Blue Is for Nightmares (3 page)

I peer down at her toenails, the pink and blue smiley faces with missing eyes and half-worn-off smiles. She ends up borrowing a bottle of nail polish remover from my desk and then raiding Drea's fridge for a Snickers bar and two cans of Diet Coke before leaving.

Meanwhile, since I'm pretty sure I won't be getting any more sleep tonight, and since the cards are already shuffled, when Drea asks for a reading, I
should,
but I don't, refuse.

We sit cross-legged on my bed, the cards in between us and thick, purple candles lit on both night tables. The rulebook says we aren't supposed to light candles or incense in the dorms, but nobody really pays attention to the rulebook anyway. Plus, Madame Discharge is usually too busy living vicariously through the contestants on
Blind Date,
blasting from her portable TV in the lobby, to even notice.

"Cut the deck into three piles," I say, "and make a wish before you make the third pile."

"Why the purple candles?" she asks.

"To help give us insight." I look down at my amethyst ring, remembering how I dreamed about it, remembering how my grandmother gave it to me when I was twelve, just before she passed away.

Drea makes her piles and I take seven cards from each to make one stack. "To your self," I say, placing the first card facedown. "To your family" I say, setting the second down next to it. I lay four more cards facedown and say their categories: "To your wish. What you expect. What you don't expect. What's sure to come true."

"Why don't you just use Tarot cards?" Drea asks.

"Because they're not as true. My grandmother taught me to read playing cards, just like her great-aunt taught her. The
real
way"

I lay the remaining cards down atop the others, creating piles of three and four. There are two cards left over, which I place to the side. "These are your surprise cards."

I turn the wish pile over to reveal a Nine of Spades, a Jack of Hearts, a Two of Clubs, and a Three of Spades, and feel the corners of my mouth turn down.

"What's wrong?"

"You made a wish about Chad."

"How can you tell?"

I point to the Jack of Hearts. 'A fair-haired young man next to the Nine of Spades."

"What's a Nine of Spades mean?"

"Disappointment. The Two of Clubs tells me he's going to ask you out somewhere. But then he's going to disappoint you at the last minute."

"And the Three of Spades?"

"The Three of Spades is for tears."

"There's a surprise."

I place the wish pile to the side, facedown. "Do you want me to keep going?"

She nods.

I pick up the what-you-don't-expect pile and spread the three cards out to reveal an Ace of Clubs, a Five of Clubs, and an Ace of Spades.

I feel my face freeze up.

"What?"

"Nothing," I say, turning the cards over.

"If it doesn't mean anything, then tell me."

"Be careful, all right?"

"Be careful of what?"

But I can't answer. Can't say the words, like that will make them true.

Drea looks away to avoid eye contact--the way she always does when she doesn't get her way.

"Fine, forget it," she says. "Don't tell me. I don't have time for games."

I focus a moment on the candle flame, following a tear of wax as it drips down the side. I don't know what to say, how to tell her, or if I should.

I peel the three cards back over and spread them out with my fingers. I swallow hard, try to think up something quick that will sound convincing. But instead I say, "Be careful you don't say something you might regret."

The expression on her face curls into a question mark.
"What?"

"You know, watch what you say" My voice cracks.
"'Watch what I say?'
Are you
serious?"

"You may get into an argument with someone over it. Someone close to you."

"I do that anyway" she says. "Wow, Stace. You're a real mystic. You should open up your own shop and start charging people." She swings her legs off the side of the bed. "I have e-mail to check."

I hate having to lie, but it's better than telling her the truth. Even I don't want to face it. I collect the cards, but hold Drea's what-you-don't-expect pile aside.

"Why did Chad send me
this?"
Drea turns from her computer.

"What is it?"

"Some weird link about nursery rhymes. It's 'The House that Jack Built.--

I join her to look. A computer-animated man in overalls and a tool belt moves around in a sort of computerized gait, laying down long slats of wood in the form of a house. In a matter of seconds, the construction is complete and the man has begun painting the exterior a creamy beige color.

"This is different," Drea says.

When the painting is done, a pearly white cat pounces down from a window ledge. It chases a rat across the front porch. The man wipes a stream of sweat from his brow and hammers up the finishing touch: a bright gold Welcome sign for the front door.

Drea clicks on it. A grandma-looking woman, wearing a long peach dress and a frilly apron, comes out on the front porch. She reaches into the pocket of her apron for a thin red book labeled Nursery Rhymes.

"This is the house that Jack built," the grandma-looking woman begins. "This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built."

"Someone has a weird idea of humor," I say.

The wiry voice continues, "This is the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built."

"Chad's such a weirdo," Drea laughs. "I was telling him the other day that I've been having trouble sleeping. I guess this is his idea of a bedtime story. You know, to lull me to sleep. He's so sweet." She clicks the page closed and checks her other messages. "Something from Donovan,"

she says,

reading from the screen. "He's not going to be in health class, so can he borrow my notes." She types back a quick reply and sends it off.

"You know that's just an excuse," I say, moving back toward the bed. "He's probably missing class just so he
can
borrow your notes. Like health notes are even important."

Drea smiles; she knows it's true. "Nothing else from Chad," she sighs.

"Don't you think 'The House that Jack Built' is enough for one night?"

"I guess. I guess I just kind of miss the way he used to email me good night." She flops back onto her bed and crawls under the covers. -Good night," she says.

"Good morning, you mean." I place Drea's cards into the night table drawer and roll the covers up over my shoulders. We still have another hour and a half before the alarm goes off. An hour and a half that I will spend staring up at the ceiling, thinking of Drea's card reading and of what I didn't
couldn't--say.

There is
no way
I'm going to fall asleep now.

D-period French. I slide down into my chair, sink my teeth into the pencil eraser, and flip through the four pages of the test. The subjunctive of
pouvoir?
The conditional past of
aller?
Is Madame LeSnore serious? She said this was going to be easy.

The room is church-silent as the traitor herself prances up and down the rows doing a final cheat-check, probably giggling on the inside at the sight of my sweaty face, twisted up in utter confusion. As she makes her way to the other side of the room, PJ, who sits beside me, and Amber, two chairs up, snicker silently back and forth about the shimmery blue tint Madame's sporting in her hair today. A definite Clairol emergency. Though I'm not sure why PJ thinks it's funny. He dyes his hair spikes more often than a chameleon changes color. Today he's settled on camouflage swirls to match his nail polish.

"Ten minutes left," Madame Lenore announces. "Stacey, stop daydreaming."

I blink my stare away from the ugly clay planter on her desk--a gift, she told us, from a former student
who appreciated the values of discipline and hard
work. Translation: a royal kiss-up.

PJ slides his test toward the end of the desk and then tilts it up in my direction. But all I can make out are the miniature doodles of comic-book characters playing cards and eating cheeseburgers that he's drawn in the corners.

"Your own work, please," Madame snaps. I bite the eraser completely off the end of the pencil and feel it wedge itself in my throat. A reflex shot: the soiled red nubby shoots out my mouth and into Veronica Leeman's bullet-proof hair. I'm all prepared to mouth out an apology, but with all that hair spray and gel, she doesn't even notice.

PJ rocks back and forth in silent laughter, his hands gripping over his stomach. "You rock," he mouths. I'm thinking Veronica senses the mockery because she turns around and gives him the finger.

I, on the other hand, am too tired to laugh. I need sleep more than this test. Besides, even attempting to fill in any of

these blanks is a waste of fine pencil lead. I'll be begging Madame after class for a retake anyway. Why waste breath
and
school supplies?

I suddenly feel my eyes begin to droop closed and am literally fighting my head from bobbing back. I scrunch down a bit farther in my seat, hoping the back of the chair will help keep me propped, looking alert.

PJ's still laughing, audibly now. His mouth is arched wide open and his green, candy-dyed tongue is wriggling out his mouth like an angry snake. He pounds his fist down on the desk in hysterics, but no one seems to be paying any attention. No one even looks.

I don't have time to obsess on the subject of classroom injustice because suddenly... I have to pee.
Bad!
I place my hands over my stomach, cross my legs, and feel a droplet of sweat trickle down my forehead. I raise my hand to be excused, but Madame only laughs at me. She takes her seat at the front of the room and begins to correct my test, even though I haven't turned it in yet, even though it's still sitting on my desk, staring blankly up at me. This seemingly obvious setback doesn't seem to set her back from correcting it, however, because the next thing I know she's holding it up for everyone to see: a giant red
F
printed on the top.

PJ's mouth fills with even more laughter when he sees it, and his snakelike tongue writhes and twists out his mouth, trying to break free. Madame folds the test into a paper airplane and launches it at me. The -plane circles the room a few times, but then lands in the center of my desk. I open up the folds and blink at the mass of words written in large, red, block letters across the paper: YOU KILLED MAURA AND DREA WILL BE NEXT.

"No, I didn't!" I scream. "I didn't kill her!" My shriek wakes me up and everyone's just...

staring. It takes me a second to put it all together, that somehow I nodded off to sleep, right here, in the middle of class.

I look down at my test. It's still blank, still asking me for the subjunctive and conditional tenses.

PJ reaches Out his clunky, braceleted hand to my forearm, but even that startles me.

"Stacey?" Madame says. She stands up from her desk and looks me over, as though expecting to find some physical defect.

I have no idea what to say. A sprinkling of giggles shoots out from the front corner of the room.

"Students, please continue working," Madame says. "Stacey, are you all right?"

I nod.

More laughter, now from Veronica Leeman and her snotty friends.

"I hope this wasn't some idea of a joke." Madame looks at them and then at me.

I shake my head.

"Why don't you hand in your test and go to the office.
Now."

The legs on my chair scrape against the linoleum floor as I slide myself back from the desk. I want to slither away as slyly as PJ's tongue, but I can't. I need to hurry or I won't make it to the bathroom in time. All eyes in the class, except for Amber's and Prs, reluctantly turn back to their meaningless French tenses. I walk to the front of the room and hand my blank test to Madame.

She doesn't say anything else and I can't. I can only walk out of the room and resolve to stop whatever is going to happen. I have to save Drea and put Maura to rest in my mind forever.

Dinner tonight looks gross. But since I skipped lunch after French class, mortified about what happened, I'm prepared to eat almost anything. I pluck one of the lemon-yellow trays from the stack, clank a handful of utensils on top, and peer over the row of heads in line to try to decipher what the gray mush being shoveled onto the plates is. Shepherd's Pie: bits of fatty scrambled hamburger in a mix of fake, waxy mashed potatoes and sweet, runny corn. So yucky.

Veronica Leeman stands ahead of me in line. I check her hair for my pencil eraser, but can't seem to locate it in all that mass. Darn. She notices I'm behind her and looks down at me as though I'm a squashed bug.

Veronica Leeman is one of the few people in this world I enjoy hating. Freshman year she organized a book drop in the middle of Algebra. At exactly 12:01, everyone except her and her three clone friends dropped their books. She and her friends just sat at their desks, hands folded, heads cocked to the side, feigning confusion. The result: the rest of the class, me included, got a week's worth of mind-deadening detention with Mr. Milano, the biology teacher, who decided it would do us some good to listen to him lecture for hours about his dissertation research--the mating habits of reptiles.

The line moves forward, and me and Veronica are next. I watch as she grimaces over the selection of food. "Shepherd's Pie?" cafeteria-lady asks, an ice-cream scooper full of the chunky mixture aimed over Veronica's plate in plop position.

"Heinous," Veronica says, waving her red acrylic nails like a stop signal. "Who eats this stuff?"

"You do, now," cafeteria-lady says.

"I don't think so. I'm a vegetarian."

The woman plops some onto Veronica's plate. "Try it."

"Didn't you hear me? I'm a vegetarian. Veg-i-tar-i-an. I don't eat an-i-mals. Which word don't you understand?"

Cafeteria-lady smacks the ceramic plate back onto the counter and hands Veronica a cellophane-wrapped sandwich labeled TUNA.