by Steven James
Since there are no lights out here, and my eyes are already used to the dark, when I look up, I can see the stars.
Mr. Schuster’s house is far enough in the country for me to make them out pretty well, although not quite as clearly as I would if I were back home in Wisconsin.
As I trace out the constellations that I know, I sort through the images of the dream.
The cliff and the gorge and the call to die.
Or fly.
Maybe it was an invitation to fly.
Over the last nine months as I’ve looked for clues to deciphering my blurs, I’ve read a lot about dreams and nightmares and how to figure out what they might mean.
Falling is a pretty common nightmare. So is being chased and dreaming that you’re late for class or that you missed it entirely.
Those three are the big ones.
I’m not really sure why the late-for-class nightmare is so common—or so upsetting. Sure, it’s a little embarrassing to miss a class, but you’re not in any real danger. Why on earth would that scare us as much as falling to our death or being chased by a monster or an axe-wielding killer?
But for some reason it does, and it’s one of those dreams that people wake up the most troubled by.
Scientists still don’t have any real idea why we have nightmares. They can record the brain activity that’s occurring when we dream, but they don’t have a clue about why we so often dream of things that terrify us.
In studies, two-thirds of the dreams that people remember are unpleasant.
Why?
No one really knows.
So now, this one—what does it mean?
In dreams, falling and flying can mean entirely different things.
One is the loss of control. The other, an exercise in control.
One ends in death. The other leads to the most glorious kind of freedom.
So maybe this dream means that I need to trust my blurs, that I need to lean out farther into them.
Or maybe the opposite: that leaning into them will cause me to fall in ways I’ll never recover from. In that case, it might be telling me that I need to pull back now, before it’s too late.
But, of course, that’s one of the problems with interpreting dreams—how can you ever be sure you’ve gotten the interpretation right?
I think of my discussion with Kyle last week about me being on a road with no exit ramp, racing toward the edge of a cliff, and I wonder if that might be what led to this dream of stepping off an outcropping on a mountaintop.
Hard to say.
My thoughts cycle back to the blur in the attic and the boy in the road and the fact that my grandpa died on that same stretch of highway.
I decide that tomorrow I’ll follow up with Mom, see if there’s anything from Grandpa’s life that might give me a hint that’ll help me figure out what’s going on now, in mine.
When I go back inside, I accidentally bump into Annabelle, but thankfully she doesn’t bark, just whimpers, circles around herself a couple times, and then settles down and drifts back to sleep.
Unlike her, it takes me a little while to doze off, then, when I wake up again, she’s licking my face. I push her away and roll over. Sunlight washes through the room and, sitting up, I hear Mr. Schuster in the kitchen asking my friends if they want chocolate chip or blueberry pancakes.
Chocolate chips all around.
After breakfast, as we gather our things, Kyle starts riffing on candy bars—maybe because he now has chocolate on the brain. “Shouldn’t fun size and party size be the same size? I mean, who came up with the idea that fun size and party size are antonyms? And why is the smallest size ‘fun’? That makes absolutely no sense. No sense at all.”
“Good use of the word ‘antonym,’” I tell him.
“Thanks.” He digs through his duffel bag and comes up with a can of Red Bull. “Now, time to get my energy drink ready.”
“Your special concoction.”
“Nothing else comes close.”
“But you didn’t stay up for thirty-nine hours.”
“If at first you don’t succeed.” He cracks it open.
“Right.”
I email my mom, asking her to send me any pictures she has of Grandpa when he was a boy, then we say goodbye to Mr. Schuster, and Nicole pets Annabelle, who slobberingly licks her one last time.
She jerks her hand back. I’m guessing she’s thinking of Kyle’s story.
I know I am.
Then, we’re on our way again.
This time for Atlanta.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Malcolm’s plane landed in Atlanta.
In order to keep everything discreet, he made sure Tane wasn’t able to tell exactly where they drove after they left the airport.
He got him situated on level B3 at the center.
Then left to track down Daniel.
The day goes by fast.
There’s a ton of traffic around Atlanta and it seems like every street is named “Peachtree” or something close to it, so that makes things even more confusing.
To get to Sue Ellen’s place we have to take Peach Avenue to Peachtree Circle, before ending up in the Peach Grove Estates subdivision.
Man, they must like their peaches down here.
The traffic puts us behind schedule, but eventually, right around seven, we locate her house.
It’s a nondescript, beige, two-story home with a small deck in the back.
A city park with some wooded trails lies across the street.
Two baseball diamonds radiate out from a centrally located playground and basketball court, and a man on a riding lawnmower is cutting the grass on one of the ball fields.
The smell of freshly cut grass drifts toward us as we get out of the car and step into the Georgia humidity, which Mia complains about right away.
“At least it’s not snowing,” Nicole says encouragingly, since Mia likes snow about as much as she likes dogs. “It could be worse.”
“Snow might actually be preferable to four hundred percent humidity.”
One of the neighbors must be grilling because the smell of charcoal mixes in with the scent of grass clippings and it’s almost as if someone has chosen two of the most classic smells of summer and threaded them through this neighborhood at the same time.
All we need is some coconut-scented suntan lotion and we’d be three for three.
Sue Ellen swoops out to meet us in the driveway.
“How was y’all’s trip?” she asks with a big smile and a sweet southern accent.
“Good.” Mia isn’t a hugger, but she puts up with her aunt’s rather gregarious embrace without complaining. “It’s nice to be here.”
We all introduce ourselves, then Sue Ellen says, “You must be tired!”
With her accent it sounds like “tarred” and it takes me a second to decipher it, but, in a way, it’s endearing.
She gestures toward the door. “Come in, come in. Let’s get y’all settled.”
Without her medication, as time wore on, Petra Amundsen began to see things in the basement that she knew could not possibly be there.
At first, she told herself that it was just from stress and lack of sleep.
But then the walls began to melt and she realized that—unless she got her pills—things were only going to get worse.
Her nightmares first began four years ago when she was seventeen and her parents were going through their divorce. The dreams kept getting more frightening for about six months, until finally, they began to invade her waking life.
That’s when she started to wonder if she was going crazy.
At first she tried seeing a counselor, but she didn’t like it. Then she went to a hypnotist, which was really weird and a little unsettling, since after she woke up from her trances she wouldn’t remember what had happened during them.
When she watched the video recordings of her sessions, she could hardly believe some of the things she’d said and done while she was hypnotize
d.
In the end the sessions hadn’t really helped.
In fact, in that last one when she had the hallucination about the snakes attacking her and she woke up in the middle of her trance—remembering everything—it might have actually made things worse.
Now, based on the passage of time that she was able to track from the cycles of light and darkness passing outside her window, she figured it was Sunday evening.
The deadline was tomorrow night.
You’re never going to make it, a voice told her. You haven’t gone this long without medication, not since—
“Stop,” she said aloud. “I’ll be okay.”
No, you won’t. You know how these things go, how important it is for you to—
“Stop!” she yelled, even though she knew the voice wasn’t any more real than the dripping concrete on the walls that encompassed her as she walked in circles and circles and circles around her small, enclosed room.
While Sue Ellen makes supper, we each contact our parents to let them know we’ve made it here safe and sound.
Mom, who hasn’t sent the photos of Grandpa yet, tells me she’s going through some old albums, scanning in pictures, and will email me later tonight. “What are you looking for, exactly?”
“I’m not sure. I guess send them all.”
After having a little too much of Sue Ellen’s fried chicken, green beans, and sweet—very sweet—tea, we drive over to Northern Georgia Tech, which is only a couple miles away, so I can get checked in for the camp tomorrow and throw my stuff in the dorm room where I’ll be staying.
Quiet, shady lanes crisscross the main part of the campus and lead past the carefully manicured flowerbeds that seem to be everywhere.
It’s peaceful compared to what I imagine it’ll be like tomorrow when it’s overrun with three hundred high school basketball players, not to mention the kids from the band and cheerleading camps that will also be going on in other parts of the campus.
The brick buildings all have a similar design. From what I can tell, the newest one is the field house, which is located between the guys’ dorms and the student center.
The residence hall director has the registration forms of all the campers with him and it only takes a minute to check in. Then, because of the rule about no girls being in the guys’ living areas, Nicole and Mia wait in the lobby while Kyle and I take my things up to my third-floor room. Most everyone else has a roommate, but for whatever reason, they’ve assigned me a room to myself.
Since I’m going to be busy here all week, the four of us head back to Sue Ellen’s house to hang out until my ten-thirty curfew on campus.
We talk on the back deck for a while, and as it gets dark, the heat and humidity ease up and it feels almost as cool as if we were back home.
Almost.
But not quite.
We decide to go for a walk, but before we leave to visit the park across the street, Nicole asks me if I left Alfie at the dorm.
“No, actually he’s still in the car.”
“Good. Bring him along.” Then she says slightly flirtatiously, “I might want you to show me a few moves.”
Okay.
That can be arranged.
There aren’t any lights specifically directed at the playground or outdoor basketball court, but the nearby streetlamps toss down enough light for us to see.
Mia puts her arm around Kyle’s waist and they slip off toward one of the walking trails that lead into the woods.
So far on the trip, there hasn’t been any sign that things have been rocky between them. Maybe they’re finally working stuff out.
Nicole heads to the swing set. “Hey, push me? Oh wait!—your arm. I wasn’t even thinking.”
“I should be okay.”
She kicks off her flip-flops, and then positions herself on the seat, wiggling her way to being comfortable. “Okay. Ready.”
I roll Alfie onto the grass nearby, and then, placing my right hand on the small of Nicole’s back, I ease her forward.
Once she’s moving, she pumps her legs to gain more height.
“I’ve always liked swings,” she tells me as I push her again. “Even when I was a little girl, my dad used to push me all the time. I mean, back then, I was probably only going a few feet off the ground, but when I think back to it now, it’s like I was flying over the whole world.”
As she talks, she continues pumping and I keep pushing her, getting her a little higher with each swing.
“Then I’d jump off and he’d always catch me—except for this one time I when jumped before he was ready and he couldn’t get to me in time. I fell and scraped my knee pretty bad—got some gravel stuck in there. I still have a scar.”
“So that’s where that scar came from.”
“What? You noticed my scar? And when exactly were you checking out my leg, Daniel Byers?”
“Oh, I might’ve just happened to glance in that direction once.”
“Just once?”
“Maybe twice.”
“Uh-huh.” She pumps. Rises higher in the night. “Anyway, Dad felt terrible. And I just remember crying and holding him and how strong he was and how safe that made me feel.”
She swings back toward me.
I give her another push.
In the trees, cicadas cycle louder and softer as if they’re somehow orchestrated to chirp—or whatever it is cicadas actually do—in sync with each other.
“It’s weird,” she says. “I haven’t thought about that in years. Not until just now, when I started swinging again.”
“Maybe you just needed something to spark the memory.”
Like the pictures of Grandpa that Mom is sending tonight.
Like the blurs.
The boy in the road.
Your corpse in the attic.
“Maybe.” Then all at once she shouts, “Okay, here goes! I’m gonna jump!”
“I’m not going to catch you.”
“I’ll be fine!”
She swings back one last time, and as she floats forward, she leaps from the swing, squealing and kicking her feet in the air like a long jumper launching herself out over the sand.
She lands a bit off balance, but quickly collects herself, and then throws her arms out in celebration as if to say, “Tada!”
“Nicely done.”
She takes a bow. “Thank you. I’ll be signing autographs later.”
“And no scar this time.”
“Not this time.” She flits over and picks up my basketball. “Alright, come on. Before Kyle and Mia come back I want you to show me how to shoot.”
She dribbles it onto the court using both hands at the same time.
It’s a little troubling.
“Okay, now.” She slings the ball to her hip. “I need to tell you something.”
“What’s that?”
“A ton of people have tried to teach me before, but it’s never worked.”
“And you never wanted me to show you before now, either. Why is that?”
“Embarrassment.”
“Nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“You haven’t seen me shoot yet.”
“Well, go ahead. Show me what you’ve got.”
“Promise not to laugh.”
“I promise.”
She’s standing at about where the free throw line would be if it were painted on the blacktop. She eyes up the basket and heaves the ball toward it two-handed. It drops a couple feet shy of the rim. “See?”
Okay, this might take a little work.
“Well, let’s start with your form. That’s the key.”
I retrieve the ball and choose a spot about halfway closer to the basket from where she was.
“You must not be very confident of your teaching abilities.”
“We’ll work our way back.” I hand her the ball. “So, first, you’re right-handed, so you’re basically going to use that hand to shoot, not both hands. The left one is just there to help guide the ball, to keep it
straight as you release it.”
I take her hands and position them on the basketball, carefully guiding them into place. Even after all these months of being together, I still feel that same electricity that comes every time I touch her hand or she grazes her fingers across my arm.
I take my time to get it right.
She doesn’t seem to mind.
“Now, when you line things up, keep your right elbow in. Here.” I gently tilt it in for her so it’s directly beneath the basketball. “Let the ball rest on your fingertips. Imagine that we painted the palm of your hand. You want to shoot so that no paint would get on the ball. So you’re going to hold it just with your fingers, not your palm.”
“Fingers, not my palm. Got it.”
She shoots again, but still instinctively uses both hands. The ball bangs off the backboard and bounces onto the grass. I grab it, then return to her side.
“Show me where the paint would be,” she says.
“The paint?”
“On my hand.”
I take her right hand in mine and draw a soft circle around the edge of her palm. “Here.”
“Where else?”
I brush my finger across her palm, pretending to paint it.
“Do the other one.”
I do.
“Slower.”
“Why?”
“I wanna make sure I’ve got it.”
I go slower.
“No one ever taught me the painting thing before.”
“I’ve never taught it to anyone quite like this.”
“I think I’m glad to hear that.”
I hand her the ball and lead her toward the side of the basket. “Try another one. And this time, bend your knees a little as you do. Keep that elbow in, and follow through with your hand. Aim for the backboard.”
“Bounce it in?”
“We call it ‘banking’ it.”
“Gotcha.”
Mia and Kyle appear, walking side by side through the wash of light from the streetlamps.
Nicole studies the basket, bites her lip in deep concentration, and then fires away.
This time, I think to the surprise of both of us, the ball kisses gently off the backboard and swishes through the net without touching the rim.
“Yah!” she cries. “I made it! I banked it!”