Dream On

by Kerstin Gier

  I couldn’t help smiling. “I left a few security precautions in place outside her dream door, just to be on the safe side. Maybe you should do the same with your door.”

  “You think so?” He had already turned to go, but then he turned back and looked suspiciously at me. “Who’d be interested in my dreams? I’m not involved in any of this. And I very much hope you’re not thinking of taking advantage of my trust and visiting me in my dreams.”

  “Never! Except in an emergency,” I assured him, and quickly switched off the bedside lamp. It was easier to go on talking in the dark. “Grayson?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks. Sometimes I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Hesitantly, I added, “And I’m sorry. I mean, sorry you aren’t getting enough sleep because of me. That you feel you have to worry about me. And that we destroyed that horrible bush.”

  I heard Grayson sigh. “That’s all right.”

  “No, it isn’t. You really are the best, nicest”—and best-looking!—“big brother anyone could wish for.”

  He laughed quietly. “And you’re the most annoying … and blotchiest little sister I’ve ever had. Sleep well, Liv. Everything will look better in the morning.”

  TITTLE-TATTLE BLOG

  The Frognal Academy Tittle-Tattle Blog, with all the latest gossip, the best rumors, and the hottest scandals from our school.

  ABOUT ME:

  My name is Secrecy—I’m right here among you, and I know all your secrets.

  13 January

  So there was I thinking that without Jasper to call the referee animal names, start fights, or strip off his jersey in the middle of a game, watching the Frognal Flames would be boring, but guess what? I was dead wrong. Okay, so it might have been better if we’d won, but apart from that I can’t complain. It was a great show.

  And am I ever glad not to be a boy—all that testosterone can’t be much fun. Seems like it’s even more unpredictable than PMS. Arthur has just set a new record. With two obvious fouls just eight minutes into the game, wow, Gabriel didn’t really have to call the ref a blind, beer-bellied sad sack. And as for Henry—terrific to see the elegance with which he missed the basket on all of his free throws, without reacting at all.

  A word in the ear of Eric Sarstedt: We like you fine, we really do, and you’re trying hard to stand in for Jasper. But never mind that, just keep your jersey on, okay? If we want to see hairy backs, we can simply go to the zoo.

  After the game, Grayson, as captain of our team and deputy chief editor of reflexx magazine, gave his co-editor and girlfriend, Emily Clark, an interview. I’m glad to say we can let you read it—an exclusive, just for you.

  Emily: “I need a statement for reflexx. A word or so explaining why you lost. The extra practice doesn’t seem to have done your team much good.”

  Grayson: “They just need a good night’s sleep. Right, I’m off.”

  Emily: “Do I put that in?”

  Grayson: “No, of course not. We’ll do it later, okay? I have to join the others.”

  Emily: “Later’s no good. You know our deadline. Just a sentence.”

  Grayson: “My God, Emily, think something up yourself.”

  Emily: “Grayson Spencer is disappointed in his team members. Their adolescent behavior has foiled his best efforts yet again. One really wonders why he invests so much time and energy in this silly sport and his team, when he could be concentrating on more important things in his last year at school.”

  Grayson: “Silly sport? Basketball? Because it doesn’t entail tormenting horses by plaiting their manes into little braids?”

  Emily: “Because it means practicing three times a week with a bunch of weak-minded idiots and the effect is catching.”

  Short pause.

  Grayson: “Okay, that sounds super. Put it in the magazine.”

  Emily: “Grayson. I didn’t mean it like that. Wait…”

  Grayson: (has gone already).

  As I always say, couples shouldn’t work together. It’s bound to end in tears.

  Can’t wait to see the report that will appear in reflexx on Wednesday. Or maybe it won’t appear at all. ☺

  See you later!

  Secrecy

  PS—Liv and Mia Silver, a.k.a. the ax murderesses, a.k.a. the spectacled snakes who go around chopping down trees, weren’t there to watch the game—and I for one didn’t miss them. My heart still bleeds when I think of that beautiful topiary peacock. How about all of you?

  19

  MR. WU WAS STANDING in his fighting gear outside Mia’s door like a soldier of the Royal Guard, except that instead of a gun he had the gong beater over his shoulder. However, I wasn’t sure whether he had been on duty while I was awake as well. After all, he was my dream creation, and if I was not asleep, then how could he exist here?

  “No intruder has ventured to come to blows with the Tiger’s Claw of the sky,” he informed me.

  “Did anyone try it, then?” I asked intently, although at the same moment I thought that a figure whom I had only imagined could hardly have seen anything that I hadn’t seen. (Yes, I know, a rather complicated thought. The kind to be avoided if you don’t want to get your brain tied in knots.)

  “All crows under the sun are black.” Mr. Wu nodded his head back and forth. “There was that stranger with the hat.…”

  Hat? The stranger could only have been Senator Tod. Or rather, Dr. Anderson, Anabel’s psychiatrist. And did that mean that he had really been here, or just that Mr. Wu, as part of myself, was only saying what I was afraid of? But what could Senator Tod want from Mia? Maybe he had just passed by in search of someone else—me, for instance.

  “This really is complicated,” I murmured, casting a quick look at Henry’s black door. When I had stepped into the corridor and saw that it was still right opposite mine, my stomach had contracted painfully. Although I told myself I was here only for Mia, I mustn’t pretend—secretly, I’d hoped to meet Henry.

  I’d refused to speak to him all Saturday. After sleeping in until eleven, I ought to have jumped out of bed fresh as a daisy, but you don’t jump out of bed fresh as a daisy when you’ve caught your own boyfriend in a whirlpool with a naked woman and cried half the night. I for one had the feeling that there was lead in my veins instead of blood. Or poison.

  In spite of the extra practice and the basketball game, Henry had left me seven voice mails and tried the landline three times, but in the evening, when the game was over and I finally felt strong enough to face him without instantly bursting into tears, or screaming, or doing both at once, radio silence suddenly set in. No more calls, no texts.

  And when someone rang the doorbell, it was only Emily, wanting to see Florence and discuss plans for the twins’ birthday party, of course without Grayson. They were taking over the living room for that, so Mia and I had to leave it ourselves. Although I didn’t really mind, because all I wanted to do this evening was lie in bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling terrible. First I took a bath, staring at the bathroom ceiling, and likewise feeling terrible. Maybe it was the effect of the hot water, or maybe it was also because I still had to catch up on sleep, or it was a kind of protective function of the body simply to switch off in stressful situations, but anyway, my eyes closed as soon as I was in bed. My last thought was for the dream corridor. In no circumstances did I want to go into it today. For one thing, I didn’t know whether Henry would be waiting for me there, and for another, I wanted him to wait in vain. If he was waiting.

  Yes, well. Here I was, in spite of my good intentions—and here Henry wasn’t.

  “First words get confused, then ideas get confused, and finally so do the facts,” said Mr. Wu.

  “I guess you’re right about that.” I sighed and patted his shoulder. “Go on guarding this door, please. You’re doing fine.”

  So now what? I turned on my own axis. My eyes focused on Henry’s door again. The brass lion’s head and the fittings of the three locks, one above another, shone as if
freshly polished in the dim light of the corridor. For a few seconds, I stared at the words DREAM ON, carved into the wood in playfully curving characters, then I just walked away. I must get out of here. I ran down the corridor, turned the corner to the left, and didn’t stop until I saw the next door that I knew. It was Arthur’s, and for a split second I actually thought of knocking at it. Arthur might know the answers to my questions.

  I quickly let my hand drop again. Had I really come to this—looking for Arthur’s company out of sheer desperation? I could have kicked myself, but I never got around to it, because suddenly I felt sure that I wasn’t alone. It wasn’t the first time that the corridor had been lying there perfectly calm and peaceful, yet I could sense someone else’s presence.

  And I wasn’t wrong. Senator Tod came out of the shadows where the corridor next branched. Along with his cloak and the slouch hat pulled right down over his forehead.

  “Well, well, if it isn’t the leopard girl,” he said, and he sounded positively glad to see me.

  I was neither particularly shocked nor especially afraid, which surprised me a little.

  “If it isn’t the Senator,” I replied. “Dressed to the nines as usual. Although that leather cloak reminds me a bit of the costumes in cheap B movies.”

  Senator Tod put back his head and let his laughter ring out. By now this gruesome sound, however, had lost a good deal of its effect on me. I didn’t even get goose bumps. He fell silent and came a step closer. Now I could see the watery blue eyes under the brim of his hat.

  “Is that by any chance a spider on your arm?”

  It was. A large, hairy tarantula was slowly climbing up my sleeve. It was only with difficulty that I suppressed a shriek. If this hadn’t been a dream, I’d have hopped around, screaming at the top of my voice. To be honest, I’d have done that even with a spider only half the size of this one. I wasn’t very keen on animals with more than four legs, so I had spent quite a lot of time screaming while we were in India. But I wasn’t going to give Senator Tod the satisfaction. And this wasn’t real life. In real life, I was lying safe and sound in my bed, in a house that was a total no-go area for tarantulas.

  “You know, I’ve never met a girl who wasn’t afraid of spiders,” said Senator Tod, gloating. As he saw it, I was rigid with terror. “Psychologically, there’s a simple explanation. The living creatures we fear most are those whose physical appearance is least like that of human beings.”

  It took me a bit of an effort, but I put out a hand and stroked the tarantula’s hairy back.

  “So nice and fluffy,” I said. “Have a feel of it yourself. I think it’s called confrontation therapy, isn’t it?”

  I was expecting him either to pounce on the tarantula or turn it into an even bigger spider (which is what I’d have done in his place), and I was preparing to turn myself into a brimstone yellow butterfly. But Senator Tod just gave me a crafty smile.

  “Oh, very brave, little one,” he said. “But you can’t fool me. I see just what’s going on inside you: dilated pupils, pulse beating faster, higher frequency of breathing.… Oh, look at that, here come some more.…”

  Two more tarantulas had appeared between us and were making for my legs. And yes, my breathing really was a little irregular.

  “I count on subtle effects, you see,” Senator Tod went on, sadistically clicking his tongue, and two more spiders turned up. This time they came scrambling down from the walls.

  This was getting to be more than I could take.

  “You can keep your eye on one spider—but two?” The watery blue eyes were watching me intently. “It’s the unpredictably quick movements that make them so frightening. Did you know that they can jump a long way?”

  “Is that so?” As the spiders came closer, I grew two extra arms. And two extra legs. All of them very hairy. As Senator Tod watched, I turned myself into an enormous tarantula, and it wasn’t even difficult—I had the little brutes right there before my eyes to be copied. Before my eight eyes, to be precise, two large and six small eyes, all of them staring at Senator Tod.

  Taken completely by surprise, he staggered back, and suddenly held up a little bottle filled with some kind of bright, shining liquid. He seemed surprised by it himself, but he held it out in my direction and shouted, “Don’t come any closer!”

  I wasn’t going to, but I burst out laughing. Someone had been watching The Lord of the Rings once too often. “The light of Eärendil? I’m afraid that won’t work here.” I was laughing so hard that I could hardly keep my balance on my thin spidery legs, while my huge body swayed back and forth, but I managed to exchange the little bottle in Senator Tod’s hand for one of the tarantulas on the floor. I moved the other three to his slouch hat. And then, because my peals of laughter seemed to have detracted a bit from my terrifying appearance, I changed back to my own shape and smoothed down my T-shirt.

  That had done me good. I ran through Mr. Wu’s large selection of wise sayings for one to suit the situation, but I could think of only one in a hurry, and it wasn’t really appropriate. All the same, on principle, I came out with it: “When the wind of change blows, some build walls, some build windmills.”

  However, Senator Tod wasn’t interested in wise sayings. He was having difficulty shaking off the spiders he had imagined into being himself, as I noticed with satisfaction. When he had finally done it, Arthur’s door opened, and Arthur came out.

  “Am I in the way?” he inquired, looking from me to Senator Tod and back again.

  “Not at all,” I said as Arthur’s door closed behind him. “Frodo here and I are just having a shot at applied psychology. Did you know that…” But I got no further, because Senator Tod had straightened up, raised his arm, and thrown something that looked like a bolt of lightning at me. It would have hit me, too, if a kind of energy field hadn’t formed in the corridor right in front of me like a wall. The bolt of lightning bounced off it and shattered into a thousand tiny sparks.

  Arthur looked surprised, and only now did I realize that he wasn’t the one who had come to my rescue.

  I spun around. Henry. He was standing a little way behind me in the corridor, holding the palm of his hand up in front of Senator Tod. At the sight of him, my heart started racing the way it ought really to have raced when I saw the spiders just now. Where had he come from all of a sudden? Had he been here all the time? Had he perhaps been watching me and following me all along?

  He was looking good, better than ever, pale, with bright-gray eyes and a slight smile on his lips. With a casual movement, he dug his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Arthur applauded.

  Senator Tod seemed to be temporarily speechless. He was staring at all three of us with hostility.

  “Who are you supposed to be impersonating now, Senator? Thor, the god of thunder? Or Zeus?” Henry shook his head pityingly. “Delusions of grandeur, black leather, lightning—a clear case of megalomania. But I’m sure you made the same diagnosis yourself long ago, didn’t you, Dr. Anderson?”

  Senator Tod looked as if he’d been caught in the act of wrongdoing. He straightened his hat.

  “Dr. Anderson?” Arthur repeated.

  Henry nodded. “Dr. Otto Anderson. Anabel’s psychiatrist in the hospital. He’s a bit fatter and shorter in real life, and he wears glasses, but, hey, who wants to look the same in dreams as in real life?”

  It was obvious that this news took Arthur completely by surprise. His face expressed a whole range of emotions in turn. Astonishment. Understanding. And finally anger. His jaw muscles were working.

  “Did Anabel send you? Are you letting a girl of eighteen exploit you?”

  Dr. Anderson had recovered a little, and seemed to be gradually getting his usual self-confidence back. “Your girlfriend, Anabel, is right—you three really are still children,” he said with a brief, scornful laugh. “I don’t let anyone exploit me, certainly not a schizoid girl like her. However, I’m grateful to her for showing me the way into this dream world. Because unlike her
, I soon realized that you can do more here than play games.”

  “So what can you do instead? Rule the world or something?” inquired Henry. “I’m not trying to probe your mind too far, but you still have a lot to learn if that’s what you want.”

  “Where’s Anabel? And what does she have to do with you?” asked Arthur.

  Senator Tod made a throwaway gesture. “The poor child thought that maybe she could get out of the hospital by manipulating me in dreams. But I’m afraid her plan didn’t work—I don’t let anyone manipulate me. However, I must say that I find the possibilities of this place fascinating. Just for a moment I thought I had lost my own mind.…”

  “How about Anabel?” I asked. My heart was still racing, but I’d stopped looking at Henry. It seemed a better idea to concentrate on Senator Tod.

  “Anabel … yes. I’d have shown myself very appreciative, but unfortunately the girl didn’t want to cooperate. And I could really have done with her help—all this is still entirely new to me. But characters like Anabel don’t appreciate it when their plans don’t work. You young people will know that better than anyone.” He laughed again. He was regaining his self-confidence with every passing second. Oddly enough, he no longer seemed to me quite so ridiculous, but very dangerous instead. “And because I’m afraid she didn’t want to play by my rules, I had to … Well, let’s just say she’s taking a little rest.”

  I was coming out in goose bumps all over now.

  “With young women patients of her sort, one always has to go carefully—highly intelligent, an influential father, I didn’t want to take any risks,” Senator Tod went on calmly. He seemed to relish our shocked silence. “But luckily, as the psychiatrist treating her case, I had all sorts of ways and means at my disposal.”

  “What did you do to her?” I whispered. Images of the whole arsenal of depressing movie clichés about psychiatric treatment were unreeling before my mind’s eye: electric shocks, straitjackets, lobotomies, and I saw Anabel tied down to a bed, staring into space with empty eyes.