Sleeper

by MacKenzie Cadenhead

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  Copyright © 2017 by MacKenzie Cadenhead

  Cover and internal design © 2017 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Colin Mercer

  Cover images © Silvia Otte/Getty Images; Fukuma Umi/Getty Images

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Fire, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  Fax: (630) 961-2168

  www.sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Cadenhead, MacKenzie, author.

  Title: Sleeper / MacKenzie Cadenhead.

  Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Fire, [2017] | Summary: A sleep disorder causes Sarah to act out her dreams, including nearly killing the school’s “queen bee,” but when she and new friend Wes try an experimental drug cure, they discover they can now control other dreamers.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016050931 | (alk. paper)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Sleep disorders--Fiction. | Dreams--Fiction. | Drugs--Testing--Fiction. | High schools--Fiction. | Schools--Fiction. | Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.C11713 Sle 2017 | DDC [Fic]--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016050931

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For Phinn and Lyra

  Chapter One

  If you ever see a door hovering in the middle of an ethereal, gray fog, don’t open it.

  In fact, no matter how adventurous you’re feeling, or how curious, or how baffled you are by that freestanding door floating in the void, promise me that you’ll run in the opposite direction.

  In other words, don’t be an idiot like me.

  The door isn’t anything special. Three horizontal panels, distressed white wood, greening brass knob. It’s nothing to write home about. But its sudden appearance triggers Christmas-morning-like excitement. Nothing else is happening. I mean, literally nothing. I’m all alone in this gloomy mist. It’s been hours since I went to bed. And I am bored. So the sudden appearance of the door is a thrill.

  I reach out to turn the knob, and it doesn’t once occur to me that what lies on the other side might not be the golden ticket. So when the door doesn’t budge? I want in even more.

  As I stare at my nemesis, growing more and more desperate to get inside it, my thoughts turn to Gigi MacDonald, captain of my lacrosse team, queen bee to all us wannabes. Any time we drop a pass or let another player get a fast break to goal, she relentlessly runs drills until we get it right. But her favorite motivator is the football team. “You want them to think we’re weak?” she’ll scream until this little vein pops on her forehead. “Or are you gonna show them that real athletes do more than just run until they hit something?”

  The question is rhetorical. But tonight?

  I face my opponent. Channeling every football player who’s ever scoffed at women’s athletics, I take a step back, lower my shoulder, and ram the door with all my might. It flies open, and I fall.

  Into…

  Black.

  Silence.

  Chest-compressing airlock.

  A stinging wind needle-pricks my face as a deafening FWAP, like the amplified-times-a-million fluttering of butterfly wings, beats against my eardrums, and I’m sure they will burst. My mouth drains of all moisture. I blink and I blink and I blink and I blink. It’s all I can do to see anything against the slapping wind in the darkness. I am being swallowed into nothingness.

  Until…

  I’m not.

  My blinking eyelids reveal a flipbook of images: arthritic branches, leafless in the moonlight; a rocky path; the color green.

  And then I land, face first, in a mountain of crunchy brown leaves. I lie still, inhaling the crisp autumn air that tickles the inside of my nose. Raising myself onto my elbows, I brush away a leaf that’s tangled in my thick, dark hair. I’ve come through the looking glass, but I totally know this place.

  I am in the nature preserve behind the Horsemen’s football field. In front of me is the Stump—what remains of the massive oak tree that the town cut down when I was ten. I know it now as the favorite late-night hangout spot for Irvington High School’s cool kids and a monument to some personal firsts. Not only did I try my first beer here, but it’s also where an upperclassman soccer star gave fourteen-year-old me my first kiss. (The beer may have been an acquired taste, but that kiss was like coming home.)

  Tonight though, the Stump is deserted. Leafless trees canopy overhead, and a bright full moon plays hide-and-seek between branches. Twigs crunch under my feet as I move over rocks and roots, seeking out a random course that soon becomes an actual path. I’m dressed only in a tank top and boy-short hip-huggers, the slumber party uniform I went to bed in. I rub my arms for warmth. “Always the fashionista,” I chide myself. “Never the weathergirl.”

  I follow the path obediently, trying my best to ignore the goose bumps that have turned my skin to sandpaper. By the time I jump at the particularly loud crack of a twig snapping under my foot, I’ve wandered deep into an unfamiliar part of the woods.

  “Shhhhh,” whispers someone directly to my right. Every molecule of my being tenses. Beside me, leaning against a tree, is a shirtless boy with sun-kissed brown hair and four-out-of-six-pack abs, watching something on the other side of where we stand. He is tall, taller than me by a foot at least. Though his shoulders are broad, he’s lean, his width easily framed by the thick trunk of a maple. He’s got that effortless shaggy short hair that curls at the edges and a long, slightly off-center nose that’s all the more intriguing for its character-building crookedness. It’s like a wobbly arrow that bursts forth from a prominent brow and ends pointing at some seriously kissable lips. An
enjoyably clichéd shiver ripples through my still-tense-but-now-in-a-good-way body. I’m psyched for the companionship but more so that said companion is hot.

  He looks over at me, his Oz-green eyes sizing me up before they return to the subject of their stealthy surveillance. Then he reaches out his arm, providing a perfect me-size opening against his chest.

  For the first time, I hesitate.

  When you’re here, in this place, you generally don’t waste much time with contemplation. Why would you when there’s no such thing as consequence, no final exam, no why or what were you thinking? Here, there’s nothing but now. So it strikes me as odd that I have the sudden urge to cover up. Am I feeling shy? Why, when none of this is real, am I embarrassed that the space between this half-naked wood god and a giant tree trunk is the only place I want to be?

  I tell my subconscious’s conscience to shove it and take a step forward. As I inhale this dream guy, I forget everything else. His intoxicating odor of Dove soap and all-American-boy sweat beckons to me like one of those finger-shaped scent streaks from Scooby-Doo. I slide into place against him.

  His chest is warm, but my shivering doesn’t stop. I turn my face up to his and smile. He doesn’t so much as glance down at me, fixated instead on that spot beyond us. I wonder what could be more compelling than a scantily clad girl leaning against his chest.

  So I look.

  In the center of a clearing, spotlighted by the impossibly bright moon, lies a fawn. Her eyes are wide and her breathing shallow. An arrow protrudes from her side.

  “The wound’s fatal, but it’ll take a while for her to die,” the boy says.

  I feel a sob build deep within me, but when I open my mouth, I don’t cry out.

  “I know what to do,” I say instead.

  Suddenly, I am running into the clearing. I place one hand on the trembling deer’s chin and the other on the opposite side of her head. In her surprise, she struggles against me, and I lose my grip. But she is also wounded, groggy, and I use that to my advantage.

  I wrestle the animal still, pinning her with my legs. My absolute certainty that this mercy kill is the right thing to do gives me strength.

  The boy at the tree calls to me, telling me to stop, but I won’t—I can’t.

  The deer’s eyes widen.

  My hands return to her chin and forehead and lock in place.

  I prepare to snap her neck.

  “No!” the boy shouts. “Wake up!”

  Everything freezes. The woods disappear. The wind stills. The deer vanishes, though I can still feel her against my hands. I ask, “What did you say?”

  I don’t get an answer. The boy is gone, and new sounds engulf me, muffled at first.

  Someone is screaming.

  “Sarah! Stop! You’re going to kill her!” a familiar female voice shrieks. I blink my eyes, flickering myself back to reality. No longer am I looking into the blinding late-autumn moon; instead, I see the recessed halogens of a suburban basement.

  I lower my gaze and take in the room where two of my best friends are staring at me. Tessa’s the one shouting, “Stop! Sarah, you have to stop!” Amber is clutching her pillow, her jaw almost unhinged in shock. I feel something struggle against me, trying to free itself from the restraints that my limbs have become to hold it in place.

  No, not something. Someone.

  Gigi, the boss of us all.

  She is sobbing. She trembles against my iron-clenched hands, which are locked firmly on her chin and forehead. About to snap her neck.

  Crap, I think. Not again.

  Chapter Two

  “I honestly don’t know what her Greek tragedy is,” Tessa says as she stirs a container of ranch dressing with a carrot stick. “Gigi’s known how to cover up a mark on her neck since the seventh grade.”

  “True,” I agree. “But these bruises are a little more intense than a Tommy Murnighan hickey. Besides, it might be the trying to kill her part that’s really got her ticked.”

  “Eh, potato, potahto.” Tessa bites into her carrot, and the loud crunch startles the staring freshmen girls seated at the table opposite us. They giggle as they pick up their trays and scurry off.

  “I’ve got to give it to you, Sar. I didn’t think you could get any more popular. It’s like, if being a hot, superstar jock made you homecoming queen, being a homicidal maniac added a sex tape.”

  “With the football team,” I say.

  “And the pom squad,” she coos. Then her smile inverts, and her eyebrows pull together. Quietly, she adds, “Still, I think Gigi’s being way harsh, trashing you around the Quad and banishing us from her table. It’s not like you meant to hurt her. She has to know that.”

  I sigh. Tessa’s a good friend. My best, actually. Her determination to support me through the aftermath of this past weekend’s horror is both unsurprising and more appreciated than she’ll ever know. Thankfully, she’s a floater, automatically cool enough to straddle multiple social groups and somehow always remain above reproach. No one’s coming after her for sticking with me. But while I sincerely appreciate her blame-the-victim routine as a kind attempt to boost morale, I’m having a hard time keeping up the que sera, sera façade. It’s been three days since I attempted manslaughter, and my victim has shown no signs of accepting my not-guilty-by-reason-of-nocturnal-insanity plea. Though I know I’m to blame and that Gigi didn’t ask for any of this, part of me is shocked that I’ve been so unceremoniously dumped.

  Gigi and I have been friends since our peewee sports days. While we share a passion for free Sephora makeovers, and I’ve no doubt she’d be the first to check an opponent who crossed me in a game, I’m starting to wonder if our BFF status may have been somewhat circumstantial. I mean, when we’re on the field, we’re the dynamic duo, telepathic in mind and body. Our opponents spend half the game trying to break us up. But it never works. Because out there, we’re one.

  Off the field, however, there’s no we in clique. In Gigi’s little army, I’m a good and appropriately ambitious soldier. I’ve never considered a coup. Thanks to the skeletons in my closet, I’ve always felt most comfortable basking in the reflective glow of her blinding sunlight, getting just enough heat to maintain my tan without the threat of a third-degree burn.

  But I’m also not a pushover or a lackey. Put me on the field, and I’ll murder my opponent. Take me to a party, and I’ll prance-dance just seductively enough to make all the boys take note. I like the sweat and the muscle ache and the burning oxygen that stings my lungs when I push my body further than my own brain thinks it can go, as much as I like the power that comes from staking claim to my feminine mystique.

  But if I’m being honest, sometimes I get caught up in the moment and push back against my place in the pecking order. Like winning the AP Latin award Gigi thought was in the bag or dating the Horsemen’s star quarterback. Suddenly, the line between coconspirator and competitor blurs. She forgets to invite me on a weekend trip to the mall, or I’m left out of a group dinner at the Alp. Suddenly, there’s not enough room in the car that’s going to the Saturday night rendezvous in the woods.

  When those moments come, I prostrate myself before the queen quick and do whatever I can to reclaim my place in her shadow. Because, with a single mom working multiple jobs to keep my life normalish, a dad who’s hasn’t sent me a birthday card in years, and the really weird stuff I do in my sleep, I have enough drama on my plate. Why would I threaten the most stability I have in my life by crossing Gigi?

  I guess that’s the thing about drama though. No matter how hard you try to avoid it, when it finds you, there’s nothing you can do but hope it ends in a marriage and not a death.

  As I look across the lunchroom to where Gigi, Amber, and my other former friends ignore me from a slightly elevated counter, I realize the answer to my circumstantial friendship question is yes.

  I watch as kids from t
he upper social syndicates stop by to offer their sympathies—jocks, student council members, even a few of the young teachers seem to be jumping at the opportunity to make it into Gigi MacDonald’s good book. And why shouldn’t they? The poor girl was attacked in her sleep, nearly murdered by someone who was supposed to be her friend.

  Meanwhile, the less-than-beautiful people, the silent majority of the IHS student body, smile at me with awkward approval. That my actions were unintentional doesn’t seem to matter. Within hours of the attack, there was an Instagram account revealing details from the stolen police report and leaked photos of a battered, makeup-free Gigi, the fresh bruises on her neck and collarbone red and raw.

  While most of the social media response was sympathetic to her, with plenty of people immediately condemning me as a monster, the growing number of likes on the RIPGigi Facebook page and Twitter feeds hailing the #psychoattheslumberparty pointed to a far more disturbing trend. The disenfranchised had finally found their voice. And they were calling me a hero.

  Knowing Gigi, it’s this insubordination that enrages her the most. My having challenged her social autocracy might be even worse to her than the actual threat of death.

  “You know, Tessa,” I say pathetically. “No one’s mad at you. You weren’t excommunicated. You don’t have to slum it with me.”

  “Are you kidding?” she says as she jabs me with a carrot stick, her long, russet-brown fingers contrasting with the ghostly glow of the ranch dressing. “And miss my opportunity to be the inkonsequential Kourtney to your killer Kim? No way, sister. I’m sharing in your interrogation-room spotlight! Besides, we should enjoy it while it lasts. Come college acceptance letter time, some stressed out senior’s bound to off himself and steal your thunder.”

  “That’s a little dark, Tessa,” a husky male voice chimes in. “And maybe not the perspective Sarah needs right now.”

  Jamie Washington. Star quarterback, student council member, honor roll recipient two years running, and a bit of a savant when it comes to sucking face. Tessa once said that if Michael Jordan had a baby with Michael B. Jordan, it’d look like Jamie. I don’t disagree, which makes being his ex that much harder.