Reverie

by Ryan La Sala

  There were things Kane did not share. He did not tell the Others about Dean, who he could not fit into anything so far. He did not tell them the reason Poesy had come to East Amity: the loom. And he did not feel bad about it. Poesy had been miraculous for Kane, an advocate and a mentor when everyone else who loved him had treated him as a liability or a prop. Poesy had given Kane knowledge, insight, and tools to understand the reveries. She had kept her promise, and she had saved them all, using just a teacup and a well-manicured nail.

  Kane knew power when he saw it, and Poesy was power. He also recognized Poesy’s violence, but wasn’t her violence used to dismantle something far more dangerous and malicious than herself? Helena’s world had tried to kill them, and if Poesy had not retaliated with force, Helena’s world would have succeeded. Kane didn’t think he could trust the Others to understand this cost of survival. He wasn’t even sure he understood it himself. What he did understand was that he had called upon Poesy for help, and she didn’t deserve betrayal for showing up and saving them on her own terms.

  Whatever wrong she had committed, it was on Kane to right it. But had she committed a wrong?

  “I have some questions,” Elliot said at the end of Kane’s story.

  “Same,” Adeline said. The way she looked at Kane made him wonder if she could trace the outline of all the memories he had omitted. He took care not to look her in the eye.

  “Same,” Ursula said through a mouthful of scone. “Like, was she really tall? I saw a drag queen once who was like, eight feet tall. It was the hair.”

  “Nine feet at least,” Elliot said. “What does she want, though? She’s got to have a goal for showing up. Is she after the reveries? She turned it into a charm. She clearly had a few on her bracelet, already. Is she some kind of collector?”

  Kane had thought about this. She had said she would fix what happened with Helena, implying she had a plan to undo all the twists the Others had caused. This spurred Kane’s own question.

  “Why do you guys give the reveries back?” Kane asked. “If they’re so dangerous, wouldn’t it just be easier to keep them? Or erase them completely?”

  Ursula and Elliot looked to Adeline. She rolled her lips together, like she didn’t want to say. “We thought that once. We didn’t know better. It turns out, when a person is missing such a big piece of themselves, they’re not themselves anymore. They become…hollow. Same shape, but nothing keeping them going inside. It only took us a few accidental hollowings before we figured out you have to give the reverie back, all of it, or you might as well just kill a person.”

  “Who did that happen to?” Kane asked.

  Now Kane couldn’t look away from Adeline. She stared at him, past him, and for a moment he felt like he had her power and could see a person’s memories dancing deep in their depths.

  “My grandmother,” she said.

  The room went too quiet. Ursula pushed herself up and began pulling pans into the sink. Elliot might as well have turned himself invisible. Adeline and Kane were locked in a staring match.

  “People get hurt when we mess up this bad,” Adeline said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know.”

  He flinched. “Yeah? And whose fault is that, Adeline?”

  She snorted, then addressed the room with patronizing cheer. “So when are we going to talk about how, on his first official mission back, Kane went ahead and smuggled an entire-ass drag queen sorceress into a reverie, and it cost an old lady her life?”

  “She’s not dead,” Kane said, heat rising to his cheeks.

  “Well then what is she, dream boy?” Adeline spread her fingers toward the small kitchen. “Where is she?”

  Hadn’t they seen what Kane had seen?

  “She’s in her reverie. She was happy in there, before we messed it up.”

  “Happy?” Adeline shoved back her chair, standing. “You think she’s living happily ever after, locked into a fake world on the wrist of that glittering maniac? Jesus, Kane, you’re as delusional as ever, but at least you used to know the difference between right and wrong.”

  “I know wrong.” Kane stood, too. “Unlike the three of you when you destroyed Helena’s love story. If any of you stopped for a second and looked at her, I mean really took a look, you would have seen what I saw. She was a person, not a plot.”

  Adeline’s knuckles turned tan as she grasped the back of her chair, and her voice went low. “Exactly. She was. She no longer is, all thanks to you and that witch.”

  A commotion broke the tension as two small boys raced into the kitchen, pursued closely by Ursula’s father. He was a gargantuan man—like a lumbering cottage, really—but he deftly swooped the two kids over his shoulders. They screamed and reached for Ursula.

  Mr. Abernathy laughed, a boisterous and booming noise. “All righty, we’ve had enough heroes and monsters for one night. Time to wash up and head to bed, right boys? Sorry, Urs, sorry, guys.” Then he spotted Kane. His face was craggy and hard, but in that moment of recognition a sweetness shone in his eyes as tender as his grip on his children. He let the boys down and scooted them toward Ursula and Elliot, who had retreated into the hall.

  “Kane,” Mr. Abernathy said. “Haven’t seen you around here for a little bit. I’m glad you’re feeling better. Ursula and I—we’ve been praying for you before dinner. Mason and Joey, too, and Gail even, although she doesn’t believe in that.”

  “Thanks,” Kane said quickly. “I appreciate it.”

  Mr. Abernathy put his hands on his hips and surveyed the kitchen as though seeing the mess for the first time. “Ursula’s been pretty busy, I guess. More for the poker club, am I right? They’ll be over in a bit, if you’d like to join. I’ve been showing Elliot the basics, but to be honest I think he’s gonna be better than all of us. You two interested in sticking around?”

  “Sorry Mr. A., but we were actually just heading out,” Adeline said. She grabbed her jacket. “Kane, I’ll drive you home.”

  Mr. Abernathy went off to find Ursula and Elliot. Adeline pushed Kane from the house before he could protest.

  “We need to talk. Alone,” was all she said.

  But instead of talking, a heavy silence fell as they pulled out. She drove with smooth turns that went on and on, never nearing Kane’s house. She was waiting on him to start.

  “I’m sorry about your grandmother,” Kane offered.

  “It’s okay. That wasn’t your fault. She was fading anyways. Alzheimer’s. It runs on my mom’s side. I like to think I gave her some peace once all her good memories left her, and the bad ones became their own kind of reverie.”

  “Still,” Kane said.

  “Still.”

  He wasn’t sure how to ask this next thought. “You said a person needs their reverie, that they’re not the same without their dreams. How are you sure this isn’t better for Helena?”

  Adeline thought about this at a stoplight. “Because it wasn’t a choice she made for herself. We can’t be sure, because she can’t be sure. She doesn’t know any better, and she never will. We have no idea what Poesy does with those reveries.”

  “She said she would help Helena fix it. Maybe she’s like a reverie doctor.”

  “Or maybe she crushes them into bronzer? Why are you so confident she knows best, Kane? How did she win you over so quickly, when we can’t get a word out of you for two whole days?”

  Kane wanted so badly to respond, but he couldn’t find the words. A new, burning agony brimmed behind his eyes. He didn’t know why he was about to cry, or why the question felt like such an invasion.

  Adeline pulled to the side of the road and parked the car.

  “Kane, you need to know something, and I couldn’t tell you with Ursula and Elliot there. They know what happened the night of the incident, but not everything
.” She turned to face him. “You asked me to do what I did. When that crown was taking over you, you grabbed me and begged me to destroy your memories. Told me to destroy everything. And I didn’t know what to do, so I listened to you. And it worked. The crown let you go, and you survived.”

  She looked at Kane, something like hatred in her big, brown eyes.

  “And it kills me that I listened. I think of the person you used to be, and I hate myself for destroying him, too.”

  The air thinned to nothing. To poison. Kane died upon each word, sure he couldn’t take another breath of whatever Adeline was saying. This wasn’t his fault.

  This wasn’t his fault.

  “Poesy is manipulating you,” Adeline went on. “Can’t you see? She’s setting you up and breaking us apart. Again. You need to forget about that crown. I’m sure she’s the one who gave the crown to you, to trigger your blowup. And maybe she stole away Maxine Osman’s reverie, too. And now she’s back, to finish what she started, to finish—”

  Kane grabbed his backpack and bolted. He left Adeline in her idling car, passenger door swung wide. He left her like he’d once left Ursula: running away, determined to take the long way home.

  • Twenty-Three •

  SEA FOAM

  The following days were bright and crisp, announcing the official end of September with the onset of October’s subtle moodiness. And October was promising everything: cool breezes, tinges of yellow brushing the trees, milky clouds dragging shadows over the suburb—they were the details Kane always looked forward to. October was the month he loved most.

  But Kane was not in a loving mood.

  At all.

  “Honey, you’ve been brooding for days,” his mom said. She and Sophia had convinced Kane to come shopping with them in preparation for a barbecue in honor of their dad’s birthday tonight. They did it every year, even when it was too cold.

  “For years,” his sister added.

  Kane ignored Sophia, which he was incredible at by now. If there were an Olympics for ignoring Sophia, Kane would be unrivaled.

  “Did something happen at school?”

  “Yeah, tell Mom what’s up at school, Kane.”

  Kane twisted around and gave her a hard look. Sophia, since learning about the Others, had adjusted into an outright asshole. After that first night, she’d had so many questions—questions Kane refused to answer. Now she was making him pay. He didn’t care. He’d told her he couldn’t keep her safe if she knew more than she already did, and she hated that. Go figure that the moment Kane started finally acting like an older brother was the point at which Sophia went from simply resentful to outright hostile. When guilting him didn’t work, she turned to threats of exposure, and when that clearly wasn’t going to work, either, she went full-blown brat. Always, she leveraged their parents.

  “You’re a dick,” he told her.

  She winked.

  Kane turned to look out the window, gazing at the changing trees. Their beauty made him feel worse. He reminded himself that autumn, for all its cozy brilliance, was actually a flamboyant sequence of decay. And there was more melodrama where that came from, all of it dripping through Kane with nowhere else to go.

  There was one bit of brightness that Kane couldn’t shake, though. Adeline had told him something amazing: Poesy may have been the true culprit behind the unraveling of Maxine Osman’s reverie. If that were true, and if she’d been taken in just like Helena, then she lived.

  She lived.

  “What happened in school?” his mom asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Then what?”

  Oh, you know, I fell into the path of an omnipotent, dream-harvesting drag queen, and now a pair of queer elders have been quarantined in the form of kitschy jewelry, and even though we’re all a lot safer for it, my friends hate me!

  “Everything is fine,” he told her.

  His mother sighed.

  “You’re not sleeping,” Sophia piped in from the back seat.

  “How would you know?”

  “I can hear you stomping around at night.”

  Oh, actually I’m asleep, but I’m having such vivid nightmares that I wake up floating, because a fun new thing about my uncontrollable reality-bending magic is that I now sometimes levitate myself and objects nearby!

  “I’ll be quieter,” he said.

  Forcefully, the subject was changed to Sophia’s day, which had been—as always—particularly eventful. She told an elaborate story about how Headmistress Smithe had announced a required fall seminar that would cut into elective hour, which Sophia reasoned was exactly the sort of maneuver the vindictive Headmistress Smithe had been concocting ever since Sophia managed to finagle two electives in a row at the beginning of the year, both of which she spent practicing viola anyways.

  This is why Kane didn’t want her involved. Everything about her was a plot twist. He tuned out her story, only tuning back in when his mother threw some cash in his lap.

  “Here,” she said. “Buy candy while I get gas. As much sugar as it’s going to take to bring you back to life.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Sophia said with a wicked grin.

  All through the gas station’s aisles, she served Kane theories about the sick fantasies she suspected her classmates of harboring.

  “Pemberton’s School for Girls,” she implored, “is full of weirdos.”

  Kane went right for the Slurpee machine, per usual.

  “Kane, this stuff is radioactive. How can you drink it?”

  He shrugged. The bright blue mixture in the machine whirled around and around as the slush looped into Kane’s cup.

  Sophia bounced on her heels, clearly wanting to say something, so he finally gave her a sideways glance.

  “I figured something out, Kane. I know,” she said.

  “Know what?”

  Her voice was golden with pride. “Your accident wasn’t real, was it? It was related to the reveries, wasn’t it? The whole car thing—was that just a cover-up?”

  Kane set his jaw and started rooting around for a lid. Sophia blocked his path.

  “I’m not stupid, Kane.”

  “I know.”

  “If I knew I was in a fake world, I never would have acted that way. I’m smart.”

  “It’s not about being smart. It’s about staying lucid.”

  “I can stay lucid. I can help you guys. I see stuff that no one else sees.” She held out a straw but whisked it away before he could grab it. “For instance! I know you’re into that boy. And I get why. He’s super cute.”

  Kane rolled his eyes. Of course she had a crush on Elliot. It must run in the family.

  Sophia’s prodded him with the straw. “I’ve met him before. It took me a long time to remember, though. But I remember seeing him at the fair with you. And I know you two would sneak out together at night. I even knew your secret signal.”

  Seeing Kane’s surprised reaction, Sophia said, “What? You thought you were discreet? Drawing those number eights everywhere? I don’t know why you didn’t just text each other. Or maybe you did. I don’t know. But then I’d see him outside, late at night, waving for you to come down, and it’d be hours before you got back.”

  Kane grabbed away the straw. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  That was true.

  “He seemed…different than the others,” she said. “When you were with him, you seemed…happy.”

  Something about this sentence softened Sophia’s accusations, filling her words with sad wonder. And now Kane was full of his own questions. He and Elliot, happy together?

  “Elliot isn’t gay, Sophia.”

  Sophia leaned away, as though she regretted pushing into this territory. “Not Elliot. The boy who took care of me during the reverie. I remember his eyes. They weren’t green, an
d they weren’t quite blue.”

  “Sea foam,” he said, barely registering Sophia’s nod as the world around him washed away.

  Sea foam.

  The Slurpee fell from Kane’s hand, splaying its neon thickness across the aisle. He barely heard Sophia cuss.

  Sea foam.

  She was describing Dean. And, without knowing it, she was telling him exactly where to look for the rest of what he had lost.

  Kane had no idea if this would work, but he had to try.

  He stood in the wings of the auditorium where it was dark and cool. The empty space amplified the sounds of students going to class in the background. Shouting. Lockers slamming. Laughter. It was a period earlier than Spanish. None of the Others knew he was here. This had to be done alone.

  Kane waited until the second bell to see if anyone entered the auditorium. No one did. He walked onto the stage—it was set up for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, full of watercolor trees and papery vines. He crouched in the middle, pulling out the red journal and a thick marker.

  What would he do if it worked?

  Hunched in the center of the stage, Kane drew a looping number eight on a fresh page.

  Nothing happened.

  Kane shook out his hands and rewrote the eight, just like he’d seen Dean do in Benny Cooper’s reverie, and arranged in shells on his bookshelf. All over his old belongings, he found eights.

  Nothing happened. The auditorium was unchanged, its invisible crowd unimpressed. What had he thought would happen? Sparkles? A sudden, mystical wind? After the past weeks of magic and the supernatural, reality felt insufferably unengaging.

  Kane tore the page from the journal, crumpled it up, and tossed it as hard as he could into the seats. This was so stupid. He rushed into the wings, already wondering if he should skip class and just go to the nurse, when he saw something in the auditorium flash.