Ah, so it was that kind of dream. I felt even worse about having to disturb it.
As Antony ran the fingers of one hand through his luxuriant hair, the triumph disappeared from Charles’s face. “Some women find a man with a bald patch very attractive,” he murmured.
“Oh yes,” I quickly agreed. “Lottie, for instance.”
And my mom. After all, she was in love with Charles’s bald brother, Ernest. Although presumably in spite of his bald patch, not because of it.
“Who’s Lottie?” asked Antony, and I was just as interested in the answer as he was. Now we’d see if Charles was serious about Lottie.
At least he was smiling again when he said her name. “Lottie will—Hey, what’s that?” He had been interrupted by a high-pitched sound suddenly ringing out over the golf course.
Now, of all times! “It’s too early for the alarm clock,” I murmured, and when Antony added, “Sounds more like a smoke alarm to me,” I made for the door in a slight attack of panic. If Charles woke now, the whole dream would collapse, and I’d fall into a void, a very unpleasant experience that I wasn’t keen to repeat in a hurry. As the high note went on swelling, while cracks were already appearing in the sky, I sprinted back to the door and grasped the handle just as the ground threatened to give way beneath me. With one last stride, I was safely through the doorway and out in the corridor, closing the door behind me.
Done. But my mission had obviously failed. I still didn’t know how Charles really felt about Lottie. Even though he had smiled at the mention of her name.
The photo of Charles on his door struck up its tooth-brushing jingle again.
“Oh, shut up,” I snapped, and the photo of Charles fell silent, looking hurt. And then, in the sudden hush, I heard it: a familiar, unpleasant rustling only a few yards away. Although there was no one in sight and a sensible voice in my head told me that, after all, I was only dreaming, I couldn’t hold back my fear. The feeling was as nasty as that rustling sound. Without knowing exactly what I was doing or who I was running away from, I took to my heels.
2
MY BREATHING WAS so loud that I couldn’t hear anything else, but I felt sure the rustling was right behind me. And coming closer. I scuttled around the corner into the next corridor, where I’d find my own dream door. To call the sound a rustling wasn’t quite right—that sounds more like a harmless rat, and this rustling was anything but harmless. It was the most mysterious rustling I’d ever heard, like a curtain being drawn back to reveal a hollow-cheeked chainsaw murderer with a bloodst—
I slowed down abruptly. Because there was already someone waiting for me beside my door. Luckily not a hollow-cheeked chainsaw murderer, someone much better-looking.
Henry. My boyfriend for the last eight and a half weeks. And not just in my dreams but in real life too. (Although it did seem to me that we spent far more time together in our dreams than when we were awake.) He was leaning back against the wall, as he so often did, with his arms folded, and he was smiling. The very special Henry smile that was just for me and always made me feel I was the luckiest girl in the whole world. Normally I’d have smiled back (with what I hoped was an equally special Liv smile) and flung myself into his arms, but at the moment there wasn’t any time for it.
“Nocturnal fitness training?” he inquired when I stopped in front of him and hammered on the door with my fist, instead of kissing him. “Or are you running away from something?”
“I’ll tell you inside!” I gasped, still hammering. The flap of the mailbox opened, and someone pushed out first a piece of paper and then a pen, infuriatingly slowly.
“Kindly write down today’s password, fold the note correctly, and post it back through the flap,” my friend Mr. Wu said in dulcet tones from the other side of the door.
I cursed quietly. My security system was brilliant at fending off unwanted strangers, not so good when I wanted to get to safety in a hurry myself.
“There really are more effective methods than running away in a dream, Liv.” Henry had taken a good look around the corridor and now reappeared beside me. “For instance, you can simply fly out of danger, or turn into something so fast that no one could catch up with it. For instance, a cheetah. Or a moon rocket…”
“Not everyone thinks it’s as easy to turn into something else as you do, especially not into a stupid moon rocket,” I snapped at him. The pen in my hand was shaking slightly, but my fears had subsided a good deal in Henry’s presence. I didn’t hear any more rustling. All the same, I was sure we weren’t alone. Hadn’t it turned darker? And colder?