Luka, page 13
I shake out my hand and keep writing.
Tess has dreams that come true. I begin listing them. A bombing at a fetal modification clinic, where a doctor and a nurse died. The girl on the Golden Gate Bridge, who wanted to jump but didn’t. The man with a gun. A mother and her two children in a garage while the car ran. Tess dreamt about these things and the following day, she found them on the news.
She dreamt about her grandmother, too. Not dead, as her parents led her to believe. But very much alive. Locked away in a mental rehabilitation facility. A grandmother who tried kidnapping her when she was a baby.
“Luka?”
I jump.
Mom stands in my doorway, her attention sliding from me to the notebook. I set my elbow over the page and scoot the notes out of sight.
“What are you doing?” she asks, her eyebrows pulling together.
“Homework.”
She considers me. My answer. The notes I’m obviously hiding. “Luka,” she finally says. “Should I be worried about you?”
“Why?”
“You’re spending a lot of time in your room. Sometimes I hear you pacing.”
“I’m fine.”
Mom frowns like she doesn’t believe me.
I don’t blame her. Especially when I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the screen of my opened laptop. My hair’s messier than usual. There are dark circles under my eyes. I wonder if Dr. Roth is in my future. I wonder if our weekly appointments will resume. I glance at my phone, willing it to ring. “Really, Mom. Everything’s fine. I just need to finish this assignment and I’ll be down for dinner.”
When she’s gone, I blink down at my small, messy scrawl. The slanted scratchings of a madman fill an entire page and I’m not even finished. We shared a vision at the pep rally. Another one in Lotsam’s class. Again in Ceramics. And today, another white-eyed man in the locker bay, followed by his brief reappearance in first period. Three out of the five times, these visions tried interacting with her. Something they’d never done with me.
A man with a scar told Tess I’m dangerous company. Summer told her I’m using her for information. Both times, in a dream.
I drum my fingers against my desk and stare down at the page like the words are all scrambled and I need to put them back in order.
My phone chirps.
I jump out of my chair as fast as the lunging white-eyed man. Tess’s name lights up my phone screen. I answer halfway through the second ring, sit on my bed with my elbows on my knees, and chew on my thumbnail as Tess tells me about her appointment with Dr. Roth. She told him about the dream with the carbon monoxide poisoning. She didn’t tell him about me.
“I asked him about medicine,” she says.
“What did he say?”
“He’s not convinced medicine would be in my best interest.” There’s a pause. And then, “He wants me to record my dreams. In detail. For a month.”
I sit up straighter. “Why?”
“To gather information.”
“About?”
“My condition, I guess.”
Suspicion coils through me like a snake. “Are you okay with that?”
Another pause follows my question. Longer this time. Pregnant. Bloated.
“We made a deal,” she finally says. “I do this for a month—record my dreams—and he will tell me more about my grandmother.”
25
What Was That?
The deal unsettles me.
I understand my father’s facility runs differently than those that are owned by the government, but this feels especially unorthodox. Not to mention, unethical. Dr. Roth isn’t supposed to give out patient information, even if that patient doesn’t go to Edward Brooks. Doing so would be a major breach in protocol.
But who am I going to tell?
Certainly not my father.
Which means there’s nothing I can do but stand by and watch as Dr. Roth’s treatment plan makes everything worse.
Tess’s symptoms.
Tess’s dreams.
Tess’s obsession with the local news.
In early November, she dreams about a kidnapping. In the dream, she fights. In real life, a kidnapper is apprehended after his car runs off the road. His victim—a six-year-old little girl—is safely returned to her parents.
In mid-November, she dreams about a white-eyed man lurking nearby as an emaciated woman lies in a hospital bed, his skeletal fingers pressed against her skull. In the dream, she fights. In real life, a woman suffering from an aggressive form of stage four brain cancer is miraculously healed and walks out of the hospital cancer free.
At the end of November, she dreams about a shooting at the mall. In the dream, Tess fights. In real life, a disturbed teenager with a semi-automatic attempts to open fire in a San Francisco mall on Black Friday. His gun jams and what could have been a national tragedy becomes a collective sigh of relief.
Through it all, my recurring dream returns in full force, riddling my sleep with anxiety and an ever-pressing need to protect a girl hellbent on marching into the heart of danger.
At school, she’s haunted by men with white, unseeing eyes. They show up at unsuspecting moments with increasing frequency, making Tess jump or gasp for no reason anybody but myself can see. Someone spray-paints Freak Show in bright red across her locker. I catch wind of unkind words scrawled across the stalls in the girls’ restrooms. Then the rumor begins. About me and a bet and the real reason I’m paying so much attention to the school freak. I suspect Summer, but when I confront her, she plays innocent.
All the while, Tess grows thinner. Paler. Skittish and shaky and plagued by headaches. Her parents are arguing at home. They bring up the prospect of moving, as if a change in location might fix whatever is troubling their obviously troubled daughter.
As hard as I try, I can’t fix or stop any of it. Not the dreams at night or the rumors at school. Not her parents bickering or the possibility of moving. All of it spins into a giant ball of misery until one night, Tess dies.
I wake up drenched in sweat, my helplessness boiling into a seething rage. So much so, that when a skeletal man materializes in the locker bay later that day, I do something I’ve never done before.
An explosion of heat bursts from my body, visible sound waves hurling straight at her tormenter. The man’s unseeing eyes go wide with shock as the bright, radiating force slams into him. He topples backward and disappears in a shock of brilliant light.
Our classmates carry on as if nothing at all has happened.
Tess and I make a beeline for the library.
Lotsam has given us the class period to work on our year-long project. We find a private corner while my heart soars.
“Did you just—?” Tess begins breathlessly.
“I think so.”
“How?”
“I have no idea.” I stare down at my hands, warmth tingling in my fingers. “I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“Luka,” she whispers, “you made him disappear.”
“I know.”
Shock and hope stretch between us. A live wire that crackles with heat.
With her elbows on the table, she leans closer. “Can you teach me how you did it?”
“I would if I knew. It was like a reflex.”
“Maybe you should try it again.”
I blink down at my upturned palms, unsure how. How does one re-create something they never intended to create the first time?
“You had to have done something,” she says, her hopeful tone bleeding with urgency. “Let’s replay it.”
“I saw him coming at you, but you weren’t looking and I … I don’t know. It just happened.”
“Do you remember what you were thinking?”
I turn my hands over and stare hard at my knuckles. I attempt to do whatever it was I did in the locker bay, but it’s wasted effort. I might as well be trying to levitate a stack of books with telekinesis. I drag my hand down my face and look apologetically at the girl beside me. “You have your appointment with Dr. Roth today.”
Tess nods.
“It’s been a month.”
She nods again.
“Are you going to ask for medicine?”
“I can’t live like this.”
Her answer fills me with relief. I don’t want her to live like this. I have no idea if medicine will help. No idea what it means if it does. I only know that something has to give. I take her hand beneath the table. “You shouldn’t have to.”
Behind us, a book drops.
We turn around.
Summer stands too close for comfort, her eyes bright and frenzied as they meet my own. She picks up the book and hurries away. I stare after her, a pit opening wide in my stomach. How long before she Googles the name Dr. Roth?
26
Grandma’s Journal
Ocean waves crash in the dark as I climb the white trellis leading up to Tess’s bedroom window. I called her before dinner. I called her after dinner. Then spent the rest of the evening scrolling through social media, fully anticipating Summer to announce what she overhead in the library. But Summer remains eerily silent online. And Tess’s phone goes straight to voicemail. Which is why I’m climbing her trellis now.
When I reach the top, I see her sitting on her bed, drinking from a glass of water. There’s a stack of folded papers beside her and an orange prescription bottle on the nightstand.
Medicine.
Gently, I tap on her windowpane.
Even though the sound is soft, her hand flies to her chest. She gapes at me with parted lips, then glances toward her half-opened door. She closes it, turns the lock, then hurries to the window to let me inside.
“How did you climb up here?” She looks toward the shadowed grass below.
“The trellis helped.” A cool breeze joins me as I climb in. I brush my hands down my shirt, registering the fact that we’re alone. Something we haven’t been since the last time I was here in her bedroom after Bobbi’s party, when Tess couldn’t look me in the eye. Now she’s looking straight at me, her expression one part surprised, one part unfathomable.
“Hey.” My belated greeting is low. Husky. My body, impossibly aware of hers. “I wasn’t sure if your parents would let me come in this late. Or if they’d let us talk privately.”
“Probably not.”
“How’d it go with Dr. Roth?”
She picks up the stack of paper from her bed and hands it to me.
I thumb through the pages, slowly registering what it is—a journal. Of dreams. But the handwriting doesn’t match Tess’s. The entries don’t coincide with any of the dreams she’s told me about either.
Last night I dreamt about a plane. I sat in the cockpit, watching the pilot have some sort of seizure. I watched the flight attendants try to keep the passengers calm, their own fear oozing out from their stricken eyes, and I was moved profoundly. Somehow, with immense concentration, I managed to land the plane. This morning, there is news of a plane crashing. There were no casualties.
I flip a few pages.
A bus full of students died because of me. It was my fault. James insisted I get help, but this medicine is making me weak. I couldn’t save them. I wasn’t strong enough.
Eager to understand what I’m reading, I flip more pages. The further I go, the larger and messier the handwriting gets. The author writes of a man who haunts her dreams. Her waking hours, too. Then I reach a line that brings all of my attention to a sharp and sudden halt.
Teresa can save me. She can make this stop.
Teresa.
Tess.
The shock of seeing her name written so erratically draws me back. And suddenly I understand exactly whose journal I’m reading. This belonged to Tess’s grandmother. I thumb through more pages. As far as I can tell, Tess isn’t mentioned again. The ramblings grow increasingly frantic, soaked in fear and confusion. The paranoid, panicked incoherence of a demented woman. A demented woman who tried kidnapping Tess when she was a baby.
A knot ties tight in my stomach.
Prophetic dreams. The belief that those dreams impact real life. Feeling haunted at all hours of the day. These are the exact same symptoms Tess has been experiencing and Tess’s grandmother was diagnosed with psychosis. I hold the stack of paper aloft. “Dr. Roth had this?”
Tess nods.
I don’t understand it. Why did Dr. Roth have her grandmother’s journal? She wasn’t one of his clients, was she? I run my hand along my jaw, my attention snagging against the orange bottle on her nightstand. “Did you …?”
She nods again.
“Do you feel different?”
“Not yet.”
I take a step closer, wanting to erase the distance between us. So much frustrating distance, created by hostile dreams and a month of torture at the recommendation of a doctor who was supposed to be helping her.
“I’m afraid,” she whispers.
“Don’t be.”
“What about your dream?”
I shouldn’t have told her about that dream.
“What if I turn into her?” she asks, her voice trembling. “What if they lock me up? What if—?”
“Tess,” I interrupt, my own hoarse. Ragged. “I won’t let anybody lock you up.”
She rakes her teeth over her bottom lip.
Full.
Perfect.
Kissable.
Filling me with a need so acute, it feels like a physical ache. Slowly—cautiously—I hook my pinkie with hers to draw her closer. She doesn’t resist and the ache intensifies as I run my thumb across her knuckles.
Her breath catches.
My own goes shallow.
Then a creak sounds in the hallway.
With a jerk, Tess steps quickly away.
Another creak outside her door, followed by a knock.
“Tess?” a masculine voice says from the other side. “Are you sleeping in there?”
Tess looks at me with panicked eyes.
I step toward the window, then stop. Frustrated. Always and forever frustrated. I want to stay and tell her everything will be okay. I want to assure her of things I can’t actually guarantee. I want to finish what was about to transpire before we were interrupted by that knock. But another one sounds on her door.
“Tess?” her father says again.
Before her panic can grow any larger, I make a fast and smooth exit. I crawl down the trellis and pause beneath her open window as the curtains flutter in the night.
Above me, the window shuts.
There’s nothing to hear but the ocean’s lullaby.
27
A Parental Warning
The next morning, I wait outside by my car, eager to see her. I didn’t have any dreams last night. At least none that I can remember. When I woke up, I did so quickly. Startlingly. Like I accidentally slept through an alarm.
Her front door opens. She steps outside, tips her face to the sun, and does something I haven’t seen her do in a month. She smiles.
All the stress winding through my body lets go and the proposition I’ve been entertaining for the past few weeks escapes on a relieved and hopeful exhale. “Wanna hitch a ride with me today?”
Without missing a beat, she tosses her car keys to her scowling brother and strolls to my car.
My spirits lift.
Her cheeks have color. The dark circles beneath her eyes have gone away. Her narrow shoulders no longer look like they’re bearing the weight of the world. The transformation is astounding. “You’re looking cheery this morning.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No, not at all.” It’s a wonderful thing, this version of Tess. Contagious, too, as the weight on my own shoulders slides away. I open her door with a grin.
“What?” she says.
“Maybe you should share those pills with me.”
“Maybe I will.” She winks and climbs inside.
I hurry around the car and take a seat behind the wheel. “I take it you didn’t have any dreams last night?”
“Not a single one.”
I set my hand on the back of her seat and reverse out of the drive with a curious hum.
“What?” she repeats.
“Worked fast.” Not just on her, either. The whole world seems brighter. Thornsdale in late November isn’t usually a warm, sunny place. But morning sunlight sparkles over the ocean as we drive to school.
“You look good,” I tell her.
“Thanks,” she says, the color in her cheeks deepening.
It’s quiet after that. A silence that isn’t awkward or oppressive or anxious. A silence that isn’t benign either. The absence of worry and concern stewing between us has made room for something else. An energy that thrums with heat—an energy that makes me impossibly aware of her, myself, and the moment we shared last night in her room.
Not until I pull into the school parking lot does my growing elation take a hit. The medicine might have given Tess a much-needed night’s rest, but it’s not going to stop Summer and her minions from their passive aggressive attacks. Summer might have been quiet online last night, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to be quiet today.
Inside, Leela waits by Tess’s locker.
The second she sees us, she smiles wide and my affinity for her surges. Despite Tess’s erratic behavior, despite the relentless gossip and the unsettling rumors, she’s remained stalwartly by Tess’s side.
“So,” she says, clapping her hands together, “it’s throwback night at the theater. They’re playing all these old-school, amazing films. Please say you’ll go.”
I shrug. “I’m a fan of movies.”
Leela gives a little cheer. “You in, Tess?”
I take the moment to scan the locker bay. There are no white-eyed men. No hovering balls of light. Just a bunch of loitering classmates who don’t want the first period bell to ring.
Tess meets my eye.
I toss her a smile.
