Miss Stubin sighs. “Difficult. Be careful. And be creative—It may be tricky to find the right dreams to fall into. Keep up your strength. Be prepared for every opportunity to search out the truth. Dreams happen in the strangest places. Watch for them.”
“I—I will,” Janie says softly.
Miss Stubin cocks her head to the side. “I must go now.” She smiles and fades away, leaving Janie alone on the bench.
2:27 a.m.
Janie’s eyes flutter and open. She stares at the ceiling in the dark, and then flips on her bedside lamp. Scribbles the dream in her notebook.
Wow, she thinks. Cool.
Grins sleepily as she turns out the light and rolls over, back to sleep.
POINTED VIEWS
January 6, 2006, 2:10 p.m.
Janie codes her notes now, too:
Bashful=Spanish, Miss Gardenia
Doc=Psychology, Mr. Wang
Happy=Chemistry 2, Mr. Durbin
Dopey=English Lit., Mr. Purcell
Dippy=Math, Mrs. Craig
Dumbass=PE, Coach Crater
And, of course, Sleepy=Study hall
There’s definitely something sleepy about Michigan in its darkest months of January and February.
Study hall is a disaster. And after relatively few incidents, besides
Cabel’s dreams, over the past few weeks, Janie’s feeling the pull harder than ever.
She needs to practice concentrating at home, in her own dreams again.
Stay strong, like Miss Stubin told her in the dream. Or else she’s going down.
2:17 p.m.
Janie feels it coming. She sets her book down and glances at Cabel. It’s not him. He gives her a pitying half-smile when he sees the look on her face, and she tries to smile back. But it’s too late.
It hits her, like a bag of rocks to the gut, and she doubles over in her chair, blinded, her mind whirling into Stacey O’Grady’s dream. Janie recognizes it—Stacey was in Janie’s study hall last semester too, and had this same nightmare a few months ago.
Janie is in Stacey’s car, and Stacey is driving like a maniac down a dark street near the woods. From the backseat, a growl, and then a man appears and grabs Stacey around the neck from behind. Stacey’s choking. She loses control of the car, and it careens over a ditch, smashes into a line of bushes, and flips over.
The man is shaken loose of his grasp, and when the car comes to rest in a parking lot, Stacey, bleeding, climbs out of the car through the broken windshield and starts running. He gets out and follows her. It’s a mad chase, and Janie is swept into it. She can’t concentrate hard enough to get Stacey’s attention, and Stacey is screaming at the top of her lungs. Around and around the parking lot, the man chases her, until she runs for the woods…
…trips
…falls
…and he is on top of her, pinning her down, growling, like a dog, in her face2:50 p.m.
Janie feels her muscles still twitching three minutes after it’s over. She didn’t hear the bell ring, but Stacey did, apparently, because the dream stopped abruptly.
Janie still can’t feel anything. She can’t see. But she can hear Cabel next to her. “It’s okay, baby,” he whispers. “It’s gonna be okay.”
2:57 p.m.
Cabel’s gently rubbing her fingers. He’s still whispering, letting her know no one is around, they’ve all left, and it’s all going to be okay.
She sits up slowly.
Squeezes her hands till they ache with pain and pleasure. Wiggles her toes. Her face feels like she’s been to the dentist for a filling.
He’s rubbing her shoulders, her arms, her temples. She stops shaking.
Tries to speak. It comes out like a hiss.
3:01 p.m.
“Cabel,” she finally says.
“You ready to try to move?” His voice is concerned.
She shakes her head slowly. Turns toward him. Reaches out. “I can’t see yet,” she says quietly. “How long has it been?”
Cabel moves his hands over her shoulders and back down to her fingers. “Not that long,” he says softly. “A few minutes.” More like twelve.
“That was a bad one.”
“Yeah. Did you try to pull out of it?”
Janie rests her forehead on the heel of her hand and rolls her head slowly, side to side. Her voice is weak. “I didn’t try to get out. I tried to help her change it. Couldn’t get her to pay any attention to me.”
Cabel paces.
They wait.
Slowly Janie can make out shapes. The world fades back in. “Phew,” she says. Smiles shakily.