He smiled. “I’d be happy to come over. Besides,” he said, tossing his apple core into his empty lunch bag, “I like your house. It’s all cozy and full of people.”
I frowned. “Don’t more people live at your house than mine?”
He stretched, putting his hands behind his head with a sigh. “Technically. But the de la Maras live their separate lives in their separate rooms. Julian’s always off somewhere, Lucian is barely housebroken, Mariana’s devoted to Dominic, and Dominic is devoted to his work. Our concept of family is pretty much nonexistent.”
I let that process in my brain for a long moment, then said, “I think Lucian really looks up to you.” Adrian gave me a puzzled look. “We had a nice conversation while you and Julian were catching up the other day.”
“I bet that was interesting.”
I searched for the right words. “It was … educational. He mentioned some of the things he liked, and you were on his list. He said you told him stories.”
Adrian looked embarrassed. “Lucian has trouble sleeping. It’s like he doesn’t know how to shut his brain off. He actually stayed awake so long that he fell into a coma. We didn’t realize when he went into his room at night, he just stared at the ceiling until someone came to ‘wake’ him up. But if I tell him a story, he relaxes enough to let his mind wander and eventually drift off. One time he had a dream about the story I told him, and now he gets excited to fall asleep, so he can dream.”
“He seems like a good kid,” I said, remembering the way he’d first introduced himself. Yes, he’d been upside down, but he’d shaken my hand and said, “How do you do?” very politely.
Adrian closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the seat. “I don’t know about ‘good,’ but he’s definitely a kid. Doesn’t know right from wrong, has almost no sense of morals or responsibility, doesn’t understand the concept of private property. He can’t be around other kids because he’d just take things from them that he wanted, and if they resisted, he’d probably get violent. And that would be bad for so many reasons.”
“He did mention that blood was one of his favorite things.”
Adrian shook his head. “He drinks more than the rest of us combined. We’re trying to get him off of it gradually, but he’s having a hard time adjusting back to this dimension.”
I remembered him holding up his hands and looking frustrated, saying that his body got in the way. “I don’t know if he really understands the concept of love,” I told Adrian, “but if any part of him is capable of it, he loves you.” I wasn’t trying to make him feel better, it was just the truth. Well, I guess I was trying to make him feel better—but it was also the truth.
The bell rang and we climbed out of the truck. Adrian walked me to my fifth-period class, hugged me once, tightly, and let me go. I watched him walk away, a rush of contradicting feelings flooding through me. Finally, I headed into my own classroom.
This would be so much easier if he were unattractive, or boring, or dumb.
But he wasn’t. He was incredible.
12
AS I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP
The paralysis was familiar. The setting was not.
I struggled to open my eyes, and when I did, a harsh white light glared down at me from overhead. I squinted, and realized I could move my neck, but everything else was nonresponsive. Whatever I was lying on, it was white, cold, and looked similar to the marble in Adrian’s foyer. An altar, maybe? It didn’t seem to extend much beyond the length or width of my body. Beyond that, everything was dark. I was also wrapped in my mother’s quilt. And—as far as I could tell—I wasn’t wearing anything other than the quilt, which scared the shit out of me.
Something tickled the arch of my foot, and if I’d had control over my reflexes, I would have jumped or kicked, but I couldn’t. It scuttled around to my ankle and it felt like it had legs— Lots of them.
I knew it was a dream. But I could feel the quilt around me and the marble beneath me and the thing crawling slowly and intentionally up my leg and it might have been a nightmare, but it was real. This was too clear, too vivid, to be anything else.
Something moved out of the corner of my eye. It was a cockroach, and it crawled across the marble toward my shoulder. The thing on my leg wriggled its way under the fabric and over my knee. The cockroach disappeared into my hair, its antennae flitting against the back of my neck. I let out an involuntary sob, and then bit my tongue, breathing heavily as tears spilled down my cheeks.
When I opened them again, worms were crawling over the sides of the marble. Huge, fat, mucous-covered worms. I had no idea how they were climbing up, but they were, in waves. The centipede thing had made it past my thigh and was currently wriggling across my stomach. I was going to puke.