Dana’s father had sneered at that idea and dismissed it as probably one of those “Jesus freak” hippie things, and when Mom had pointed out that the hippie days had been over for years, Dad only grunted. That was how a lot of conversations went at the Scully house.
Dana adjusted the straps of her backpack and thought about what it meant for a church to be empty. If the Catholics weren’t coming back, then the church would have been officially deconsecrated, which meant that it was no longer a house of God. The thought frightened Dana, and it made the building look not just empty but abandoned. By people and God. She never saw the construction workers who were supposed to be restoring it. Sometimes she heard hammering and electric saws, but never people. So weird. So scary.
You’re an idiot, she told herself. Stop it.
Melissa came out on the porch. She wore an electric-blue sweater that made her red hair catch fire. “Bus?”
“Not today, Missy,” said Dana. She wore a heavy cream-colored Irish cable-knit sweater she’d gotten for Christmas. Even though it was the beginning of spring, she felt cold. She always felt cold, but this morning there was a deeper chill she couldn’t seem to shake. “We have time.”
It was about a mile to school, and although there was a bus, they both liked walking.
Craiger was an odd town. The total population was small, but it covered a large area because of vast farms. It was crowded during the day and a ghost town at night. Field hands who worked the farms came by the hundreds in buses every morning from Baltimore and other cities and then left at sunset. The high school and middle schools were magnets that drew in students from all over the county, but most of the students vanished in fleets of yellow buses every afternoon. The small “center” of town was moderately busy, but at night and on weekends, Craiger might as well have been on the dark side of the moon.
It was, however, a very pretty little town. Very green. San Diego had been all succulents and palm trees but not much grass, and very few leafy plants. April in Craiger was lush with ten thousand shades of green, from the purplish Bahia grass to the vibrant bluegrass to the dark green ryegrass. Dana had read a book on the flora and fauna of Maryland when her dad announced that he was being transferred all the way across the country. Identifying plants, flowers, trees, birds, and insects was fun for her. Anything that was orderly and precise kept her steady, helped her find solid footing no matter how weird her dreams got.
She wondered how Melissa managed it, because floating above the grass and drifting on the breeze seemed to be how her sister coped with everything. With the constant changes of towns and schools and friends, with being navy brats, with the fights at home and the long, silent meals. With never being able to put down roots.
“You had another dream, didn’t you?” asked Melissa as they crossed Elk Street, past a ranch-style house whose garden was an explosion of columbines and bluebells.
“It was the storm—” began Dana, but Melissa cut her off.
“You. Had. Another. Dream,” said Melissa, punctuating each word with a poke to her sister’s arm. Hard, too.
“Ow,” complained Dana. They walked half a block. “So, okay, I had a dream. Big deal.”
“So, tell me what it was.”
It really annoyed Dana that her sister seemed to think this was all something delicious and wonderful. As if it were fun.
Dana did not want to talk about her dream. She looked over her shoulder and could see the steeple of the empty church silhouetted against the morning sky.
“Come onnnnn,” wheedled Melissa. “You know I’m just going to badger you until you tell me everything.”
They crossed the street and walked around a pair of grade-school kids trudging toward the bus stop.
“If I tell you,” said Dana carefully, “you’re going to have to promise not to make a big thing out of it.”
“When do I ever?”
Dana gave her a frank stare.
“Okay,” said Melissa, “fair enough. But I won’t now, okay?”
“You promise?”
Melissa actually crossed her heart and held up a hand. “May lightning strike me.”
“Don’t say that.”
Melissa shook her head. “You are weird this morning.”
“I know.”
Melissa took a lollipop out of her backpack, put it in her mouth, and began to suck very loudly. “Tell me.”
Dana did. And she surprised herself by telling her sister all of it. Every single detail. Melissa did not laugh. She didn’t make fun of Dana. Nor did she make a big thing out of it. Instead, two small vertical lines formed between her eyebrows, and she lapsed into a thoughtful silence. They walked for three blocks without saying a word.
When the silence went on a few moments longer than Dana thought it should, she turned to Melissa and asked, “Missy … do you think I’m losing it?”
“No,” Melissa said at once. “I really don’t.”
“Then … what do you think it means?”
Melissa crunched the lollipop, attacking it with enthusiasm. She did that when she was happy and she did it when she was nervous. She wasn’t happy now.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe it’s—”