Blue Is for Nightmares (6 page)

"Well, you need to care because tonight this spell involves you." I pinch the lip of the clay pot arid pass it three times through the incense smoke. Then I light the candle and place it on the night table. It's purple and white, the product of two parent candles melted together in a sort of wax communion.

"That's funky"

"It's symbolic," I explain. "The purple is for insight; the white is for magic. The union of the two symbolizes the union of the images I've been having in my dreams. Can you give me a blank page from your diary?"

"Why?"

-Because the pages hold your energy, even the blank ones. And this spell is for you."

She reaches into her night table drawer for the diary, thumbs to the back, and tears out a page.

"What's this all about?"

"I told you we needed to talk."

The phone rings again. Drea springs to answer it. "Hello? Oh, hi." She turns away from me and resumes her conversation in a whisper.

I'm assuming she's talking to him again--the guy who called early this morning. And I know it should make me jump for joy, since it's not Chad she's talking to, but it doesn't. I have no idea who this guy is and it's not like Drea to keep her crushes a secret.

When she finally does hang up, she looks upset. She flops onto her bed, scrunches up her knees, and reaches for the medicinal bar of chocolate. I'm all ready to ask her about it, but the phone rings again. This time I answer it. "Hello?"

Silence.

"Give it to me," Drea says.

I shake my head. "Who is this?"

Still nothing. I hang up.

"It was probably for me," Drea says.

"If he wants to talk to you, why can't he just ask? Who is this guy? And why does he keep pranking us?"

There's a knock at the door. I get up slowly from the bed, pluck the baseball bat from behind the door, and curl my hand around the knob. "Who is it?" I demand.

"Who else would it be this late?" says the voice on the other side.

Amber. I can breathe again.

"What is wrong with you?" Drea asks.

I open the door.

Amber looks at the baseball bat positioned over my shoulder. "Trying out for the team? I'd rethink. Polyester stretch and cleats are so not a good look for you."

"Amber, have you been getting any pranks? Drea and I have been getting a lot of them lately.-

"They're not pranks," Drea says.

"It's probably PJ," Amber says. "He likes to prank people. He used to prank me all the time while we were dating." She sprawls out on Drea's bed and kicks her legs back and forth. "Your bed is so incredibly comfortable compared to mine. Care to trade for tonight?"

"So you haven't been getting any?" I ask.

Amber shakes her head. "Did you star-six-nine them?"

Light dawns. I grab the phone and dial. "Blocked."

"Figures," Amber says. "PJ always star-six-sevens before he dials. Oldest trick in the book. PJ

taught it to me. Maybe it is him. I'll ask him tomorrow in French class. Wanna do a love spell?"

I fish my hand into the trash and pluck out the mangled box with the cookie. "Did you get one of these cookie presents?"

"Some cookie," Amber says.

"It kind of had an accident," I say. "It was left on the window ledge."

"Sweet," Amber says. "I love secret admirers. Who's it for?"

I take the message from my pocket and hand it to her.

"I guess the culinary arts club doesn't want me to join," she says. "Who wouldn't want to taste these cookies?" "Shall I start the list?" Drea yawns.

The phone rings again. Drea goes to grab it, but I get there first. "Hello. Hello? I know you're there."

"Give it to me," Drea says.

I shake my head and listen. I can hear someone breathing on the other end--thick, even breaths.

And then he finally hangs up.

"Drea," I demand, clicking the phone off, "who is this guy?"

"I told you. He's just someone I've been talking to." "What's his name?" I ask.

"I don't know," she says. "It's not important anyway" "His name isn't important?"

"Names are just tags we put on to label ourselves," she says. "They don't mean anything."

"What are you talking about?"

"Forget it," she says. "I didn't think you'd understand." "Does he go here?" Amber asks.

She shakes her head.

"Then how do you know him?" "Well, not that it's any of your business," she says, "but he called here one night by accident, basically a wrong number, and we just started talking."

"Do you call him?" I ask.

"No. He says he can't give his number out."

"Why?"

"Hey, I'm not on trial here. Enough questions." Drea pulls the diary from her drawer to write.

"So
not smart." Amber extracts a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her pajamas, taps the box against her palm, and lights one with the candle flame. She sucks on the cigarette as though it's an asthma inhaler.

"Since when do
you
smoke?" I ask.

"Since I found an only half-used pack in the lobby"

"Well, if Madame Discharge smells that, we're all dead."

"I think it's airy enough in here, don't you?" Amber makes fish faces as she blows 0-shaped puffs of smoke toward the broken window. "Besides, with that stuff you're burning, it smells like skunk piss in here."

I wave the tendrils of smoke from my face before moving over to the corner window, the one that isn't broken. It's black outside--just a few scattered stars in the distance. I make a wish on one of them, for peace and safety. The glass is chilly, like the room, and the heat of my breath forms a cloud. I draw a peace sign in the middle of it with my finger and then peer down through my print.

There's a man looking up at me from the lawn. It's hard to see too well in the darkness, but I can tell he's older, maybe forty or fifty-ish, and that he has sort of dark, wispy hair. He's wearing a pair of jeans, I think, and holding a large shopping bag. When he sees that I notice him, he looks away, toward the windows of the other rooms. "Guys, there's somebody out here spying on us."

6o

"What?" Drea joins me at the window to look. "Maybe it's a janitor."

"Maybe we should call security," I say.

'And tell them what?" Amber says. "That one of the janitors is working outside? Big news flash.

They'll have us committed."

"We already called them once tonight," Drea says.

"You guys are worse than a couple of old ladies." Amber bounces up and in between us to look.

Her eyes widen. "Jel-l000, Big Boy," she says. "Not bad. Not bad at all. Eat your heart out, Brantley Witherall. Maybe there's hope for me yet."

'Are you kidding?" Drea says. "He's ancient."

"Yeah, well, times are tough." Amber combs her hands down the front of her pajama top, all sexylike, then flips the top up, revealing two lacy red demi-cups, her boobs oozing out the top.

'Amber!" Drea screeches, pulling her away from the glass. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Lighten up," Amber says. "See, it just goes to show you, don't laugh when Mom tells you to always wear good underwear."

"Clean
underwear," Drea corrects.

I remain at the window, staring out at the man from behind the curtain. I can tell that he's tall, and from the movement of his body as he walks, searching the other windows, that he's also very strong. He peers in my direction and smiles, somehow able to see me. I panic and pull the shade down.

"You guys are just too paranoid," Amber says, chomping on Drea's candy bar. "There's enough security around here to keep god away"

"Easy for you to say," Drea says. "You don't live on the ground floor."

"Fine, you want me to call campus police?" Before Drea or I can answer, Amber is dialing. "Hi, Officer," she says. "I'm in Room 102 Macomber Center. Yeah, and there's this incredibly hot guy with pecks to die for and the tightest little ass outside our window. Now, he's probably a janitor, but we're not sure, so what do you suggest we do?" Amber dangles the phone away from her ear.

"What do you know? He hung up on me. That's, like, so rude."

"I can't believe you just did that," I say. "They're never going to believe us now"

"Believe what?" she says.

"Look, Amber," I say, "Drea and I need to talk, and I need to do this spell while the moon is still in position." "Don't let
me
stop you."

"I don't care if she stays," Drea says.

I, on the other hand, am not so sure. But she ends up staying anyway.

We sit in a triangle on the floor and clasp hands, focusing on the candle in the center of us.

"Close your eyes," I tell them, "but don't lose sight of the flame. Embrace it--its light, its energy.

Picture it all around you. Breathe the light's energy in and out, conscious of the action, grateful for it."

We practice the guided breathing for several minutes, until the energy in the room falls like snow all around us. Until we're ready to begin. "Drea," I say, opening my eyes, "I realize it's going to be hard for you to trust me after I lied to you, but you have to believe me." I break our embrace to reach into my night table drawer for the three cards from her reading. I spread them out in front of her.

"You saved them?"

I nod. "Before I tell you what they mean, you have to remember there's a reason we've been given this glimpse into the future. We're destined to change it."

"0-kay," she says, not okay.

-The Ace and the Five of Clubs are for a letter and package you're going to receive. The Ace of Spades is the death card. There's a good chance that this letter, this package, or both could be linked by death. Your death."

"What?!"
Drea asks. "What are you saying?"

"Just be careful," I say. "Be careful of any gifts or packages you receive."

"What does that mean? I'm going to get a gift and there's going to be a
bomb
inside?"

"Drea... " I don't want to say it, but it has to be said, and so I just do. "I think someone might be trying to kill you."

"What?!"
So loud and breathy that it almost extinguishes the candle flame.

"The recurring nightmare I've been having... it's a premonition. About you."

-Me?"

"I've had them before. Three years ago. About Maura, the little girl I used to baby-sit." I look away. I don't want to continue don't want to admit what happened, even though it haunts me every day.

BecattE
it haunts me every day.

"In the nightmares, she was trapped in a shed. A crammed, dark shed with cracked cement walls.

I could see her, her 3 ack toward me, lying on a bench, sort of curled up like she was asleep. But she was scared. I could feel how scared she was, like I was living it in a way. And for weeks I had these horrible, aching headaches."

Drea clutches her pillow. I can tell she believes me. She reaches into her fridge and hands me a fresh can of soda.

"Thark you," I say. It's just what I need. The artificial sweetness stings the inside of my mouth like icy cold Pop Rocks. as the dreams went on," I continue, "I was tempted to do something, to tell the police, but it just sounded so stupid in my head. So stupid because when you looked outside, there was Maura, playing on her swings, clothes-pinning cards to the spokes of her bike to make that motoring sound. So I just told myself it was a dumb dream, and soon it would pass."

'And what happened?" Drea asks.

I bite my lip to steady the shake, and then I just say it. "Someone took her. She was gone."

"What do you mean,
gone?"
Amber asks.

"I mean
gone.
Missing." I wipe the drizzle from the corner of my eyes.

"Where?"

The words about what happened have been building up inside my head for a couple years now, and I know I have to tell them. I've read the books. I've heard the experts on
Oprah.
If I want to make the horrible thing seem less horrible, less powerful and controlling in my life, I need to face it and tell it to others. As horrible as the memory is, I know it's so much worse just festering inside my head. I take a deep breath in, exhale for three full beats, and then finally say it. -Maura was killed."

"What? How?"
Amber asks.

I feel the tears drip down the creases of my face. -They found her body in a tool shed just two blocks from our neighborhood. It was this psycho guy who did it. They caught him pretty quickly. People had seen him around. Apparently he used to watch her every morning when her mother walked her to school."

-Yeah, but it wasn't your fault," Amber pipes. -You couldn't have known. I mean, how many people take their dreams that seriously? Plus, you said you saw her in some shed. You didn't see
who
took her. Or
where
the shed was exactly. It probably wouldn't even have helped."

I made up excuses like that when it happened, but excuses don't take away anything, especially blame. I wasn't the one to make those kinds of judgments, to say that my dreams probably wouldn't have helped.

Maybe they would have saved Maura's life.

'Anyway" I breathe, -now I'm having nightmares about Drea."

"So, is Chad still gonna ask me out someplace and then cancel?"

I nod and wipe at my face. "Probably the next time you talk to him."

Amber rests a hand on Drea's back to comfort her. I can tell Drea's scared. I'm scared too. Scared for Drea. Scared that history will repeat itself. I mean, sure, my mother was there to comfort me after Maura's death, was there to wrap her arms around my shoulders and try and make the shaking stop, but she just didn't understand the way Gram would have. She didn't understand the nightmares or guilt.

Or why, being
her
daughter, I was so much like Gram in the first place.

I take a deep breath, unscrew the bottle of lavender oil, and pour two drops into the mixing pot.

"To purity and to clarity" I say. "This spell is to help make my dreams more clear, so I can predict the future before it happens." I unclasp the sterling silver chain from around my neck and dip it into the oil. With a finger, I spiral it around the bottom of the pot three times, making sure it gets fully submerged.