Luka, page 9
She looks doubtful.
“My mom does a workout class on Thursdays,” I say. “She won’t be home until later. Can I get you anything? Water? Chocolate milk?”
“Chocolate milk?”
“Your drink of choice at lunch.”
Her cheeks flood with color, like chocolate milk is mortifying. She clears her throat. “Water’s fine.”
Water it is, then.
I grab her a bottle from the kitchen and snag a Mountain Dew for myself—semi-concerned she might bolt while I’m gone. Thankfully, she’s still there when I return, standing in the same place, studying the framed pictures hanging along the staircase. My school portraits over the course of my education.
I crack open my can and raise my Mountain Dew toward the gold frames. “Pretty embarrassing.”
“My mom does the same thing.” She tugs at her sleeves, pulling them long over her hands. “Mine are more embarrassing though.”
“I doubt it.” I hand her the water. “Want to go up to my room?”
“Um … sure.”
I lead the way, increasingly nervous with each ascending step. When I reach my door, I stand aside so she can enter first. When she does, I hold my breath as she looks from my warm brown walls to the oversized bookcase spanning the length of one. The laptop on my desk. A dresser with a mirror. The photos on my bulletin board. A navy-blue comforter on my queen-sized bed, upon which I discovered Summer sitting this past Friday. My reaction now, with this particular girl in my room, couldn’t be more opposite.
“You like to read,” she finally says.
“A little,” I reply on an exhale.
She shuffles to my nightstand and runs her fingers over the thick book I’ve been reading since finishing the biography on Bonhoeffer. World Dictators: Past and Present. Tess arches an eyebrow at me.
“I like history.”
She twists the cap off her water.
I pull the door shut, set my can of Mountain Dew on my desk, scoot out my chair, spin it around, and sit on it backwards. “You can sit down if you want.”
She takes a sip and sits on the very edge of my bed. “So … where should we start?”
“I have a confession.” I fold my arms over the chair’s backrest. “I don’t want to work on our history project.”
The plastic bottle crinkles in her hand. She sets it on my nightstand, then slips her hands beneath her knees. “I did some research during study hall. About your theory.”
“Find anything interesting?”
“There are people out there who believe in it—a spiritual realm. But I couldn’t find anything about people who are able to see it.”
I wheel my chair closer, the air between us vibrating with heat. “I keep thinking about what happened today, in Ceramics. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“I thought you said you have.”
“I don’t mean what we saw. I mean what happened.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It was trying to interact with you.” I said the same thing earlier in the hallway and I’ve gone over it a hundred times in my mind since. This is my definitive conclusion. That ball of light wanted Tess’s attention. “And then yesterday, in Lotsam’s class. It was almost like that thing was trying to provoke you. Like it wanted you to react. Every time I replay it in my head, that’s what I come up with.”
Her lips twist; her nose scrunches, distorting the spray of freckles across the bridge of it. “I have a question.”
“Just one?”
“It’s about our dream.”
“Okay.”
“How did that work, do you think?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Has anything like that ever happened to you before?”
Her question sits between us—bulky and unavoidable. I don’t want to lie to Tess. But I don’t want to scare her either. I’m not sure how I can avoid the two simultaneously. How does one tell a person they’ve been dreaming about them for years, obsessing over the last decade, without scaring them away? I have no idea, so I swivel my chair to take a drink of my soda and decide to take a page out of her playbook. I answer her question with a question. “Has it to you?”
She scratches the inside of her wrist. “Remember the clinic bombing?”
Her response throws me off balance. “Sure.”
“This is going to sound crazy.”
“Crazier than angels in Ceramics?”
“Right.” Tess releases a shaky laugh. “I dreamt about the bombing the night before. Two people died in my dream. Then the next morning in Current Events, I learned that the bombing actually happened and the two people who died in my dream were on the news, reported as dead.”
She pauses, giving me a moment to process her words. Tess dreamt about the fetal modification clinic bombing before it happened?
“The next night,” she continues, shaking her head. “This is totally weird.”
I scoot closer. She’s opening up. She’s telling me things. Strange, unexplainable things. I don’t want her to stop. I want to know what happened the next night. “What?”
“When we visited each other in our dream?”
I raise my eyebrows.
“What happened to me?” she asks.
“You sank into the ground. I tried grabbing you, but I wasn’t quick enough. Where did you go?” At the time, I didn’t think she went anywhere. The Tess who sank into the ground in my dream wasn’t really Tess, but my mind conjuring her. Now it seems that the Tess in my dream somehow was the real Tess.
“All of a sudden, I was on the Golden Gate Bridge. And the freaky man in Lotsam’s class? He was taunting this girl, trying to get her to jump. I wrestled him away from her and we fell.”
I pull my chin back. “You wrestled him?”
“Is that hard to believe?”
“It’s just …” I look at her. Small. Petite. With narrow shoulders and a slim build. “You don’t look like the wrestling type.”
“Hey,” she says. “I’m a black belt.”
“Really?”
Tess lifts her nose. “Really.”
The offense she takes to my surprise is so irresistibly adorable, I can’t help but laugh. “Okay, so what happened next, Karate Kid?”
“I woke up. And that same girl was in the news. She was about to commit suicide, but the police got to her in time. She didn’t die.”
My smile melts away.
Tess wrestled a white-eyed man in her dream. She pushed him away from a girl who was about to jump off a bridge. When she woke up, she discovered that girl from her dream was saved by the police in real life. I search her eyes—first one, then the other—back and forth, wading into their depths. I think I could sink for an eternity and never reach the bottom. Tess, the black belt. Tess, the girl who leads an army in my sleep and wrestles monsters in hers.
“Do you think they’re real,” she says. “The dreams? Prophetic or something?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Her posture wilts. “You’ve never had dreams like that? Dreams that actually come true.”
The questions and the desperate way she asks them push me to the edge of a cliff. A precipice. I can tell Tess the truth and risk frightening her. Or I can keep the truth to myself and risk alienating her. She opened up to me. She shared something incredibly intimate. If we’re going to get to the bottom of what’s going on, I have to return the favor.
“I’ve had one,” I say. “It’s recurring.”
“Like mine?”
“Not exactly.” I slide my palms down the thighs of my jeans. “Your first day of school wasn’t the first time I’ve seen you.”
“You saw me when we were moving or something?”
“No.”
Her brow furrows.
I take a deep breath and jump. “I’ve dreamt about you.”
“Yeah, that night—”
“Before that night.”
“Before?”
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamt about this girl with dark hair and fair skin and big, navy blue eyes and freckles across her nose.” My attention moves with the words—from her dark hair to her navy blue eyes, to the freckles across her nose. This girl I’ve spent so much of my life looking for. Sitting on my bed. Staring at me with unfathomable intensity. “And then you showed up in class and … it was you. You’re her.”
Tess blinks—several times in slow succession. “What happens in the dream?”
“That man in Lotsam’s class? There’s a whole army of them. They are strong, impenetrable. But there’s another army too. An army of these bright beings, charging ahead, and you’re leading them.”
“Me?”
I nod. “You’re fearless. Brave. But you’re also in danger. So out in the open and the soldiers of the other army are targeting you. In the dream, I’m fighting them. Trying to get to you. Screaming for you to run. It’s like your life is the most important thing. Like if you die, then so will everything else.”
I stop, letting the words sink in.
All is quiet—deathly still—in the wake of them.
I lean closer, erasing the space between us until her knees touch my chair. Now that I’ve said it, I might as well say all of it. “I’ve spent my life looking for you. Everywhere. At stores, restaurants, malls, in the newspaper, on TV shows. When you showed up in Current Events, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I still can’t.”
Her breathing is shallow.
I forge onward. “When we met on the beach in our dream, it was the first time your life wasn’t in danger. But then you disappeared, and I thought …”
“You thought something bad happened.”
“Yeah.” It’s why I spent the rest of the night tossing and turning. No matter how much I told myself she was fine, asleep next door, I didn’t believe it until she walked into Lotsam’s class with Leela. “Tess?”
Her eyes meet mine.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I say. “In Thornsdale.”
“Me too.”
A knock sounds on my door, popping the moment like a soap bubble. I scoot my chair back, irritation scratching up my spine.
“Luka?” My mother peeks around the door. She’s dressed in yoga pants and a workout top, her dark hair pulled up into a ponytail. She takes in the scene—me in my chair. A girl on my bed. “Who’s this?”
“Tess Eckhart. She moved in next door. Tess, this is my mom.” I fully expect my mother to smile. To beam. She’s always wanting me to be more social. Well, here I am, entertaining a guest. Instead, her reaction throws me off balance.
“Nice to meet you,” she says in a tone so brittle, my brow furrows.
“You too,” Tess replies.
Mom turns her stiff expression on me. “We’re going to have dinner in thirty minutes. You should probably wrap things up. And leave your door open, please. You know that’s the rule when girls are over.”
When girls are over?
Is she kidding me? Not more than a week ago, she sent Summer up to my room without my permission. Now she wants to act like we have this established rule when girls are over, like it’s some common occurrence? Before I can respond, Mom’s gone and Tess looks embarrassed. She stands sheepishly and hikes her backpack over her shoulder with such alarming quickness, I come out of my chair. “Tess.”
She stops in the doorway.
I want to ask her to stay.
I don’t want her to leave.
But I also don’t want her to feel uncomfortable and it’s obvious my mother has done exactly that.
“We should try to do it again,” I say.
“What?”
“The dream thing.” I tuck my hands into my pockets. “If we think about each other before we fall asleep …”
“You think that’s how it works?” she asks, another blush creeping into her cheeks.
Tess is a very easy blusher.
I shrug. It’s her own theory. One she mentioned in a dream. One I happen to like. “It’s worth a try.”
“Okay. Sure.” With that, she hurries out of my room.
I dig my hands deeper into my pockets, arms pressed against my sides as I take a tight breath and look up at the ceiling. As soon as I hear the front door close, I march downstairs and confront my mother in the kitchen.
She stands at the sink, rinsing a colander full of leafy greens.
“What was that about?” I ask.
“What was what about?”
“You. Up there. Being rude to Tess.”
“Rude?” She shuts off the water. Gives the colander a couple shakes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Luka.”
“You made her feel unwelcome.”
She dumps the greens into a large salad bowl. “I said it was nice to meet her and I told you dinner would be ready in thirty minutes. I don’t know why either of those things would make her feel unwelcome.”
“You told me to keep the door open.”
“Is that an unreasonable request for my teenage son when he has a girl in his room?”
I scoff. “Last Friday you practically served Summer to me on a silver platter.”
Mom slams down the salad tongs. “Now that’s rude!”
She glares at me for a silent moment, then begins tossing the mixed greens. “Her father called. I could tell she was upset. I wanted to give her a private place to talk and I thought my kind-hearted son would go upstairs and offer a listening ear like a good friend. With the door open, by the way. I wouldn’t want it closed with her in your room either. Apparently, I was wrong.” Her tossing grows increasingly aggressive. “Serve her to you on a silver platter,” she mutters. “What an awful thing to say.”
I stare at her incredulously, unsure whether I should argue or applaud.
Her gaslighting skills are off the charts.
She was absolutely a jerk to Tess.
I didn’t imagine it, no matter how innocent she’s acting now.
I think about the Edward Brooks Facility.
Does she know Tess goes there?
Is that what this is about?
My father is a stickler for privacy. Surely he wouldn’t tell her. But as she breezes past me to the refrigerator—looking unquestionably indignant—I have no idea what to think.
18
Dangerous Company
I fall asleep consumed with thoughts of Tess.
When I wake up, I’m sitting on a rocky beach alone. I drape my arms over my knees, stare out at the silent waves, and wait.
And wait.
And wait some more.
Just when I think this isn’t going to work—this theory must be wrong—movement catches the periphery of my vision. Tess stands several lengths away like a person slightly off balance. Like a person who can’t see properly. I get to my feet, wiping the rocky sand from my palms, and close the space between us. “You’re here.”
“How long have you been waiting?”
“Awhile.”
“I had a hard time falling asleep.” She cups her forehead with her palm. Her voice sounds far away. Off. Even though she’s right in front of me. Close enough to touch. “I had to take two Tylenol PMs and then I started thinking about my grandma.”
“Your grandma?” We definitely didn’t go to sleep with our minds in the same place.
She opens her mouth but before she can say anything more, she starts to fade away. I reach for her. Only I’m too slow. Tess is gone. A strange sound fills the space where she used to be. It’s not waves or seagulls but …
Some kind of struggle.
Invisible thrashing, like it’s happening on the other side of a thin wall.
“Tess?” I spin around.
And bolt upright in bed.
A stream of pale moonlight creeps across my floor. I toss off the covers, shove on my glasses, and go to my window, peering at Tess’s house through the night while blood crashes in my ears.
It was just a dream.
People don’t get hurt in dreams.
But I can’t stop hearing that sound—the thrashing, a struggle. I can’t stop thinking about the confessions she made earlier, right there on my bed. She wrestled a white-eyed demon in her dream. Those dreams were coming true in real life. The same panic I feel whenever Tess charges headlong into battle clamps onto me now—its grip suffocating.
I pace my room like a caged lion, fighting the urge to go outside and knock on her front door. I pace like a madman. Until a light turns on across the way. A second story window. I go to my own and cup my hands on either side of my face like two parentheses, my nose touching the glass.
A bedside lamp illuminates a solitary figure too small to be Pete.
It’s Tess.
Alive.
Awake.
Relief pours through me.
Sweet, soothing relief.
I repress the urge to tap on my windowpane. The sound would do nothing but wake up my parents. Tess wouldn’t hear it. Her window is closed. My attention travels down the length of a white trellis that runs along the side of her house, all the way from her window to the ground. It’s a trellis that could be climbed.
I watch intently as Tess takes something off her nightstand. A journal, like the one she writes in when she sits on her back deck. I beg her to look at me. I imagine sending my thoughts through the night, into her bedroom. But her attention remains steadfast before her, as though whatever she’s writing is a matter of life or death. I sit on my bed and wait for her light to go out. It remains on through the night.
When the morning finally comes, I hurry through my routine. Outside, I lean against my car in the driveway, frustrated with myself for not getting her phone number yesterday. If I had it, I could text her. Ask if everything is okay.
At ten minutes to eight, my mother steps outside with a mug of coffee in hand. “What are you still doing out here, Luka?”
My shoulders tighten.
Her attention slides to the Eckhart’s home. “You’re going to be late for school.”
I cast one last look at Tess’s door, then get in my car and drive away.
