Dream Boy (10 page)

My room felt colder. “I stayed after school today—I saw you and Stephanie talking,” I blurted out. “Did you know I was there? Could you hear me?”

“No,” he said. He sounded surprised. “Wait, no, there was something, like static, but it didn’t make sense. That was you?”

“Maybe.” If he couldn’t hear me, what did that mean? I was surprised at how empty I felt at the thought that he was no longer in my head. But maybe it was a distance thing.

“You were watching?” he asked.

“I guess that’s kind of—”
What? Creepy, insecure, nuts?
I didn’t fill in the blank. “What were you doing with her anyway?”

“She’s a friend,” he said. “We were talking.”

“Oh.” I was torn between wanting to wind myself into a knot of shame and wanting to ask him what the hell they’d been talking about.

“So come on,” he said.

“What?”

“Tell me.”

Tell
me?
That was like my mom’s
How
was
your
day?
question.

“About what?” I asked.

“You. Your dad. Whatever’s on your mind,” he said.

It came out in burble. “I don’t know this woman. I’ve never even
heard
about her. And all of a sudden she wants us there for the wedding and my dad is booking our flights and she’s going to be my stepmother, not that I’ll ever think of her that way.”

I paused, waiting for the part where he says “That sucks.” Only he didn’t say, “That sucks”; what he said was, “When are you going?”

“Christmas break.” I tried again: “My dad’s lived in Alaska for years and, you know, he’s never brought us out to visit him before. Doesn’t that sound weird to you?”

“He sounds like a man in love.” Martin went right on painting silver linings around every cloud I conjured. It was like trying to argue with Little Orphan Annie.

Finally, I told him that I had to get some reading done and he wished me good night. He said he could see the moon outside his window and it was the same moon that cast its glow (he actually used those words “cast its glow”) down on me at my house, so he could sleep, knowing we really weren’t far apart. I didn’t bother mentioning that we really
weren’t
so far apart, since his house was only about five blocks away. Not to mention that it was eight fifteen, way too early for sleep. But his voice was low and husky when he said it, and it gave me the chills—the good kind—just the same.

I opened
Frankenstein
, skimmed a few pages, closed it again, then glanced at my cell. No messages.

What are you doing?
I texted Will.

Creating world peace. You?

Blah
, I texted back.

Blah what?

Blah my dad is getting married.

????

Over Xmas. Bridezilla!
It was probably unfair, but I wasn’t really worried about being fair.

!

Sucks
, I texted.

Sucks. I’m coming over.

Don’t bother
, I wrote.

See you in 5
, he said.

I was standing outside when Will’s Jeep pulled up to the curb. Instead of waiting for him to get out, I hopped in.

I’d cleared it with my mom, who still wanted to know the who, when, and where of any outings, but generally didn’t give me a hard time. Plus, I was with Will. My mom trusted him, maybe more than she did me. I knew I had to be back before ten o’clock since it was a school night, but otherwise the world was my oyster. Not that I like oysters—but I didn’t like the world at the moment, either.

“Where to?” Will was wearing a worn flannel shirt, untucked, and his hair hung down over the collar.

“Anywhere that’s not here.”

He put the car in drive and pressed down on the accelerator. “That bad?”

I shrugged in the dark.

“I bet we could get as far as Texas before the Jeep conked out,” he said.

I wasn’t sure if he was serious or not—but my mind was cast with an image of the two of us stumbling down a deserted road, Will’s Jeep hazed with smoke in the background, the eerie neon light of some slasher-movie motel ahead, and the faint rumbling of a chainsaw in the distance.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Well, if Texas is out, how about the next best thing?”

“Which is?”

Will grinned. “The Texas Grill.”

BEWARE GRL flashed like a neon sign in my brain. Maybe Serena was right. Maybe it was the
Grill
, not the
girl
, I was supposed to avoid.

But the idea that I was supposed to watch out for a
grill
seemed beyond ridiculous. True, the Texas Grill was in one of Chilton’s rougher neighborhoods—all repair shops, warehouses, junk cars, and weeds. It was as far as you could get from Chilton without passing the city limits. I’d never been inside, but Will and Paolo had braved it a couple of times and spoke with reverence about something called a cheesy western. Plus, I’d told my mom, who hates me “just driving around” that we were getting something to eat. This way I wouldn’t be lying.

“Drive on, James!” I commanded in my best (but still lame) British accent.

Will steered us down toward River Road and I scanned through the lists on his iPod. Nefarious Rodents, Meltdown, Lamb of the Apocalypse.

“Geez,” I said. “Do you get this for the music or the band names? Burning Fur? Really?”

“They’re good,” he said. “A sort of glam rock-opera thing. If you’re in the mood.”

I highlighted the first track and pressed play. After a minute of bone-rattling drums and dramatic wails, I turned it off. “I’m not sure what would have to happen for me to be in the mood for
that
, but it wouldn’t be pretty.”

The dark hills rose and fell behind the river.

After a while, Will said, “So, your dad…”

It was a statement, not a question. Meaning I could talk about it if I wanted to but didn’t have to if I didn’t—which made me realize that I did want to talk.

“He’s starting over,” I said. “And he didn’t even tell us about her. I’m pissed, but it’s not like I have a right to be pissed. I mean, I should probably be happy for him.”

“Of course you have a right to be pissed. He’s your
dad
—not your great-aunt Caroline or whoever.”

“Good old Aunt Caroline,” I said, and sighed. “At first I thought they were getting a normal divorce. Like Talon’s parents. You know, he might get an apartment in Blacksburg and we’d see him Tuesdays and Thursdays and every other weekend. But when he left, he just…left. He’d never really wanted much to do with the whole idea of family, even when he was with us. You know what he called us? ‘You people.’ ‘I can’t think straight with you people around.’ He said we made him crazy. My mom would tell me, ‘That’s just the way he is.’ But now he’s starting a new family with Elana. So maybe he’s not down on family. Maybe he’s just down on our family.”

“
He’s
messed up, Annabelle, not you.” Will ran his fingers through his hair and looked over at me.

He reached over and tapped out H-I-S-L-O-S-S in Morse code an inch above my left knee. When he finished, he left his hand there. It was supposed to be comforting, but a jolt of something hot shot up my thigh. I put my hand on top of Will’s, thinking it would make that burning feeling go away, turn it into something friendly and safe, but instead the heat just kept rising until my stomach turned waffly. I pulled my hand away. Will moved his hand away, too, more slowly than mine.

He kept his eyes forward on the road and he
looked
normal. See Will sit. See Will drive. Drive Will, drive.

I guess it was my problem, not his.

Correction: no problem at all. I was just hyped up emotionally, right? The hot feeling was probably related to something
emotional
, not genuinely hot. Plus, Martin had gotten all my hormones surging and now they had just started leaking out in non-Martin settings.

Anyway, I hadn’t grown up in the heartland of Virginia without learning that handy southern skill of ignoring what I didn’t want to see.

We arrived at a small rectangular building that looked as if it had been built out of Legos. It had a big neon arrow on the roof that simply read “EAT” and a hand-painted window that read “The Texas Grill: Good Food Since 1959.” Outside and in, it was all white and red like a cloth picnic napkin. A burly guy with a white hat and apron was bustling behind the counter, chatting up the clientele, which consisted of a pair of middle-aged guys in wifebeater T-shirts, a few drunk college kids, an old guy, and a cop. Only two seats remained at the counter—one was between a college girl and the old man in a moth-eaten gray cardigan, the other was on the end beside the cop. A framed sign on the wall announced, “We seat 1,000 people. 10 at a time.”

“I guess we’re nine and ten,” I said to Will.

“Or nine hundred ninety-nine and one thousand,” he said. “Hungry?”

“Starving,” I said.

“Sit,” he said, nodding to the space between the cardigan guy and the college girl. Will stood behind me until the college girl zigzagged out, and then he took her stool.

The cheesy western was basically a burger with a fried egg on top. And the chili, which they spelled “chile” like the country, was a thick, whitish broth with beans. Mustard was the only acceptable condiment. Will said that if I asked for ketchup, the counter guy would heckle me for wanting “sissy sauce,” so I ate what was put in front of me. And it wasn’t that bad, though I’m sure Serena’s mom would have said just breathing the air in there could have clogged our youthful arteries for good.

So maybe the Ouija board really was warning me. It just didn’t know how to spell “cholesterol.”

Then again, it didn’t know how to spell “grill,” either.

We finished and Will paid. “Workman’s comp,” he said.

“That’s for people injured in the workplace,” I said. “I wasn’t working.”

“Being his daughter is work,” he said.

“I think I got laid off,” I told him.

“Nah, it’s like the Supreme Court,” he said. “Lifetime appointment.”

Will got me home in plenty of time for curfew. I didn’t want to leave, but I opened the car door and stepped out. My mom had a full-blown Crap-a-palooza going on in her private life; I didn’t want to add anything more to the lineup. “So, thanks,” I said. “This is just what I needed.”

The air outside smelled like someone had lit a fire in a fireplace, but I knew it wasn’t ours. I started to walk toward the house.

“Annabelle.” Will got out of the car and followed me.

“I forgot,” he said, and he put a thick envelope in my hands. “The photos you wanted.”

“You could have just emailed them,” I said.

“I know. But as long as I had the equipment…”

“They were really good. Thanks.”

“No problem,” he said. “Plus, they’re evidence.”

“Of what?”

“That you can smile.”

“I smile,” I said. “I’ve been smiling more than ever lately.”

“I know. I just hope—”

“What?” I waited for him to say something prophetic and comforting about my dad.

“That you’re being careful.” Careful? Oh my God! This wasn’t about my dad. This was about Martin. Was he having a
sex
talk
with me? He must have known what I was thinking because he quickly added, “I mean in general. You have to be careful with—everything.”

Whew.

“Yeah, okay,” I said. I hugged him. “I’m glad we’re friends.”

He squeezed me a little tighter for a second. “You’re my first memory, did you know that?”

“What?”

“The first thing I remember, from when I was a kid,” he said. “You were on that swing, going so high I was thinking you might just keep going, that you’d flip all the way over, make a full circle. But then you jumped off.” He brushed his thumb across my forehead. “You had a scrape right there. Like from a bug bite you’d scratched.”

“You never told me that.”

He was looking at me so closely I felt my face grow warm and the skin on my neck started to prickle. I took two steps back and sat down on the stoop outside the kitchen door. Will sat, too. It was dark but not dark enough to see stars.

“I think about it sometimes,” he said.

“But Will, we were
four
when we met. That can’t be your first memory. I mean, there must have been something before that.”

“Maybe I blocked it out. I guess it wasn’t a very happy time…you know, before I was adopted. That’s what struck me about you on that swing. You were
so
happy. It seemed like you were from another world.”

“I’m sorry.” I reached out and gave Will’s hand a squeeze. “You don’t remember anything at all?” He’d never really talked about his life before he’d been adopted. I always thought he just felt embarrassed about it or something, not that there was anything to be embarrassed about. It never occurred to me that it was a black hole.

“I get flickers sometimes, but it’s fuzzy. Grayish.”

We stayed on the step and talked until the courthouse clock four blocks away struck ten. We could just make out the dim chime from our house if everything else was very quiet, and tonight was almost too quiet, as if the air was holding its breath. “I should go in before my mom starts to worry.” I stood and shook out my legs.

“See you tomorrow?” Will said.

“Of course.” I squeezed his hand once more, and then the door banged shut behind me.

It
is
beautiful
on
the
water. The fading light seems dark and mysterious, in the way velvet and tarnished lockets seem dark and mysterious. I drift in a small rowboat, the water carrying me nowhere I intend to go. In the dim light, I cannot see far enough to make out the shore, but I believe I am on the same lake where Josh and I sailed and swam, where we kissed and he became real.

I
lie
back, dragging my hands through the cold water on either side of the boat. Tendrils of seaweed skim through my fingers, and I close my eyes. My mind starts to wander, as aimless as the boat, when I feel something thick and muscular wrap around my wrists. It is not the seaweed. An animal, maybe? It tightens and pulls. My eyes fly open and I see snakes wrapped around each of my wrists like handcuffs. There are other snakes, too, rippling through the water.

They
begin
to
slither
up
the
sides
of
the
boat—shimmering as they pool in the boat’s hull. One of them slinks over my toes. I jerk my feet up, but the others keep sliding toward me.

Maybe
I
can
charm
them, with my brain, with a song. But controlling the snakes is as unlikely as controlling a wisp of fog. I try without success to wrestle my wrists loose. Snakes are coiled all the way up my arms now, holding me tight. Panic rises in my throat. I crane my neck to look behind for some way out, but the blackness outside the little circle of the boat is now absolute.

It
is
when
I
turn
my
head
back
that
I
see
her
again. She sits in the boat facing the opposite direction. The abandoned girl from the dreams. Her white dress gleaming as if it were its own source of light. Hair limp around her shoulders like a yellow fog.

“Help me!” I cry, even though I don’t think she can hear me.

She
doesn’t turn, but she must hear me after all, because her small voice echoes my words in a singsong tone: “Help me!”

A
large
brown
snake
starts
to
edge
toward
her
waist. I struggle to free myself as I call, “Watch out!”

The
girl
doesn’t move, except to raise her arms above her head in a V and let out a long, low hiss.

In
a
unified
motion, as if they were part of the same muscle, the snakes snap their heads toward the girl. At once, they slither to her from every direction, up her legs and back, spiraling around her waist. They rise and rise, climbing one over the other, braiding themselves together into a writhing mass.

The
serpent—for the combined parts now move like a single organism—is huge. Thicker than the girl’s waist. Far longer, if stretched out, than the entire length of the boat. It drapes itself across the girl’s shoulder, its head nestled against her neck. The girl still does not turn around, but when she lowers her arms, the enormous viper trains its red eyes on me. It rears up, opening its wide jaws. It is going to strike.

Something
hisses
in
my
mind. It wants to swallow me whole.

I
struggle
again, but my arms are still wrapped in snake flesh, immobile.

“Help me, help me,” the snake hisses, but it is the little girl’s mocking voice I hear.

• • •

I searched for Martin before my French class, ignoring Ms. Gilchrest, who stood in the halls clapping and yelling “
Vite! Vite!
” I didn’t have to search very hard; he was leaning against my locker, drawing sighs and stares from idol-worshiping freshmen. Seniors, too.

“I had a dream—” I said, but he put his hand on my arm and drowned my words with a kiss.

“About your dad,” he began, then paused, like he was hoping he was saying the right thing. “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.” Thoughts about my dad and Elana still swirled around in my head, but some of them had been swallowed by the mottled black snakes from last night. They encircled my brain, the way they’d encircled my wrists, and squeezed.

“And I’m sorry I didn’t know I was supposed to be sorry. I’m still figuring some stuff out.”

“Me, too,” I said.

“So does this make it a bad time to invite you to meet
my
dad? My parents, I mean. They want to have you over for dinner.”

“I’d love to meet them,” I said. I’d been curious about his parents; I wanted to make sure they were real. Whenever I pictured them in my head, they were wispy and translucent. Projections. Ghosts.

“The thing is…” he started, but then stopped and pulled me to the side of the hall, out of the flow of people. “The thing is, they’re not really like me.”

I waited, thinking he’d go on. When he didn’t, I said, “Oh. I see.”
Not.
I was clearly as clueless about his family baggage as he had been about mine.

“Good,” he said. “Tonight, okay? After practice. You want me to pick you up?”

“I’ll walk.” I smiled at him. “I know where you live.”

I didn’t see Martin again until lunch. We’d been sitting for about two seconds—just long enough for me to take too big a sip and dribble water all over my chin—when Stephanie came up and whispered in his ear. It sounded like a hiss.

Clearly the snake in Will’s photograph was a cosmic coincidence. This was the
real
snake. A perfect match for every one of Cynthia Rêve’s interpretations: temptation (his), sex (hers), and hidden fears (mine). Ms. Rêve bats three for three!

Talon shook her head. “Can’t you put a stop to that?”

“He’s his own person,” I said, committed at least on the surface to being the new non-crazy Annabelle—the Annabelle who had enough confidence not to sweat it when her boyfriend was being pursued by a serpentine cheerleader. The Annabelle who could wait, patiently, for his attention.

Talon hadn’t said what she thought of Martin, other than agreeing about his general hotness. She was “reserving judgment,” which was not a bad thing. Serena, who had already judged, was ready to sing at our wedding. Will had also judged—but not in the good way. I had hoped, since he was off finishing a photo project during lunch, it would give Martin a chance to shine.

“Excuse me,” Talon said to Martin, when Stephanie left. “Would you care to share with the rest of the class?”

He looked up, confused.

“It’s rude to whisper in front of other people.” Talon cupped one hand beside her mouth and whispered, loudly, “In case you didn’t know.”

Sometimes it was hard to figure out what Martin didn’t know. He knew everything about throwing and catching a football, and enough about math and English and chemistry. But sometimes he didn’t understand painfully obvious stuff. And a few of his social graces needed refinement, I guess.

“And you’re disrespecting Annabelle,” Talon said, taking a bite of celery, which she’d snagged from Serena’s lunch bag.

“I know where my loyalties lie,” Martin said. He smiled at Talon and touched my arm again. “But Steph and I are old friends. I don’t want to be one of those guys who abandons his old friends when he meets a girl.”

How did he learn about THAT in dreamworld?

“Very insightful,” Talon said. “I don’t like the friend, but I approve of the sentiment.” She dropped her voice. “Just don’t whisper.”

“Thank you,” Martin said. “Your approval means a lot to me.”

He grinned. I was so relieved. He was making a joke. Sort of. And Talon was laughing. Sort of. At any rate, she threw a Cheeto at him, and everyone knows that throwing a Cheeto is a sign of friendship.

Finally, school ended. I still had a couple of hours to kill before going to Martin’s, so Talon and Serena and I took off for Goodwill to find some dresses for homecoming. I could have asked my mom for some money, but I hated to bug her; every month when she sat down to pay the bills, she got a semi-glazed look and started tugging on her hair. And anyway, some amazing stuff comes into Goodwill. If Chilton weren’t so small, no one would know where it came from.

Of course Talon, who has plenty of money, is the one who found a dress.

It was filmy, sleeveless and black, like something Aria Timpane would wear in one of her music videos. She spun and put her hands in the air, then back to her side.

“You are so getting that,” Serena said. She found a white scarf and swooshed it around Talon’s neck. “The picture of elegance,
n’est-ce pas
?”

“It’s really beautiful,” I said. In my mind’s eye I saw Will pinning a white rose on the black gauze just above Talon’s breast.

“You didn’t find anything worth trying on?” Talon asked me.

“Guess not. But there’s one more place I want to check.” We headed to the antique store. In the back, they had vintage dresses that didn’t cost so much because most of them had small imperfections—a moth hole, for instance, or an underarm stain. But they still looked mostly beautiful, like you’d come from another time.

Serena, who still liked playing dress up, was too busty for most of the dresses. I was too flat chested. But I found one dress, periwinkle blue, my favorite color. It was sleeveless with a square neckline and a smooth, shiny bodice that went to a V at the waist. I couldn’t find any imperfections, unless you count the fact that it was about fifty years out of date.

I touched the skirt, thinking about all that dress must have lived through: first kisses, romantic sunsets. And it was still here, still treasured enough that someone had saved it for years, maybe taking it out of the closet every so often just to stir up memories. A true-love dress. Not right for someone like Daniel Kowalski. But maybe just the thing for Martin Zirkle.

“You look like a princess,” Serena said when I tried it on.

“It’s the epitome of awesomeness,” Talon agreed.

Mrs. Finch, the pinched-face saleslady who smelled like lemon drops, didn’t seem to mind that I paid her in mostly one-dollar bills. “I can always use the change,” she said, as she wrapped my dress in tissue and tucked it in a paper bag. “You got yourself a lovely, didn’t you, dear? This old dress, she’s got life in her yet.” With a quick wink, she added, “Just like me, dear. Just like me.”