Dream Where the Losers Go

by Beth Goobie

  She felt that distant from him, that far away.

  “But for now,” he said, stroking her cheek, “you’re mine. All mine.”

  ONE MINUTE BEFORE the end of homeroom period, Lick walked through the door and stood in a back corner, staring as if he had never seen the place before. Rising from her seat, Skey was about to call out to him, but he turned and walked to the opposite side of the room, where he took a seat. Sinking back down, she watched him. Everyone in the room watched him. Oblivious, Lick sat looking straight ahead, without a shift or fidget, not a single loony spider crawling up his legs. His left eye was purple-black, his nose red and swollen, and his lower lip cut. A scrape ran the left side of his face.

  “Elwin?” said Mr. Pettifer, getting to his feet.

  The bell rang, signaling the end of homeroom. Rising with the others, Lick headed for the door.

  “Elwin,” Mr. Pettifer called again, but Lick exited the room in a rush of thirty students. Right behind him, Skey kept pace. She could see bruises on the back of his neck. All she wanted was to reach out and touch him, touch some part of him, find out who this was, who he could possibly be.

  “Lick?” called a guy, but the boy in front of Skey continued on, not responding. A girl stopped in front of him, asking how he was, and he stepped around her as if she was a tree growing out of the floor—something in his way, that was all. The crowd began to thin as students disappeared into classrooms, and the halls cleared. As soon as possible, Lick moved to the nearest wall and began to feel his way along the lockers. Closing his eyes, he whispered a long string of swear words.

  It was the boy from the tunnel, the dark tunnel—the boy she knew. But he didn’t know her, he wouldn’t recognize Skey Mitchell by sight. And he didn’t know anything about this place, this school, this world—he had forgotten it all when he dreamed his way into the tunnel and left Lick’s life behind.

  The halls were now empty. Quietly, Skey moved to the opposite wall. “Boy,” she called softly. “Boy, it’s me. Do you remember me?”

  Eyes still closed, he turned toward her, a look of recognition on his face. “You’re here,” he said gladly. “You’re the girl with the stories in the wall.”

  “Yes,” Skey said eagerly. “I’m here. Right here with you.”

  “I don’t know where I am,” he said, keeping his eyes closed. “I think I’m in a different dream now. I don’t like this one. Too many people. How did you get here?”

  “I come and go, remember?” said Skey. “I dream a lot of different dreams.”

  “You wearing your pj’s in this dream?” asked the boy.

  “Down, boy,” grinned Skey.

  “Just asking,” he grinned back, without opening his eyes.

  “Listen,” she said softly. “Listen, and I’ll tell you some more stories.”

  What could she tell him about this place? How could she help him understand his own life, the way it was now? Slowly they began moving along opposite walls, feeling their way.

  “Did you find a carving yet?” he asked.

  Abruptly, from behind them, came the sound of footsteps. “Elwin,” called a woman.

  Ducking into a nearby stairwell, Skey peered around the doorframe. Two figures were coming down the hall—Mr. Pettifer and a tall, thin, red-haired woman.

  “Elwin, you’re supposed to be at home, resting,” the woman scolded gently, taking Lick’s arm. “Why did you come to school when the doctor told you to stay in bed?”

  The boy opened his eyes and looked around himself with a bewildered expression. “I found her,” he said, “but now she’s gone again.”

  “Who’s gone?” asked the woman.

  “The girl with the carvings in the wall,” said the boy.

  Frowning slightly, the woman glanced at Mr. Pettifer. “Let’s go home, Elwin,” she said softly.

  “She’s only here when it’s dark,” said the boy.

  “You’re okay now, Elwin,” said Mr. Pettifer, taking his other arm. “Everything’s okay.”

  “Don’t touch me,” said the boy, but neither adult let go of him.

  Slowly they led him down the hall.

  IN CALCULUS, San started imitating every move Skey made. When Skey put her chin in her hand, so did San. When Skey picked up her pen, so did San.

  “Stop it,” Skey hissed.

  “Stop it,” San hissed back.

  It was such a little kid’s game, but it gave Skey the creeps. The Dragons were closing in on her now, pulling her in so deep, she no longer owned her own movements.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  WHEN SKEY WALKED INTO the Counseling office and saw Tammy sitting at their regular table, she felt as if the very atoms in the air opened to give her more space.

  “Hungry?” asked Tammy.

  “You bet,” said Skey. “What’ve you got?”

  “What you need,” said Tammy. “More of these.” With a smile, she slid two meat pastries across the table. Grabbing one, Skey chomped her way through it, then downed the orange juice Tammy handed her.

  “When I get out of that lockup,” she said, letting out a small burp. “I am going to take you out for a fabulous lunch.”

  “Oh yeah?” said Tammy. “Where?”

  “Anywhere you want,” said Skey. “We can go to the Bean Palace Extraordinaire if you want. You can bring your mother too. I owe her.” Eagerly she began munching the second pastry.

  “You don’t owe,” said Tammy dramatically, leaning toward her. “You deserve.”

  Skey’s throat tightened, and she set down the pastry. “You have no idea,” she whispered, staring at the table.

  “About what?” asked Tammy.

  “You’re another world,” Skey said slowly.

  “No,” said Tammy. “We’re the same world, you and me.”

  Skey shook her head. “Different planets,” she said.

  “Look around you, girl,” said Tammy. “Do you see me on a different planet from you?”

  Hesitantly, Skey met the other girl’s eyes. “Then how did you get to be so different?” she asked.

  “My mother feeds me,” Tammy said emphatically.

  “That’s not all it is,” said Skey, toying with the pastry. “You ever had...sex, Tammy?”

  Tammy’s eyes widened. “No,” she said, glancing away.

  “Why not?” asked Skey.

  Tammy flushed. “I’m not exactly on the Most Wanted List, am I?” she said.

  “You could get it if you wanted,” said Skey.

  Tammy let out a nervous whoosh of air, then said, “Why are we talking about this?”

  Skey focused on a spot just to the left of Tammy’s face. “Sex changes things,” she said quietly. “When a guy wants you, when guys want you, you don’t belong to yourself anymore. You belong to them, to their eyes and their hands. To their thoughts. They’ve got you, trapped in their minds, doing whatever they want you to do.” She paused, thinking. “It starts in grade six or seven, as soon as they figure out what their cocks are for. That’s when they start watching, trapping you with their minds. And their mouths. No matter what they’re saying, what they’re telling you is, You’re mine. If you don’t get it from me, you’ll get it from some other guy. Then you’ll belong to him.”

  “So don’t listen to them,” said Tammy.

  “They’re not asking you to listen,” Skey said intensely. “They’re not asking for anything. If they were asking, you could answer no.”

  Tammy’s gaze faltered, and she took a deep breath. “I’m not sure,” she said slowly, “what we’re talking about.”

  “How do I get myself back?” Skey asked softly. “What I want to know is how do I take myself back—back from the dragon’s claw?”

  Across the table, the two girls watched each other silently.

  “How well do you know this dragon?” asked Tammy.

  “Pretty well,” said Skey.

  “How well do you know yourself?” asked Tammy.

  Skey’s eyes dropped.

>   “I don’t know about dragons,” said Tammy, “but yourself you can do something about.”

  Skey stared at the long sleeves covering her forearms. “Maybe,” she said.

  AT THE END OF the tutoring session, Skey borrowed enough money for bus fare from Tammy and caught the bus back to the lockup. Tammy was right, she thought, watching through the window as the city slid past. It didn’t matter how well she knew Jigger and the Dragons, and it didn’t matter if she guessed their intentions and realized what they planned to do. She didn’t own them, she didn’t run that pack, and she couldn’t change a single electrical pulse in their brains. What she needed most right now was to go deeper into herself. That was where the possibilities lay, the search for what she could become.

  “I feel sick,” she told Janey upon her return to the unit and crawled into bed. Then she closed her eyes and descended into the relief of her mind. “You’re right,” she said quietly into the dark. “There is something I need to remember, but I don’t know how. How do I remember something when I don’t know what it is?”

  “What are you most afraid of?” asked Lick.

  “Touch,” she said immediately. But it was more than that, and she knew it. And if she couldn’t say it here in the dark to someone who would never know who she was, how could she truly face it within herself?

  “Turning on,” she added shakily. “Turning on to the dragon’s claw. Wanting it.”

  “Wanting what makes you scream?” asked Lick.

  She saw what he was getting at. “Wanting what made my mother scream?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Everyone’s got their own personal dragon,” she said. “I’m pretty sure my mother made herself forget she ever had one.”

  “I never forgot mine,” said Lick. “I can’t forget. I want to. You’re lucky. Why d’you want to remember what makes you afraid?”

  “I feel like I’m missing part of myself,” she said. “Like an arm or a leg. Or maybe part of my brain—the part that helps me think straight.”

  Lick laughed softly. “So you can think like me?” he asked. “So you can think about it all the time, always scared, always thinking he’s coming to get you again, it’s going to happen again, it’s going to happen any minute and you can’t stop it, you’re helpless, you’re an absolute victim. You want to remember how bad it got, how much you begged for him to stop, how you screamed? How you wanted it to end, how you just wanted everything to end?”

  “I tried to kill myself,” she said.

  Lick continued shakily. “I remember knowing it would never end,” he said. “I remember my face pushed into my pillow, so no one could hear me screaming. I remember him bringing in his buddies, and it’d be a group thing. Sticks and bottles, not just body parts. I remember telling my mother, and her not believing me. For twelve years, she didn’t believe me. Asked him to babysit me. Finally, she walked in and saw it happening. Then she believed me. She ran straight to the phone and called the cops. I was fourteen years old, but she held me in her lap and rocked and rocked me until they came. Rocked and rocked me while I answered their questions. She wouldn’t let go of me. I hated her touching me, I hated anyone touching me, but she wouldn’t let go.”

  “Did he go to jail?” she whispered. “Your dad?”

  “Not my dad,” said Lick. “He was gone a long time ago. It was my brother. He’s seven years older than me. The judge gave him two years less a day. I think he did six months, and then he was out on good behavior.”

  She let out a long string of swear words.

  “You got it,” Lick said softly. “Oh, I remember. I remember everything. Sometimes I get these sharp stabbing pains in my ass, like someone’s got a shovel and he’s digging me wide open. Then I know my brother is thinking about me. I know he’s thinking about me. I know he’s thinking about me.”

  Lick whimpered softly, drowning in his memories, his fear. Her fear. She felt it like Lick felt it, but still she knew something he didn’t. Part of him had forgotten, just as she had. The boy in the tunnel was his forgetting. The boy with the secret name, the boy with no name—Lick didn’t know about that part of himself. That meant he only had one side of the story, one side of himself, just like she had. And now she had to figure out how to find the other side of herself.

  “I’ve got to know,” she whispered. “I’ve got to.”

  “It’s your funeral,” said Lick.

  OUT IN THE UNIT, Ann was obviously having another bad day, stalking around, yelling at staff, and slamming her door. Finally, just before evening snack time, staff moved her to the Back Room to cool off, and quiet descended onto Skey’s room. Settling onto her bed, she took one last look at the stars and prepared to descend again into the dark tunnel.

  “Skey,” called a staff. “Phone.”

  Heart thudding, Skey picked up the girls’ phone to find Jigger on the other end of the line. “What do you think you’re pulling?” he demanded, his breath heavy and harsh.

  “What d’you mean?’ she stammered.

  “Where were you this afternoon?” he asked.

  “I got sick,” she said. “I came home.”

  “That isn’t home,” he hissed. “It’s a dungeon, remember?”

  Surprise flickered through Skey. She had actually called this place home. “Yeah, okay,” she mumbled.

  “Plans have changed,” he said abruptly. “You’ll be required to prove your loyalty to the Dragons tonight. Two AM. You’ve got the key. Meet us at the door and let us in.”

  “No, Jig—,” she started to protest, but Jigger cut her off.

  “Night Games,” he said and hung up.

  SKEY LAY WATCHING the red numbers on her clock radio flick past midnight, closing her eyes tightly each time night staff came around with a flashlight, checking the rooms. After Jigger’s phone call, she had crawled into bed and glued her eyes to the clock. Whatever Lick was thinking about in the dark tunnel, tonight he would have to think about it alone—she had to make sure she was here and awake for two AM, so she could show the Dragons that she had no key. Then they would go away, and it would be over. There would be no Night Games in this place of girls, no Night Games for Ann or anyone else who was alone, hurt and scared.

  HER CLOCK READ 1:15. Skey figured she would give herself time to get down the stairs, but not so much that staff would see her hanging around the side entrance door. As far as she could tell, the girls’ rooms were checked once an hour—at ten thirty, eleven thirty and twelve thirty. The next time would be one thirty. No, a little earlier. At exactly one twenty-four, a brilliant flashlight beam swept over her closed eyelids and passed on.

  Skey sat up slowly, cringing at the creak of bedsprings. She waited, hunched over her thudding heart, but the flash-light didn’t return. Getting out of bed, she peered through her open doorway, watching the night staff move around the unit, tidying up. At one forty, the woman turned on the TV, then sat down and lit a cigarette, breaking the no-smoking rule.

  Move, Skey thought, clenching and unclenching her hands. You’ve got to move.

  The minutes crawled by, and she began to go stiff at the knees. Finally, at one fifty-two, the woman stood and went into the girls’ washroom. Immediately Skey ran past the office and down the entrance hall. Here she paused at the edge of the brightly lit main hallway, where the stairs began their descent.

  She knew how each one of the stairs creaked. One wrong move, and sound would reverberate through the entire building. How could Jigger think the Dragons would be able to sneak into this place? Coming up these stairs, they would broadcast themselves in stereo. Carefully, Skey began her odyssey down the stairwell, sliding from one end of a stair to the next. Meticulously, she picked her way through a minefield of hidden noise and gradually gained the first landing, then the second and finally the last eight steps that led toward the side entrance door.

  She approached the door slowly, knowing they were already there, feeling them shift in the outside dark. She could feel
them and they could see her through the window, well-lit in the hall light. As she neared the door, cold air blew in under the bottom and onto her bare feet. Now she could see dark shapes and pale faces. Somehow the gang had turned off the outside light above the door—unscrewed it, probably. Abruptly, Balfour’s leering face squished itself against the window, his eyes rolling, his mouth large and distorted. Behind him, San drifted close enough to be seen, then faded back. Stepping forward, Jigger motioned for her to unlock the door.

  Open the door, he mouthed in huge syllables as if she was stupid. Open the door.

  In slow motion, Skey spread her hands and pressed her empty palms against the window glass. No key, she thought at them urgently. I have no key.

  “Shit,” Jigger said quietly, but the gang didn’t fade away into the night. Instead, Jigger gestured to Trevor, who hunched down over the outside keyhole. Pressing her face to the glass, Skey heard a slight scraping sound, and realized what he was doing. Trevor was using a pick. The Dragons were trying to pick the lock.

  She understood then. They hadn’t come to play the usual Night Games. They hadn’t even come to get at a feast of sleeping girls, torture and mutilate them in their beds. They had come hunting for her. She had betrayed them, turned on her own kind, and they could feel it—they were the same blood and heartbeat, weren’t they? The Dragons were going to pick the lock, open the door, pull her out into the night, and take her away.

  Forever free, she remembered Jigger saying, sad and soft. Free as the moon and the stars. Whatever he planned to do with her, she wouldn’t be coming back.

  Electric fear surged through Skey, and her empty hands came together into fists. Desperately she began pounding on the door, the dark sound of her hands echoing beneath her high bright voice. No words, but enough sound—endless, terrified sound.

  In the distance, she could hear night staff coming, calling out to her as they descended the stairs. With a moan, Skey slumped to the floor, her head filling with the sound of running feet, panting, the slam of a car door and an engine starting up. On the other side of the locked door, wheels spun and squealed down the street, taking seven Dragons away from what might have been, what they would have done to her, the fate the dragon’s claw had reserved for each one of them that night.