spun for her in her youth probably held such promise, but this was where she ended up. One lost year starting with becoming a widow and ending with losing a son. There would be no coming back from this, and I was little comfort in my own broken state. Together, perhaps, we’d make a presentable human and pick up each other’s pieces, as shattered and in need of rearranging as they were.
The funeral came quickly. I’m not sure why I expected seeing him laid out in that setting to not be all that different from viewing his comatose form, because they were in no way alike. Someone had obviously been paid rather well to groom him and try to restore something lifelike to his skin.
They had failed.
Ellie came with her mother, who signed the guest book for both of them, and all three of us were wearing the exact same outfits we had worn to Dad’s funeral last year. Like every other person who came, old school friends of Reeves, distant relatives, and so on, Ellie told me how profoundly sorry she was with glistening, pink eyes. Her mouth was as straight as the lines going up the back of her black tights, and she might have been more beside herself than I was.
As the pastor spoke in mellow tones about Reeves being in a better place, I looked up toward the ceiling, finally grateful, wondering if anyone realized how true those words were. Not that I was completely positive of their validity, a part of me still wondering if the whole thing had been a delusion. Some sort of sick way to cope with losing both him and Ashlinn, but there was no way my imagination could have made up such a perfect recreation of my brother. Even if I never saw him in person again, I could be happy knowing he was free.
No one slept that night. Or, at least, no one in my house. In her bedroom Mother was trying to muffle her sobs but the sharp intakes of breath still drifted down the hall. A better daughter might have gone in there to comfort her, but there was nothing to say. Some unimaginable pains have to be endured alone. I just feared for her sanity after I headed off to college. The wounds might never heal, but that doesn’t mean we’d stop putting Band-Aids on top, and I wasn’t sure if she could do that alone.
The hours ticked by, and my ceiling got less exciting by the second, so I crawled over to my closet with a flashlight, trying to avoid the creaky parts of my floor, and pulled out the book of fairy tales. It was splayed open like a squashed insect in the corner with my license. Many of the pages were bent in on themselves. Sitting in the doorway to our kingdom, I opened to the tale of the sandman and read it, imagining my brother as the main character. He had been hearing his own life story without even realizing it. Now that’s celebrity preceding someone to the extreme.
That was how I spent the hours after my brother was lowered into the ground: reading words meant for children and dabbling in being an insomniac.
I never did sleep that night, but my mother managed to drift off sometime, probably on top of a soaked pillow. Around midnight the audible sobbing stopped, but who knows how much longer she lay awake. Maybe some comfort was waiting in her dreams, though.
The next morning as she slept off a bit of her grief, I tiptoed past her door and headed downstairs to the kitchen for breakfast. Our milk had expired the previous day, so I poured cereal and sat down with it dry, not really intending to eat anything but satisfied to have gone through the motions of normality. My unwatered garden watched as I pretended to eat, and I stared back exhaustedly. It desperately needed to be tended to.
Just as I considered going outside to try and resurrect the carnations, my cell phone began ringing on the table.
Ellie.
I pressed the green button to talk.
“What?” I hissed angrily, hoping the noise hadn’t woken Mother. Did this girl realize what we were dealing with? She had been at the funeral not twenty hours before.
“Your girlfriend is in my fucking house! I think she broke into my room. I mean, sorry about the timing, but this isn’t cool.” She sounded completely out of her mind and was breathing like she was calling from a treadmill.
Holy crap.
“Don’t call the police,” I rushed to say as I ran to grab some paper and my purse. Ashlinn was here.
“That’s all you have to say? Don’t call the fucking police? Of course I didn’t call them. I called you, dammit. Why the hell did you say that? Has she been on the run or something? Holy crap, you dated a murderer. She runs a drug cartel.”
“No she doesn’t, I promise. Where is she?” I uncapped the pen and began to write a note to Mother.
“In my bedroom. She was standing at the end of my bed wearing nothing but my goddamn sweater and saying how there’s an explanation blah blah blah. I got out of there and locked the door as quick as I could. You are da
mn lucky my parents are heavy sleepers and my room is in the basement.”
With the phone jammed between my face and shoulder, I scrawled how I was going to Ellie’s but prayed that Mother wouldn’t wake up before my return. To find one child missing the day after the other’s funeral was beyond my imagining, but there was no time to think up a better plan. Ashlinn was human, Ellie was a catastrophe, and I was wasting moments. I left the paper on the kitchen table and went out the front door, which I opened so slowly it barely creaked. The second it was shut, I broke into a sprint down the sidewalk.
“I’m on my way now but can’t guarantee how fast I’ll be able to run this. Don’t worry, she wasn’t really breaking and entering.” I hope. What was Ashlinn trying to pull here? “You can go back into your room.”
“No way, not until you’re here. This kind of shit doesn’t happen every day. I could have easily thrown my lamp at her and caused major damage. I thought you said she was gone!”
“Yeah, well, apparently she’s back now. I thought it might happen soon but not like this. Sorry.”
“Oh are you? Well, if you know so much, mind telling me why the hell your long-lost girlfriend is half-naked in my bedroom at seven in the morning?” Ellie was shouting, and I worried about her parents. She had said they were heavy sleepers, but this made it seem like they could sleep through a brass band marching. If only I could give her an honest answer for all this, but that idea had fizzled and died the last time I tried it.
Wait, I thought back to what Ellie just said, half-naked? Ashlinn was going to have so much explaining to do when I got there.
After Ellie was an appropriate distance away, of course.
I guess warning me she was about to pull this stunt would have made things too easy.
“What were you dreaming of?” I asked, turning the corner. Empty roads made the run easier not only because there was no waiting at intersections, but also because it meant no one would think I’d gone off the deep end and call the police. It was just a matter of not tripping over the mountainous cracks in our sidewalk.
We Awaken Page 17
