“No, I only wanted to know how you are.”
“Fine, thanks. I’ve drunk chamomile tea and taken a tablet, and right now I’m lying comfortably in my bed. With a bucket beside it just in case. So that the rug doesn’t suffer a second time.” He smiled a little wryly. “What’s the matter, Liv?”
“Why haven’t I ever been to your home? I don’t even know what your room looks like.”
“Well, we can easily change that,” said Henry, and instead of sitting on the seat in a capsule on the big wheel I was perched on the edge of a bed. Henry was opposite me, sitting on a chair at a desk and grinning at me. “Voilà—my room. I just left out the bucket and tidied up a bit.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said, but all the same, I looked around with interest. There wasn’t a lot of furniture. Just the broad bed, the desk, and its chair. I expected that his clothes were in the built-in wardrobe behind two white-painted slatted doors. My own green dream door beside them didn’t quite fit into the red, white, and dark-blue color scheme.
Large quantities of books were simply stacked along the walls—obviously Henry didn’t think much of bookshelves. There was a guitar leaning against one of the stacks. A basketball hoop hung above the bed, and the ball that went with it was lying on the rug, a soft version of the British flag. Textbooks and paper covered with Henry’s handwriting towered up on the desk, and the music box I’d given him for Christmas stood there as well. He didn’t have any pictures hung on the walls, only an enormous bulletin board over the desk with notes, postcards, and photos on it. Including one of me and Henry at the last Autumn Ball. I stood up to take a closer look.
“There are clean sheets on the bed,” said Henry, reaching for my hand to pull me down on his lap.
My knees instantly went weak. Was this the time and the place to show Secrecy, Mom, and anyone else interested (me included) that they were wrong about my being sexually backward? Admittedly it was a great temptation, particularly as Henry’s smile had never been more seductive, but then I remembered those lucky cats that my unconscious had brought raining down just now. Suppose that bombardment was only the beginning? Who knew what else my unconscious would do to make me talk to Henry and clear up a few important points? I pushed him away from me and tried not to let the glint in his eyes distract me.
“Henry, I don’t want to know what your room looks like, or that your sheets have been changed,” I began. “Or rather—well, yes, but then it ought to be your real bed.… Anyway, it ought to be real if we…” No, I wasn’t getting anywhere this way. I stepped back and took a deep breath. “Why have I never been in your room for real? How come Grayson and Emily know about problems you’ve never mentioned to me? Why don’t I know all those people in your photos when I’m awake?”
Henry sighed. “But you’re here now.”
“That’s not the same!”
“Yes, it is,” said Henry. A pair of basketball shoes fell on the rug out of nowhere, and there was a rain of socks, six in all, distributed picturesquely around the room. A pot with a dried-up houseplant in it appeared on the windowsill. “It’s absolutely the same now.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said firmly. “Because this is still a dream. My dream, to be precise. We never meet at your place—why not?”
“If that’s the trouble, we can go there now.” Henry pointed at the green door. “I’ll show you all the photos, and you can tell me what your problem with the beckoning cat is.”
“I’m talking about the real—”
I was interrupted by a scream. Someone shouted Henry’s name. And at the same moment he disappeared, taking his room with him.
I was left alone with my green door on an enormous Union Jack flag, staring frustrated at the void.
TITTLE-TATTLE BLOG
The Frognal Academy Tittle-Tattle Blog, with all the latest gossip, the best rumors, and the hottest scandals from our school.
ABOUT ME:
My name is Secrecy—I’m right here among you, and I know all your secrets.
7 January
Welcome back to the treadmill. So here we are: This is the first school day at the Frognal Academy minus Jasper Grant. And instead the kids at the Lycée Baudelaire in the little town of Beauvais, France, are meeting a new student today. According to my research, there’s nothing at all interesting in Beauvais (apart from the wine they make with grapes from those parts. And the bus to Paris). The school doesn’t even have a basketball team. So there won’t be anything for Jasper to do but study.