The Dream Where the Losers Go (2 page)

“So, you feel all right about it?” Terry probed. “You know where your homeroom is?”

“I’ve been going to that school for two years now.” Skey shrugged.

“And you’re comfortable with the visit we made to your school principal?” Terry asked. “The guidelines he laid out for you?”

“I guess,” Skey said.

Terry paused, searching for a way to open her up—the correct combination of words, the right tone of voice. There might be one. Skey held herself stiff and waited.

“Did you know,” Terry said slowly, “that there are five people employed full-time just to scrape gum off the Statue of Liberty?”

“Huh?” Startled, Skey glanced at Terry’s grinning face.

“Yeah,” said Terry. “I read that somewhere. So if you ever need a job scraping gum off a wall, just fly to New York and apply to work at the Stature of Liberty. Forty hours a week. Probably minimum wage.”

“Maybe when you let me out of this place,” Skey said with a slight grin. “Give me a reference?”

“You bet.” Without losing a beat, Terry twisted the subject back to school. “You sure you’re okay with everything?”

Skey closed down, dropping her eyes. “I guess.”

“Skey?” If Terry was waiting for a response, she wasn’t going to get one, but her voice ambled on cheerfully. “What’s your favorite color?”

Skey sat, thinking her way through the options. She knew it wasn’t black—she got more than enough of the dark in her dreams—but it wasn’t white either. White didn’t help you see things any better. “It depends,” she said slowly.

“On what?” asked Terry.

“On my mood.” Skey spoke hesitantly, thinking out loud into Terry’s listening silence. “I guess it’s this color you can find sometimes between a peach and a pink. Not exactly peach and not exactly pink. Some days I like green, other days it’s blue.”

“Like the sky?” asked Terry.

“Like the sky around three o’clock in the afternoon when it’s really hot,” said Skey.

Terry gave her a slow smile. “Now you’re talking.”

“It’s really hot,” said Skey, “and the radio’s playing. And you’re lying in the sun, and you’ve got nothing to do, and you could do anything you wanted. That’s the color of sky I like best.” She paused, still thinking. “But most days I like gray. Gray because it’s quiet.”

Terry nodded. “Skey, help me with something. When I’m working the morning shift and you’re leaving for school, tell me what color you’re feeling.”

Briefly, Skey’s eyes flickered across Terry’s. “Why?”

Terry shrugged. “When I wonder how you’re doing at school, I’ll think of that color.”

Skey moved in and out of Terry’s gaze, leaving it, coming back, leaving it again. Coming back. “That’s weird, Terry,” she said finally.

“Hey, I thought of it myself,” said Terry.

T
HAT NIGHT
S
KEY
stood at her window, holding the rock. There was no wind. The elm’s branches reached out sharp and clear, motionless against the stars. As motionless as the large black iron gate that stood at the far end of the lock-up’s parking lot, dividing the grounds from the street. The gate’s purpose seemed to be decoration—it stood open day and night, cars and people coming and going. Skey’s eyes skimmed the staff-and-visitor parking lot, then settled on the concrete building that housed the school gym and classrooms beyond it. She had lost the previous September and October in that building. Autumn had been a daze of green leaves turning amber in the windows, the buzz of flies growing slower against window glass until they
died. Floor hockey games, roller-skating, arts and crafts— she had done what she had been told to do, fulfilled their expectations for good behavior. Tomorrow morning they would have to open one of their precious doors and let her out.

The moon was somewhere in the middle of itself, half dark, half light, the ground shadowy with dead grass and leaves. No snow yet. How she longed to walk out into those stars and feel the breeze move over her skin, feel herself move
inside
like something in the dark you can’t see but know is there, going on about its business. Unseen but always going on, like a heart.

The rock seemed to pulse in her hand. Skey half expected it to glow with a strange light, but it had come out of the dark. It was impossible and a mystery, but it held no messages—just a gray rock with rough edges that had accidentally bumped against her foot. A dream rock.

A dreaming rock
, Skey mused, turning it over. Maybe she was the rock’s dream, and the rock was hers. She laughed softly.

“You’ve been here too long, loser,” she whispered. “Soon you’ll belong.”

Leaving the window, she crawled into bed and turned to face the wall. Sometimes she and Ann tapped back and forth, but tonight she could hear the other girl’s snores. Gently Skey tightened her grip on the rock, and suddenly she was in the dream tunnel, standing somewhere in the dark. Stretching out her left hand, she located the wall and began to feel her way along. Almost immediately, she heard him—the other one. Everything in her stopped. Abruptly, from nearby, came the sound of a heavy stone shifting, followed by a muffled curse.

She crept forward, so alert her joints felt about to snap. Whoever the other one was, he seemed to be seated, nursing his foot and muttering to himself. It wasn’t an intelligent monologue, nothing like Hamlet—just a long string of swear words, slowly and meticulously phrased, as if pronouncing them with the utmost care was keeping everything in place, containing the hurt until it subsided. From the sound of his voice, he seemed to be fifteen or sixteen, around her own age. Quietly she stood, trying to silence her breathing as she listened to the boy feel his way through pain. After a while he stood and began to move forward, swearing every now and then, and she followed at a short distance, holding the small rock in her hand.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

T
HERE WAS A KNOCK
on her door. “Skey,” said a female voice. “It’s time to get up.”

“Yeah yeah,” mumbled Skey. “

C’mon,” said the voice. “It’s your first day back at school.”

“Yeah yeah,” said Skey. “I heard you.”

The rock lay in her hand, warm as flesh. Sitting up, Skey stared at it. All night she had followed the boy through the darkness of her dreams. This rock kept him close, she was certain of it. The night she had left the rock in her dresser drawer, she hadn’t heard him, but last night she had encountered him as soon as she entered the dark tunnel. It was this rock that connected them, it had to be.

Should she take it to school with her or leave it here? What if staff sprang a room search on her while she was gone and went through her stuff? Would they take it? But if she took the rock to school with her, would she lose it? Finally, Skey decided to keep the rock in a front pocket of her jeans, checking first for holes. Then she positioned
herself in front of her mirror and applied her makeup. Not the heavy metal, headbanger face most of the girls here wore—Skey sketched herself in thin delicate lines, a face for the cover of
Seventeen.

O
PENING HER BEDROOM
door, Skey entered the unit’s common area. To her left were four bedrooms, the unit TV and stereo and the washroom; to her right, the office and kitchen area. Directly opposite were five more bedrooms. Quickly, she passed the couches and pool table that sat in the middle of the unit, picked up some toast and juice sitting on a kitchen counter and joined two girls, Ann and Monica, at one of four small tables. Several girls sat haphazardly at the other tables—a lunch-and-supper seating plan was posted by the fridge, but at breakfast a girl could sit where she wished. Quietly envious of Skey’s impending freedom, Ann and Monica didn’t say much. Most of their attention was focused on Viv, a new girl who was still in her room, yelling at staff. Admitted three weeks ago, Viv was still going through the adjustment stage, throwing her weight around and emphasizing herself with threats and volume. Today she seemed to be refusing to get up.

“You gonna run?” Ann mumbled through a mouthful of toast. As usual, her eyes were shifting nervously, her body jerking every time Viv banged or yelled. Carefully Skey slid her eyes across Ann’s face. Ann was thin, thinner than Skey, and she didn’t have to work at it. But her long black hair was ratty. She needed to wash it.

“No,” Skey said shortly. She hadn’t considered going AWOL. She wanted to leave this place for good, not get dragged back by cops.

“I dunno if I could go back to my old school,” said Monica.
“Not if everyone knew I lived here. Why didn’t you ask for a new school?”

Monica had gained seven or eight pounds since her admission last summer, and she kept eating. As the pale blond girl started her second bowl of cereal, Skey pushed aside her own half-eaten toast, plain with no butter. Standing up, she said, “I have to brush my teeth.”

“Hey, Skey.” Ann twisted a strand of her long limp hair, her sharp wrist bones shifting under her skin like a dance. Fascinated, Skey stared. All of Ann’s bones were like that, rippling the surface.
Beautiful
.

Catching her gaze, Ann grinned, her teeth startlingly white against her dark skin. “If you get some stuff,” she said, “share it, eh?”

“Yeah yeah,” said Skey.

She brushed her teeth, then followed staff down the three flights of stairs that led to the lockup’s side entrance. As the woman’s key slid into the lock, Skey’s entire body tensed. What if the key got stuck; what if the lock didn’t turn; what if she was trapped in here forever? With a groan, the door swung open, and she could smell the November wind, the leaves and the cold, cold air. From inside the door, it looked like another world out there, the life of a different person blowing by.

Smiling slightly, staff handed her two bus tickets. “You’ll be back by 4:30?” she asked.

“Yeah yeah,” said Skey.

“Got your lunch?” the woman asked. “Have a good day.”

“Do I have to?” asked Skey. “Or can I take a break?”

T
HEY WERE IGNORING
her or waiting for her, it was hard to tell which. Through the bus window, Skey watched Rosie
and Balfour smoking in the student parking lot. Her heart splattered, rain hitting glass. How she wanted to get off the bus, raise her head with a knowing smile, let the wind lift out her long dark hair and saunter over to them as if she had never been gone and was still part of them—part of their invisible force field that ran Wellright High, ran it with smirks and sneers, whatever the occasion demanded.

But she couldn’t. Face pressed to the glass, Skey couldn’t find the vibe, the attitude, the correct brain wave that would place her back in May of last year, before everything changed, and she was pulled out of the real world into the inside of her head, where nothing fit together and very little made sense. Staring out the window, she swallowed and swallowed. Birds kept flying up her throat, birds of heat and salt. Their cries filled her head. Dropping her eyes, she rode the bus for another block, then got off and entered the school by the tech wing’s door, an entrance that couldn’t be seen from the student parking lot.

Incredibly it had all remained the same. To the right and left, rows of lockers opened and slammed, kids shoved stuff in and pulled things out. Fluorescent lighting flickered overhead, and here and there Skey could see erratic gaps where guys had taken running leaps and poked out a ceiling tile. In the middle of the surrounding mayhem, she stood with one hand to a wall, tracing the shape of a concrete block. So, the school was still here, and so was she. That much came together. For now.

She started toward the locker the principal had assigned her, thinning herself down, weaving in and out of the flow of bodies and voices. Coming into the school, she had pulled up her jacket hood and now she kept it up. No one recognized her, no one called out. Last year these had been kids she knew; she
had dropped into their jokes and laughter as if she owned it, as if it would always be hers. Now it was like walking through a magazine that had suddenly come to life in all the expected images, but they were too vivid, startling her with color and sound.

Taking a deep breath, she turned into the hall that led to her locker then froze in fear as she saw Gillian and Pedro leaning against the wall directly opposite her locker. No question about it this time. They were definitely waiting for her.

Gillian’s mother was one of the office secretaries. Either Gillian had wheedled the locker number out of her, or she’d somehow gotten into the school’s database. It wouldn’t have been that difficult; she had accessed information for the Dragons before. That was why they had decided to include Gillian as a fringe member—she was adept at leaving casual fingerprints all over the school office.

Skey began a casual drift backward. She had thought she would be able to handle this, find the same old face and drag out the same old laugh. But that face and laugh belonged to the self she had lost last spring, a self she could no longer reach. Somehow she had made herself believe that part of her, that lost self, had been left behind here at Wellright High, wandering these halls like a ghost and waiting for her body to show up so they could connect and she would be whole again, the same old Skey Mitchell.

But the lost self wasn’t here. Skey couldn’t feel her anywhere. That meant she was stuck being the pale, quiet, nothing-to-say, not-worth-noticing, very fucked-up, locked-up head case, except now she would be displaying it to her friends. No, former friends. They wouldn’t give her five minutes like this. Jigger wouldn’t. No one would.

Skey turned and headed for homeroom. The halls were thinning out now, students rushing to beat the warning bell, but still she kept her hood up and her head down. Coming down a stairwell, she scanned ahead for anyone who might be waiting in the hall outside her homeroom, then realized too late that she had forgotten a small open area behind the stairs. As she stepped off the bottom stair, sudden hands reached out and pulled her in. Frantically, Skey fought the scream that surged through her. It was always like this now—someone touched or spoke unexpectedly and the scream started, low in her gut. She had to fight so hard to keep it quiet.