The Vault of Dreamers (34 page)

“I’m not going to live my life afraid of ladders,” I said.

“You have a dizziness problem. When are you going to realize that?” he said.

“You don’t have to shake me,” I said. “Why are you even holding me if you’re mad?”

His lips pressed together in a line, but his grip on me turned gentle. “I’m not mad.
I’m here to say goodbye. I’m leaving.”

I went very still. Then I touched my fingers softly to his jacket. “Is this because
of me? Because of last night?” I asked.

Linus shook his head.

“Yes, it is,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s nothing complicated,” he said. “Otis wants me to stay, but there aren’t any
decent jobs in Forgetown. I can’t work here anymore, and I don’t count getting bled
for Parker as a real job, so I’m moving on.”

“Where will you go?”

“I’m heading back to St. Louis,” he said. “I can get a ride there later today with
a trucker who’s coming through.”

“You mean Amby?”

I felt his hands slide lightly down my arms, but he didn’t let me go completely.

“I might have been wrong about Amby,” Linus said. “I haven’t found any proof about
his deliveries. I shouldn’t have told you about that. It just gave you ideas.”

I let out a brief laugh. “It didn’t give me ideas.”

“Something sure did,” he said. He stepped back then and released me. “You know what
I keep thinking about? I can’t help wondering what would have happened if you’d given
me your video camera last night when I asked.”

“I should have,” I said. “That was a mistake.”

“But you didn’t trust me.” He slid a hand in his back pocket. “Isn’t that funny? When
it came right down to it, you trusted the security guard more than you trusted me.
I keep telling myself it’s just as well. If I’d taken your camera, I would have watched
your footage, and this way, I never have to know for certain how much you made up.”

“I didn’t make it up,” I said slowly. “Everything I’ve ever told you is true.”

“No. It was a good story,” he said. “It definitely got me to care about you, but let’s
be real now.”

I searched his eyes. “You’ve never believed me? All this time?”

“Actually, I did something worse,” he said. “I believed
in
you. That was
my
mistake.”

I tried to think about it from his perspective, but a tight, aching ball in my chest
was making it hard for me to breathe. “Then you think I’m crazy. That I imagine things.”

“Don’t we all?” he asked quietly.

I took a step back. My fingers felt suddenly cold, and the video camera slid heavily
down my wrist. “I know the difference between imagination and reality, Linus.”

“Come on,” he said. “If you could just admit it once, maybe we could still at least
be friends,” he said.

I choked on a laugh of astonishment. “Friends? Crazy things are happening at this
school.
Crazy
things. But that doesn’t mean
I’m
the crazy one.”

“Rosie, wait. No one said you’re crazy.”

“Don’t patronize me. That’s exactly what you meant.”

“I just want you to admit that you make things up,” he said.

He reached for me again but I winced away, hugging my sore elbow.

“I don’t make things up,” I said. “All this time, I thought you wanted to help me,
but now that I think of it, you’ve been no help at all.”

He dropped his voice. “You can’t really think that. I just lost my job because of
last night.”

“But you came because I amused you. You came looking to
kiss me
,” I said accusingly. “You didn’t come to be of any
real use
.”

His eyes hardened and his jaw clamped shut. For one last second, he seemed to consider,
and then he threw out his hand. “You want me to be of real use? Then be honest. Quit
being so cautious. Tell people what you really think is going on here. I’ve listened
to your stories. I’ve kept your secrets. Go on. You’ve got a whole world of viewers
out there.” He gestured even wider. “What’s so evil about the Forge School? What’s
going on here, Rosie?”

There it was. I’d resisted my chance when I was before the trustees, but Linus’s goading
hit at a deeper level.

“I believe Dean Berg is doing experiments on us,” I said. “I think he mines us for
dreams while we sleep, against our will.”

I could feel the cameras aimed at me and the microphones picking up every word. It
was terrifying and exhilarating.

Linus urged me on. “Students like you?”

“Maybe not all of the students, but some of us for sure, and certainly me,” I said.
“And he seeds us, too. He plants ideas in us. It doesn’t show right away. It doesn’t
seem to hurt or do any damage at first, but it made me dizzy enough to fall off that
ladder yesterday.”

“When you fell with Burnham,” Linus said.

I nodded. “People are killing themselves when they leave here. They’re never the same.”

“What you’re talking about would involve brain surgery, wouldn’t it?” Linus asked.

“It’s a kind of microsurgery with lasers, I think. Dean Berg studied medicine when
he was younger,” I said. “Dr. Ash helps him. They have an operating room under the
school. They can wheel our sleep shells there at night and bring us back to the dorm
before morning without us ever knowing.”

“So it’s completely secret,” Linus said.

“Yes, but the worst thing, the thing I discovered last night, is that he has a whole
extra supply of sleeping bodies he can use for experiments,” I said. “Dozens. He has
dozens of children stashed in a vault under the school, all asleep.”

“You mean, in comas?” Linus said.

I felt him guiding me forward with his questions, as if he were beckoning me toward
him across a tightrope.

“I don’t know what they’re in, exactly,” I said. “Possibly comas. They’re definitely
alive.”

“And how did you find them?”

“I skipped my pill. I stayed awake. I know I wasn’t supposed to, but I did.” I pointed
in the direction of the quad, beyond the nearest buildings. “I found the sleeping
children down the pit in the clock tower.”

“Everything you’ve discovered, you discovered at night?” he asked. His voice had turned
unexpectedly gentle. “When you were supposed to be sleeping?”

“That’s right. I tried to take video footage for proof, but it all got erased.”

“So you’re the only one who’s ever seen this?”

My heart ticked oddly. “What are you saying?”

Linus turned toward the quad, and then back to me. He spoke carefully. “I just want
to understand. I think you’re saying, if we go down the pit of the clock tower right
now, we’ll find a room full of sleeping children. Is that right?”

I paused, searching his eyes. Did he know something that would prove me wrong? Suddenly
confused, I flashed to a memory of Dean Berg’s smug face. He’d had no fear of me,
none, during the meeting with the trustees.

Then the worst happened.

A crumbling of doubt edged through me. I staggered back a step. What if it was all
some elaborate nightmare I’d invented? What if I had concocted the whole thing, and
none of it was true?

Why hadn’t I told the board about the dream mining when I’d had the chance? Maybe
I had been afraid to tell my secret because, deep down, I knew it was all false. The
more twisted and elaborate the nightmare was, the more special I had felt all this
time, figuring it out. Now that Linus had pushed me to say it all out loud, I felt
like I was betraying myself.

This wasn’t only for the viewers.

He wanted me to see it for myself.

I stared at Linus and backed up another step.

“You think I dreamed it all,” I said, awed. “You’ve been humoring me, all this time.”

“If you want, I’ll go with you to the clock tower right now,” he said. “We can look
down the pit. We can climb down, if you want. All the cameras can follow us down.”

I could hardly breathe. If we went and looked right now, we should find the glass
walls at the bottom of the pit, and the doorway that led to the leaf-strewn tunnel,
which in turn should lead us to the vault full of sleepers with their eyes covered
in gel. But what if we didn’t find that? What if the glass walls weren’t there? What
if I’d imagined them? They hadn’t shown up on my footage last night.

“Rosie, should we go see?”

I backed up yet again. He was totally freaking me out. I was freaking myself out.

My gaze shot to his, and his eyes were warm with pity. “Come with me to St. Louis,”
he said gently. “Or I can take you back to Doli, if that’s what you want.”

“I can’t,” I said.

He had just made me tell.

I was going mad.

“What do you know?” I asked accusingly. “How can you be so sure?”

“I don’t know anything. I’m just trying to understand you,” he said.

Dean Berg had always been one step ahead of me, even when I was spying on him. He
could have fed me anything he wanted me to believe. Anything. Everything. He could
have staged whatever he wanted, to lure me in. To punish me. Even a vault of dreamers.

“Can they block off the bottom of the pit? Is that it?” I asked.

“Would you listen to yourself?” he asked, gently. Another gust of wind blew up the
pasture and lifted his jacket collar against his throat. “Maybe you need some help.”

“Not from you.”

“I’m not the enemy, Rosie.”

I let out a laugh. “You just work for him. Or you did.”

His expression went flat, and then he nodded toward the video camera I was holding.
I’d practically forgotten it.

“Good luck with your art, Rosie,” he said.

A lonely, aching part of me wanted to reach for him, like I still belonged in his
arms. The rest of me wished I’d never met him. I curled my hair back around my ear
and blinked against the wind.

“Good luck in St. Louis,” I said.

I met his gaze one last time, and then he turned and headed down the pasture, toward
the road that led to Forgetown. My cool eye framed up the shot, seeing how photogenic
he was against the backdrop of the water tower and the horizon of the prairie, but
even though I had a camera in my hand, I turned in the other direction, back toward
the center of campus.

31

CATCHER

THEY SENT A
security cart around for me. They said Dr. Ash wanted to check on me. I flared up
inside, ready to run, and then I saw their wary eyes. I heard the undertone in their
calming voices. The crazy label was clear in the way they handled me, as if they were
both sorry and secretly pleased that I’d cracked.

I went with them. I let Dr. Ash check me out. I let her give me some pain medicine
for my elbow and wrap it in a sling. She asked me if I truly believed everything I’d
said to Linus.

“What’s better to say? That I do or I don’t?” I asked.

“Just be honest.”

I thought rapidly. Honesty depended on whether or not I trusted the person I was talking
to, and Dr. Ash was a liar. “I don’t want to say anything Linus might hear,” I said.
“Take me off camera and I’ll talk.”

“If you go off camera, you’re off the show for good. Is that what you want?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Was this some kind of game you were playing on Linus?” Dr. Ash asked. “Like a performance
art piece that went wrong, maybe? That’s happened here before.”

I glanced down at my hands. “I’ve been having nightmares a lot,” I said. “Maybe I
got confused.”

“I wish you had told me,” she said. “And were you really dizzy on the ladder yesterday?”

I nodded.

“Any voices? Déjà vus? Blackouts? Hallucinations?”

It was hard to tell if they were hallucinations when I believed them. “No,” I said.

She set a hand lightly on my shoulder. “Let’s let you rest a little, shall we?”

I turned to gaze out the infirmary window, and the doctor left me in peace. Outside,
the wind had blown in a change of weather. A mist enshrouded the campus, bringing
twilight early, and it thickened to rain as I watched.

I had not known until then that a heart could feel bruised. Mine was bitterly sore,
and each time I thought of Linus, it pumped the pain a little harder. I had thought,
somehow, that we were starting something small together. Maybe not a family, but something
that mattered. Now I couldn’t tell if I was angry at him for all he’d done, or if
I was angry because he was gone.

I didn’t want to need him.

So why did I?

*   *   *

A tap came on the door, and the nurse, Mr. Ferenze, looked in. “A couple of your friends
are here to see you. Dr. Ash says it’s okay for them to visit for a few minutes. Should
I send them in?”

“Sure.” I pushed aside my dinner tray and brushed a couple crumbs off my jeans. All
I’d eaten was the apple crisp, anyway.

A minute later, Paige and Janice came in hesitantly. Paige wore sweats, while Janice,
all in black, looked paler and more chic than ever. Careful of my sling, Janice gave
me an awkward hug, and then Paige did, too.

“Thanks for coming, guys,” I said.

“You don’t look too bad, all considering,” Paige said.

“Thanks.”

Janice had brought along my brown sweater and my umbrella. She offered me a quaint
red flower made of bent plastic, with a string for hanging.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“I made it for you. It’s a dream catcher,” she said. “It’s for a window, normally,
but you could hang it anywhere.”

I laughed, realizing that the flower was made out of swizzle sticks. “That’s very
nice. Thank you.”

Janice glanced at Paige and then back to me. “We wanted to tell you,” Janice said.
“Paige and Henrik and I went to the clock tower. I climbed down the pit to see what
was at the bottom.”

“You did?” I asked, surprised.

“Henrik came down, too, and Rosie, we didn’t find anything down there but a few leaves
and some mouse droppings. It’s just a pit.” Janice curled her wispy hair behind her
ear. “I’m sorry. It’s just, I thought you would want to know we tried.”