The Dream Thief (4 page)

He chewed, slowly, his eyes on the waitress in a way I didn't fully like. "I see your point. Just thinking about what to say makes all the words go fuzzy."

"We're not allowed to warn people."

Being fused to Will was a big problem, but I was beginning to realize the extent of another one. Ten years of hate and thoughts of revenge had dissipated completely. When I'd confessed my guilty secret to Will—that my father was already dying before the crash that killed him—all of that hatred either vanished into some depository for ugly feelings in the sky, or turned inward on myself.

I was the responsible party. If anybody could be blamed, it was me.

Meanwhile, Will, who had loved me in one way or another since we were kids, now saw me clearly for the heartless bitch I had become. The expression on his face, in his eyes, a mix of grief and disgust, was devastating. And when he found out exactly what I had set loose in my house, well, that would be the end of all hope that I could ever make things right between us.

"Jesse. Could you stop drifting off and just stay with this problem for a minute?"

I brought my attention back to where it didn't want to be. To those strong man's hands, with the grease staining the fingernails and the calluses of hard work and the bruises where my fingers had dug into his flesh during the—whatever had just happened. The changeable eyes, blue-grey in the dim light of the diner, the marks down his cheek where I'd scratched him yesterday when he saved me from drowning. To his mouth, which had been a boy's ten years ago, slightly bowed and soft, now a straight line of determination. His jaw had squared. And his voice—well, that was the greatest torment of all.

"Do you have furniture up at the house? Towels? Food?"

"Wait—what?" I stared at him in shock and dismay.
Not now, not yet
.

"We have to sleep somewhere. We need a base camp."

"What's wrong with your place?"

"It's too small. One bedroom."

"I can sleep on the couch."

"Aren't you doing work on your house? To get it ready to sell?"

Work, yes. Sell? Not so much. "It's sort of out of the way."

"At the moment, I think that's a good thing. Look, Jesse—if we go to my place, people will see us. People will talk. People will make assumptions."

God forbid anybody should think we were together. He went on, driving the nails into my heart, one by one.

"Just in case you hadn't figured it out, I don't really want to be in the same town with you, and it's pretty clear you feel that way about me. The house gives us each a room of our own and we can avoid each other."

I kept my eyes on my hands, poking at the bruises to see how much they hurt. They hurt plenty. "No furniture. No food. The lights and water work. That's the extent of it."

"Fine. Tomorrow we'll stop by Goodwill and get some basics. You have money?"

"Some."

"Good, because I'm not paying to furnish your house."'

"I know what," I said, manufacturing a bright enthusiasm that didn't fool either of us. "Let's camp. You have a tent—"

"I'm not sharing a tent with you."

"Fine. You camp—"

He sat back in the booth and gave me a long, level look. "What's in the house that you don't want me to see? And there's no point in lying, because I can feel the secret. Like a gas bubble, right here." He put one hand just below his rib cage, which was exactly where I was feeling the secret, and it did feel like a gas bubble.

"If you already know, why do you need me to tell you?"

"Because I can't read what the secret is, only that you have one. And even if I could, you're working awfully damn hard to keep me out of that house."

I sighed. "You already know—she told you. I spilled a dream by mistake. It got into the walls and the floor—"

"And I'm supposed to help you clean it up. Which necessitates being on the premises."

"But we don't have to sleep there, Will!" I was almost in tears again. Despite all of the very bad things that had already happened, having Will find out that I'd ordered a dream in which I repeatedly blew him to smithereens was about the worst thing I could imagine left to come.

Someday I'll learn not to think things like that, because the instant I have a thought like
this is the worst thing ever
, fate laughs and lobs another surprise in my direction.

The door to the diner opened and Marsh stepped in, looking a little worse for wear. The stubble on his chin had gone from GQ to drunk and disreputable and his hair was greasy and uncombed. He stood blinking in the dim light, his fingers twitching to some beat I couldn't hear, and then his eyes caught sight of me. His jaw dropped and his mouth fell open, and he stumbled backwards, tripping over his own feet, lurching sideways into the doorframe.

Recovering his balance, he blundered toward us, knocking against another table with his hip and sending water and ice cascading into the lap of an elderly man in shorts. Close up, I could see the fatigue clearly etched into his face. He looked like a guy escaping from a low budget horror flick—as if he'd burst through the big screen into the light and heat and incredible savory food smell that was Dave's, leaving monsters and darkness on the other side.

I'd thought it was me he was gunning for, but he sank down in a chair beside me and stared at Will instead. "You're alive."

"Mostly." Will scooted his chair back a couple of inches. Marsh was leaning forward and his presence was pungent and intense. He still wore the jeans and t-shirt he'd been wearing when he spilled the dream on himself, and I guessed he hadn't slept much since then, either.

He grabbed Will's hand and held it between both of his. "But your truck blew up. Over and over. You exploded into pieces and your arm…" He choked and heaved and I thought we were about to have a vomit condiment added to our dinner, but he managed to swallow it back. "And then Jesse split you open with a tire iron—"

Marsh's eyes locked on mine. He whimpered like a child and held his hands in front of his face as though he thought I was going to try to spike him with my fork. "Don't hurt me, Jesse. I'm sorry for what I tried to do back there—"

"It's a dream," I said, matter of fact and totally calm, as though my insides weren't shaking like Jell-O in an earthquake. "Nobody's planning to hurt you."

He shook his head. "Can't be a dream. I saw it. My ears were ringing—"

"Marsh. Pull yourself together. People are looking."

This was true. And while I wasn't crazy about the way they were watching us like they'd tuned into the afternoon soaps, this time I truly wasn't being selfish, just using my knowledge of the man to good advantage. It worked, at least a little.

He wiped the trail of snot that wet his upper lip with the back of his hand and took a deep breath.

"Look," I said. "Will is fine and well and here in the flesh. You haven't been blown up lately, have you, Will?"

"Define blown up."

I glared at him.

"Right. Not that I know of."

"See?"

Marsh scrubbed both hands over his dirty face. "But I know what I saw, what I heard."

We couldn't talk more here. All eyes were on us, nobody even pretending to eat anymore. So I snuck in one last fry and pushed my chair back. "Let's go outside and talk, okay?"

"I dunno—"

But Will was with me on this one, and he had Marsh by the other arm. "Come on, Bud. Let's take it outside. See? I'm alive and even mobile."

Once through the doors and over by the truck I scrambled for a way to explain that wouldn't be blocked. "Remember that little bottle you broke at my house?"

"I said I was sorry."

This wasn't a tactic I'd planned on using, but he'd given me an opportunity I wasn't about to pass up. "You're a bully, Marsh. You turned mean and broke something special."

"I know, I'm sorry. God, Jesse—what are you going to do to me?"

"I don't need to do anything to you. You're already under a curse."

That stopped him, froze him cold with his mouth hanging open. The small, rebel part of me that wasn't actively engaged with shock and horror over what I'd done wanted to snap a picture to post on the internet somewhere, but it was a small part, easily kept under control.

"A curse. Like from a witch, you mean?"

"Right. Like from a witch. The stuff in the bottle wasn't meant for you, but you spilled it all over yourself and that made you go crazy."

"Like—I'm hallucinating?"

"Pure loony tunes."

"Oh my God. Jesse, please." He sank down onto his knees and clasped his hands. "I don't want to go to a loony bin place. Fix me. Make me back. I'll be good, I swear."

I acted like I had to think about it, when all I wanted was for him to get out of my sight. Finally, I sighed. "Well, okay. I guess maybe you've had enough. Here's how you break the curse—are you listening?"

He nodded.

"Go home. Put all of the clothes you're wearing in the woodstove and burn them. Scrub yourself off in the shower. That will fix it."

"That's it? Just like that?"

"Well—almost. After the ashes have cooled from burning your clothes, double bag them and bury them in the backyard. And then—donate a thousand bucks to the DV shelter. Can you do all that?"

"Anything." He grabbed my hands and kissed them, not in the expected Marsh way, highly suggestive and sexually charged, but like I was a priest who had just granted him absolution from hell, which maybe I had. But the revulsion was pretty much crawling all over my skin by now and I had no patience left for him.

"Get up. Go home. Do as I have said."

Internally, I rolled my eyes at myself and added, "and you shall be healed," as I watched him run down the sidewalk and across the street without any regard for traffic.

"Do I need a hazmat suit?" Will asked, beside me. The sensation of his skin crawling in addition to what I was already dealing with was almost enough to send me running down the street in the opposite direction. Which of course I couldn't do unless Will came with me, which would be defeating the point.

"I doubt that it would help."

"I'm not hungry anymore. You?"

My stomach roiled at the thought and he apparently felt that and took it for answer, because without another word he turned and headed for the truck.

 

 

W
e stopped at Will's
house so he could grab a sleeping bag and a change of clothes. At my request, he also scrounged up an old sleeping bag for me. He had questions about why I traveled without one and I let him think I was scattered and stupid, rather than tell him I'd burned mine when the dream got spilled.

I was not invited in and waited on the porch, feeling the bond between us stretch and ease as he moved about inside. When he emerged he shoved a jug of milk and a box of dry cereal into my hands, then turned around for the sleeping bags and a daypack.

"Don't you want to bring your guitar?"

Will had never gone anywhere without his guitar since he was ten and bought the first one at a yard sale. It rode in the car with us to school. It came up into his climbing tree where he'd sit and play for hours—bits of songs from the radio, tunes he'd painstakingly learned off a chart, stuff he made up himself.

Now he looked at me blankly.

"Why?"

"Well, why do you ever?"

His expression mirrored my confusion. "Sometimes you're more than a little freaky, Jesse. I found a guitar in my house, but I can't for the life of me figure what it's doing there. It's not like I can play the thing. If this is a joke, I'm missing the punch line."

"It's not a joke. You…" There were no words for this, and I was still fumbling, trying to think what to tell him when he ran out of patience.

"This is ridiculous. Let's go."

I followed him down the sidewalk, the milk jug chilling my fingers. The line of cold down my spine came from a different source entirely. Will didn't remember playing the guitar. My brain kept bobbling on this idea, falling back, and getting up to try again. It was unthinkable. Like forgetting to eat or breathe. This was the sort of memory that usually stuck even when names and places blurred and faded away.

Driving home, he slowed a little as we passed his old house. Someone had planted a tree. All wrong. The Aldersons didn't plant trees because there was a whole forest behind them and who had time for that sort of thing?

I'd lived at Will's house near as much as at my own. His mom died before my dad did, breast cancer that metastasized. It was one of the things that bonded us to each other. Our dads worked at the mill. Well, all right, his dad owned it but mine was his right hand man. And our mothers were both missing, one way or another.

"So your dad—"

"I don't want to talk about him."

I shut up. Talking was hard anyway, what with the anxiety. Even with the window wide open, driving relatively slowly on the winding gravel road up to the house, I felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin.

It was a huge relief to pull up in the yard, and the instant the truck came to a stop I was out with my feet firmly planted on the gravel. It was out of the frying pan and into the fire, though, because the very next thing was going to be a whole lot of explanations and unpleasant consequences.

 

 

T
he pile of old
carpet and wallpaper in the front yard still smoldered, giving off a foul stench of burnt rubber and chemicals.

"Your idea of home renovations?" Will asked. "Nobody ever tell you that you can't burn carpet?"

"That's subject to dispute." I mean, the carpet was sort of burned, although  melted would probably be a better description. In any case, I was more interested in knowing whether a spilled dream could be incinerated or not than I was in the state of the carpet.

His eyebrows went up. "Is this about the dream that got away? Looks more like a case of an awkward dead body and blood. Maybe a plague epidemic."

"You don't need to be difficult." He had every reason in the world to be difficult, of course, but I don't like feeling stupid. Also, I was busy wondering whether the nightmare was lingering near the earth or floating freely up over the trees and drifting toward town. If it was, there could be an awful lot of people dreaming about killing Will this night.