Wake (8 page)

“I don’t recall ever seeing you there, or talking to you…except when I’m actually dreaming about you,” he muses. “Janie,” he says abruptly. “What if I don’t want you to see it?”

Janie grabs a slice of pizza. “I’m working hard, trying to bust my way out of them—the dreams. I don’t want to be a voyeur—seriously, I can’t help it. It’s almost impossible. So far, anyway. But I’m making a little progress. Slowly.” She pauses. “If you don’t want me to see, I guess, don’t sleep in the same room as me.”

He looks up at her with a sly smile. “But I’m known for sleeping in school. It’s my shtick.”

“You can change your schedule. Or I can change mine. I’ll do whatever you want.” She looks at the uneaten pizza and sets her plate down. She is miserable.

“Whatever I want,” he says.

“Yes.”

“I’m afraid you haven’t been privy to that dream yet.”

She looks at him. He’s looking at her, and she grows warm. “Maybe I’d rather experience that firsthand,” she says lightly.

“Mmmm.” He takes a sip of his soda. “But before this goes offtrack…What the hell is wrong with you?”

She’s silent. Not looking at him.

“And,” he says, “Jesus. It just occurred to me why you freaked when I pretended I wasn’t me. You must be a freaking mess, Hannagan.” He tugs her arm, and she falls back on the couch toward him. He kisses the top of her head. “I can’t begin to tell you how bad I felt about that.”

“It’s cool,” she says. “Sorry about the flagrant foul,” she adds.

“S’all right. I was wearing a cup.” He twirls a strand of her hair with his finger. “So, when do you sleep, like, normally?”

Janie smiles ruefully. “Normally, I sleep fine, if I’m alone in a room. When I was thirteen, I finally asked my mother if she would do me the favor of passing out in her bedroom rather than in here. There’s something about a closed door that blocks it.” She pauses.

“But what happens, exactly?”

She closes her eyes. “My vision goes first. I can’t see around me. I’m trapped. If it’s a bad dream, a nightmare, I guess I start to shake and my fingers go numb first, then my feet, and the worse the nightmare is, the more paralyzed I become.”

He looks at her. “Janie,” he says softly.

“Yes.”

He strokes her hair. “I thought you were dying. You shake, you spasm, your eyes roll back in your head. I was ready to steal the nearest cell phone, stick a wallet in your mouth, and call 911.”

Janie is silent for a long time. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“You’re lying.”

She looks at him. “Yes,” she says. “I suppose I am.”

“Who else knows? Your mother?”

She looks at her plate of uneaten pizza. Shakes her head. “Nobody. Not even her.”

“You haven’t been to a doctor about it or anything?”

“No. Not really. Not for help.”

He throws his hands in the air. “Why?” His voice is incredulous. And then, suddenly, he knows why. “Sorry,” he says.

She doesn’t answer. She’s thinking. Thinking hard.

“You know, nobody’s ever gone there with me, like you did.” Her voice is soft, musing. She gives him a sidelong glance. “I don’t understand that part. How did you get there too?”

“I don’t know. All of a sudden it was like I had two different angles to watch from: one of them as an observer, the other as a participant. Like virtual reality picture-in-picture or something.”

“And don’t even tell me you’d believe a word of this if you hadn’t come through it with me.”

He nods soberly. “You’re right, Hannagan.”

It’s 10:21 p.m. when Cabel says good night at the door. He leans against the frame, and Janie kisses him lightly on the lips.

He hops off the step and starts walking home, but turns back in the driveway. “Hey, can I see you tomorrow night? Sometime around nine or ten?”

She nods, smiling. “I’ll be here. Just let yourself in—Carrie always does too. It’s cool.”

TRUTH OR DARE

October 16, 2005, 9:30 p.m.

It’s Sunday. The house is clean. Janie had the day off. She ran out for groceries in the morning, vacuumed, dusted, washed, polished, shined, and steam-cleaned. Now, Janie is asleep on the couch.

Cabel doesn’t come.

Or call.

11:47 p.m.

She sighs, clicks off the lamp, and goes to bed, miserable. October 17, 2005 7:35 a.m.

Janie grabs her backpack and heads out the door. She’s pissed. And hurt. She thinks she knows why he didn’t show up.

On Ethel’s windshield is a note, under the wiper. It’s wet with dew. I’m sorry,

it says.

Cabe.

Yeah, well. Not as sorry as I am, she thinks.

She passes him on the way to school.

He looks up.

And eats her dust.

He’s late for school.

She doesn’t speak to him.

11:19 p.m.

He’s sitting on her front step.

She’s pulling up to the house after work.

She gets out of the car, crunches over the gravel, and stands in front of him.

“Yes?” she says.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

She stands there, tapping her foot. Searching for words. She blurts them out as they come to her. “So, you got freaked out. I’m a lunatic. An X File. I figured it would happen.”

“No—” he stands up.

“It’s cool. No, really.” She runs up the steps, past him, and fiddles for her key in the dark.

“Now you know why I didn’t want to tell anybody.” The keys rattle in her fingers, and she cusses under her breath. “Least of all, you.”

She drops the keys. “Goddamnit,” she sniffs, picks them up again, and finds the right one.

“And if you tell anybody,” her voice pitches higher as she gets the door open, “you’ll learn a new definition of flagrant foul! You big…fucking…jerk!”

She slams the door.

11:22 p.m.

The phone rings.

“Asshole,” she mutters. She picks it up.

“Will you let me explain?”

“No.” She hangs up.

Waits.

Pours a glass of milk.

Drinks it.

Cusses.

Turns out the kitchen light, and goes to bed.

She is cursed for life. She will never have a boyfriend. Much less get married. Hell, she’ll never be able to sleep with anybody.

She’s a freak.

It’s not fair.

Sobs shake the bed.

October 18, 2005, 7:39 a.m.

Janie calls the school, pretending to be her mother. “She won’t be at school today. She has the flu.”

She calls the nursing home. “I’m sick,” she sniffles. “I can’t come in tonight.”

Everyone is sorry. The secretary. The nursing home director. “Feel better soon, sweetie,”

the director says.

But Janie knows there is no “better.” This is it. This is her life. She falls back in bed.

12:10 p.m.

Janie drags her ass out of bed and, sitting on her bedroom floor, does the homework she didn’t do the previous night.

She can’t stand getting behind in school.

She works ahead, even.

Her mother shuffles around the house, oblivious to Janie’s presence. The sleaze-bitch. It’s her fault for giving birth to me, she thinks. She’d blame her father, too, if she knew who he was. Briefly, she thinks of her mother’s kaleidoscope dream. Wonders if the hippie Jesus is her father. Wonders what happened that made her mother give up on absolutely everything. She’ll probably never know.

Maybe it’s better this way.

2:55 p.m.

The phone rings. Janie’s mother answers it.

“She’s at school,” she slurs.

Janie didn’t know her mother ever answered the phone.

4:10 p.m.

Janie sits wrapped in a blanket on the couch, a roll of toilet paper next to her, watching The Price Is Right. Carrie lets herself in.

“Hey, bitch,” she says cheerfully. “You missed a good one today. You sick?”

“Hey. Yeah.” Janie blows her nose loudly in some toilet paper to prove it.

“You look like hell,” Carrie says. “Your nose is all red.”

“Thank you.”

Carrie sits on the couch next to Janie.

“Funny…Cabel looks like hell too,” she says lightly.

“You sure you don’t have something you want to tell me?”

“Pretty sure, yeah.”

Carrie pouts. Then, she ruffles through her backpack and pulls out a folded piece of paper. She tosses it on the coffee table. “This is from him. You’re not preggers or something, are you?”

Janie looks at Carrie. “Ha-ha.”

“Well, jeez. Whatever it is, it’s got to be a big deal to keep you home from school. You haven’t missed a day since eighth grade. And, sorry to say, you might look like shit, but I don’t think you’re sick.”

“Think what you want,” Janie says dully. “I think you have to have sex in order to get pregnant, last I heard.”

“Aha, so it’s a sex thing!” Carrie shouts triumphantly.

“Go home, Carrie.”

Carrie grins. “You know where to find me. Sex tips and advice—just holler out the window.”

Janie holds back an urge to strangle her. “Good-bye,” she says pointedly.

“Okay, okay. I can take a hint.” She heads to the door and turns back to Janie, a curious expression on her face.

“This, by chance, doesn’t have anything to do with Cabel messing with drugs this weekend, does it?” She blinks rapidly, grinning.

“What?”

“He’s sort of a dealer, I guess—or, you know. One of those guys who works as a gobetween. Whatever they’re called. So Shay danced with him at a party Sunday night. She was really high, though. I heard he got busted. Is that true?”

Janie’s stomach twists and shreds.

She’s going to be sick.

“No,” Janie says slowly, “it doesn’t have anything to do with that.” Tears well up in the corners of her eyes and she presses them back with her fingers. Carrie’s face falls. “Oh, shit, Janie. You didn’t know.”

Janie shakes her head numbly.

She doesn’t notice when Carrie leaves.

October 19, 2005, 2:45 a.m.

Janie lies awake in bed, staring at the ceiling. Arguing with herself. She knows she shouldn’t do it. But she has nothing to lose.

Feeling like a total creep, she gets dressed and slips out of the house. Runs softly through the yards, avoiding the houses with dogs.

Sneaks up to Cabel’s house and sits outside his bedroom window, in the bushes. She leans up against the house and waits. The bricks snag her sweatshirt. It’s chilly. She puts her mittens on.

Her butt falls asleep.

And her legs.

She gets terribly bored.

5:01 a.m.

She slips away while it’s still dark, feeling like a criminal. A criminal who walks away with nothing.

7:36 a.m.

She gathers her schoolbooks from the coffee table. The note is still there, where Carrie left it. She hesitates, and then opens it.

We really need to talk, Janie. Please. I’m begging. Cabe.

That’s all it says.

7:55 a.m.

Janie waits for the bell and slips into school. She gets to English class just before Mr. Purcell closes the door. “Feeling better, I presume, Miss Hannagan,” he intones. Janie presumes it’s a rhetorical question and ignores him.

She can feel Cabel’s eyes on her.

She won’t look at him.

It’s torture, is what it is.

Every damn class, of every damn day.

Torture.

12:45 p.m.

He gives up.

Janie dreads study hall. But he gives up. He sits in the opposite corner of the library, removes his glasses, and rests his head on his arms.

She notes with satisfaction that he does, indeed, look like shit. Just as Carrie said. Carrie plops in the chair next to her.

If Cabel dreams, Janie doesn’t pick it up. Instead, she lays her head on her arms and tries to take in a nap. But she’s sucked into yet another falling dream. This time, it’s her own.

And then she’s pulled awake and Carrie is there. Or, rather, Janie is with Carrie. And Stu. Janie watches with curiosity.

Carrie looks like she’s enjoying it.

A lot.

Four times.

Once was enough for Janie.

And she really doesn’t think Stu’s dick could possibly be that large. He could have never fit behind the wheel of ol’ Ethel with that thing.

Now Janie knows what else she’s missing. She grunts when Carrie nudges her arm. Gets up.

Two more classes.

Janie is weary. And she has to work a full shift tonight.

Apparently things get worse before they get better.

If they ever get better.

Janie’s doubtful.

10:14 p.m.

Miss Stubin is in a coma.

Hospice is in her room all evening.

Janie hovers anxiously.

And then Miss Stubin dies. Right there in front of Janie.

Janie cries. She’s not exactly sure why—she’s never cried over a resident’s death before. There was just something special about this one.

But she’s glad Miss Stubin got to make love with that nice young soldier, even if it was just a black-and-white dream.

The head nurse sends Janie home a little early. She says Janie still looks a bit under the weather. Janie is numb. And exhausted. She’s been awake since two a.m. She says good-bye to Miss Stubin. Touches her cold, gnarled hand and gives it a little squeeze.

10:31 p.m.

Janie drives home slowly, windows rolled down, hand ready on the parking brake. She takes Waverly. Past Cabel’s house.

Nothing.

She falls into bed when she gets home.

There are no notes, no phone calls, no visits. Not that she was hoping for anything, of course. That bastard.

October 22, 2005

Janie works the day shift. It’s Saturday. She is assigned to the arts-and-crafts room. This makes her happy. Most of the residents at Heather Home don’t sleep through the craft. At her lunch break, the director is there, even though it’s a weekend. She calls Janie into her office and closes the door.

Janie is worried. Has she done something wrong? Has someone caught her in a dream and thought she was slacking off? She sits down tentatively in the chair by the director’s desk.

“Is everything okay?” she asks nervously.

The director smiles. She hands Janie an envelope.

“This is for you,” she says.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. It’s something from Miss Stubin. We found it in her belongings after the coroner came. Open it.”