Get Out of My Dreams

by Fernando Trujillo Sanz

  The parrot came back, flying in circles.

  “Uaaaac . . . Jerk.”

  It was irritating how it insulted me just like the dark-haired girl. I reacted without thinking, grabbing a stone off the ground and throwing it at it as hard as I could. I missed, of course; didn’t even come close to the stupid bird.

  “Are you having fun, boy?”

  As bad luck would have it, Tedd, the history teacher, was walking by just at that moment, supported by his cane. He wasn’t looking at me, though, so maybe he hadn’t seen what I’d done.

  “I was just leaving,” I said, embarrassed.

  “Why?” Tedd asked. “Lunch period isn’t over yet. You still have plenty of time to continue throwing stones at the school.”

  Just what I needed. No one better to catch me than an old blind guy.

  “I was just messing around. I saw a . . .”

  I was about to say something about the parrot, which would have been counterproductive since trying to hurt an animal wouldn’t have helped my situation any. In any case, the bird had vanished.

  “No, my man, no. It’s fine. Here, take this.” Tedd picked up another stone and offered it to me, in spite of the fact that he was holding his hand out in a direction that wasn’t pointing directly at me. He was talking so naturally that, for a moment, I thought he might be serious. “Go on, try again. Maybe you’ll get it right this time and hit a window. So, what difference does it make if you break the glass? The school can pay for it; it’s as good as free. Or maybe you were aiming at something else, boy. Maybe you wanted to hit a teacher. Let’s see . . . which windows are within range? My, my . . . how curious. I’d say that one right up there is the window to the Math office.”

  So now he thought I wanted to split the witch’s head open. I considered telling him about the vine to distract him, but it wouldn’t have made any difference.

  “I just threw a stone up in the air; I wasn’t trying to hit anynoe,” I answered, trying my best to sound sincere and repentant. “It won’t happen again.”

  “I believe you boy. I can tell by looking at your face that you’re a good boy. And good boys shouldn’t be expelled from school—which is one of the possible consequences for assaulting a teacher and destroying school property. Besides, I have a weakness for good boys who are sorry for what they’ve done and who promise me they won’t make the same mistake again. I’m such a softy that I will sometimes even forget what happened and not mention a word about it in the teachers’ lounge. Especially when the good boy slips away quietly and doesn’t cause any more trouble for a good, long while. It’s almost as if, when I don’t hear any unpleasant news, my memory is erased.”

  He turned, tripped, then walked away whistling. I quickly and quietly hurried off.

  No other teacher scared me as much as he did. I’d been through a ton of tight spots in my life and had been scolded harshly by my elders as they scowled at me threateningly, but that sweet-looking old man absolutely never behaved that way. He never raised his voice or showed any signs of anger. He spoke calmly, as if he was telling you about a movie he’d seen—but for some reason, his almost unnatural aura of calmness made my hair stand on end. Maybe I’m the weird one, but I prefer people who get upset in tense situations.

  It goes without saying that I didn’t even open my mouth during history class, which I had right after lunch. I even tried to look interested as Tedd taught the lesson. The last thing I wanted was to have another confrontation with him after the strange exchange I’d had with him during lunchtime.

  Ivan was still acting aloof, and he seemed completely caught up in his note taking. I decided to wait until the next day to talk with him. So I grabbed my stuff and left class without waiting for him. I found out when talking with some of my soccer teammates as I walked out of the school that the game was postponed again and we’d probably be playing it Monday. I headed for home.

  On the way to the subway I was stopped in my tracks by the sound of beating wings and an annoying voice.

  “Uaaaaac . . . Jerk . . . Uaaaaac.”

  I had to contain myself to keep from taking another shot at pelting that stupid parrot. The best I could hope for was that it’d meet up with the windshield of some truck. The little idiot wouldn’t give the insults a rest for even a minute as it circled above me—just out of reach. After a few circles, it flew off to the right toward the other side of the street. For the first time, I had no interest in following. If it wanted to show me something, it would have to tell me—after all, when it came to hurling insults, it sure didn’t have any trouble getting to the point. I kept on walking as I watched it fly over the street and alight on a bench on the other side. It turned its head toward me, swung its beak a couple times, and flapped it wings. It was clear the parrot thought I was going follow suit and cross the street. As far as I was concerned, it could wait on that bench all day. I just didn’t give a—

  Holy crap! I about choked when I saw who was sitting on that bench. The parrot had distracted me, because otherwise I would never have overlooked what was unmistakeably Claudia’s silky hair. Next to her, with his arm slung over the back of the bench behind Claudia, was Ivan, who was having what appeared to be quite a relaxing chat with her. Ivan barely talked to Claudia at school; they weren’t close enough friends to be out alone together. And if they were, he would have told me about it since he knew how much I liked her. I felt betrayed and infuriated. I wasn’t sure what was going on between them, but my friend had certainly hidden from me how well he got along with her, if that’s all it was. And that hurt. I was absolutely convinced that I wouldn’t have acted like that if I were in his place. And worse yet, I would’ve sworn he wouldn’t have, either. But there they were, the two of them. And I would never have noticed them if it hadn’t been for the parrot.

  The bird gave a little hop and perched on Ivan’s arm. Then it flapped its wings and pointed its beak straight at me. I had the distinct impression that heap of black feathers was smiling. I was at least sure the beast was enjoying my suffering.

  I considered turning back and heading over there, pretending that I’d run in to them by chance, just to see how they’d react, but I thought better of it. Feeling as angry as I was, I knew I’d make things worse. If they had hidden their friendship from me, they’d make up some lame excuse or they’d act normal since they weren’t doing anything wrong and since I had no right to interfere—no matter how much I felt like I did. Claudia was not my girlfriend; she’d never even shown any interest in me, so my stupid attack of jealousy was my problem and no one else’s.

  I walked home, both surprised by and proud of my self control.

  I found my mother crying, sitting on the sofa with her head in her hands and her elbows resting on her knees. She tried to get hold of herself when she heard me come in the living room by quickly wiping her eyes on her sleeve, but it was too late to hide the obvious.

  “Mom, are you all right?”

  I set my backpack on the floor, sat down next to her and hugged her tightly. She continued to cry as I held her. I desperately hoped it was just an attack of raging hormones from the pregnancy like what my father had explained to me. I noticed a strange smell in the room as I was hugging my mother and waiting for her to regain her composure. It was a horrible stench that buried the typical flowery aroma of the plants that filled the room.

  “Oh, Son. It was terrible . . .” she said in a trembling voice.

  “What was, Mom?”

  “The canary . . .”

  It was one of the few birds I could identify from my mother’s vast collection. I didn’t really like any of them, but especially not the canary—that annoying little feathered lemon never shut up. The stupid creature liked his version of singing. And he liked it a lot. Unfortunately, he never lost his voice no matter how much his tiny beak whistled.

  I glanced at his cage and noticed it was covered, but I assumed it was so the bird would think it was nighttime. I discovered the real reason when I pulled of
f the sheet to look at the canary.

  The stench immediately intensified, permeating the air around me. The canary was gone; in his place was a small pile of smoking flesh and a few scorched feathers. It was disgusting. I covered the cage back up.

  “Mom, you didn’t get burned, did you?”

  I had no idea what had happened, but I was alarmed, and worried about my mother’s burns.

  She shook her head. “No. I found him like that.”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Working.”

  “And you don’t know what happened to the canary?”

  She shook her head again and wiped a tear as it ran down the deformed skin on her cheek. It took me a long time to calm her down. I promised her we’d buy another canary, then got her settled down enough to watch some TV until she fell asleep.

  I had to plug my nose when I dealt with the mess in the cage. My intention had been to clean it, but I was so grossed out by it I decided to just chuck it all. I put it in a huge garbage bag and left it in the garage.

  Afterward, I stretched out on my bed to think, my pulse racing from an electrifying curiosity. The incident with the bird had flipped a switch in my mind and I now had a hunch I was close to making sense of all this craziness. I breathed deeply, concentrated, and grabbed a pen and a notebook. I reviewed my dreams about the twins and made notes about the “gifts” I’d brought out of each one. From the first dream, the one in the museum, I’d gotten information; nothing tangible—just the knowledge required to pass a surprise exam I was going to have the following day and to get away from Eloy by kicking him in his bad knee. What intrigued me most was how the twins could know those things were going to happen. I wrote the word “future” followed by a question mark. From the second dream I’d gotten the glasses that allowed me to read Spanish as if it were my native language. In the third, the girls gave me the seed that had become a vine, but I still hadn’t found a use for that. From the last dream I’d brought out a parrot that also hadn’t proven very useful except for showing me how much a stupid bird could insult me . . . unless its purpose was to call my attention to whatever was going on with Ivan and Claudia. But that didn’t seem like it would be its main function since I might have seen them myself if I had walked on the other side of the street. All the other gifts from the twins were considerably more amazing than the parrot. By using them, I was able to do things that were clearly beyond my own abilities.

  The parrot really had me stumped. The twins had emphatically insisted that I take him—so much so that I hadn’t wanted to. But somehow the bird had ended up attached to my hand before I’d woken up.

  And now came the best part of what I was figuring out. My glasses, the normal ones, had disappeared. I thought I’d lost them, but that was not the case. Now I got it. After seeing what had happened to the canary, and to the plant the day before, I now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt. When I brought something out of my dreams, an equivalent object disappeared from the real world—like some kind of exchange. After the first dream that hadn’t happened because I hadn’t brought out anything tangible. But, even so, I had gone completely blank when I’d tried to talk about the Normandy Invasion. But with the rest of the gifts there had definitely been a clear trade off. A plant and a canary had disintegrated because I’d brought out the vine and the parrot.

  The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was about my conclusion . . . and the more I kept telling myself that if I shared any of this with anyone else, they’d have me locked in a psych ward immediately. I felt isolated and alone. It was like having a superpower and not being able to share it with anyone. I could imagine superheroes feeling something like this—needing to maintain a secret identity, making sure no one would find out . . . and having to suffer through their loneliness.

  I was getting delirious. Not good. I shook my head to clear my thoughts and got back to my analysis. Trying to come to a conclusion was good for me; it put me in a better mood, especially if my hunch was right. The one piece that was not yet in place was my sleepwalking. I was still unsure about whether or not it had anything to do with the twins.

  Something thudded against my bedroom window, startling me. I carefully—and a little nervously—pulled back the curtain, as if I were about to come face to face with some kind of danger. There was a small smudge on the outside of the glass. I opened the window and immediately heard that familiar, annoying voice.

  “Uaaaaaac . . . Idiot . . . Uaaaaac.”

  The parrot shot into the room like a bolt of lighting.

  “Just what I needed,” I sighed. “Hey! Calm down! Stop flying around!” The thing was flitting and fluttering all over the room—all the while insulting me, of course. “Stop it right now! No! Not there! What the fu—”

  The parrot had just left a “deposit” on top of my Spiderman comics. I tried to catch him but failed, and ended up hitting my head on a bookshelf.

  “I’ll catch you, you little swine.” I closed the door to my room. “It’s only a matter of time. There’s no way out.”

  “Waaaaaay ooouuut . . . Uaaac . . .”

  I had to admit, the way it imitated my voice was kind of funny but I was focused on catching the parrot, closing that beak once and for all, and then using those black feathers to scrub off my comic books.

  “So you wanna play it like that, you little beast?”

  “Uaaaac . . . You can’t tell him, even if he is your best friend . . .”

  The parrot’s voice had changed. The intonation of that last sentence had a higher pitch; it was more . . . feminine.

  “You can use all the voices you want, stupid bird. I’ll catch you either way.”

  “Uaaaac . . . But he’ll find out sooner or later.” Now the tone was deeper, and different than the voice he used to insult me. “I don’t like lying to him. We’ve known each other for years and I’ve never hidden anything from him.”

  I stood there, frozen in place, staring at the parrot. Its new voice wasn’t just deeper, it was a spot-on imitation of one I knew inside and out: Ivan’s.

  “Uaaaac . . .” It switched back to the feminine voice. “We’re in this together and until we know exactly where this is headed, you have to hide the truth from him.”

  A perfect imitation of Claudia. The parrot was repeating to me the conversation they were having when I saw them on the bench. Apparently, I was wrong. The bird wasn’t taunting me when he landed on Ivan’s arm; he was showing me that he was spying on them. The twins had surprised me once again, more than I ever could have imagined. This seemingly irritating parrot I’d brought out of the dream was proving to be quite useful.

  I sat down on the bed and focused all my attention on the ugly words coming out of that little curved beak.

  “Uaaac . . . All right, fine,” said the parrot in Ivan’s voice. “I won’t tell him anything if you don’t want me to. . . Uaaac . . . Perfect,” he continued, using Claudia’s voice. “I don’t trust him . . . Uaaac . . . How long do we have to hide this from him? . . . Uaaac . . . I’m not sure. As long as necessary . . . Uaaac.”

  And then he went quiet.

  “What? Come on, keep going! They had to have said something else.”

  But the parrot wouldn’t open his beak. He sat there on the lamp, which was wobbling under his weight, grooming his wings and smoothing his feathers.

  So, Ivan and Claudia were together. And they had decided to hide it from me. Jealousy bubbled up inside me, consuming me, fueling thousands of questions. How long had they been together? Why weren’t they telling me? I had no clue.

  I don’t know how long I sat there turning it all over in my mind, getting more and more pissed off, feeling more and more stupid and helpless. But when I finally managed to calm myself down, I realized I was mostly feeling two things. I was hurt, thinking about Claudia; a new, unfamiliar pain I had no idea how to cope with. And I hated Ivan. Intensely. I couldn’t keep him from going out with Claudia, nor did I have the right to even if I could. It was the betray
al I was having a hard time accepting. I simply could not understand why my friend hadn’t confided in me. If he had told me, it would have hurt but I would’ve gotten over it—for his sake—and I think I could even have gotten to the point where I was happy for the two of them. But now . . .

  Somehow, I had to calm down. Surely it was affecting me this acutely because I’d just found out. Everything looks worse in the heat of the moment. I just needed to give my head a chance to cool off and sort it all out or I’d drive myself crazy.

  The parrot nipped my ear. I hadn’t realized he was sitting on my shoulder. I reached up my hand and carefully petted his head.

  “Good boy. I was wrong about you. You are a very useful pet.”

  I could think of countless ways I’d be able to take advantage of my new companion. Spying on teachers while they were reading the questions on tests . . . spying on my parents . . . and, of course, spying on Ivan and Claudia. The parrot was an extraordinary gift—the best one of all, without a doubt.