“You can and you will. I don’t take all those antidepressants for nothing!” My zombie mom grabbed hold of Mia, tried to force her mouth open and stuff a muffin into it, and Mia began screaming. I snatched her away from Mom, stumbled backward over a pile of muffins with her, and looked around in panic for a place to hide or some way to escape. There in front of us—a green door … Oh, thank goodness, it was only a dream. I didn’t have to be afraid of my zombie mom anymore. With a blink of my eyes, I made her and all those disgusting muffins disappear, then I blinked the screaming Dream-Mia away—I had to go out to protect the real Mia’s dream door. I’d borrowed a bracelet of hers on purpose and put it on before I went to sleep. I couldn’t forget what Grayson had said last night: suppose someone was really stealing into Mia’s dreams by night? Anabel, for instance.
The corridor was empty; everything was calm and peaceful. The sight of Henry’s black door opposite mine made me smile—I was so glad that we’d cleared things up between us. I’d visit him tomorrow, and then I’d finally meet his family. And the cat. I felt a bit excited when I thought about it. I hoped they’d like me. Maybe I ought to take something home-baked to make myself popular. It sounded like they weren’t used to that sort of thing. And cat treats for the cat. Or simply a bag of cat litter. I’d looked it up on the Internet, and it seemed that many cats stopped being clean around the house because no one cleaned out their litter tray.
But now my priority was Mia. Her door was right beside mine. It was a plain wooden door painted forget-me-not blue with a dull silver doorknob, just right for a natural stone house somewhere in the countryside, like the line of little pennants hanging over the lintel. There was no lock, no peephole, and the flap of the letter box was so wide that a small animal could easily fit through it. Last time I’d been here, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, the big toy rabbit with the fox’s tail, had been patrolling up and down outside the door, but there was no sign of him tonight. Experimentally, I tried the door handle. It wasn’t locked! How careless of Mia’s unconscious—anyone could just go in like …
“Hello, hello, hello!” A large head appeared right in front of my nose, and I jumped back in alarm. Fuzzy-Wuzzy, the toy rabbit in the yellow overalls. I’d never before realized how much worse soft cuddly toys look when they’re larger than life. Particularly when they’ve been loved as hard as Fuzzy-Wuzzy. There was nothing cute about his missing eye now—it gave him a malicious look, and that impression was reinforced by the two long buck teeth that showed when he spoke.
“Wanna pome! Wanna nurthewy whyme!” he lisped in a grotesque kind of baby talk that was in total contrast to his monumental appearance. His voice was squeaky and childish, like the voice of a rabbit in an animated cartoon.
“You want a poem? A nursery rhyme?”
“Yeth!” Fuzzy-Wuzzy clapped his forepaws. “Rethite it! Rethite it for Fuzzy!”
“Any old nursery rhyme?”
“A nithe one! One that Fuzzy liketh!”
“Okay. Er … Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye…”
“Nooo! Fuzzy not like zat whyme. Want uvver pome! Want pwoper pome! Or Fuzzy eat you up!” He opened his mouth wide, baring those enormous teeth.
Hmm—maybe the security precautions here weren’t so bad after all. Fuzzy-Wuzzy was a creation of Mia’s unconscious, so he presumably had some particular poem in mind. One that Mia had loved when she was little. I could think of about a hundred and twenty of those, some in English, some in German—an intruder would have difficulty getting the right one before being eaten alive by Fuzzy. Always supposing that the intruder went to the trouble of talking to him at all, because in spite of his alarming appearance and his threat to eat me up, I could think of many ways and means of getting past him unnoticed.
“As a breath of air I could have made my way into Mia’s dream three times by now,” I said regretfully. “Or I could have turned into a squirrel to get in through the letter box.”
“Zat’th not a pome! Now Fuzzy mutht eat you.” He began making for the doorway. “But Fuzzy not like girlth to eat. Fuzzy only like cawwotth to eat,” he added with a triumphant giggle, slamming the door in my face.
I sighed. Great—at least that cleared up one point: any reasonably experienced dreamer, like Anabel, for instance, would easily be able to get into Mia’s dreams, holding a carrot. I thought it over. As I could hardly keep watch outside Mia’s door myself every night, I must think of something else. I snapped my fingers.
“Miss Olivia!” Mr. Wu was bowing to me in his black fighting gear, as if I’d just plucked him out of a martial-arts film. I nodded, pleased. This was better than a silly toy rabbit.
“I want you to guard this door tonight,” I explained. “Don’t let anyone in or out. And raise the alarm at once if an intruder tries it. Loud enough for me to hear you, anyway.” I imagined a gigantic gong outside the door and handed Mr. Wu the beater that went with it.
Mr. Wu tossed the beater up in the air and skillfully caught it as it came down. “The best-locked door is the door that you can leave open,” he lectured me.
“Yes, I’m sure you’re right. But this one must stay locked tonight, whatever happens. You mustn’t let even a breath of air through. Do you understand, Mr. Wu?”