The Waking Dark

by Robin Wasserman

  The sofa was L-shaped. They lay head to head, their fingers nearly touching at the joint.

  “Can’t,” he said. Then, because he didn’t have to see her face in the dark, because he wanted to tell someone and for some reason, he wanted the someone to be her, “I don’t mind. When I sleep… I’ve been having these… dreams.”

  “Pretty sure that’s natural in a growing boy,” she said, her tone unable to match the joke in her words. “Testosterone and all.”

  “Dreams about that day in the drugstore,” he said. “The shootings. Everyone dies. Again. Only this time…”

  “This time you’re the one holding the gun.”

  His breath caught. “How did you know?”

  She hesitated. “It just figured. But, Daniel, it’s only a dream. You know that, right? It’s not like you’re seeing the future or something.”

  There was nothing but to say it: “I wake up in the drugstore. I wake up in the drugstore holding a gun.”

  “You mean, in the dream?”

  “I mean in real life. In the middle of the night. I wake up there, and my hands are bloody from broken glass, and I’ve got a gun, and I don’t know how I got there, and…” He’d thought it would feel better to say it. But it didn’t. “I thought I was going crazy. Maybe I am. Crazy.”

  She shifted on the couch, and when she settled back into place, her fingertips rested atop his palm. Without letting himself think whether it had been an accident, he closed his fingers over hers. She let him. Her hand was cold.

  “For me it was a knife.”

  He held on to her fingers, afraid to speak and break the spell.

  “My uncle’s knife. First in my dreams, then – like you said. I woke up, and there it was. In my hand. Somehow. And it was like it… this is going to sound stupid, but kind of like it…”

  “Like it wanted you to use it?”

  “You too?”

  “Me too.”

  There was a sound: a ragged breath, or a choked sob. Some explosion of air and emotion.

  “But it doesn’t have to mean anything,” he said. “It’s like you said, it’s not the future. If it’s the R8-G, maybe knowing makes it better. We don’t have to do what it wants.”

  “But what if…?” The half-asked question hung between them. “Nothing,” she said finally. “It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s over now.”

  “What is?”

  “I told you, nothing. Anyway, maybe the dreams will stop now. I haven’t had one since… well, not for a couple of days now.”

  Daniel realized that he hadn’t, either. Not since the night Jule had shown up at his door.

  “Not since we’ve all been together,” he said. “It’s like we’re stronger now. Stronger than it.”

  “That’s stupid,” she said. “All we are now is screwed.”

  “I know that. But still… it doesn’t feel that way. It feels better.”

  A shorter exhalation of air this time. Only a sigh, soft and defeated. “Maybe,” she admitted. “It does.”

  “I was looking forward to Bali,” he said.

  “Tahiti.”

  “There, too.”

  “But now…”

  “Stuck in Oleander for the rest of our days,” Jule said. “Maybe we should be glad we don’t have much longer to go. You think it’ll be a bomb?”

  “I don’t know, Jule. We shouldn’t think about —”

  “That’s too messy, I think. Too big. If it were the government, maybe. But a private company? They’ve got soldiers, they’ve got tanks – I think it’ll be on-the-ground combat. Like in Iraq or something. A guy with a gun kicks in the door and sprays everyone inside with bullets, and next thing you know, we’re all rotting in some mass grave.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “Or some kind of toxic gas,” she said. “That would be poetic, right? Less fun for them, maybe. If I had a tank, I’d want to use it.”

  “We’ll get out,” Daniel said. “And we’ll tell people what’s happening, and they’ll stop it in time. We’ll save everyone.”

  “Superheroes. You’re just like Milo.”

  If only it were that easy. “I’ve never been like Milo.”

  “But you really believe it. That we’re going to save the day.”

  It seemed suddenly important that she believe it. “Yes.”

  “At least, we know it’s coming,” she said quietly. “And when it does, we won’t have to be alone.”

  He kept his hold on her fingers, and wrapped his other hand around hers. He tipped his head back, and met her eyes. The pupils were huge, drinking in the night. He could just make out the curves of her face, the whites of her eyes, the shock of purple slashing across her forehead, the bandage on her cheek. She went very still in his grasp and then, abruptly, sat up.

  But she let him hold on.

  Daniel sat, too. Their linked hands lay between them, carefully ignored by both, as if to acknowledge them would necessitate immediate release. Her skin was much softer than he had expected. Her fingers were so small.

  “You better act now while you still have the chance,” she said, a new sharpness in her voice cutting through the dreamlike intimacy of the night.

  “What?” She couldn’t have read his mind; he hadn’t even made it up yet. This wasn’t anything so clear-cut as want, or desire – those he understood, even if he’d never quite been able to act on them. This was… like standing at the edge of a diving board, or a cliff, gravity taunting him, eager to take its inevitable course. This was like the dream, like the gun, and he couldn’t help thinking that if he closed his eyes and let himself fall, he would wake up to find himself in her arms.

  “Sleeping Beauty up there,” she said. “Little Miss Dream Come True.”

  “What?” he said again, now genuinely confused.

  “Not that I encourage making out with the unconscious,” she said. “Fairy tale or not. But she has to wake up sometime, and then I recommend you make your move before the whole food-for-worms thing.”

  “Are we talking about Cass?”

  “Playing dumb probably isn’t going to work for you. I don’t get the sense she goes for stupid.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “I see the way you look at her,” she said.

  “And how’s that?”

  “Like you can’t believe your luck. We’re in the middle of the apocalypse here, but every time she’s in the room, you act like you won the lottery. No, better, like some rock star in a bikini just parachuted into your living room and handed you a bottle of suntan lotion.”

  “That’s… very specific. You really think that’s how I look at her?”

  “Really and specifically.”

  It was too embarrassing to consider that it might be true. And all the more embarrassing to explain that looking at Cass was like admiring a picture in a magazine, something glossy but flat, and more than a little unreal. He’d watched Cass from a distance, while Jule was here. Up close, too close, close enough to see the rough spots and touch the imperfections. Close enough to scare him. But he couldn’t tell her that, any more than he could tell her that Cass made him wish he were someone else, while Jule just made him want to be brave.

  “You always do this, you know,” he said.

  “I’m not sure you know me well enough to know I ‘always’ do anything.”

  “You get kind of mean. When you’re nervous.”

  “I’m mean under almost all circumstances. It’s my default.”

  He grinned – it took her a moment to get why.

  “And I’m not nervous,” she added quickly.

  It was an obvious lie, which was surprising, but not nearly so much as the fact that he wasn’t nervous. Nor, any longer, was he confused.

  He was terrified – but somehow, that didn’t seem to matter.

  “I thought I was in love with her,” he said. “Cass.”

  “Yes, we just covered that.”

  “But that was before I even knew her. T
he real her.”

  “The real her doesn’t seem so bad. If you can overlook that whole brainwashed-murderer thing.”

  If he told her that maybe the problem was he hadn’t known himself, she would laugh in his face.

  “Okay, it was before I knew you,” he said.

  “And that’s relevant how?”

  Show, don’t tell, their English teacher had drilled into them the year before. It wasn’t until now that he understood her point.

  He let go of Jule’s hand, and cupped her face. Crossing the distance between seemed at once impossible and the easiest thing he’d ever done. It wasn’t like stepping into an abyss; it wasn’t like falling. It wasn’t like anything. It was only what it was: Jule, soft in some places and prickly in others, tough all over, in his arms. Jule, the smell of Jule, sweat and clove cigarettes and leather. Jule, in the dark, a solid shadow, never afraid. Jule’s eyelids, pale. Jule’s cheeks, smooth. Jule’s lips, soft.

  It was kissing Jule. Not falling after all but, finally, landing on solid ground.

  She didn’t know she was going to push him away until she’d done it. As soon as she did, she wanted to take it back. But the space between them had opened up again. Daniel was on his feet, and she was shaking her head, and of course he took it as a no intended for him, because who would say no to themselves?

  “Sorry,” she said, unsure what she was apologizing for, unsure of everything. “I didn’t mean…” She didn’t want anyone to touch her.

  She wanted him to touch her.

  She could be bold. Move back toward him, close the space, take what she wanted – if she knew what she wanted, if her body hadn’t gone rigid, if her lungs weren’t so tight, if she could trust him enough to explain. If she could trust him.

  She was afraid if he tried again, she would slap him or freeze up in his arms or, worst, cry; she was afraid he wouldn’t try again.

  Her lip throbbed where Baz had drawn blood.

  Everything hurt.

  “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have,” he said, and so it was too late.

  Because going back to sleep – or at least lying quietly together in the dark – seemed too intimate for the sudden awkwardness between them, they retreated to business. As if talking through their impossible circumstances yet again would change the fact that they were surrounded by concentric circles of enemies.

  “If you think about it,” Jule said, “we do have one weapon. The town itself. The people. If we aim them the right way…”

  “If we start a war, you mean? Set them on the soldiers? Can you imagine how many people would end up dead?”

  “They’re not soldiers,” she said. “And people are going to end up dead anyway, even if we don’t do anything. You don’t think they have a right to know what’s coming, too?”

  “They’re not in their right mind.”

  “Or maybe they’re just doing exactly what they want to do, for the first time in their lives. Maybe they’re more themselves than they’ve ever been. Maybe the R8-G is doing them a favor.”

  “You can’t believe that.”

  “Inhibitions aren’t always good,” she said, but that was getting too close, and they both edged away.

  “We don’t even know if this is curable. What if it’s not, and we let them loose on the world?”

  “Maybe the world deserves it.”

  “We’d be responsible for everything they did after that, Jule. Everyone they hurt.”

  She was sorry for him then, sorrier than for herself. Because he actually believed that; because it was how he had always lived. “You can’t be responsible for everything, Daniel. You know that, right?”

  “I’m going to sleep,” he said, not unkindly, but with finality.

  This time, without discussing it, they lay toe to toe, their heads pointed in opposite directions.

  She did not sleep.

  “You awake?” Jule asked.

  For a moment, he wondered if maybe he had been sleeping after all, and had dreamed everything, their truth swapping, their kiss, his humiliation, and this was his chance to do it again, for the first time, right this time – or to be smart and not do it at all. Then, for another moment, he considered keeping his mouth shut. But, “What do you think?”

  “I think I figured something out,” she said. “A plan.”

  “For getting out?”

  “What if we don’t have to get out and get help?” she asked. “What if there were a way to make help come to us?”

  Cass woke to Grace’s dead eyes, and choked off a scream. Her head throbbed. Grace was fuzzy around the edges. She was in a strange room, but strangely familiar, on a soft bed, with no bars on the door and no guns – and Grace.

  Maybe, she thought, she was still asleep.

  As she puzzled it out, and the memories of the previous day trickled back, she remembered. The R8-G; the answer. At that, she couldn’t help herself: she smiled.

  Grace slapped her.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Cass said. It sounded feeble. “They drugged me. I didn’t know what I was doing. I couldn’t help myself.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know. If I could have stopped it, I would have.”

  “But you didn’t. So Owen’s dead.”

  “You tried to shoot me,” Cass said. She was foggy and feverish and thought she might throw up. The light burned her eyes. “You actually pointed a gun at me and pulled the trigger.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you… do you feel weird at all, Grace? Like, different?”

  “They told me everything,” Grace said. She yanked the pillow out from beneath Cass’s head. “Children are immune, remember?”

  Cass tried to push herself up into a sitting position, but a wave of dizziness knocked her back to the mattress. The impact set off an explosion in her skull. “I don’t feel well,” she said. “Can we talk later? After I sleep?”

  “You can close your eyes if you want,” Grace said. “Maybe it’s better that way. Poetic or something.”

  “What’s better?”

  “As long as you know it’s coming. And why.” The pillow descended, and her world went first white, then black.

  Grace was small, but not too small to bear down. There was nothing for Cass to breathe; there was no breath, only a tightening, then a burning. Her skin tingled with panic. This was terror; this was her lungs swelling to fill her chest, to rise up her throat, to grasp and beg and hurt for the air that lay just beyond the soft cotton. This was floating away; this was death.

  “That’s what it felt like.” The voice came from the other side, so far away. “That’s what you did to him.”

  Her mouth opened, screaming, screaming noiselessly, tears soaking the cotton. She could feel Grace’s hands through the pillow, pressing down, holding down, her lungs, her pain, her guilt.

  It would be poetic, she thought, her arms spasming.

  It wasn’t my fault, she thought, her body forcing itself on, rebelling against all things final.

  It wasn’t me, she thought, and it still wasn’t, neither her mind nor her will but her body, her heart pumping furiously, her blood rushing, her muscles flexing with such force that Grace flew backward and landed on the floor with a noisy clatter and cry. Cass’s chest heaved with the sweet, fresh heaven of one full breath after another. It wasn’t her, but she was the one who got to live.

  It had taken all the strength she had, and she collapsed to the bed. There were footsteps in the hallway, murmurs of concern, a bursting through the door, a wait for explanations.

  “Grace tripped,” Cass said. Because this was between them. Because neither had had the chance to decide. “I woke up, and she was going to get me some water, and she tripped.”

  Jule helped the girl to her feet. Daniel rushed to Cass’s side, rested a cool hand on her forehead. “You’re covered in sweat,” he said.

  “A girl loves to hear that,” Jule told him.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “How do y
ou feel?”

  “Alive,” Cass said, and drew in another greedy breath, and another.

  “Are you all right?” Jule asked Grace.

  “I… tripped,” she said. She would not look at Cass, at any of them.

  “Cass, think you can get up?” Jule said. “We don’t have much time, if we’re going to make this work.”