Sam Saves the Night

by Shari Simpson

  Despite her personal distaste for practical jokes, Sam had to laugh. She looked around at the SleepWakers and couldn’t resist the joy on their faces. “So, I’m guessing that during the day the Numbs are… what? Not allowed to have screen time?”

  Byron called to a Waker who was playing Frogger with one hand and shooting walking dead bodies on Zombie Raid with the other. “Hey, Olivia! Got a newbie here! She wants to know what you do all day!”

  “Study!” Olivia shouted as she managed to run up insane numbers on both games. “I’m a Mensan!”

  “Member of Mensa,” Byron supplied helpfully. “The high-IQ society.”

  “My parents want me to be a neurosurgeon!” Olivia continued, typing her initials into the high-score field on Frogger while pumping her gun for a Zombie reload. “But neurosurgeons have really expensive malpractice insurance costs, so I have to make sure I’ll never make a mistake! I study for about seven hours after school every day!”

  “How can a person never make a mistake?” Sam tried to shout-whisper this to Byron, but Olivia still overheard and turned around with a smile.

  “I know, right? What kind of psycho pressure is that? No wonder I was walking in my sleep! Thank God for Dr. Mahdhav! Right, Kyra?” Olivia leaned over and tried to fist-bump a heavyset Waker in red flannel pajamas, who was playing a Nightmare in the Dark game as if her life depended on it. Olivia was left hanging.

  “How are you doing, Kyra? You adjusting okay?” Byron somehow managed to sound caring even when yelling over zombie deaths.

  “Fine.” Kyra didn’t take her eyes off her game.

  Sam shout-whispered to Byron, “Is Dr. Mahdhav one of the other Waker docs?”

  He nodded. “This is his sector. He’s kind of a man-child, so it fits that he has the Numbs and the Pranks.”

  “You said there were five doctors. Where are the other three?”

  “There’s Dr. Hopkins—she’s in North Dakota; Thomas has Manhattan; and Knavish is in—”

  “Byron! Brah!” A scrawny teenaged boy approached, sporting the humble beginnings of a soul patch and hitching up pajama pants that were about three inches too short for him. “Whatcha doing in Mahd’s quad? Slummin’?”

  “Hey, Noa. Just helping out a new Waker,” Byron said. “This is Sam.”

  “S’up, Sam?” Noa gave her a little salute. “You meet Kyra yet? She’s a newbie, too, only been detached a couple of days.”

  “Uh, yeah, sort of,” Sam said.

  “How’s she doing?” Byron sounded concerned, casting a glance over at Kyra, whose nose was about two inches from the Nightmare screen.

  Noa shrugged. “Still won’t talk much, but Olivia did get a nugget of info out of her. Seems her little bro has Asperger’s and Nightmare in the Dark is his favorite game.”

  Byron nodded, thoughtful. Sam wasn’t sure what was on his mind, but then again, she wasn’t hip yet to the inner workings of the SleepWaker world.

  “Hey, Sam, you wanna do some ’Roids?” Noa drawled.

  She must have looked startled because Byron jumped in, “He means Asteroids, not performance-enhancing drugs.”

  “Oh. Oh! Right.” Sam breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks, but I, uh… I’m still kind of useless.” She held up her mist hands.

  “Naw, don’t say ‘useless.’ ” Noa looked at her earnestly. “You’re just an embryo, waitin’ to hatch into a swan.”

  “Why don’t you try, Sam?” Byron leaned in and said this in her ear, which would have given her chills if she weren’t so distracted by Noa’s mangled metaphor. “This is a good place to practice. No pressure, right, Noa?”

  “Brah! Righteous! The daytime is mad pressure, but not here!” Noa crowed, gesturing grandly to the huge room humming with flashing colored lights and bright mechanical sounds. “Freedom! Freedom! Let your soul be a joy cannon!”

  The cheesiness of this proclamation aside, Sam felt a little thrill ripple through her. Maybe this is my tribe, she thought. Maybe this is where it all starts to make sense. Noa loped over to the Asteroids Deluxe game, and she found herself following. As he pressed “Player One” and started to shoot rocky planets and flying saucers, Sam stared at her hands. You have weight. You have possibilities. You can press a button and cause things to exist or be destroyed. You can play a stinkin’ video game, for Pete’s sake.

  “Aw, man, killer satellite took me out,” moaned Noa. “Your turn, Sam. Hope you win!”

  Her heart started to hammer. I don’t need to win, I just want to exist. She moved her hand toward the “Player Two” button. I just want to be solid.

  And then her pointer finger slid right through the button and her whole hand disappeared into the control panel.

  “Sam! Sam!” Byron yelled after her as she doggedly stride-hovered forward. Maybe she couldn’t achieve hyper-cross speed, but she could at least leave the Galloping Ghost behind. “You don’t even know where you’re going!”

  Awww, crud. She stopped so abruptly that Byron blew right through her soul body to the other side. He turned around sheepishly. “Sorry.”

  Sam shrugged. What did it matter? She was immaterial, nonexistent; everything could pass through her without even noticing she was there.

  “Don’t take it so hard,” Byron said. “You’ll get it eventually. Being solid takes practice.” He was using his “concerned” voice again. Only this time she wasn’t buying it.

  “Oh yeah?” she countered. “How long did it take you?”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “That doesn’t matter—”

  “How long did it take Kyra? She’s only been around a few days, and she’s as solid as a rock!” Byron seemingly had no answer for this; he just looked down at the sidewalk. Sam snorted a bitter laugh. “Uh-huh. Listen, why don’t you Roam off and haunt someone else? I’ll just start my own tribe, the Double Losers. Losers by day, and by night. We’ll meet up in Times Square and let cars and Laters blaze through us until one of ’em manages to snip snip the silver cord and puts us out of our misery—”

  “Stop.” At first Sam thought that Byron was reacting to her rant, but then she saw his face. “Come here right now.” His voice was so commanding and serious that she obeyed immediately. They quickly slipped through the wall of the Taco Stop and hid behind a sign advertising a Friday night burrito special.

  “What’s going on?”

  Byron peered through the window. “They’re not usually in this sector. Something must be up.”

  “Who?” Sam still felt irritable. “Is it the Broadways again? They come back to sing about my loserness?”

  “Shhh!” Byron hissed and she shhhed reluctantly. He continued in a whisper, “No. It’s… the MeanDreams.”

  Before “The whaaa?” could come out of her mouth, Sam remembered the Broadways the night before: Ima be carefuling of the MeanDreams. What she’d thought was just rapping grammar was obviously something more. She shivered slightly and peeked out the window past Byron.

  A large group of kids in pajamas were gliding past them. At first Sam wasn’t sure why this particular tribe was so automatically creepy, but then it dawned on her; they were silent. All the other Wakers she had seen so far seemed to have been released from their bodies into noise and thrill; the MeanDreams appeared to have been unshackled into grim and eerie quietness.

  “What are they?” Sam breathed.

  “They’re the reason everyone needs a tribe to be safe,” Byron muttered grimly.

  The MeanDreams stopped dead in front of Galloping Ghost.

  “Uh-oh,” Byron said under his breath.

  Sam gulped nervously. “What? Is it us? Did they hear us?”

  “No. I think they’ve got somebody else.” He craned his neck, trying to see, but the group was in a tight knot now, their backs forming an impenetrable wall.

  “They’ve got somebody? What does that mean?” This came out in an audible squeal that made her sound impossibly girly, but seriously? What the heck were they dealing with here?

  “S
HHHHH!” Byron hissed. “I don’t know for sure! It’s only a rumor at this point, just a suspicion. I haven’t caught them in the act yet, and I never will if you don’t shut it!”

  Her entire misty body was vibrating now, and her whisper was just as wobbly. “In the act of what, exactly?”

  Byron’s mouth was set in a hard line. “Soul-napping. I think they’re taking Wakers against their will.”

  With that hugely awful statement, all the playful joy and supposed freedom of the night was obliterated. Against their will? Even in the SleepWaker world, there were bullies? If it could happen even in the darkness, that meant there was no real freedom anywhere.

  To this realization, Sam had a hugely awful reaction, although not the one she, or anyone else, would have anticipated. Because, the next thing she knew, she was out on the sidewalk, having leapt through the wall of the Taco Stop.

  “HEY!”

  Like gates opening up onto the driveway of hell, the MeanDreams split down the middle and swung apart to see who would dare challenge them.

  Sam gasped.

  In the center of the group was Kyra, plucking anxiously at her red flannel pajamas with trembling hands. And right next to her was the most beautiful disembodied bully one could imagine in one’s darkest imaginings: a stunning girl in a silky turquoise nightgown, the glow of her fair hair and blue eyes lighting up the night.

  There was only one brightness missing.

  Because, for once, Madalynn Sucret was most definitely not smiling.

  “MISS FIFE, ARE YOU IN the land of the living?” Bain’s (obviously) favorite saying cut through her fog. Sam sat up straight in her chair, shaking off the tornado of thoughts that had sucked her into the muffled eye of its storm.

  “Yes, sir. I am.”

  “Glad to hear it. You’ve been doing better the last two days. Don’t crush my dreams.”

  “I’ll do my best not to, sir.”

  The class tittered, with a slight edge of surprise. Was Samantha Fife joking around with a teacher? Bain thankfully let it go, but Sam couldn’t. Memories and images kept drawing her into the mental whirlwind. Had she really seen Madalynn Sucret and a super-scary tribe called the MeanDreams attempting to soul-nap the newbie Kyra? The same Madalynn Sucret who, in approximately eleven minutes, was donning her cheerleading uniform to lead a stomp and shake in Wallace’s “Just Say No to Bullying” pep rally? And what had happened to Kyra? Had Byron been able to help her? For the twentieth time, Sam mentally cursed her bladder. If her physical body hadn’t woken up to go to the bathroom, her silver cord wouldn’t have yanked her back at such a crucial moment and she’d have more answers.

  Or you’d have been soul-napped yourself.

  Well, yeah, that was the other un-fun possibility. What on planet Earth had possessed her to jump out and confront a tribe that Byron had just pegged as probable Waker-stealers? Even now the memory was so overwhelming, her brain kept insisting that she’d imagined the whole thing. Madalynn Sucret? She knew the theory that a SleepWaker soul was supposed to be the opposite of the daytime self, but there was simply no way that the angel playing Flo Nightingale in the school musical was a nighttime bully. There had to be another explanation. There just had to be another detached soul out there with blond curlicues, oceanic eyes, and lips from a plastic surgeon’s “After” photos file.

  “Miss Fife.” Bain’s tone had upgraded from mild exasperation to plain old are you kidding me?

  “Yes, sir, sorry. What was the question?” Sam grabbed her algebra book.

  “The question was, are you going to continue to daydream in my classroom or are you going to the auditorium for the assembly?”

  Sam looked around her; the room was empty. As she gathered up her things, she was tempted to say, “Daydream? More like daynightmare.”

  But she didn’t.

  By the time Sam had reached her lock-less locker after the assembly (thank you, ornery janitor with a bolt cutter), she was convinced. There was no way that the shimmery girl who just led the entire school in a tear-choked plea to the universe on behalf of the downtrodden and disenfranchised was the same person slithering through the darkness like a pissed-off poltergeist.

  No. Way. Sam slammed her locker closed to punctuate.

  And like the sun breaking through the clouds, there she was in the flesh—Madalynn Sucret. “Hello, Sam,” the girl purred.

  Sam squawked in shock. Her first thought—Locker Lurker!—quickly gave way, however, to a starstruck Madalynn Sucret knows my name?

  “I saw that you signed up for set crew for my musical. You want to head over together?” Madalynn radiated such warmth that Sam only mildly registered the “my” part of “my musical.”

  “Did you write it?” Sam said dreamily, basking in the Madalynn campfire.

  “You are so sweet,” laughed Madalynn, slinging an arm around Sam’s shoulder. “No, I’m not that smart,” she continued with a wink that clearly said, Yes, I am totally that smart. “I think it’s awesome that you’re talented enough to build sets, especially since you’re so pretty you should be onstage.”

  They were moving down the crowded hallway by this point, Madalynn’s arm still around Sam, and students’ mouths were dropping open in succession, like the wave at a sporting event. Sam would have been amused, but she barely noticed. It was as if her ears were radio-tuned to the Madalynn Channel—sweettalentedpretty—and everything else was white noise.

  Until Jaida, of course.

  She was coming out of the girls’ bathroom—alone, for once. And Sam was walking with Madalynn Sucret, who was basically the equivalent of a platoon of popular middle school girls. So when Jaida stopped dead and stared at them, she suddenly appeared to Sam as a solitary figure that seemed a whole lot easier to topple.

  “Now…” Madalynn’s whisper broke the spell. Sam turned back to that incandescent smile. Seriously, it was like the girl brushed her teeth with plutonium. “About last night…”

  Last night? Her heart started to thrum. They entered the auditorium, and Sam found herself seated crisscross applesauce on the floor in a dark corner with her brand-new bestie. “Whaaa… what do you mean?”

  “Oh, come on,” Madalynn crooned. “SleepWaker sisters can talk about anything, can’t they?”

  Sam felt her face flush at the same time her hands went icy cold. “I—you—that was you?”

  “Well, of course. Listen, I’m not sure what the Spy told you, but I’d like to clear up a few things.” Madalynn said this in a conspiratorial whisper.

  Now Sam’s entire body became an ice sculpture. The Spy? Madalynn could only mean—

  “You know Byron is Joanne’s son, right? He’s assigned to every new Waker to spy for Fletcher,” Madalynn continued. Then, as she noticed Sam’s expression, her eyes widened. “You didn’t know, did you? Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry! I thought everyone was onto Byron. We call him ‘By the Spy.’ ”

  Sam was reeling, but desperately tried to get a toehold. “S’okay, I… kinda suspected,” she lied, forcing a laugh. “He’s way too hot to be anything but the bad guy, right?”

  Now Madalynn’s gaze narrowed. “Exactly. Figures he would be a Roamer. They’re so selfish.”

  I don’t want to know any more. Don’t tell me any more. But Sam couldn’t stop herself. “What are they, anyway? He never said.”

  “Who, the Roamers? Well, during the day, they’re super-overscheduled perfectionists, so at night they just roam. Alone, not connected to anyone else, no leader. Selfish, right?” Madalynn’s voice was cold, dismissive.

  Something about this tickled Sam’s thinker. Flashes of Byron helping her, encouraging her, watching out for her. Was all of that fake? If a Roamer couldn’t help but be solitary and uncaring, how could he even summon the energy to be a spy? Didn’t that mess up the whole theory about SleepWakers being their essential selves in the darkness?

  She was roused out of her miserable mind flagellation by the sensation of hands on her head; Madalynn was massaging Sa
m’s temples tenderly. Wow. This is really… awkward. But it was working. All of her wounded, confused thoughts started to drain out as Madalynn murmured consolingly, “Don’t fret, Sleep Sis. Forget him.”

  Forget… just forget…

  Wait a minute. She remembered something.

  Sam pulled back from the hypnotic handling. “I saw you. With Kyra. What… what were you doing?”

  Madalynn sighed sadly. “Oh, Kyra. Poor thing. Did you know her little brother has Asperger’s?”

  Sam nodded carefully.

  “Well, my friend Bree—she’s in our tribe—has a sister with special needs, too. We were trying to help Kyra figure out how to deal. Particularly with her parents, who just don’t understand Kyra’s side of things. Because that’s what Dreams do.”

  “Dreams?”

  “You probably heard us called something else, right?” Madalynn continued breezily. “Just another thing to thank the Spy for. He makes up all the tribe tags.”

  “I didn’t make up all the tags.” Sam felt sick. Had Byron lied to her about everything? Had he lied to her about the (Mean)Dreams? Who was telling the truth? Her head felt like it was going to explode.

  Sam’s brain bomb was going to have to wait, however, because just at that moment, Mr. Todorov, Wallace’s excessively committed drama teacher, called from the stage, “Madalynn, dear, are you ready? We’re doing the ‘Queen Victoria awarding you with the Royal Red Cross’ ballet.”

  Madalynn didn’t miss a beat. “I’m just discussing the construction of the Windsor Castle throne with the head of our set crew, Mr. Todorov. Have you met Sam Fife?”

  “Oh my Godspell, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Sam!” Todorov crowed.

  “I’m the head of the set crew?!” Sam whispered to Madalynn in dismay.