Dream Boy (3 page)

We’re Chilton born

and Chilton bred,

and when we die

we’ll be Chilton dead!

So go-go Chilton!

Devils rule!

Talon glowered down the line of blue and gold pompoms. “Did they really just say they’ll be ‘Chilton dead’?”

I shrugged. “Maybe it’s some kind of zombie thing?”

“Idiot zombies.” She shifted on the bleacher like she was propped on a bed of nails. “And we’re idiots for watching them. Why are we here again?”

“Yeah.” Serena took a long sip from a forty-two-ounce diet soda she’d bought before I could tell her the ingredient list. “I thought you hated football.”

“I did, I mean I
do
, it’s just I’m…” I trailed off, craning my neck so I could see beyond a row of blue-and-gold shoulders and hats.

“A little preoccupied?” Serena offered. “Annabelle, who are you looking for?”

“What do you mean?”

“Let me translate,” interjected Talon. “First you insist we come
here
—which totally screws up our standing as Chilton’s All-Time Least Spirited—when you
know
the Pacers are playing a gig at the Crow’s Nest tonight; next you want Serena to drive down every side street and back alley on our way to Pulaski; then you can hardly stand still while we’re in line at the concession stand; and now you’re rubbernecking like a demented bobble head and we can’t get a coherent word out of you. So, yeah, that’s what we mean.”

“Really?” I asked, defeated.

Serena gently brushed back a lock of my hair from where it had fallen in front of my eyes. “Are you all right, honey?” she asked. “You’ve been acting kind of loony.”

“It’s nothing, really.” I looked up. “I’m just—hey, is that Macy?” I pointed to a bleach-blond head up in the stands.

“Yeah, I think so,” said Serena.

“So?” said Talon.

So this was Macy White, from my
chemistry
class. “Look, I, uh, I’ll be right back,” I said as I started climbing up the bleachers.

“Case in point!” Talon called after me.

I knew she and Serena were giving each other WTF looks, but I could explain stuff to them later—or at least make up something that would pass for an explanation. Right now I had to talk to Macy.

“Macy, hey,” I said, sitting down in an empty seat in front of her.

“Hey.” She looked a little confused as to why I was talking to her. We probably hadn’t said more than ten words to each other since she moved here last January. It wasn’t that I hated Macy. At least, not exactly. It’s just that she had started dating Daniel Kowalksi the week
before
he dumped me, so I
had
hated her. Then. When I was Crazy Annabelle, I’d given her a fair share of stink eye and said some things that I hope never got back to her. Now that I was calmer and knew I was better off without Daniel (right?) the hate had mostly passed. Plus, Macy had dumped him, which sort of helped. He was sitting even farther up in the stands, not looking at either one of us.

“Um, so like, this is my first football game,” I told Macy, turning around in my seat.

“Your first?” Her tone was kind of “so what?”

Maybe
if
I
brought
up
the
class, she’d just magically start talking about Josh…?
“You have Ernshaw for seventh period, right?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Her eyes flickered, registering my face for a second, then went back to the field.

Or
maybe
not.

“He’s okay, but kind of boring,” I added, trying to keep the conversation—or what I hoped would become a conversation—moving. “Ernshaw.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Um, Macy…” I suppose it would be too weird just to ask
Did
an
amazingly
hot
guy
happen
to
walk
in
at
the
end
of
class
today
or
was
I
just
hallucinating?

Yep, definitely too weird.

“Did you get that crystal thing Ernshaw was talking about?”

“Not really.” She was watching the pep band, which was playing an especially horrid rendition of Go-Fight-Win.

“Me neither.” I tried again. “You know, um, at the end of class, that guy…” I trailed off, hoping she’d finish my sentence for me. When she didn’t, I rambled on.

“I was kind of dozing at the end of class, but some girls were talking about a guy, you know, who just sort of showed up.”

Macy turned her eyes full on me now, like she was seeing me for the first time. “You mean Martin?”

“Martin?”
So
there
WAS
a
guy
in
Ernshaw’s class? And his name was—

“Martin Zirkle. You know him?” The question seemed loaded, an overfull washing machine. I suspected there were all sorts of other questions in there, swishing around with the socks and underwear.

“No,” I said. “I mean, not personally.” The guy I knew was named Josh, wasn’t he? Not Martin. Josh.

Macy looked at me harder, like she was trying to see something in my eyes. Now I was the one to look away as I said, in what I hoped was a casual tone, “He seemed nice, though. I mean, he seemed like he would be nice.”

She angled herself so she could study my face. “He’s been to Egypt.”

“Wild,” I said.

“He’s really—”

“Join me in welcoming to Cougar Stadium the Chilton Blue Devils!!” an absurdly loud announcer blasted over a speaker, drowning out Macy’s words.

As the team ran on the field, Macy got to her feet and started clapping. “Let’s go, Devils!” she screamed.

“That’s him!” Macy pointed. “Number twenty-three!”

It didn’t seem possible. But I guess if someone from a dream can just show up in real life, there’s nothing stopping him from joining the football team.

I looked to where a few dozen helmeted football players were running down the middle of the field. From this distance, they were interchangeable, like the guys on a foosball table.

Across the field, the Pulaski drum line started pounding out a cadence.

“Now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for,” the announcer boomed, “the Pulaski Cougars!” As the Cougars ran across the field, a thunderous flushing sound filled the stadium.

“What was that?” I asked Macy, straining to be heard above the general pandemonium in the background.

“It’s the cougar’s roar,” she yelled.

“Oh,” I yelled back.

“Sounds like the Cosmic Toilet, if you ask me.” It was Talon. She and Serena had climbed up into the stands and were in the aisle beside us. “So, can we bolt?”

“Not yet,” I said, scooting over to make room for them. “I want to see this.”

They sat down. “You know, if we leave now, we could still catch the Pacers,” Talon said.

“Soon, I promise,” I said. “Let’s just see a little of the game. I mean, we’re here, right?”

Not that it made a difference. All I saw of Number 23 for a long time was the back of his uniform as he sat on the sidelines. And when he was out on the field, the little cage-thing at the front of the helmet pretty much obscured his face. He ran and caught the ball and
moved
like Josh would have. But it could have been anyone in there.

And then, before I knew it, the whole team jogged into a little concrete building at the end of stadium, and the marching band took the field. Halftime. Talon, who was never known for her patience, looked ready to blow. “Have you seen enough?” As the band started in on the “Circle of Life,” she stood, tapping her foot like somebody’s mother.

“I guess,” I said. “See you in chemistry,” I said to Macy.

“See you,” she said.

I followed Talon and Serena the way I’d seen kids follow their parents out of the park. “Just five more minutes?”

“No.”

We walked along the fence and past the concession stand. I stopped.

“You guys go on to the car,” I said to Talon and Serena. “I have to go pee. I’ll catch up with you.”

I sprinted off before they could argue. But I wasn’t headed toward the bathroom.

As soon as Talon and Serena passed the gates to the stadium parking lot, I ran back toward the field and darted through the door of the concrete building that had just swallowed the football team. I didn’t think about the relative sanity of what I was doing; I just did it, a walking, talking Nike commercial.

The front room was empty. The hallway was empty, too. I followed it to the end and found two doors. One was marked with a mural of a cougar, fangs exposed. The second door had “VISITORS” stenciled on it in chipped, black paint. I put my hand on Door Number Two. It creaked.

Peeking in, I saw Coach Masterson scrawling on a chalkboard on the far side of the room, his team huddled around him. No one was looking at the door. As silently as possible, I slid in and edged myself in a corner beside a row of lockers. At the end was an open locker door. I inched behind it and peered through the space where it was hinged, unseen.

They seemed to be talking strategy. I could make out words like “defensive line,” “fake out,” and “grapevine.” Number 23 still had his back to me. Then he turned his head.

I wanted to shout and scream and hurl myself into his arms. Maybe I would’ve, if I weren’t scared out of my wits.

He looked over his shoulder, toward the corner where I was hiding, and smiled. I got jelly knees and wondered if I would fall.

“Zirkle!” Coach Masterson barked. “Get your head in the game.”

Josh—because it
was
Josh, my Josh—turned back. “Yes, sir.”

After a final pep talk, the team got up, did that hand-tower thing, yelled “Devils!” and jogged out of the room. As Josh passed me, he slowed down.

He didn’t look at me, but I swear he said my name. “Annabelle.”

“You talking to me?” Billy Stubbs asked him.

“I said ‘Give ’em hell,’” Josh said.

“GIVE ’EM HELL!” Billy Stubbs shouted. His voice ricocheted off the lockers. Then they were gone, and I was alone. And crap. I was going to be totally alone if I didn’t find Serena and Talon. I ran out of the locker room and up the hill to where we’d parked. They were both sitting on the hood of Serena’s pink VW Beetle with their arms folded across their chests to keep warm.

“Sorry,” I said.
He
knew
my
name.

“Where was the bathroom? Roanoke?” Talon asked.

“No.”
Of
course
he
knew
my
name. If it were him he would know my name.

“New York then?” she suggested.

“I just had a hard time finding it,” I said. “I’m not exactly a regular here. Give me a break.”
But
why
was
his
name
Martin? I definitely hadn’t dreamed about anyone named Martin Zirkle.

I climbed into the backseat of the Bug, thinking that if I gave Talon shotgun she would go easy on me. Wrong.

She shifted sideways so she could face both Serena in the driver’s seat and me in the back at the same time. Maybe it was just Talon’s edgy profile, but I started to feel a little twitchy, like prey. “Come on, Annabelle. Football?
Macy
White
?”

“She’s in my chem class,” I said, stalling. Assessing.

“Yeah,” Talon said. She opened her mouth but she didn’t want to remind me about Daniel; nobody did. “Look.
We’re
your friends,” she said. “We’d be a lot more cooperative if you’d just tell us why you’re acting crazy.”

Normally Will served as the landfill for most of the garbage clogging up my brain. But he wasn’t here and he was, after all, a guy, which meant that there were certain things that were beyond his understanding. My head felt like Mount Vesuvius. I had to tell someone.

Serena reached into the backseat and put her hand on my forehead. “No fever,” she said.

I gave her a thin smile. She put the key in the ignition, and pulled off the grass and onto the road. Her headlights caught a path of cougar paw prints, painted in white.

“Spill it,” Talon said, turning the radio down to nothing as Serena turned onto 114.

“Okay…so there’s this guy,” I began.

Serena burst out laughing. “That can explain all kinds of crazy.”

“You
like
someone?” Talon said. “Around here?” Now she reached back and put a hand on my forehead, too. “Raging,” she said.

“Just tell me he’s not a Cougar,” Serena said. School rivalries run deep, even if we pretend not to care.

“He’s not a Cougar,” I said. “He’s new. I thought I saw him in chem class last period and then Will said he saw him talking to Coach Masterson.”

“So you thought he might be at the game,” Talon finished.

“He
is
at the game,” I said. “He’s playing.”

“Football?” Talon spat out the word like a piece of phlegm.

“Why didn’t you just tell us?” Serena said. “We would have stuck around.”

“Speak for yourself,” Talon said.

“I wasn’t sure he was here at first and I didn’t want to drag you on a wild goose chase,” I said.

“Hello? You did drag us on a wild goose chase,” Talon pointed out.

“But she caught the goose,” Serena said. “Honestly, we would have helped you find him, Annabelle. And no fair. Now we have to wait until Monday to get a look at him.”

“You couldn’t have seen him anyway,” I said. “Not with those helmets on. I didn’t catch the goose. I just saw the back of his uniform.”

“So what’s his name?” Serena asked.

I almost said Josh, but remembered in time. “Martin…Zirkle.”

“That’s not something you hear every day,” Talon said. As a girl who was named after a bird claw, Talon usually went pretty easy on people with unusual names.

“I don’t know any Zirkles,” Serena said. “His family must not be from around here.”

We were quiet for a minute, as Serena tried to decide whether or not to pass a red pickup that was in front of us. She decided not to. Our car slowed and I let the other shoe drop.

“The thing is,” I said, lowering my voice even though it was just us, “I saw him someplace before today.”

“What, like downtown?” Talon asked.

“No.”

“Like on TV? YouTube?” Serena asked.

My
own
private
channel, maybe.
“No,” I said. They waited for me to finish. “I think I had a dream about him. Do you think that’s nuts?”

Serena didn’t swerve the car and drive us off the road.

“That makes sense, actually,” she said.

“It does?”

“Sure. You probably saw him someplace but didn’t realize it, and then you
did
have a dream about him. After. I mean if he’s that good looking—he’s good looking, right?”

“He’s amazing looking,” I said.

“It’s easy for amazing-looking guys to creep into your subconscious,” she said.

“It wasn’t just one dream,” I said. “It was more than one.”

Talon still hadn’t weighed in. I hit her on the back of the head. “Well? Say something.”

“Is this the first time that’s ever happened to you?”

“What?”

“The first time you’ve ever dreamed something and then, you know,
seen
it
.”

“Yes. I mean, I get that déjà vu thing sometimes. Like I remember thinking Stephanie Gonzales looked familiar when I first saw her, but then I figured out she just looks like a young Elizabeth Taylor,” I said. “My mom had watched a marathon on the classic movie channel that weekend and it must have gone to my head. But this—this was totally different. I’m sure I’ve never seen this guy before. In real life. But he was in my dream.”

“Of course he was.” Talon had that eerie look she gets sometimes, like when she wants to pull her tarot cards out from under her bed.

“Why?” I asked. “Has it happened to you?”

“Twice.”

“No way.”

“The first time was when my grandfather died,” she said. “I dreamed about it, and when I woke up in the morning we got a phone call saying he died. I was the only one who wasn’t surprised. For a long time I thought it was my fault. For dreaming it, I mean. The other dream was about Spice.”

Spice was Talon’s dog, a spotted mutt that was part beagle, part Chihuahua, a seriously strange-looking beast.

“You dreamed about a dog?” Serena asked.

“I dreamed about
my
dog. I dreamed her name and everything. We were all playing with her at the mall, calling her Spice. You were there, Annabelle, and let’s see…Will, and some girl with long black hair. Come to think of it, she might have looked like Stephanie Gonzales, too. Oh, and the guy who works at the library was there. In the dream, I mean.”

“I was there with Spice?”

“Yep.”

“Which library guy?” I asked.

“The young one. Lennon glasses, soul patch, always reading Faulkner.”

“Robert?”

“Maybe,” she said. It was the “maybe” that means
I
don’t know his name
, not the one that means
maybe
yes, maybe no
.

I’d majorly crushed on Robert the spring of my freshman year. He was wiry, but the cute kind of wiry, not the scary, malnourished kind. I kept checking out
As
I
Lay
Dying
in hopes he would talk to me, which of course he never did. At least he worked at the library instead of a bookstore, so there was no financial investment, just time and brain cells and, since it was Faulkner, suffering.

“My mom went to the shelter to drop off some dog food that people at her work had collected as a charity thing,” Talon resumed the story. “She saw this little dog there and, I mean, who could resist Spice? So she brought her in the house, like it was supposed to be a big surprise, but I just said, ‘Here, Spice,’ and she came right to me.”

“Weird.”

I didn’t say it out loud, because Talon doted on that dog, but I could totally see why Spice was at the animal shelter. She had this brown snaggletooth that made her lip curl up, and when she sat in your lap, licking the back of her paws, the stink went straight to your brain. She wasn’t the kind of dog you’d make up in a dream unless you were a seriously disturbed individual.

“How do you even remember all that stuff?” Serena asked. “I mean, I can hardly remember what happens in
real
life and—”

“Dream journal,” Talon interrupted. “I keep it by my bed and write everything out before I even get up.”

“You keep a dream journal?” Serena asked. I could almost hear her eyes widen.

“It’s just a notebook,” Talon said. “Something The Doctor made me do.” Since her parents’ divorce, Talon and her dad went to counseling with a woman who, as far as I could tell, was some sort of new age therapist, not a medical professional, but was nevertheless always and only referred to as “The Doctor.”

“Anyway,” she went on. “I could show you the dream about Spice. My grandfather died before I started keeping track.”

“I’m sure there’s a logical explanation,” Serena said. If there was a contest among the three of us, Serena would have been voted Most Likely to Believe in Fairies, but here she was quoting Mr. Spock. “Like, you heard your mom talking about collecting dog food, and the idea sort of slipped in there. Or maybe you’d heard your parents talking about your grandfather being sick.”

“But how would I know what Spice looked like?” Talon said. “And my grandfather hadn’t been sick; he had a heart attack.”

“Maybe you were afraid he’d die because you’d just heard about someone else’s grandfather dying. And with Spice, I don’t know. It could have been déjà vu, like with Annabelle.” We were almost back in Chilton now. Serena turned onto Fast Food Row where seven of the town’s twelve restaurants sat side by side next to the highway off-ramp. Mostly crappy chain stuff. Burgers, burgers everywhere and not a place to eat. In the relative darkness of ten fifteen in Chilton, the Row glowed like a landing strip. “Maybe that happened with your dream guy,” Serena said. “Your brain processed everything superfast and you just thought you’d seen him before.”

“That’s not what happened,” Talon and I said at the exact same time. Then we started laughing like lunatics because we were totally, totally serious.