AND PICKS UP SPEED
August 30, 2004
It is the first day of school. Janie and Carrie are juniors. They wait for the bus on the corner of their street. A handful of other high school kids stand with them. Some are anxious. Some are terribly short. Janie and Carrie ignore the freshmen.
The bus is late. Luckily for Cabel Strumheller, the bus is later than he is. Janie and Carrie know Cabel—he’s been trouble in school since ninth grade. Janie doesn’t remember him much before that—word was that he flunked down into their grade. He was often late. Always looked stoned. Now, he looks about six inches taller than he did in the spring. His blue-black hair hangs in greasy ringlets in front of his eyes, and he walks with shoulders curved, as if he were more comfortable being short. He stands away from everyone and smokes a cigarette.
Janie catches his eye by accident, so she nods hello. He looks down at the ground quickly. Blows smoke from his lips. Tosses the cigarette down and grinds it into the gravel.
Carrie pokes Janie in the ribs. “Lookie, it’s your boyfriend.”
Janie rolls her eyes. “Be nice.”
Carrie observes him carefully while he’s not looking. “Well. His pox-face cleared up over the summer. Or maybe the new fancy ’do hides it.”
“Stop,” hisses Janie. She’s giggling, and feeling bad about it. But she’s looking at him. He’s got to be about as dirt poor as Janie, judging by his clothes. “He’s just a loner. And quiet.”
“A stoner, maybe, who has a boner for you.”
Janie narrows her eyes, and her face grows sober.
“Carrie, stop it. I’m serious. You’re turning mean like Melinda.” Janie glances at Cabel. His jeans are too short. She knows what it’s like to be teased for not having cool clothes and stuff. She feels herself wanting to defend him.
“He probably has shitty welfare parents, like me.”
Carrie is quiet. “I’m not like Melinda.”
“So why do you hang with her?”
She shrugs and thinks about it for a minute. “I dunno. ’Cause she’s rich.”
Finally the bus comes. The ride is forty-five minutes to school, even though the school is less than five miles away, because of all the stops. Juniors like Janie and Carrie are considered by the unwritten bus rules to be upperclassmen. So they sit near the back. Cabel passes by and falls into the seat behind them. Janie can feel him push his knees up against her back. She peers through the crack between her seat back and the window. Cabel’s chin is propped up by his hand. His eyes are closed, nearly hidden beneath his greasy curls.
“F*ck,” Janie mutters under her breath.
Thankfully, Cabel Strumheller doesn’t dream.
Not on the bus, anyway.
Not in chemistry class, either.
Or English.
Nor does anyone else. Janie arrives home after the first day of school, relieved.
October 16, 2004, 7:42 p.m.
Carrie and Stu knock on Janie’s bedroom window. She opens it a crack. Stu’s dressed up, wearing a thin, black leather tie, and Carrie has on a slinky black dress with a shawl and a hideously large orchid pinned to it.
“I saw your light on in here,” explains Carrie, regarding the unusual visit. “Come to the homecoming dance, with us, Janers! We’re not staying long. Please?”
Janie sighs. “You know I don’t have anything to wear.”
Carrie holds up a silver spaghetti-strap dress so Janie can see it. “Here—I bet this’ll fit you. I got it from Melinda. She’ll die if she sees you in it instead of me. And I’ve got shoes that’ll go with it.” Carrie grins evilly.
“I haven’t washed my hair or anything.”
“You look fine, Janie,” Stu says. “Come on. Don’t make me sit there with a bunch of teenybopper airheads all night. Have pity on an old man.”
Janie smirks. Carrie slaps Stu on the arm.
She meets them at the front door, takes the dress, and heads over to Carrie’s ten minutes later.
9:12 p.m.
Janie drinks her third cup of punch while Stu and Carrie dance for the billionth time. She sits down at a table, alone.
9:18 p.m.
A sophomore boy, known only to Janie as “the brainiac,” asks Janie to dance.
She regards him for a moment. “Why the f*ck not,” she says. She’s a head taller than him.
He rests his head on her chest and grabs her ass.
She pushes him off her, muttering under her breath, finds Carrie, and tells her she has a ride home and she’s leaving now.
Carrie waves blissfully from Stu’s arms.
Janie attacks the back door of the school gym and finds herself in a heavy cloud of smoke. She realizes she’s found the Goths’ hangout. Who knew?
“Oof,” someone says. She keeps walking, muttering “sorry” to whomever it was she hit with the flying door.
After a mile wearing Carrie’s heels, her feet are killing her. She takes off the shoes and walks in the grassy yards, watching the houses evolve from nice to nasty as she goes along. The grass is already wet with dew, and the yards are getting messier. Her feet are freezing.
Someone falls in step beside her, so quietly that she doesn’t notice him until he’s there. He’s carrying a skateboard. A second and third follow suit, then lay their boards down and push off, hanging slightly in front of Janie.
“Jeez!” she says, surrounded. “Scare a girl half to death, why don’t you.”
Cabel Strumheller shrugs. The other guys move ahead. “Long walk,” says Cabel. “You, uh”—he clears his throat—“okay?”
“Fine,” she says. “You?” She doesn’t remember ever hearing him speak before.
“Get on.” He sets his board down, taking Janie’s shoes from her hand. “You’ll rip your feet to shreds. There’s glass an’ shit.”
Janie looks at the board, and then up at him. He’s wearing a knit beanie with a hole in it. “I don’t know how.”
He flashes a half grin. Shoves a long black lock of hair under the beanie. “Just stand. Bend. Balance. I’ll push you.”
She blinks. Gets on the board.
Weird.
This is not happening.
They don’t talk.
The guys weave in and out the rest of the way, and take off at the corner by Janie’s house. Cabel pushes her to her front porch so she can hop off. He sets her shoes on the step, picks up the board, nods, and catches up with his friends.
“Thanks, Cabel,” Janie says, but he’s gone in the dark already. “That was sweet,” she adds, to no one.
They don’t acknowledge each other, or the event, for a very long time.
IN EARNEST
February 1, 2005
Janie is seventeen.
A boy named Jack Tomlinson falls asleep in English class. Janie watches his head nodding from across the room. She begins to sweat, even though the room is cold. It is 11:41 a.m. Seven minutes until the bell rings for lunch. Too much time.
She stands, gathers her books, and rushes for the door. “I feel sick,” she says to the teacher. The teacher nods understandingly. Melinda Jeffers snickers from the back row. Janie leaves the room and shuts the door. She leans against the cool tile wall, takes a deep breath, goes into the girls’ bathroom, and hides in a stall.
Nobody ever sleeps in the bathroom.
Flashback—January 9, 1998
It’s Janie’s tenth birthday. Tanya Weersma falls asleep in school, her head on her pencil box. She is floating, gliding. And then she is falling. Falling into a gorge. The face of a cliff streams by at a dizzying speed. Tanya looks at Janie and screams. Janie closes her eyes and feels sick. They startle at the same time. The fourth graders all laugh.
Janie decides not to hand out her precious birthday treat, after all.
That was after the train ride and the man in the underwear.
Janie’s had only a few close calls in school before high school. But the older she gets, the more often her classmates sleep in school. And the more kids sleep, the more of a mess it makes for Janie. She has to get away, wake them up, or risk the consequences.
A year and a half to go.
And then.
College. A roommate.
Janie puts her head in her hands.
She leaves the bathroom after lunch and goes to her next class, grabbing a Snickers bar on her way.
For two weeks afterward, Melinda Jeffers and her rich friends make puking noises when they pass Janie in the hall.
June 15, 2005
Janie is seventeen. She’s working her ass off, taking as many shifts as she can.
Old Mr. Reed is dying at the nursing home.
His dreams grow constant and terrible.
He doesn’t wake easily.
As his body fades, the pull of his dreams grows eerily stronger. Now, if his door is open, Janie can’t enter that wing.
She hadn’t planned for this.
She makes an odd request on every shift. “If you cover the east wing, I’ll take the rest.”
The other aides think she’s afraid to see Mr. Reed die.
Janie doesn’t have a problem with that.
June 21, 2005, 9:39 p.m.
Heather Home is short-staffed. It’s summer. Three patients on the cusp of death. Two have Alzheimer’s. One dreams, screams, and cries.
Someone has to empty bedpans. Hand out the night meds. Straighten up the rooms for the day.
Janie approaches with caution. She stands in the west wing, looking into the east wing, and memorizes it. The right-hand wall has five doorways and six sets of handrails. The last door on the right is Mr. Reed. Ten steps farther is a wall, and the emergency exit door.
Some days, a cart stands between doorways three and four. Some days, wheelchairs collect anonymously between doorways one and two. A stretcher often rests in the east wing, but usually it’s on the left side. Janie would have to get a glimpse before entering the hallway, no matter the day. Because some days, most days, people travel up and down the hallway without pattern. And Janie doesn’t want to run into anyone in case she goes blind.
Tonight, the hallway is clear. Janie noted earlier that the Silva family came for a visit in the fourth room. She checks the record book and sees that they signed out. There are no other visitors recorded. It grows late. For Janie, it’s either get the work done, or get fired.
She enters the east wing, grabs the hall bar, and nearly doubles over.
9:41 p.m.
The noise of the battle is overpowering. She hides with old Mr. Reed in a foxhole on a beach that is littered with bodies and watered with blood. The scene is so familiar, Janie could recite the conversation—even the beat of the bullets—by heart. And it always ends the same way, with arms and legs scattered, bones crunching underfoot, and Mr. Reed’s body breaking into tiny bits, crumbling off his trunk like cheese being grated from a slab, or like a leper, unraveling.
Janie tries walking normally down the hallway, gripping the handrail. She cannot concentrate enough to remember her count of doorways, the dream is so intense. She keeps walking, reaching, walking, until she hits the wall. She’s losing the feeling in her fingers and feet. Wants to make it stop. She backs up eight, ten, maybe twelve steps, and falls to the ground outside Mr. Reed’s door. Her head pounds now as she follows Mr. Reed into battle.
She tries to find his door so she can close it. She tries, and she can’t feel anything. She doesn’t know if she’s touching something, or nothing. She is paralyzed. Numb. Desperate.
On the bloody beach, Mr. Reed looks at her and beckons her to come with him. “Behind here. We’ll be safe behind here,” he says.
“No!” she tries to scream, but no sound comes out. She can’t get his attention. Not behind there! She knows what will happen.
Mr. Reed’s fingers drop off first.
Then his nose and ears.
He looks at Janie.
Like always.
Like she’s betrayed him.
“Why didn’t you tell me,” he whispers.
Janie can’t speak, can’t move. Again and again, she fights, her head feeling like it might explode any moment. Just die, old man! she wants to yell. I can’t do this one anymore! She knows it’s almost over.
And then, there is more. Something new.
Mr. Reed turns to her as his feet break free from his ankles and he stumbles on his stilty legs. His eyes are wide with terror, and the battle rages around them. “Come closer,” he says. Fingerless, he shrugs the gun into her arms. His arm breaks off his shoulder as he does it, and it crumbles to the beach like powder. And then he starts crying. “Help me. Help me, Janie.”
Janie’s eyes widen. She sees the enemy, but she knows they can’t see her. She is safe. She looks at the pleading eyes of Mr. Reed.
Lifts the gun.
Points.
And pulls the trigger.
10:59 p.m.
Janie is curled on a portable stretcher in the east hallway when the roaring gunfire in old Mr. Reed’s dream stops abruptly. She blinks, her vision clears slowly, and she sees two Heather Home aides staring down at her. She sits up halfway. Her head pounds.
“Careful, Janie, honey,” soothes a voice. “You were having a seizure or something. Let’s wait for the doc, okay?”
Janie cocks her head and listens for the faint sound of beeping. A moment later, she hears it.
“Old Mr. Reed is dead,” she says, her voice rasping. She falls back on the stretcher and passes out.
June 22, 2005
The doctor says, “We need to do some tests. Do a CAT scan.”
“No thank you,” Janie says. She is polite, but firm.
The doctor looks at Janie’s mother. “Mrs. Hannagan?”
Janie’s mother shrugs. She looks out the window. Her hands tremble as she fingers the zipper on her purse.
The doctor sighs, exasperated. “Ma’am,” he tries again. “What if she has a seizure while she’s driving? Or crossing a street? Please think about it.”
Mrs. Hannagan closes her eyes.
Janie clears her throat. “May we go?”
The doctor gives Janie a long look. He glances at Janie’s mother, who is looking down at her lap. Then looks at Janie again. “Of course,” he says softly. “Can you promise me something? Not just for your safety, but for the safety of others on the road—please, don’t drive.”
It won’t happen when I’m driving, she longs to tell him, just so he doesn’t worry so much. “Sure. I promise. We don’t have a car, anyway.”
Mrs. Hannagan stands. Janie stands. The doctor stands too. “Call our office if it happens again, won’t you?” He holds out his hand, and Janie shakes it.
“Yes,” Janie lies. They walk back to the waiting room.
Janie sends her mother outside to the bus stop. “I’ll be right there.”
Her mother leaves the office. Janie pays the bill. It’s $120, pulled out of her college stash. She can only imagine how much a CAT scan would cost. And she’s not about to spend another cent just to hear somebody tell her she’s crazy.
She can get that opinion for free.
Janie waits for her mother to ask what that was all about. But she may as well wait for flowers to grow on the moon. Janie’s mother simply doesn’t care about anything that has to do with Janie. She has never really cared.
And that’s f*cking sad.
That’s what Janie thinks.
But it sure comes in handy, sometimes.
June 28, 2005
There’s something about a doctor telling a teenager not to drive that makes it so important to do so. Just to prove him wrong.
Janie and Carrie go see Stu at the body shop. He sees them coming. “Here she is, kiddo,” Stu says. He calls Janie “kiddo,” which is weird, since Janie is two months older than Carrie.
Janie nods and smiles. She runs her hand over the hood lightly, feeling the curves. It’s the color of buttermilk. It’s older than Janie. And it’s beautiful.
Stu hands Janie the keys, and Janie counts out one thousand, four hundred fifty dollars cash. “Be good to her,” he says wistfully. “I started working on this car when she was seventeen years old and I was thirteen. She purrs now.”
“I will.” Janie smiles. She climbs in the ’77 Nova and starts her up.
“Her name’s Ethel,” adds Stu. He looks a little embarrassed.
Carrie takes Stu’s oil-stained hand and squeezes it. “Janie’s a really good driver. She’s driven my car a bunch of times. Ethel will be fine.” She gives Stu a quick kiss on the cheek. “See you tonight,” she says with a demure smile.
Stu winks. Carrie gets into her Tracer and Janie slides behind the wheel of her new car. She pats the dashboard, and Ethel purrs. “Good girl, Ethel,” she croons.
June 29, 2005
After the incident with Mr. Reed, the Heather Home director made Janie take a week off. When Janie shuffled and hemmed about taking that much time off, the director promised her shifts on July 4 and Labor Day, where Janie gets double pay. She is happy.
Janie drives her new car on her first day back to work. She gives sponge baths and empties a dozen bedpans. For entertainment, she sings a mournful song from Les Misérables, changing the words to “Empty pans and empty bladders…” Miss Stubin, a schoolteacher who taught for forty-seven years before she retired, laughs for the first time in weeks. Janie makes a mental note to bring in a new book to read to Miss Stubin.
Miss Stubin never has visitors.
And she’s blind.
That just might be why she’s Janie’s favorite.
July 4, 2005, 10:15 p.m.
Three Heather Home residents in their wheelchairs, and Janie, in an orange plastic bucket chair, sit in the dark nursing home parking lot. Waiting. Slapping mosquitoes. The fireworks are about to begin at Selby Park, a few blocks away.
Miss Stubin is one of the residents, her gnarled hands curled in her lap, I.V. drip hanging from a stand next to her wheelchair. All of a sudden, she cocks her head and smiles wistfully. “Here they come,” she says.
A moment later, the sky explodes in color.
Janie describes each one in detail to Miss Stubin.
A green sparkly porcupine, she says.
Sparks rising from a magician’s wand.
A perfect circle of white light, which fades into a puddle and dries up.
After a brilliant burst of purple, Janie jumps up. “Don’t go anywhere, you three—I’ll be right back.” She runs inside to the therapy room, grabs a plastic tub, and runs back out.
“Here,” she says breathlessly, taking Miss Stubin’s hand and carefully, gently, stretching out her curled fingers. She puts a Koosh Ball in the old woman’s hands.
“That last one looked just like this.”
Miss Stubin’s face lights up. “I think that’s my favorite,” she says.
August 2, 2005, 11:11 p.m.
Janie leaves Heather Home and drives the four miles to her house. It’s wicked hot out, and she chides Ethel mildly for not having air-conditioning. She rolls the windows down, loving the feeling of the hot wind on her face.
11:18 p.m.
She stops at a stop sign on Waverly Road, not far from home, and proceeds through the intersection.
11:19 p.m.
And then she is in a strange house. In a dirty kitchen. A huge, young monster-man with knives for fingers approaches.
Janie, blind to the road, stomps on the brake and flips the gearshift into neutral. She reaches to find the emergency brake and pulls, before she becomes paralyzed. This is a strong one.
He pulls a vinyl-seated chair across the kitchen floor, picks it up, and whirls it around above his head.
But it isn’t the emergency brake. It’s the hood release.
And then he lets go of the chair. It sails toward Janie, clipping the ceiling fan.
Janie doesn’t know it’s the hood.
She looks around frantically to see what it will hit. Or who.
Janie is numb. Her foot slides off the brake pedal.
Her car rolls off the road.
Slowly.
But there is no one else. No one else but the monster-man with finger-knives, and Janie. Until the door opens, and a middle-aged man appears. He walks through Janie. The chair, sailing in slow motion, grows knives from its legs.
The car misses a mailbox.
It strikes the middle-aged man in the chest and head. His head is sliced clean off and it rolls around on the floor in a circle.
The car comes to rest in a shallow drainage ditch in the front yard of a tiny, unkempt house.
Janie stares at the large young man with knives for fingers. He walks to the dead man’s head and kicks it like a soccer ball. It crashes loudly through the window and there is a blinding flash of light—
11:31 p.m.
Janie groans and opens her eyes. Her head is against the steering wheel. She has a cut on her lip that is bleeding. And Ethel is decidedly not level. When she can see clearly, she looks out the windows, and when she can move again, she eases her way out her door. She walks around the car, sees that it is not injured, and that she is not stuck. She shuts the hood gently, gets into the car, and backs up slowly.
When she arrives in her driveway, she breathes a sigh of relief, and then memorizes the exact location of the parking brake by feel. She sees the keys dangling from the ignition. Duh, she thinks.
Next time, she will be ready.
Maybe she should have bought an automatic.
She hopes to God it doesn’t happen on a highway.
12:46 a.m.
Janie lies awake in bed. Scared.
In the back of her mind, she hears the distinct sound of knives sharpening. The more she tries not to think about whose dream that might have been, the more she thinks about it. She can never drive that street again.
She wonders if she will end up like her friend Miss Stubin from the nursing home, all alone.
Or dead in a car crash, because of this stupid dream curse.
August 25, 2005
Carrie brings in the mail to Janie’s. Janie is wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts. It’s hot and humid.
“Schedules are here,” Carrie says. “Senior year, baby! This is it!”
Excitedly, they open their schedules together. They lay them side-by-side on the coffee table and compare.
Their facial expressions go from excitement, to disappointment, and then excitement again.
“So, first period English and fifth period study hall. That’s not terrible,” Janie says.
“And we have the same lunch,” Carrie says. “Let me see what Melinda has. I’ll be right back.” Carrie gets up to leave.
“You can call her from here, you know,” Janie says, rolling her eyes.
“I-I would, but—”
Janie waits for Carrie to explain. Then it dawns on her.
“Oh,” she says. “I get it. Caller ID. Sheesh, Carrie.”
Carrie looks at her shoes, then slips out.
Janie checks the freezer for ice cream. She eats it out of the carton. She feels like shit.
September 6, 2005, 7:35 a.m.
Carrie and Janie drive separately to school, because Janie has to work at 3 p.m. Janie waves from the window when she hears Carrie’s car horn beep. This is it, she thinks.
Janie is only mildly excited to start her senior year of high school. And she is not at all excited to have study hall right after lunch.
She brushes her teeth and grabs her backpack, checking the mirror briefly before heading out the door. She is stopped by the flashing red lights of her former bus, and she smirks when she sees the noobs all climbing the steps to board it. Most of them are dressed in the styles of five years ago—hand-me-downs, or secondhand thrift clothing. “Get jobs, and get the hell out of South Fieldridge,” Janie mutters. At least there’s strength in numbers.
Ethel purrs.
Janie continues when the red lights stop. A block before the “bad” house on Waverly Road, she turns to take a detour. She’s not taking any chances. She slows as she sees someone walking toward her along the road, wearing a ratty backpack. At first, she doesn’t recognize him.
And then, she does.
He looks different.
He’s not carrying a skateboard.
“You missed it,” Janie says through the open window. “Get in. I’ll drive you.”
Cabel eyes her warily. His features have matured. He’s wearing eyeglasses, the new cool rimless kind. His jaw is decidedly angular. He looks both thinner and more muscular at the same time. His hair, wavy at shoulder length, is layered slightly, no longer blue-black or greasy, but golden light brown. His long bangs that hung in his eyes last year are tucked behind his ears this year. And it looks freshly washed. He hesitates, and then opens the passenger door.
“Thanks.” His voice is low and gruff. “Jesus,” he remarks as he tries to fit his knees inside.
Janie reaches down between her legs. “Grab yours too,” she says.
He raises an eyebrow.
“Your seat adjustor, you ass. We have to pull them together. It’s a bench seat. As you can see.” They pull, and the seat moves back a notch. Janie checks the clutch to make sure she can still reach. She shifts into first as Cabel shuts his door.
“You’re on the wrong street,” he remarks.
“I know that.”
“I figured you were lost or something.”
“Oh, puhleeze. I-I take a detour. I don’t drive on Waverly anymore. I’m superstitious.”
He glances at her and shrugs. “Whatever.”
They ride in awkward silence for five minutes, until Janie rolls her eyes inwardly and says, “So. What’s your schedule?”
“I have no idea.”
“Okaaay…” The conversation fizzles.
After a moment, he opens his backpack and takes out a sealed envelope. He rips it open as if it’s a chore of great difficulty and looks over his schedule.
“English, math, Spanish, industrial tech, lunch, study hall, government, P.E.” He sounds bored.
Janie cringes. “Hmmm. Interesting.”
“And yours?” He says it too politely, as if he is forced to chat with his grandmother.
“It’s, ah…actually…,” she sighs, “…pretty similar to that. Yeah.”
He laughs. “Don’t sound so f*cking excited, Hannagan. I’ll let you cheat off my papers.”
She smiles wryly. “Yeah, right! Like I’d want to.”
He looks at her. “And your GPA is?”
“Three point eight.” She sniffs.
“Well, then, of course you don’t need help.”
“What’s yours?”
He shifts in the seat and shoves his schedule into his backpack. “I have no idea.”
That was the most Cabel Strumheller had ever spoken to Janie in all the years she’d known him. Combined. Including the three miles on the skateboard.
12:45 p.m.
Janie meets up with Carrie in study hall. Seniors have study hall in the library so they can access the books and computers and hopefully do actual work rather than sleep. Janie hopes for the best and finds a table in the far corner of the room.
“How’s it going?” Janie asks.
“Decent,” Carrie says. “The only class I have with Melinda is English. Hey, did you see the new guy?”
“What new guy?”
“In English class.”
Janie looks puzzled. “I didn’t notice.”
Carrie looks around sneakily. “Oh, shit!” she whispers.
“Here he comes.”
Janie glances up. Carrie is staring at her, not daring to turn around again. He nods in her direction. Janie waves her fingers at him. To Carrie, she says, “Oh, you mean him?”
“You did NOT just wave to him.”
“To who…er, whom? Yeah, that’s it. Whom?”
“The new guy! Aren’t you listening to me?” Carrie bounces in her chair.
Janie grins innocently. “Watch this.” She gets up, walks to the table where the new guy sits, and pulls up a chair across from him so she can see Carrie watching.
“I have a question for you,” Janie says.
“I thought you didn’t need my help,” he replies, rummaging through his backpack.
“It’s not that kind.”
“Go ahead, then.”
“Are you getting a lot of strange looks today, by any chance?”
He pulls his notebook out of his backpack, takes off his outer button-down shirt, leaving on a loose, white T-shirt. He folds the button-down haphazardly, sets it on top of his backpack, scoots his chair back, and lays his head on the shirt. His newly muscular arms reach around this makeshift pillow.
“I hadn’t noticed,” he says. He takes off his glasses and sets them off to the side.
Janie nods thoughtfully. “I see. So…you don’t know what classes you have, you don’t know your GPA, you don’t notice all the girls drooling over your new look—”
“That’s bullshit,” he says, closing his eyes.
“So what do you pay attention to?”
He opens his eyes. Lifts his head from his pillow. He looks at Janie for a long time. His eyes are silky brown. She’s never noticed them before.
For a split second, Janie thinks she sees something in them, but then it’s gone.
“Pfft. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he says.
Janie flashes a crooked smile, shrugs, and shakes her head slightly, feeling warm. “Try me.”
Cabel raises a skeptical eyebrow.
“You know…sometime,” she says finally. She picks up his shirt and refolds it so the buttons turn in. “So you don’t get a button impression on your face,” she says.
“Thank you,” he says. His eyes don’t leave hers. He’s searching them. His brow furrows.
Janie clears her throat lightly. “So, uh, shall I break the news to Carrie that you’re not a new guy?”
Cabel blinks. “What?”
“Half the girls in the school think you’re a new student. Cabel, come on. You look a lot different from last year….”
The words trail off her tongue and they sound wrong.
He gives her a confused look.
“What did you call me?”
Janie’s stomach lurches. “Um, Cabel?”
He isn’t smiling. “Who do you think I am?”
Maybe she’s in somebody’s weird dream and she doesn’t know it.
She panics.
“Oh, God, no,” she whispers. She stands up abruptly and tries to get past him. He catches her arm.
“Whoa, time out,” he says. “Sit.”
Tears pool in Janie’s eyes. She covers her mouth.
“Jesus, Janie. I’m just playing with your mind a little. I’m sorry. Hey,” he says. He keeps hold of her wrist, lightly.
She feels like a fool.
“Come on, Hannagan. Look at me, will you? Listen to me.”
Janie can’t look at him. She sees Carrie, half-standing, peering over the bookshelves, a concerned look on her face. Janie waves her away. Carrie sits down.
“Janie.”
“What, already,” she says, growing hot. “And will you please let go of me before I call security?”
He drops her wrist like a baked potato.
His eyes widen.
“Forget it.” He sighs. “I’m an a*shole.” He looks away.
Janie walks back to her table and sits down miserably.
“What was that?” Carrie hisses.
Janie looks at her and summons a calm smile. She shakes her head. “Nothing. The new guy just told me…that…” She stalls, pretending to search for a pen. “That, uh, I’m doing the advance math equations completely wrong. I…you know me. I hate to be wrong. Math’s my best subject, you know.” She pulls out a sheet of paper and opens her math book. “Now I’ve got to start all over.”
“Sheesh, Janie. You looked like he just threatened to kill you or something.”
Janie laughs. “As if.”
1:30 p.m.
Cabel tries to catch Janie’s eye in government class. She ignores him.
2:20 p.m.
P.E. It’s coed this year. The students play rotating games of five-on-five basketball. Guys against the girls.
Janie commits the most egregious foul Fieldridge High School has ever seen. When he is able, the new guy stands up and insists it was his fault.
The P.E. staff confer, and decide girls versus guys is not a good idea for contact sports. Coach Crater gives Janie a hard look. She returns it, with interest.
2:45 p.m.
Janie dries off hurriedly after her shower and slips into her scrubs for work. The bell rings. She takes her stuff and jumps in her car so she’s not late for work.
8:01 p.m.
Life is blissfully calm at Heather Home tonight. Janie finishes her paperwork and her other duties on the floor early, so she goes to see Miss Stubin. She shuffles her feet and clears her throat so Miss Stubin knows Janie is there.
“It’s me, Janie. Are you up for a few chapters of Jane Eyre?” Janie asks.
Miss Stubin smiles warmly and turns her face toward Janie’s voice. “I’d love it, if you have the time.”
Janie pulls the visitor chair closer to the bed and begins where they left off last time. She doesn’t notice when Miss Stubin drifts off to sleep.
8:24 p.m.
Janie is standing on a street called Center in a small town. Everything is in black and white, like an old movie. Nearby, a couple strolls arm and arm, window-shopping. Janie follows them. The store windows are filled with simplicity. Saws and hammers. Yarn and material. Baking sheets and metal tins. Dry goods.
The couple stops at the corner, and Janie can see the young woman has been crying. The young man is wearing a military uniform.
He pulls the young woman gently around the corner of the building, and they kiss passionately. He touches her breast and says something, and she shakes her head, no. He tries again, and she moves his hand away. He pulls back. “Please, Martha. Let me make love to you before I go.”
The young woman, Martha, begins to say no. Then she turns, and looks at Janie with complete regret in her eyes. “Not even in my dream?” she says.
Martha waits for Janie to respond.
Janie looks at the young man. He is frozen, momentarily, gazing adoringly at Martha. Martha pleads with her eyes locked on Janie. “Help me, Janie.”
Janie, startled, shrugs and nods, and Martha smiles through her tears. She turns back to the young man, touches his face, his lips, and nods. They walk through the alley, away from Janie. Janie takes a step to follow them, but she doesn’t want to see any more of this dream—it’s too intimate. She grips the chair in Miss Stubin’s room with all her might, concentrates, and pulls herself back into the nursing home.
It’s 8:43 p.m. Janie shakes her head to clear it. Surprised. Slowly, a grin spreads across her face. She did it—she pulled herself out of the dream. And she’s not getting sucked back into it. Janie chuckles quietly to herself.
Miss Stubin sleeps peacefully, a smile on her thin, tired lips. It must be nice for poor old Miss Stubin to have a good dream.
Janie leaves the book on the table and exits the room quietly. She turns off the light and closes the door, giving Miss Stubin some intimate time alone with her soldier.
Before he dies.
And she never has the chance again.
September 9, 2005, 12:45 p.m.
“Why didn’t you tell me the new guy was Cabel Strumheller?” Carrie demands.
Janie looks up from her book. She sits in the library at their usual table. “Because I’m an a*shole?” She smiles sweetly.
Carrie tries to hold back a laugh. “Yes, you are. I see you’re driving him to school.”
“Only when he misses the bus,” Janie says lightly.
Carrie gives her a sly smile. “Yeah, well. Anyways, I made yearbook staff, so I’ll be gone a lot during study hall, okay? I gotta go there now for the first meeting.”
Janie waves, distracted by the play she’s reading for English. “Have fun. Play nice.” She slides down in her seat and plops her feet on the chair opposite hers. She’s reading Camelot in preparation for next month’s senior English trip to Stratford, Canada.
Every now and then she peers over the bookshelves to see if anyone is looking sleepy nearby. She figures she can handle anything outside a twenty-foot radius, unless it’s a nightmare, and then the distance jumps dramatically. Luckily, most school-day dreams tend to either be the “falling” dream, the “naked presentation” dream, or something sexual. She can usually get a handle on those without doing a full pass-out-on-the-floor reaction.
It’s the paralyzing, shiver-and-shake nightmares that are killing her.
12:55 p.m.
The book disappears in front of her. Janie sighs and sets it on the table. She lays her head in her arms and closes her eyes.
She is floating. Not the falling dream again, she thinks. She is sick to death of the falling dream.
The scene changes immediately. Now, Janie is outside. It’s dark. She’s alone, behind a shed, but she can hear muffled voices. She’s never been alone before, and she doesn’t know how people can have dreams that they are not in. She is curious. She watches nervously, hoping this isn’t somebody’s nightmare about to explode through the wall of the shed, or from the bushes.
From around the corner comes a hulking, monstrous figure, outlined by the moonlight. It thrashes its arms through the bushes and lifts its hands to the sky, letting out a horrible yell. Janie feels her fingers going numb. She tries to get out. But she can’t.
The figure’s long fingers glint in the moonlight.
Janie leans back against the barn. She is shaking.
The grotesque figure sharpens his knife-fingers on each other. The sound is deafening.
Janie, against the barn, squeaks.
The figure wheels around. He sees her.
Approaches her.
She has seen this character before.
Right before she and Ethel ended up in a ditch.
Janie stands up, tries to run. But her legs won’t move.
The figure’s face is furious, but he has stopped sharpening his knives. He’s five feet away, and Janie closes her eyes. Nothing can hurt me, she tries to tell herself.
When she opens her eyes, it is daylight. She is still behind the barn. And the horrid, menacing figure has turned into a normal, human young man.
It’s Cabel Strumheller.
A second Janie steps out from Janie’s body and walks to Cabel, unafraid.
Janie stays back, against the barn.
Cabel touches the second Janie’s face.
He leans in.
He kisses her.
She kisses him back.
He steps out of the embrace and looks at the Janie against the barn wall. Tears fall down his cheeks.
“Help me,” he says.
1:35 p.m.
The bell rings. Janie feels the fog lifting, but she cannot move. Not yet. She needs a minute.
1:36 p.m.
Make that two minutes.
1:37 p.m.
When she feels the hand on her shoulder, she jumps.
A mile, a foot, an inch…she doesn’t know.
She looks up.
“Ready?” he says. “Didn’t know if you heard the bell.”
She stares at him.
“You okay, Hannagan?”
She nods and grabs her books. “Yeah.” Her voice is not completely back yet. She clears her throat. “Yes,” she says firmly. “Are you? You have a dent in your cheek.” She smiles shakily.
“Fell asleep on my book.”
“I figured.”
“You too, huh?”
“I, uh, must’ve been really tired, I guess.”
“You look freaked. Did you have a bad dream or something?”
She looks at him as they walk through the crowded hall to government class. He slips his hand onto the small of her back so they stay together as they talk.
“Not exactly,” she says slowly. Her eyes narrow. “Did you?” The words come out of her mouth like gunshots.
He turns sharply into the doorway as the bell rings and he sees the look on her face. He stops in his tracks. His eyes narrow as they search her face. She can see his eyes are puzzled. His face flushes slightly, but she’s not sure why.
The teacher comes in and shoos them to their seats.
Janie looks over her shoulder, two rows back and toward the middle of the room.
Cabel is still staring at her, looking incredibly puzzled. He shakes his head just slightly.
She looks at the chalkboard. Not seeing it. Just wondering. Wondering what the hell is wrong with her. And what is wrong with him, that he has dreams like that. Does he know? Did he see her in that one?
2:03 p.m.
A wad of paper lands on Janie’s desk. She jumps and slowly looks over to Cabel. He is slumped in his seat, doodling on his notebook, looking a little too innocent.
Janie opens the paper.
Smooths it out.
Yeah, maybe…(?)
That’s what it says.
September 29, 2005 2:55 p.m.
Leaning against the hood of her car is the lanky, longhaired figure of Cabel Strumheller. The one who dreams about monsters, and kissing her all in the same dream. His hair is wet.
“Hey,” Janie says lightly. Her hair is wet too.
“Why are you avoiding me?”
She sighs. “Am I?” She knows it sounds fake.
He doesn’t answer.
She gets in the car.
Starts the engine.
Pulls out of the parking space.
Cabel stands there, looking. Arms folded across his chest. His lips are concerned.
She leans over and rolls down the window. “Get in. You’ve missed the bus by now.”
His expression doesn’t change.
He doesn’t move.
She hesitates, one more minute.
He turns and starts walking toward home.
She watches him, sighs exasperatedly, and guns it. Her tires squeal around the corner. Idiot.
October 10, 2005, 4:57 a.m.
On a thin piece of paper in the cave of her own dream, Janie writes:
I keep to myself.
I have to.
Because of what I know about you.
And then she crumples it up, lights a match, and turns it into ash. The charcoaled remains shrivel up and the wind takes them down the street, across the yards. To his house. He steps on them as he saunters to catch the bus. The ash is softer than the crisp Halloween leaves that gather and huddle around the corners of his front step. Under the weight of his footstep, the ash disintegrates. The wind swallows it. Gone.
7:15 a.m.
Janie wakes up, running late for school. She blinks.
She has never had a dream before—not that she can remember.
She only has everyone else’s.
At least she can sleep during hers.
She gives her straight dirty-blond hair a lesson with a wet comb, brushes her teeth at top speed, shoves two dollars in the front pocket of her jeans, and grabs her backpack, searching wildly for her keys. They are on the kitchen table. She grabs them, saying good-bye to her nightgowned mother, who stands at the sink eating a Pop-Tart and looking aimlessly out the window.
“I’m late,” Janie says.
Her mother doesn’t respond.
Janie lets the door slam, but not angrily. Hurriedly. She climbs into the Nova and zooms to Fieldridge High School. She’s ten long strides from her English classroom when the bell rings, just like half the class. Sliding into her desk, the back seat in the row nearest the door, she mouses unnoticed through the class, except for a sleepy grin from Carrie. Janie stealthily finishes her math assignment as the teacher drones about the upcoming weekend senior trip to Stratford.
Cabel’s back is to her. She has an urge to touch his hair. If she could reach him, she might. But then she shakes her head at herself. She is very confused over her feelings about him. It’s more bizarre than flattering to know he dreams about her. Especially when he does it after being that horrid monster-man. She may even admit to being a little afraid of him.
And now she knows where he lives.
Just two blocks from her.
In a tiny house on Waverly Road.
“Your room assignments,” Mr. Purcell drones, waving fluorescent yellow papers like sun rays above his head before tossing handfuls at the first person in each row. “No changes allowed, so don’t even try.”
Janie looks up as titters and groans fill the room. The boy in front of her doesn’t turn around to hand her the paper. He tosses it over his shoulder. It floats, hovers, and slides off the slick laminate desk before Janie can grab it, whooshing and sticking under Cabel Strumheller’s shoe. He kicks it toward her without acknowledgment. His hair swings lightly around his shoulders.
The list places Janie in a room with three rich snobs from the ritzy Hill section of North Fieldridge: Melinda Jeffers, who hates her, Melinda’s friend Shay Wilder, who hates her by default, and the captain of the girls’ soccer team, Savannah Jackson, who pretends Janie doesn’t exist. She sighs inwardly. She’ll have to sleep on the bus on the way.
But she’s curious to know if, after all these years, Melinda still dreams about Carrie with ginormous boobs.
OH, CANADA
October 14, 2005, 3:30 a.m.
Janie meets Carrie under the black sky in Carrie’s driveway. They offer little greeting besides sleepy grins, and Janie climbs into the passenger seat of Carrie’s Tracer. They drive in silent darkness to school. Janie’s just glad she doesn’t have to drive at this hour.
They pass Cabel Strumheller when they get close to school. He’s walking. Carrie slows and stops, rolls down the window, and asks if he wants a ride, but he waves her off with a grin. “I’m almost there,” he says. Up ahead, the Greyhound bus gleams under the school’s parking lot lights.
Janie looks at Cabel. He catches her eye briefly and looks down. She feels like shit.
Cabel and Janie’s non-fight in the parking lot began a long series of non-fights. Not only do they not fight, they no longer speak.
But Janie sees him, kisses him, in his library dreams.
She also sees him, a raging maniac. A scarred-faced lunatic with knife-fingers, who repetitively stabs, slices, and beheads one middle-aged man, over and over and over again. She feels only slight relief that he doesn’t kill anyone else.
Not yet, anyway.
Not her, so far.
And every time he dreams it, the bell rings before Janie can figure out how to help him. Help him do what? Help him, how?
She has no idea. She has no power. Why do all these people ask her for help? She can’t do it.
Just.
Can’t.
Do it.
But she sure doesn’t get much done in study hall these days.
3:55 a.m.
The oversleepers, latecomers, and don’t-give-a-shitters have either arrived or been written off by the teacher chaperones. Carrie sits with Melinda, near the front.
Janie sits in the last row on the right, next to the window. As far away from everyone as she can get. She stows her overnight bag in the compartment above her seat. She is glad to note that the restroom is at the front of the bus. She twists the overhead TV monitor so its blue glow doesn’t blind her, and puts her seat back. It only goes a little way before it hits the back wall.
Before the bus is loaded, Janie is dozing.
4:35 a.m.
She is jarred awake by a splash of water in her face. She’s in a lake, fully clothed. She shivers. A boy named Kyle is yelling as he falls from the sky above her, over and over and over, until he finally lands in the water. But he can’t swim. Janie feels her fingers growing numb, and she kicks out with her feet, trying to stop it, trying to get out.
And then it’s done.
Janie blinks, and sits up, startled. A shadowy face appears above the seat in front of her. “What the f*ck?” says Kyle. “Do you mind?”
“Sorry,” Janie whispers. Her heart races. The drowning dreams are the worst. Well, almost.
She hears a whisper in her ear as she struggles to see clearly. “You okay, Hannagan?” Cabel slips his arm around her. He sounds worried. “You’re shivering. Did you just have a seizure or something? You want me to stop the bus?”
Janie looks at him. “Oh, hey.” Her voice is scratchy. “I didn’t know you were there. Um…” She closes her eyes. Tries to think. Holds up a weak finger, letting him know she needs a moment. But she feels the next one coming already. She doesn’t have much time. And she has to prepare him. She doesn’t have a choice.
“Cabel. Do not freak if—when—I do that again, okay? Do NOT stop the bus. Do NOT tell a teacher, oh God, no. No matter what.” She grips the armrests and fights to keep her vision. “Can you trust me? Trust me and just let it happen?”
The pain of concentration is excruciating. She is cringing, holding her head. “Oh, f*ckity-f*ck!” she yells in a whisper. “This was a stupid, stupid idea for me to come on this trip. Please, Cabel. Help me. Don’t let…anyone…gah!…see me.”
Cabel is gawking at Janie. “Okay,” he says. “Okay. Jesus.”
But she is gone.
The dreams pelt her, from all directions, without ceasing. Janie is on sensory overload. It’s her own physical, mental, emotional, three-hour nightmare.
7:48 a.m.
Janie opens her eyes. Someone is talking on a microphone.
When the fog fades and she can see again, finally, Cabel is staring at her. His eyes, his hair, are wild. His face is white. He is holding her around the shoulders.
Gripping her, is more like it.
She feels like crying, and she does, a little. She closes her eyes and doesn’t move. Can’t move. The tears leak out. Cabel wipes her cheeks gently with his thumb.
That makes her cry harder.
8:15 a.m.
The bus stops. They are parked in a McDonald’s parking lot. Everyone files off the bus. Everyone except Janie and Cabel.
“Go get some food,” she urges in a tired whisper. Her voice is still not back.
“No.”
“Seriously. I’ll be okay, now that everyone’s…gone.”
“Janie.”
“Will you go and get me a breakfast sandwich then?” She’s still breathing hard. “I need to eat. Something. Anything. There’s money in my right-hand coat pocket.” The effort to move her arm seems too difficult.
Cabel looks at her. His eyes are weary. Bleary. He removes his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose, then rubs his eyes. He sighs deeply. “You sure you’ll be okay? I’ll be back in five minutes or less.” He looks unwilling to leave her.
She smiles a tired half smile. “I’ll be fine. Please. I don’t think I can stand up if I don’t get something to eat soon. That was much, much worse than I expected.”
He hesitates, and then removes his arm from behind her shoulders. “I’ll be back.” He sprints off the bus. She watches him out the window. He runs through the empty drive-through lane and taps on the microphone. Janie smiles. What a dork.
He returns with a bag full of breakfast sandwiches, several orders of hash browns, coffee, orange juice, milk, and a chocolate shake. “I wasn’t sure what you’d want,” he says.
Janie struggles a little and sits up. She pours the juice down her throat and swallows until it’s gone. She does the same with the milk.
“Can you chug beer like that?”
She smiles, grateful he isn’t asking questions about her strange behavior. “I’ve never tried it with beer.”
“That’s probably wise.”
“Have you?” She takes a bite of a sandwich.
“I don’t really drink.”
“Not even a little, here and there?”
“Nope.”
She looks at him. “I thought you were a partier. Drugs?”
He hesitates a split second. “Nada.”
“Wow. Well, you sure looked like hell for a couple years.”
He is quiet. He smiles politely. “Thank you.” He nods at her sandwich.
“Sorry.”
He stares at the seat in front of them while she eats. She hands him a sandwich and he takes it, unwraps it, and eats it slowly. They sit in silence.
Janie belches loudly.
He looks at her. Grins. “Jesus, Hannagan. You should enter a contest.”
They share the chocolate shake.
8:35 a.m.
The other students board the bus in twos and threes. Some stand outside, sucking on cigarettes.
8:41 a.m.
The bus begins to move again.
“Now what?” asks Cabel. He has a look of concern around his eyes. He combs his hair with his fingers, and it feathers and falls again.
“If it happens again, don’t worry.” She shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know what to tell you—I promise I’ll explain this all when I can. Where are we, by the way?”
“We’re getting close.”
She rummages around in her pocket and produces a ten-dollar bill. “For breakfast,” she says.
He shakes his head and pushes it away. “Let me think of this as our first date, will you?”
She looks at him for a long moment. Feels her stomach flip. “Okay,” she whispers.
He touches her cheek. “You look exhausted. Can you sleep?”
“Until somebody else does, I suppose.”
His eyes turn weary again. “What does that mean, Janie?” He puts his arm around her shoulders. She rests her head against him and doesn’t answer. In minutes, she is sleeping gently. He takes her hand with his free hand and strings his fingers in hers. Looks at her hands, and lays his cheek against her hair. After a while, he is asleep too.
9:16 a.m.
Janie is outside, in the dark. She looks behind her, and the shed is there. She walks around the shed this time, to see him coming.
He looks normal—not a monster—standing at the back door of a house, looking in. Then he slams the door and marches through the dry, yellow grass. The middle-aged man bursts out the door after him, yelling, standing on the step. He carries a rectangular can in one hand, a beer and a cigarette in the other. He screams at Cabel. Cabel turns to face him. The man charges, and Cabel stands there, frozen. Waiting for the man to approach him.
The man punches Cabel in the face and he goes down. He squirms on his back like a scared crab, trying to get away. The man points and squeezes the rectangular can, and liquid hits Cabel’s shorts and shirt.
Then.
The man flicks his cigarette at Cabel.
Cabel ignites.
Flops around on the ground in flames.
Screaming, like a poor, tortured baby bunny.
And then Cabel transforms. He becomes a monster, and the fire is gone. His fingers grow knives. His body grows like the Hulk.
Janie watches all this from around the corner of the shed. She doesn’t want to see it. No more of it. Feeling so sick, so horrible for witnessing it. She turns around abruptly.
Standing behind her, watching her in horror, is Cabel.
The second.
9:43 a.m.
Janie waits an eternity for her sight to clear. For the feeling to come back. She sits up, frantic. She reaches for him.
Cabel is leaning over, his head in his hands.
He is shaking.
He turns to her, his face enraged.
His voice is raspy. “What the f*ck is wrong with you!?”
Janie doesn’t know what to say.
His silent anger shakes the seats.
10:05 a.m.
Cabel doesn’t speak until they arrive in Stratford. And then all he says is a harsh “good luck.” He gets off the bus and heads for his hotel room.
Janie watches him go.
She closes her eyes, then opens them again, and follows the cheerleaders in the other direction to their room.
Once inside, they don’t acknowledge one another.
Janie’s quite good with that.
2:00 p.m.
The students meet in the lobby. Camelot starts in thirty minutes. Janie boards the bus, exhausted, and sits in the back row again.
Cabel doesn’t show up.
2:33 p.m.
The play begins. Janie excuses herself from her orchestra seat and finds a spot in the near-empty balcony. She sleeps soundly up there for three hours, awaking in the closing scene. She slips back down to the orchestra seats and follows the others back to the bus.
6:01 p.m.
The bus stops at Pizza Hut. They have one hour to eat before going back to the evening play.
Janie grabs a Personal Pan to go, eats it on the bus, and sleeps. Sleeps right through the play, in her backseat spot. Nobody seems to notice she didn’t get off the bus.
11:33 p.m.
The bus arrives, most kids exhausted, back at the hotel. Janie falls into bed. She is numb, but not from anyone’s dream. Not this time. She thinks about Cabel. Cries silently in her pillow in the dark room. The heat register hums loudly. Savannah, the captain of the women’s soccer team, collapses on the covers next to her. They don’t speak. They hover at the edges of their bed.
October 15, 2005, 1:04 a.m.–6:48 a.m.
Janie jumps from one dream to another.
Savannah dreams about making the U.S. women’s soccer team, and meeting the legendary Mia Hamm, even though she’s retired. Big surprise—this dream could totally be an episode of Hannah Montana. Just when Janie wonders if Savannah has even the slightest bit of depth to her, Savannah’s dream turns to Kyle, who sat in front of Janie on the bus. Interesting combo, there. Janie’s intrigued.
Until the switch to Melinda.
Melinda, no surprise, has a three-way sex party going on with Shay Wilder, who is in bed next to her, and with Carrie. The sex is normal at first, then unbelievably tacky, in Janie’s opinion. The bodies of Carrie and Shay are, to use a crass phrase, blown out of proportion. Janie manages for the first time in someone else’s dream to turn away.
Janie counts it as a major victory.
And then there’s Shay.
Shay dreams about Cabel Strumheller.
A lot.
And in a lot of different ways.
By morning, Janie hates Shay with all her heart. And she has very dark circles under her eyes.
8:08 a.m.
Shay, Melinda, and Savannah head down to breakfast. The matinee is at 10:00.
“See you on the bus,” Janie says, even though she is starving. The other girls don’t bother to answer. Janie rolls her eyes.
She takes a shower, wraps a towel around her head, and falls back into the bed. She sets the alarm for noon. The bus will be back for the luggage, and the students who didn’t elect to take in a third play, at 1 p.m.
8:34 a.m.
Janie dreams for the second time in her life. She dreams that she is alone, drowning in a dark lake, and Cabel is on the shore with a rope, but he won’t throw it to her. She waves frantically to him, and he can’t see her. She slips under the water slowly. Under the water, she sees others like her. Babies, children, teens, adults. All of them floating just under the surface of the water, no one able to help.
It’s because they’re all dead.
Their eyes bulge.
She is screaming when the alarm goes off. Her towel has fallen off her head, and her hair is in tangles. She can’t see beyond it.
There is an urgent knock on the door.
And it’s him.
He’s holding a bag of food.
Looking mournful.
He pushes past her into the room, closes the door and locks it, takes her hand, and holds her. He is pleading. “I don’t understand,” he says. “I just don’t understand. Why did you do that to me?” He’s broken.
And so is she. “I can explain,” Janie says. And she buries her face in his shirt and cries. “Just get me home.”
They fall on the bed, and they just hold each other quietly.
That’s all they do.
And then, it’s time to go home.
2:00 p.m.
Janie and Cabel are in the back seats again. Carrie and Melinda sit in front of them. Across the aisle, Savannah and Kyle are making out. Janie reminds herself to start taking bets on these things.
In front of Savannah and Kyle is Shay, or at least her baggage. Shay appears to be furiously ignoring Janie. She tries to strike up a conversation with Cabel by sitting on the aisle floor, next to him. Cabel is cool and mildly disinterested.
This makes Shay try harder.
Carrie and Melinda turn around in their seats to chat. Cabel makes small talk and jokes, while Janie looks out the window. He slips his hand into hers.
The other girls notice.
Carrie winks.
Melinda looks at Carrie with burning eyes.
Shay shifts in the aisle and leans against Cabel’s leg, batting her eyelashes madly. Frighteningly.
At the front of the bus, kids are roaming around and laughing, singing, chattering. Awake and buzzing. Janie slips into a grateful coma, her head propped against the window.
7:31 p.m.
They are back at Fieldridge High School. Cabel shakes Janie awake, gently. She sits up, wondering where she is. Cabel grins at her. “You made it,” he whispers. He gathers their bags and follows her off the bus. He walks with her to Carrie’s car.
“Come on, Cabel,” Carrie says. “Let me give you a ride, at least. Unless you want Shay to—hey, here she comes now.” Carrie titters, her eyes dancing.
Cabel’s eyes grow wide. He slips into the backseat of Carrie’s car without a word. “Get me outa here. F*ckin’ creepy cheerleaders.”
Carrie laughs. She pulls out of the parking lot and eases onto the road ahead of the pack, and turns to Cabel. “So where do you live?”
“Waverly. Two blocks straight east of your house. But I’ll walk from Janie’s, if you don’t mind. Janie has a superstition about my street.”
“What the hell?” Carrie snorts.
Janie laughs. “Nothing! Shut up, Cabe.”
Carrie pulls into her driveway. It’s cool outside. Crisp. The harvest moon shines orange on Ethel’s roof in the Hannagan driveway. Carrie grabs her things and yawns. “I’m turning in. Catch you guys later.” She clops to her front door and lets herself in, waving as she closes the screen door.
Janie takes her bag and waves to Carrie. She looks at Cabel. It feels awkward, now that they are in Janie’s front yard. They walk to her door. “Can you come in for a bit?” Janie asks, trying not to sound anxious.
“Sure,” he says, his voice relieved. “I, uh, figure we have some things to talk about. Are the ’rents home?”
“My mother’s probably passed out in her bedroom. That’s it, just me and her.”
“Cool,” he says, but he gives her an understanding look.
They go inside. There is no sign of Janie’s mother, except for an empty fifth of vodka on the kitchen counter and a sink full of dishes. Janie throws the bottle in the trash. “Sorry about the mess,” she says in a low voice. She is embarrassed. The house was spotless when she left it yesterday morning.
“Forget about it. We can clean it up later, if you want.”
Janie waves her hand at the living room. “Well. This is it,” she says.
“You sleep out here, huh?” He isn’t teasing.
“No, I have a bedroom. Come.” She shows him. It’s sparse and neat.
“Nice,” he says. He glances at the bed, and then abruptly turns around and they walk back to the living room.
“Hungry?”
“My stomach’s growling,” he says.
“Let me see if we have anything.” Janie searches the kitchen cupboards and refrigerator and comes up empty-handed. “Good grief,” she says finally. “I’m sorry.” She turns around. “We got nothin’.”
He’s been watching her, she realizes.
“Maybe we could get a pizza.”
“Sounds good.”
“You want to go out?”
Janie sighs and scratches her head. “Not really.”
“Good. Let’s order delivery.”
Janie finds the number for Fred’s Pizza and Grinders and orders. “Thirty minutes.”
Cabel tosses a twenty-dollar bill on the coffee table and sits down.
“Cabe.”
“Yes.”
“What is that?”
“It’s twenty dollars, Hannagan.”
Janie sighs. “Let’s be truthful with each other here, mmmkay?”
“Of course. Our whole relationship is based on it. Right?” He’s smiling sardonically, and looks down.
She cringes as the words hang ominously in the room. “Look, I’m sorry,” she begins. “I have a lot of explaining to do. But I know you don’t have any more money to spare than I do. So how about I pay for this?”
“No. Next question.”
Janie sits down next to him. Shakes her head. “Fine,” she says, giving up. She draws her legs up under her and turns to face him.
“Okay,” she continues. “How did you get in the dream twice?”
He looks away, and then back to Janie.
“Well, let’s just jump right into it, then.”
“I guess.”
“All right…uh…I guess the answer is, I have No. F*cking. Clue. Oh, and just let me know when it’s my turn to ask a few questions. Because I’d like to know how the hell you. Got into. My dream. Hello.”
Janie blushes. “Some of your dreams are kind of great.”
“Oh, really.” Cabel leans forward and catches her chin. Catches her by surprise. He pulls her toward him and traces her cheekbone with his thumb. And then, he puts his lips on hers.
Janie falls into the kiss. She closes her eyes and slips her hand to his shoulder. They explore the kiss for a moment, sweetly. Cabel digs his fingers into her hair and he pulls her closer. But before it grows any stronger, Janie pulls away. She feels like her limbs are rubber.
“Shit,” she sputters. “You…you…”
He smiles lazily, his lips still wet. “Yes?”
“You kiss better than I imagined. Even in—”
He blinks. “No,” he says. “No, no, no. Don’t even tell me you’ve been there.”
She bites her lip. “Well, maybe if you stopped sleeping during study hall, I wouldn’t have a clue.”
“Good God!” he says. “Is nothing sacred? Sheesh.” He turns away, embarrassed. “Maybe you should start from the beginning.”
Janie sighs and leans back against the couch. It was like reliving the dreams. Again.
“The short version? I get sucked into people’s dreams. I can’t help it. I can’t stop it. It’s driving me crazy.”
He gives her a long look. “Okay, um, how? That’s just bizarre.”
“I don’t know.”
“Is this a recent thing?”
“No. The first one I remember, I was eight.”
“So, in that dream, my dream, where I’m standing behind you, watching myself…in…” He holds his head.
“Okay, so that’s how you see the dreams, right? Like I saw mine. While I was dreaming it. Ughh.” He rubs his temples.
“That was weird, huh,” Janie says softly. “I know this is all really weird. I’m sorry.”
There’s a knock at the door. Janie jumps up, relieved. She grabs the twenty and goes to answer it.
She sets the pizza and a two-liter of Pepsi on the coffee table and goes to the kitchen for a beer, glasses, napkins, and paper plates. She pours the Pepsi for Cabel and clips open the beer. She takes a sip as Cabel grabs some pizza.
“Now. Tell me what else you’ve seen in my dreams, before I get really paranoid.”
“Okay,” she says, suddenly feeling a bit shy. She takes another sip and begins. “We’re behind that shed or barn of some sort. Is that your backyard?”
He nods, chewing.
“Up until yesterday, I’ve seen you as the monster-man-thing”—she cringes, not sure what to name it—“that monster in the house—the kitchen. With the chair. That one was purely coincidental—I didn’t even know it was you, dreaming it. Not until later. It was sort of a drive-by thing.”
He closes his eyes, cringes, and sets his pizza down on the plate.
“That was you,” he says slowly. “I knew I’d seen your car before. I thought you were…someone else.” He pauses, lost in thought. “The yard—oh, God—your so-called superstition. Damn. So—” He sits up, hands paused in midair, eyes closed. Thinking. Processing.
And then he turns and stares at her. “You could have totally crashed.”
“I didn’t think anybody saw me.”
“The headlights—your headlights. That’s what woke me up. They were shining in my window…. Jesus Christ, Janie.”
“Your bedroom window must have been open. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have happened. I think. I had no idea it was your house.”
He sits back, shaking his head slightly as he puts the pieces together. “Okay,” he says. “Get to the good part before I completely lose my appetite.”
“Behind the shed. You walk up to me. Touch my face. Kiss me. I kiss you back.”
He’s silent.
“That’s it,” she says.
He regards her carefully. “That’s it?”
“Yes. I swear. I mean, it was a good kiss, though.”
He nods, lost in thought. “Damn bell always rings then, doesn’t it.”
She smiles. “Yeah.” She pauses, wondering if she should mention the part where he asks her to help him, but he’s on to the next thing.
“So when I found you on the desk in the library a few weeks ago, and it took you a while to sit up…what was that? You weren’t asleep, were you.”
“No.”
“That was a bad one?”
“Yeah. Real bad.”
He puts his head in his hands and takes off his glasses. He rubs his eyes. “Jesus,” he says. “I remember that one.” He keeps his head down, and Janie waits. “So that’s why you said…when I asked you if you had a bad dream,” he murmurs.
“I…I wanted to know if you knew I was there, watching. Even when people talk to me in their dreams, no one seems to remember that part. No one ever mentions it, anyway.”
“I don’t recall ever seeing you there, or talking to you…except when I’m actually dreaming about you,” he muses. “Janie,” he says abruptly. “What if I don’t want you to see it?”
Janie grabs a slice of pizza. “I’m working hard, trying to bust my way out of them—the dreams. I don’t want to be a voyeur—seriously, I can’t help it. It’s almost impossible. So far, anyway. But I’m making a little progress. Slowly.” She pauses. “If you don’t want me to see, I guess, don’t sleep in the same room as me.”
He looks up at her with a sly smile. “But I’m known for sleeping in school. It’s my shtick.”
“You can change your schedule. Or I can change mine. I’ll do whatever you want.” She looks at the uneaten pizza and sets her plate down. She is miserable.
“Whatever I want,” he says.
“Yes.”
“I’m afraid you haven’t been privy to that dream yet.”
She looks at him. He’s looking at her, and she grows warm. “Maybe I’d rather experience that firsthand,” she says lightly.
“Mmmm.” He takes a sip of his soda. “But before this goes offtrack…What the hell is wrong with you?”
She’s silent. Not looking at him.
“And,” he says, “Jesus. It just occurred to me why you freaked when I pretended I wasn’t me. You must be a freaking mess, Hannagan.” He tugs her arm, and she falls back on the couch toward him. He kisses the top of her head. “I can’t begin to tell you how bad I felt about that.”
“It’s cool,” she says. “Sorry about the flagrant foul,” she adds.
“S’all right. I was wearing a cup.” He twirls a strand of her hair with his finger. “So, when do you sleep, like, normally?”
Janie smiles ruefully. “Normally, I sleep fine, if I’m alone in a room. When I was thirteen, I finally asked my mother if she would do me the favor of passing out in her bedroom rather than in here. There’s something about a closed door that blocks it.” She pauses.
“But what happens, exactly?”
She closes her eyes. “My vision goes first. I can’t see around me. I’m trapped. If it’s a bad dream, a nightmare, I guess I start to shake and my fingers go numb first, then my feet, and the worse the nightmare is, the more paralyzed I become.”
He looks at her. “Janie,” he says softly.
“Yes.”
He strokes her hair. “I thought you were dying. You shake, you spasm, your eyes roll back in your head. I was ready to steal the nearest cell phone, stick a wallet in your mouth, and call 911.”
Janie is silent for a long time. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“You’re lying.”
She looks at him. “Yes,” she says. “I suppose I am.”
“Who else knows? Your mother?”
She looks at her plate of uneaten pizza. Shakes her head. “Nobody. Not even her.”
“You haven’t been to a doctor about it or anything?”
“No. Not really. Not for help.”
He throws his hands in the air. “Why?” His voice is incredulous. And then, suddenly, he knows why. “Sorry,” he says.
She doesn’t answer. She’s thinking. Thinking hard.
“You know, nobody’s ever gone there with me, like you did.” Her voice is soft, musing. She gives him a sidelong glance. “I don’t understand that part. How did you get there too?”
“I don’t know. All of a sudden it was like I had two different angles to watch from: one of them as an observer, the other as a participant. Like virtual reality picture-in-picture or something.”
“And don’t even tell me you’d believe a word of this if you hadn’t come through it with me.”
He nods soberly. “You’re right, Hannagan.”
It’s 10:21 p.m. when Cabel says good night at the door. He leans against the frame, and Janie kisses him lightly on the lips.
He hops off the step and starts walking home, but turns back in the driveway. “Hey, can I see you tomorrow night? Sometime around nine or ten?”
She nods, smiling. “I’ll be here. Just let yourself in—Carrie always does too. It’s cool.”