“You gonna be okay?” Blue asked between bites.
“Yeah,” 62 answered. He sighed, reached for his toast, and took a small nibble from the edge. The warm bread tasted good. The way Blue had toasted it made the bread both moist and crispy. “This is good. Thanks.”
“No problem,” Blue said with a smile. “Are you excited to try day-dreaming with Mattie today?”
62 shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe. A few hours ago I was. But now, I don’t really care. I just want to sleep.”
Blue leaned on an elbow, and even in 62’s state he could see his friend trying too hard to look casual. “Tell her I said hi, will ya?” Blue’s eyes darted down to his half-eaten toast, then back up at 62. “I mean, if you think about it or whatever.”
“I’ll tell her,” 62 said. He couldn’t help his lopsided grin. He didn’t have the energy to tease Blue about it now, but he knew that his brother had feelings for the Girl at the library. “Anything else I should pass along?”
“You could tell her we need clean clothes. Then we won’t have to figure out how to do laundry.”
62 chuckled. “We could always wear smocks like Sunny. There’s gobs of them in decon.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Blue said, brushing a crumb of toast from the side of his mouth. “Except my clothes are way more comfortable than those things. Especially when it’s cold like this. I’d rather keep my long sleeves, thank you.”
62 nodded. He finished his toast, then pushed himself up from the table. “I think I’ve been awake long enough. It’s time to sleep.”
“Good luck.”
62 turned away from the table. He’d trudged his way to the door when he heard Blue call out behind him, “And don’t forget to tell Mattie I said hi!”
62 laughed sleepily, then dragged himself up the stairs and down the hall to his room. The light from the fixture hanging from the ceiling was washed out by the bright sunlight streaming in through the open window. 62 took a few minutes to re-hang his spare blanket up on the bars of the window, blotting out most of the sunlight, and then switched the lightbulb in his room off. It wasn’t completely dark, but 62 was so tired that he doubted the glow forcing its way around the edges of his makeshift curtain would be enough to keep him awake. He climbed into bed, pulled the covers around himself, and rolled away from the sunlight. A bed had never felt more comfortable.
CHAPTER 14
62 wound his way through the dream until he was standing in the library. Again, the building appeared empty, but after a time of focusing his mind, he was able to produce copies of some books he’d read before. They stood, spines erect, in a straight line along one bookshelf. There were a dozen of them, but they seemed insignificant compared to the vast emptiness of the hundreds of empty shelves. 62 picked a book about surviving the desert off the shelf, and began to read. Turning the pages jogged his memory and soon the skills he’d learned came flooding back to him. Hanford’s school hadn’t been all bad, he thought now.
He settled into a chair near the front door. The lighting in the abandoned library wasn’t good for reading, so he exercised his mind on it, adjusting the flickering light until it was bright and welcoming. He willed his imaginary journal and a pencil to form on the arm of the chair beside him. He leafed through it, taking his time, reviewing past entries and making notes of things he wanted to tell Mattie. First, that Blue said hello. 62 chuckled over this as he jotted it down in large, block letters. Don’t forget! he scrawled under the entry. Then, he tried to decide what he was going to tell Mattie about Sunny. The frail Woman still didn’t want anyone to know she was on the hill with them, and especially didn’t want anyone to know what the Oosa had done to her. But he had to tell Mattie something to get her to send help.
He set aside his journal and wandered over to the shelf. He pulled another storybook he’d read several times. Stuart Little was written by the same author as his beloved Charlotte’s Web. 62 didn’t think this novel was quite as good, but 62 still enjoyed reading it. Stuart was a funny little mouse who lived like other children of his world, only in miniature. He went on adventures down drain pipes and drove some type of small vehicle that Parker said was roughly the size of two dinner rolls placed side by side. 62 wasn’t sure how humans could have a mouse for a child, and he supposed that was the joke of the book.
Every so often, 62 set the book down, closed his eyes, and willed Mattie to appear in the library. He’d count to three hundred while waiting for her to appear, and when she didn’t, or if he lost count, he’d go back to reading. Mattie didn’t appear after the family cat, Snowbell, stole Stuart’s hat, or after Stuart sailed in a model boat in the park. 62 had only ever seen pictures of boats in other books, but he understood well enough what they were.
He wondered what it would be like to sail in one and for a few moments pushed the library away from his dream and enjoyed bobbing along in a boat, paddling around a large pond. Once the wind had tousled his hair, and his cheeks were red from the cold air, 62 shuttled his dream back to the library, where he was once again in the comfortable chair by the door, waiting for Mattie.
Mattie also didn’t appear after Margalo, a bird, turned up in Stuart’s story. Or, after the first and second time that Snowbell tried to eat her. Snowbell was a rotten creature. 62 shook his head and wondered why anyone would want to live with such a devious beast. It wasn’t until Margalo had saved Stuart from a container of garbage that the first hints of Mattie’s presence appeared, and then, 62 was so engrossed in the daring rescue that he almost hadn’t noticed.
A strange scent lingered in the air, something sweet and yeasty. The smell wafted toward him as he turned a page. He put his nose to work, sniffing the air. The light above him changed ever so slightly, and then a small glowing orb appeared nearly at the tip of his nose. It was a break in the dream. The same type of break he was used to seeing when he pushed his consciousness into someone else’s dream. 62 was surprised by the brilliant light. He hadn’t put it into his dream on his own. 62 leaned back, examining the tiny gateway. It pulsated in midair, and the sweet bready smell grew stronger the longer it glowed. He leaned in, turned his head, and pressed his ear to the light, listening for someone on the other side. Nothing but the smell of sweet rolls leaked through the opening. He prodded the opening with his fingers, stretching it wider until he could wrap both hands around the edges. He forced the gap open, leaning his face into the blinding light.
“Hello?” 62 called. “Is someone there?”
A quiet voice called back. “62? Is that you?” The bright light grew. Mattie’s features could barely be seen in the glare. Her round cheeks and dark eyes were no more than faint lines in the light. It was so bright, it looked like she was glowing from the inside out. 62 pushed on the tear between them, making it wider. Soon, it was large enough to step through. 62 took a deep breath, tried to settle the rolling of his nervous stomach, and climbed through the gap.
Mattie wasn’t dreaming of the library. She was standing in the middle of some other building. A large, glass counter filled one side of the space, and a pair of little tables winged by thin wire chairs sat in rows across the other.
“Where are we?” 62 asked. He moved to stand next to Mattie in front of the glass counter. Inside the counter were shelves, and the shelves were lined with trays heaped with food. Some of the items in the case looked like bread, but others were more like shiny, round pillows. Some were multicolored, and others were varying shades of brown. The sweet bready smell he’d noticed before was amplified. Now, he could almost taste the sugar in the air.
“It’s a bakery. Well, more of a pastry shop, actually,” Mattie answered. She took a step toward the partition between the cases, wincing with discomfort. Mattie closed her eyes, pressed her palms to her leg, and rubbed it vigorously.
“Are you okay?” 62 asked.
Mattie stood, whatever pain she’d felt in her dream healed, and answered dismissively. “Yeah. Of course, I am.”
She reached
over and opened the partition beside the glass case. She walked through it, hiding a limp as she rounded the counter. Mattie slid the back side of the case open and picked a few treats from the shelves. She placed the food on some small plates and came back to 62’s side of the counter. She set the plates on one of the two tables. 62 followed her.
“I thought you’d be in the library. You told me that’s the only place you go in your dreams.” 62 sat across from her and she pushed one of the plates toward him. It wasn’t exactly bread. It was shiny and sticky all around, with chunks of fruit popping out of its top. It was a bulging mound of a snack, and 62 probably would have mistaken it for a cow-pie if it wasn’t on a plate. 62 sniffed it. It smelled even sweeter than the air in the shop, hints of baked apples and cinnamon drifting from its surface.
“I’ve been experimenting,” Mattie answered. Her cheeks flushed pink, and she looked at her hands for a moment. “After you showed me what it was like to imagine something different, I started trying it. Sometimes, I read about something that I wish I could experience, so I think about it when I’m going to sleep.” She looked up at him with a sheepish grin. “Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.”
“That’s how it is for me, too,” 62 smiled.
Mattie scrunched up her face. “How did you find me? Shouldn’t you be awake right now? It’s after noon, you know.”
“I’ve been trying to find you at night, but I’ve been having nightmares.” 62 hung his head. He didn’t want to tell Mattie about the details of his terrible dreams, but it felt good to admit they existed. “I was talking to Blue, and he said you used to take naps during the day. So, I stayed up all last night and went to bed this morning, hoping that you’d turn up.”
“Here I am,” Mattie said happily.
62 was glad for the chance to catch up with his friend, but his curiosity was getting the better of him. He lifted the sticky bread off the plate in front of him, and held it up in the air. “So, what is this thing?”
“It’s a donut. An apple fritter, to be more precise. It’s like a small cake, but it’s fried instead of baked. They put the sugar glaze on when it’s hot so that it melts all over. I read about them in a book, and looked in the cookbooks ‘till I found a recipe. I had the cafeteria fry some up. They’re good. Try one.”
62 sunk his teeth into the pillowy bread. The fritter was warm, and the gooey treat seemed to melt on his tongue. His mouth was filled with a taste that was sweeter than anything he’d experienced before. Inside, the bread was pale yellow like sunshine. It reminded him of warm applesauce draped over a squishy pillow of bread. The treat was a pleasure to eat, and once he started, he couldn’t stop. Before he knew it, the fritter was gone. He licked crumbs and sugar from his fingers, then said, “That is good! I could eat that all day!”
“You, and everyone else. As soon as they come out of the kitchen, people gobble them up. I’ve only had a couple in real life because they’re always gone by the time I get to the front of the line.” Mattie leaned back in her chair and made a sweeping motion with her arm. The motion of her shoulder halted, and Mattie gave a small whimper. She rolled her shoulder, willing away whatever ache had given her pause.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” 62 asked, not bothering to hide the concern in his voice.
“Of course, I’m okay. I’m okayer than okay. Here, I can have as many apple fritters as I want, and there’s no one to stop me.” She picked up a fritter from her plate, ripped it apart, and crammed a hunk of it into her mouth.
“I might stop you, if I eat them all first,” 62 grinned. He sat up straight, a memory striking him. “That reminds me. Blue said to tell you hello.”
Mattie tilted her head. “Oh? Did he say anything else?”
“No, just that.”
“Tell him I said hello back then.” Mattie took a bite of her fritter and chewed a moment. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “So, how are things going out there where you are?”
“It’s okay, I guess. We can do whatever we want, which I like. But there’s not really anything to do, so it doesn’t matter that there aren’t any rules.”
“There must be something to do. Gardening, reading, or something? What do you do all day?”
62 glanced over at the pastry case. The fritter in Mattie’s dream was the most delicious thing that he’d ever eaten. He had to tell the others about it. Maybe they could get Sunny to make them, and eat them every day. 62 wished for another fritter, and one appeared on the plate in front of him. He grinned and tore a piece off. He popped it in his mouth, and Mattie waited patiently while he chomped away.
“We got N302 set up,” he finally answered. “There’s tons of electricity in the battery banks there, so it hasn’t had to turn off at night or anything. I don’t know if bots can be happy, but if they can, N302 is as happy as they get. I don’t know what it’ll do if we ever have to turn it off again. It’s pretty set on being left on forever, I think.”
Mattie leaned forward in her chair. Her eyes were wide with excitement. “Did you get the second computer running?”
“No. We got sorta sidetracked.” 62 scrunched his mouth to one side and looked at his apple fritter. He wasn’t sure how to tell her about Sunny and that made a nervous knot twist in his stomach. He sat for a long while, staring at the tiny pockets of air in the pastry’s fluffy texture. His mind suddenly switched gears and he wondered if the empty spaces were what made the bread so fluffy. He picked at the ripped edge of the partially eaten treat, sending crumbs tumbling onto the plate.
Mattie crossed her arms and sighed. “Well, aren’t you going to tell me what’s got you sidetracked?”
“It’s nothing really. I mean, it’s something. It’s just, you know.” 62 looked up at Mattie with serious eyes. He whispered, “Can you keep a secret?”
Mattie rolled her eyes so hard that her head lolled back on her neck. “Geeze. You’re acting like someone died.” She stopped and focused on 62. “Wait, did someone die? Is everyone okay?”
“Oh, yeah. We’re fine. Nobody died.”
“Well, then, what’s got you looking so dang serious?”
62 pushed the pastry around on his plate. He glanced up at Mattie’s exasperated expression, and dropped his gaze again. He heaved a long sigh, trying to steel his nerves against the flutter of anxiety rising in his chest. He closed his eyes, swallowed hard, and blurted out, “Sunny was up at the jailhouse when we got there.”
“Sunny? Like, Sunny from school, Sunny?” Mattie’s face was contorted in confusion. Her mouth twisted to one side, then screwed up the other. Her eyes squinted, then went so wide, the whites showed all around. “What’s she doing there?”
“She went there after she ran away from the Oosa. She’s sick, we think. We don’t really know what’s wrong with her. But she said that she got away from them, and decided she couldn’t go back to Hanford.”
Mattie’s eyebrows shot up even higher on her forehead. “Is she pregnant?”
“No. She said that she can’t have babies anymore.”
Mattie frowned and shook her head. “What do you mean she can’t have babies? That doesn’t make any sense. That’s the whole reason we go with the Oosa. To get set up to have babies.”
62 wasn’t sure what else to say. He knew Mattie had already decided to volunteer to go to the Oosa as soon as she was old enough. They’d already fought about it once, when 62 admitted he didn’t think she should make her decision until she was older.
Mattie looked skeptical. “Well, if Sunny wasn’t sent back with a baby, she shouldn’t have run away. We don’t come back from the Oosa if we aren’t pregnant. They keep the others.”
“I know. You told me they go away somewhere to live happily ever after. But Sunny says that’s not how it is. She says they made her sick.”
Mattie snorted with disbelief. “This is crazy. It doesn’t make any sense. I’m beginning to wonder if you’re really here. This is just a weird dream, isn’t it? Or, maybe, whoever
you found isn’t Sunny. Maybe it’s somebody else pretending to be her, to convince you the Oosa are bad.”
62 shook his head. Blue recognized the Woman, and he said she was Sunny. But 62 had never met her before. What if Blue was wrong? Blue said she looked different than before. 62 didn’t know why someone would pretend to be Sunny and hide out at the jailhouse, though.
“I really am me. This isn’t a weird dream. Maybe I can show you what she looks like,” he offered. “It won’t be the real her, but I think I can remember the first time I met her, so you can see for yourself.”
“Okay,” Mattie agreed with a nod.
62 reached across the table and wriggled his fingers until Mattie grasped his hand. Mattie cringed when their fingers touched, then shook out her hand. She frowned, glaring at her fingers. She curled and flattened her fingers a few times, then laid them in 62’s open palm. 62 gave her a sidelong glance, but could tell from Mattie’s expression that she didn’t want to be asked if she was all right again.
“Close your eyes. Try to not imagine anything. I’m going to see if I can take us to when we first got to the jailhouse.”
They grasped one another’s hands tight, and closed their eyes. 62 imagined the day that he, Blue, and 00 climbed the slope toward their new home. He remembered the rugged terrain and taking the last turn to find the front of the worn-out building. He squeezed Mattie’s hand and opened his eyes. They were still seated at the table from Mattie’s pastry shop, but now the table was sitting right in the middle of the trailhead.
“Open your eyes,” he whispered. As Mattie’s eyes fluttered open, a copy of 62, flanked by his brothers, walked straight through them. The shock of the specters caused both Mattie and 62 to scoot back in their chairs, the thin wire legs catching on the pitted dirt. 62 slipped off the edge of his seat, a shiver of discomfort shooting through him.
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