Blue Is for Nightmares (7 page)

"What does that do?" Amber asks.

-The color silver will help give me insight as I travel in the astral."

"Sounds kinky" Amber says.

"The astral is our dreams." I close my eyes and concentrate on it. "Silver chain, as each link binds the next and forms a string around my neck, so may the links of my psychic dreams bind to unify the visions of my subconscious mind." I open my eyes and, with the yellow crayon, write the question WHAT ARE MY NIGHTMARES TRYING TO WARN ME? across Drea's diary page. "Yellow is for clarity of thought," I say, folding the page up into a palm sized square and slipping it into the pencil case that I use for a dream bag. I glance a moment at Drea, at the dark, grayish aura that cloaks her hair and shoulders.

"What's that?" Amber asks, pointing at the branch of rosemary.

I pick up the sprig, its fresh, pointed needles like a Christmas tree branch. "This will help purify the energy around me so I can remember." I pluck twenty-eight needles from the branch, the number of days in a moon's full cycle, and sprinkle them into the pot. "Rosemary, hold strong my dreams all full of wonder, as I lay me down to slumber."

I concentrate on the mixture and then pull the silver necklace from the pot. "Will you help me?" I hand the necklace to Drea and gesture for her to fasten it. The chain hangs around my neck at the collarbones, the lavender oil drooling down my skin, a few stray rosemary needles at my throat.

"So, are we done?" Amber asks.

-Not quite," I say, diffusing the candle with a snuffer. "Why don't you blow it out?" Amber asks.

"Because that would confuse the energies and cause a negative backlash."

"Oh, yeah, right," Amber says, rolling her eyes.

I mix the oil and rosemary in the pot with my fingers, and then pour the mixture into the dream bag. I wait a few seconds for the candle to cool a bit, for the pool of liquid wax around the wick to solidify. Then I scoop the clump out and plant it inside the dream bag.

'And you said / had weird habits," Amber says.

I zip the bag back up and slide it into my pillowcase. "Repeat after me," I say, clasping their hands. "With the strength of the moon and stars and sun, as I do, it shall be done. Blessed be the way!"

Drea and Amber repeat the chant and we unclench hands. I lay down in bed and touch the silver chain around my neck, the sweet, flowery smell of rosemary lingering on my skin and the nubs of my fingers. "Good night," I say.

I pull the covers up to my chin and concentrate on the dream bag inside my pillow and the question inside, confidant that they will soon help reveal the truth behind my nightmares.

They have to.

Before I'm able to nod off to sleep, Amber announces she's crashing in our room, claiming that all my nightmare-talk has wigged her out. I'm nervous at first. It's hard enough trying to hide my bedwetting from Drea, never mind Amber, who'll be sleeping on a futon wedged in between our beds. But sleeping isn't even an issue because as soon as her head skims the pillow, Amber starts snoring--chestheaving, wide-mouthed, nostril-flaring snores.

When the alarm clock vibrates beneath my pillow, alerting me that it's 5 A.M., I sit up, fish a sweatshirt from the growing pile of dirty clothes on the floor, yank it over my head, and head out to the laundry room to retrieve my stuff.

The campus is still asleep as I make my way over there, but the woods are not. I can hear birds chirping away from the tops of trees and the nests of bushes as the morning dew lifts itself from trunks and branches and stretches out into the morning air. It's almost peaceful, almost worth getting up so early on a school day after not having slept all night. Almost.

When I get to the washroom, I'm filled with this delicious sense of peace, of being one with nature. But then I swing the door open and everything changes. There's no laundry in sight.

I hurry across the speckled linoleum floor to the machine I used last night. I hold my breath and flip the lid open.

Empty.

I begin flinging open and slamming shut the lids of all the other washers and dryers, hoping that maybe someone merely moved my stuff. But it's nowhere.

Someone must have taken it.

I pick up the campus phone on the wall and call security, thinking that maybe someone turned my laundry in to lostand-found. No luck. They ask me if I want to make a formal complaint, but considering how that would sound, I politely decline. I'm hoping someone just made an innocent mistake and grabbed my laundry by accident. Hoping that whoever that is doesn't recognize the stuff as mine.

When I get back to the dorm, it's 5:30, and Drea and Amber are still asleep. I crawl back into bed and drag a pillow over my ear. But it isn't enough to block out Amber's snoring, and it isn't enough to muffle the blare of the phone.

"Hello?" I say, dragging the receiver up to my ear. Silence.

"Hel-lo?" I repeat.

Still nothing, so I hang up.

"Who was it?" Drea asks, rolling over in bed.

"Probably that freakazoid you've been talking to. Who the hell is he, Drea? And why is he so psycho?"

Amber lets out this pain-filled moan. She scooches up in bed, her orange pigtails sticking out like Pippi Longstocking. "What's all the drama?"

The phone rings again. Drea goes to answer it, but Amber intercepts. "Hello? Drea and Stacey's Love Shack."

I have never seen anyone wake up so fast. There's already a wide and cheeky smile stretched across her freckly cheeks.
"Queue coincidence, monsieur,"
she says into the phone. "We were just talking about you last night." She winks overtly at the two of us. "Funny you should call at this early hour, though. Couldn't sleep? Something keeping you up?"

"Who is it?" I mouth.

"It's Chad." She fans her eyebrows up and down and blows kisses in Drea's direction. "What am I doing here?" she says into the phone. "Couldn't tell you. I've been known to sleepwalk on occasion."

Drea extends her hand for the phone, but Amber avoids it. "Never know where I'll end up," she continues. "Better keep your door locked."

"Give it to me.
Now!"
Drea tries snatching the phone, but Amber's too quick. She jumps up and scurries to the opposite side of the room.

"Huh?" Amber covers her non-receiver ear to block us out. She turns to Drea. "He wants to know if you got his email."

Drea springs from her bed to check.

"He wants to know if you did your psychology homework," Amber says.

Drea nods.

"Well, then, can he, like, borrow it? It's due first period." Drea's smile wilts, but she nods anyway. She turns away to click on his e-mail.

"Get out!" Amber laughs into the phone. "You guys are
too
funny"

Drea spins around, her white-knuckled fists digging into the groove below her rib cage. "Give me the phone, now!"

"Breakfast,
huh?" Amber repeats into the phone. "Is that what they're calling it these days? Drea, he wants you to meet him for
breakfast
this morning to study. How's your schedule, babe?"

Amber shoots Drea an exaggerated wink.

Drea claps in silence. She plunges into her closet in search of the most perfectly ironed uniform.

She pulls one out and holds it up for show. I give her the okay sign with my fingers. Navy blue and green plaid bib-jumpers, white collar-blouses underneath, and navy-blue knee socks. How good
could
they be?

"She's already picking out her clothes," Amber tells Chad. She coils the phone cord around her feet; one sock decorated with cow spots, the other with scattered pictures of various types of cheese. "She just can't wait till senior

year when she can wear green knee socks. Just one of the many senior privileges."

Drea whips a Scooby Doo slipper at Amber's head.

"Gotta go, Chaddy Patty. You know how it goes, people to do, things to see. Ciao, ba-by" Amber hangs up, stands, and pinches a three-finger wedge from her pajama crack. "I'm starving. Anyone for food?"

"The card reading was right," I say. -Chad just asked Drea to breakfast."

"He's not gonna cancel," Drea says.

"Yeah," Amber says, -he needs your homework."

-Great." Drea peels the foil down from her chocolate bar and nibbles at her frustration. "Most guys want me for my looks. Chad wants me for my brain."

"Sucks for you," Amber says.

I ignore the rest of their banter and take a seat by the corner window. I end up staring out at the tall maple tree in the distance, the one me and Chad christened at the end of last year, just after finals, when he and Drea were broken up.

We sat beneath it, eating peanut butter and banana sandwiches and talking about our plans for the summer.

-Are you cold?" he asked, referring to the goose flesh on my arm, running a finger over the skin.

I shook my head and noticed that he was staring at my mouth. "You missed some peanut butter,"

he said.

How elegant. I licked the corner of my mouth and felt a peanut globule hit against my tongue.

"Better?"

He nodded.

"I'm such a dainty eater." I looked away to hide the baked-apple heat I knew was visible all over my face.

"You're beautiful."

I looked at him, expecting to hear the butt of the joke. But instead he slipped his hand down my arm and cradled my fingers.

"Drea's beautiful," I said. "I'm--"

"Beautiful," he finished. He turned my chin with his finger, so I would look at him, and smiled like he really meant it. "I've always thought so." He brushed away the few dark strands that had fallen into my eyes, and glanced down again at my lips. "Is this okay?"

I nodded and felt him lean in closer. I closed my eyes, anticipating the kiss, and then felt it warm and fruity against my lips.

On our long walk back to reality that day, I told him I wanted to keep the kiss a secret, that I didn't want to hurt Drea. I wanted the memory to stay forever perfect in my mind, where no one could ruin it.

He told me he had been waiting to kiss me for a whole year.

But now it's me who's waiting.

"Earth to Stacey- Amber shouts, plucking me off the blissful path of memory lane. "If this whole card thing is right, then Chad has less than two hours to cancel Drea's date, right?"

I nod.

"So what happens if you're wrong about the prediction?" Drea asks, her arm loaded down with school uniforms. "I guess I could be wrong about it all."

But I know I'm not. I turn to glance back out the window That's when I see him. Again. The man from last night. "He's back!" I shout.

-Who is?" Drea asks. But then she sees and drops the uniforms to the floor.

He's standing out on the grass, only a few yards away. He looks straight up at us and smiles.

"What a freak!" Amber says.

"Should we do something?" Drea asks.

"Like what?" I say.

"Call security"

"They'll never listen," Amber says. -They think we're nutty"

"Thanks to you," I say.

He takes a step closer and points in our direction. I look at Amber and Drea, but can't tell who he means, who his eyes are focused on, if it's me. I squint to focus harder. But before I can figure it out, he tilts his cap to salute us, and then simply walks away.

"Are you ready?" Drea is standing by the door of our room, waiting for me, doing a last-minute vanity inspection in the mirror. She drapes her monogrammed towel around her neck and pulls her hair forward over her shoulders. "Remind me to make an appointment later to get my eyebrows waxed." She runs a finger over the invisible fuzz between her eyes. "Let's go. All the showers are going to be taken."

But now that Amber's gone, I want to talk.

"Looks like Chad and I are sitill on for this morning." She winds a long strand of wavy blond around her fingers, her nails freshly painted in corn yellow.

"Looks like," I say, practically biting through my tongue. Chad still has a whole hour to cancel.

And I know he will. I grab the towel from the foot of my bed and drape it around my shoulders.

"Drea, before we go, there's something I need to ask you about."

"What?"

"That guy who keeps calling you. Why were you upset the last time he called?"

"Who says I was upset?"

"I know you, Drea. Who is he and why were you upset?" She sighs. "He's a friend, okay? We just had a misunderstanding."

'About what?"

"He just thought I was seeing someone, but I'm not, so there's no problem."

"What does that mean? Are you two a couple?"

"I don't have time for this. Are you coming or not?" She jiggles her basket full of shampoo products and shower gels.

"Not," I say. "Not until we talk about this."

"Fine," she says. "Then I guess I'll see you later." She closes the door behind her.

I plop down on my bed, a serious headache creeping across my temples. Sometimes I wish my problems could be solved as simply as that sceue in the movie
Grease.
The one where the diner morphs into a chunk of heaven. Where Frankie Avalon swoops down from a sparkling, light-filled sky and plays guardian angel for Frenchy, who needs advice about beauty school.

I could use some advice, too.

I roll over and glance toward the broken window. There's a clicking sound coming from just outside it. "Drea?- I sit up. Maybe she forgot something.

The noise continues.

I move off the bed and grab the baseball bat from behind the door. I sling it over my shoulder, batter-up style, and wait. A whistling now slow and steady and separated by human breaths. I take a few steps toward the sound, but then it seems to travel over to the corner window, the one that isn't broken. I follow it, noticing the window is open a crack.

"Stacey" says a voice. "I can see you. Can see your pretty plaid pajamas.-

I take another step, my heart beating down the door of my chest, forcing me to stop, take a deep breath. I root myself in place, secure my hands around the baseball bat, and mentally prepare myself for his next move.

And there it is a hand smacks up against the glass, the fingers squirming and kneading their way upward, toward the window frame, to open it wider.