Hunted (15 page)

As
I sat down on it I realized what was different. I wasn't having to
think about it, but some part of my mind was busy maintaining that
bench. The closest parallel I could come up with was that a corner
was knotted up from the strain of keeping my dream from switching
back to whatever my subconscious actually wanted it to be.

I
stood back up and relaxed my mind, smiling as the bench vanished. Now
that I knew what I was looking for it wasn't difficult at all to find
the tiny bit of my mind that was maintaining the illusion that I was
Missy rather than Adri.

I
could feel exhaustion starting to pull ever so slightly at me, but I
had one more idea that I wanted to try before I let myself lapse into
a more normal rest. I closed my eyes again and thought about Sheree
again, but this time I focused more on how she made me feel.

Sheree
was the kindest, most non-judgmental person I knew and being around
her was almost like being wrapped in a soft, fuzzy blanket of
acceptance. I felt a smile tug at the corner of my lips as a sense of
happiness rushed through me. The happier I felt the stronger the
sense of her presence became.

There
was a kind of tightness in my skin, like maybe I was being pulled
through a keyhole, and then the exhaustion that had been hovering at
the edges of my being moved a little closer, dragging at the
happiness that had been buoying me up.

I
opened my eyes and my jaw dropped when I found that my surroundings
had changed. I wasn't outside of the school any more, I was inside
someone else's bedroom.

"Mom,
please don't make me get up. It's a Saturday. Can I please just sleep
in for once?"

Sheree's
voice sounded more tired than I'd ever heard out of her before now.
The perky excitement that was normally part and parcel of interacting
with her was gone, but it was still Sheree, she was just buried
underneath her green comforter.

I
was pretty sure that I was in her dream this time. Things felt
different, for one thing, and there were some things that didn't look
right. Sheree's hands were enormous for one thing, which seemed to
indicate that she was much more self-conscious than I ever would have
guessed about that particular attribute. Just to be sure I tried to
change the color of the walls in the room. I imagined the blues and
greens switching over to yellow and then once I had that image fixed
in my mind I pushed in an effort to enforce my will on our
surroundings. There was a flicker of something on the wall closest to
me, but it disappeared so quickly that Sheree didn't even notice the
change.

I
definitely wasn't in my dream now. The level of effort I'd just put
into that simple change would have more than sufficed if we'd still
been in a construct that I'd made. Another wave of exhaustion crashed
through me and I momentarily had to lean against the chair and desk
behind me. I was going to have to be careful not to try and change
anything

"Are
you tired, Sheree?"

She
looked up at me and nodded. "Yes, I'm exhausted. I was helping
poor Adri try to learn stunts for what seemed like forever last…well,
I'm not sure when it was. I was going to say last night, but that
can't be the case if today is Saturday…"

I
didn't want Sheree to think that through too much. I figured I was
much better off with her in her normal dream state than if she were
experiencing some kind of lucid dream. I'd just found out how hard it
was to change things around when in someone else's dream. It seemed
like a really bad idea to let her or anyone else dictate what my
environment did.

I
shuddered slightly at the thought of just how unpredictable it could
be to experience someone else's dream. You would never know which
physical laws were going to be working at any given time.

Sheree
misinterpreted my shudder and frowned at me. "I don't understand
why you hate Adri so much. It's not like she made Janessa take those
drugs. The whole thing was unfortunate, but it's hardly Adri's fault
that things ended up going
that
badly for Janessa."

"I
don't care about Janessa, I just don't like Adri."

I
got another frown, but it looked like this was just par for the
course when it came to Sheree's interactions with Missy. So far, she
didn't seem to think anything was out of the ordinary.

"You're
not going to lose your spot as a flyer, Missy. I know—we can
practice right now if you want."

I
opened my mouth to tell her no, but something made me stop. I had
only vague memories of the dreams where I'd learned the routines that
had gotten me on the squad. It seemed like I'd watched for the
longest time and then Cindi or Sheree had invited me to join them. It
had worked for that, maybe it could work when it came to learning to
fly as well.

"Okay,
let's practice. You'll have to hurry though, I don't have long. It's
a good thing that we're already at the school."

We
weren't actually at the school when I said it, but I'd been acting on
a hunch. My saying that we were at school nudged Sheree's
subconscious into putting us there. We were standing on the football
field with no breeze and a clear blue sky above us.

"Hmm,
we're going to need more than just us if we are going to do this,
Missy."

"Ah,
look, there's Jackson and Cindi."

I
pointed behind her as I said it and once again that caused her
subconscious to do exactly what I wanted her to do. Jackson and Cindi
appeared as she turned around to look for them, and Sheree didn't
seem to think it was odd that they were wearing the exact same
clothes as they'd been wearing when we'd practiced earlier that day,
and she didn't seem to notice the fact that they were rendered like
some kind of low-resolution computer painting. Apparently her mind
wasn't up to holding much if any more in the way of detail than mine
was.

"Oh,
this is perfect. Hi, guys, would you be willing to help Missy?"

We
all got the preliminaries out of the way and then we got down to
business. I'd hoped that it would be easier to practice in the dream,
but I hadn't expected it to be as easy as it turned out to be. In the
real world I'd spent the entire time scared that I was going to get
seriously hurt. In the dream, I just figured that any sprains or
breaks wouldn't still be a problem when I woke up, so I relaxed and
let Jackson and the others throw me to their hearts' content.

Everything
from basket tosses on down went smoothly. I didn't start out perfect
obviously, but Sheree just kept telling me what I was doing wrong and
I kept making slight adjustments to my technique until she started
telling me I had it.

The
thing that was most surprising of all was that I actually started
enjoying all of the different stunts. The feeling of soaring through
the air, the centrifugal forces as I did a backflip, it was all much
more fun than I'd expected it to be.

I
thanked Sheree profusely after what felt like a couple more hours of
practice, which caused her to look at me oddly. Apparently gratitude
wasn't one of Missy's strengths. As I let Sheree's dream dissolve
away from me I realized that I could really get to like this whole
dream traveling gig. I could practice with Sheree or one of the other
girls pretty much whenever I wanted to without it getting in the way
of studies or any of my other waking activities.

I
even liked interacting with Sheree better in the dream world than in
the real world. Don't get me wrong, Sheree was super nice in both
places and I felt a little bad at having fooled her by making her
think I was Missy, but there was something addictive about being able
to interact with people completely on your terms.

It
turned out that there actually were some consequences to dream
traveling. By that, I mean negative consequences. I already knew that
dream traveling used up calories, but that came down decidedly on the
benefit side of things.

I
was the most tired I could remember being in months by the time
morning finally rolled around. After finishing my impromptu practice
session with Sheree I'd slept the sleep of the dead. I didn't
remember any more dreams, normal or otherwise, almost as though I'd
dreamed myself out and hadn't been capable of dreaming after that.

I
hit the snooze button two more times than normal before finally
stumbling down out of my bed. Mom and Dad were both gone already,
apparently both trying to get ahead with their respective projects
before they left on their mini vacation. I hadn't expected that, but
it wasn't entirely a surprise. What did shock me was the fact that
Cindi was gone too by the time I stumbled out of the shower.

She
hadn't said anything during the minute or two when we saw each other
before I went into the bathroom, so I hadn't realized I was going to
be walking to school by myself. It was surprising just how different
it felt to leave the house without Cindi by my side. We'd been
walking to school together each morning since middle school and I
honestly couldn't remember a day where I hadn't talked to her before
sitting down in my homeroom class.

I
spent the first hour or so of school worried that Cindi had overheard
Dad and me talking. There wasn't anything I could do to make things
better if she had been listening to us, but that didn't stop me from
wondering how bad things were going to be when she finally exploded.
Just trying to keep up with the lectures when all I wanted to do was
lay my head down on my desk and sleep took nearly all of my mental
resources.

I
finally caught up with Cindi at lunch, but even then it was just
because I happened to see her head outside with her salad just as I
was headed into the cafeteria. I grabbed a big serving of greasy
yellow French fries and a slice of pizza and then headed outside to
see if I could find her.

She
was sitting outside, back against the school, staring off into the
distance as she ate her salad. It was maybe the only time I'd ever
seen her eat by herself in the last year.

"Can
I join you?"

She
looked up at me and nodded. "Sure. Those jeans look good on you
by the way."

I
was wearing the clothes that Mom had bought me. I'd actually
forgotten that I'd put them on this morning, but I suspected that
she'd commented on them less out of an effort to be polite and more
as a way of covertly bringing up what had happened last night.

"Thanks.
I almost didn't wear them, but I didn't want to borrow any of your
stuff without asking and without your belt none of my other pants
would have stayed up."

Cindi's
nod was oddly noncommittal. "You should be careful, Adri. You
have to watch what you're eating if you want to stay this skinny.
Just because you're stressed out and unhappy doesn't mean you can
just eat whatever. I know it's a temptation, it's hard for me too."

I
looked down at my pizza and fries and nodded. She was right, at least
she would have been right if I'd been normal. I debated telling her
about my dreams, but now didn't seem like the right time. Things had
been better between us lately, but if I was going to tell her
something that crazy then I wanted to be certain that she would
believe me. As things stood right now she was just as likely to think
that I was making it all up as some kind of play for attention.

"I'll
be careful, Cindi. Thanks for the warning. I think I'll be okay for
today though. Yesterday took a lot out of me. It wasn't even just the
exertion from trying to stunt, I was all tensed up and nervous the
entire time too, which also burned up calories."

I
wasn't sure I wanted to dive right into Mom and Dad's fight, so I
cast about for something else to talk about.

"Did
you take your test yet?"

"Yeah,
I had it second hour."

"How
did you do?"

Even
as I asked, I realized that the answer wasn't going to be good, not
given how little time she'd had to study for it and how terrible last
night had been.

"I'm
pretty sure that I failed it. I didn't even know what he was talking
about with about half of the questions."

"I'm
so sorry, Cindi. This is my fault. I never should have agreed to
practicing last night."

She
shrugged. "One test probably won't drag down my grade too much.
I can probably still get a 'B' out of the class. Maybe Mr. Cruthers
will even let me do some extra credit work."

She
hadn't disagreed with me, which meant that she did think her bad
grade was my fault. A tiny part of me wanted to tell her that she was
a big girl, that she could have told the rest of us when our
impromptu practice ran long, but I stomped on the impulse and tried
again.

"I'm
sorry about the way things went down when we got home last night. I
tried to leave you alone because that was what I thought you wanted.
I'm sorry if that was the wrong way to have handled it."

"It's
fine. Look, I've got a test next week that I should probably get
started studying for. I'll see you at practice."

**

I
went through the rest of my classes in a haze of misery. I'd joined
the cheerleading squad mostly because of Cindi. The idea had been
that both of us being on the squad would bring us closer together.
The reality was that things were tenser now than they'd been for
weeks.

I
was so deep in thought that Jackson had been walking next to me for
several seconds before I realized it was him.

"You
okay, Adri?"

"Yeah,
sorry. I…well, it was just a rough night after the four of us
got done yesterday."

He
gave me a surprisingly understanding smile. "I'm sorry to hear
that. If there's something I can do to help make things better just
let me know."

"Thanks,
I don't think that there is, but I appreciate the thought."