“Uh-huh. Sure,” Sam said drily. “Just an FYI, I almost drowned in swim class. They switched me to ballroom dancing. Think I can cha-cha my way through this?”
He grinned and set off again. Sam gingerly moved forward, just trying to stay vertical. “So… what are the ‘tribes’?”
“The different groups of Wakers. In this sector, there’s the Achieves, the OCDeeds, the Juve—”
“Slow down! The Achieves?! The OCwhos?! What are these, like, code names?”
“Sorta, yeah. I don’t know how much Fletch told you—”
“Fletch? You mean, Dr. Fletcher?” Sam would have paused for this line of questioning, but she was managing the forward float-walk better and didn’t want to lose her momentum. “Did he detach your soul, too?!”
“Yep. Fletch did a lot of the Wakers in this sector. I can’t believe he didn’t brag to you about it.” They were cutting across a lawn, and Byron walked through a tree. Right through it. And that seems normal now. But she still cut around the trunk, not quite ready to be absorbing bark into her essence. “Did he give you his line about the darkness revealing everything?” Byron said as he reappeared on the other side.
That did sound familiar. “Oh yeah. It was on my sleep study follow-up. Something about people showing who they really are in the dark. What does that mean?”
“Well, I guess the best way to explain it is, your nighttime self is the opposite of your daytime one.”
Sam processed this for a moment, then, “Oh, so my SleepWaker self is gonna be normal?” The bitterness in her voice surprised even her.
Byron gave her a once-over; he seemed to be trying to figure out how, or if, to respond. “Anyway… that’s what the tribes are. You just kinda go with your people, once you know who they are. And who you are.”
They were crossing the street, a large park in front of them. As they walked through the pools of light from the streetlamps, Sam noticed that she and Byron cast no shadows. Just like vampires. Teen vampires wandering the night looking for their people. I’d write a YA book if someone hadn’t already done that. Sullenly, she mumbled, “Why do I need to go with anybody? I do better by myself. You’re not with a tribe.”
“That’s different. I’m a Roamer.” Before Sam could question this curious title, Byron continued, “And to answer your question, even if it takes a while to find your tribe, you do because it’s safer. Especially for a girl—”
“Especially for a girl?” Now that really frosted her doughnut. “What is this, 1950s sleepwalking? Maybe I should wear an apron over my jammies and join a tribe that cooks and cleans for the strong male souls!”
Byron sighed. “You didn’t let me finish my sentence.” He stopped abruptly and faced her. Sam also stopped, backstroking a bit, as it would not be cool to mist through another person’s soul body, no matter how delish that person was. “I was going to say, especially for a girl like you.”
This left Sam feeling all confuddled again. First of all, Mr. Roamer was still identifying her as a girl, which, she was pretty sure was, like, SleepWaker sexism or something. Secondly, duh, she was a girl, but why would that be a safety matter if she didn’t even have a real body to protect? Thirdly, dude was looking at her with such a weird expression of understanding and compassion it was making her heart—or whatever that thing was in the center of her pretend chest—do flip-flops. Fourthly—
But there was no fourthly. Because Sam had just seen them—the other Wakers—and her eyes widened in awe.
“What?” Byron looked over his shoulder. “Oh, right. Meet your first tribe, Sam. The Juvenold.”
Running, jumping, sliding, climbing. Teenagers pushing each other on swings. Tweenagers sitting on top of the monkey bars. All pajama-clad, all barefoot, all shouting and laughing. Sam moved closer, this time hardly noticing herself gliding through space. There were gangly teens piled on each end of a seesaw with green frog seats and preteens shooting out of the end of a rainbow tube slide. How could there be so many? How could there be this many souls freed from sleepwalking bodies? I’m not the only one. I’m not alone. She’d never had a thought like that in her life.
Her eyes fell on a girl standing on the rubber seat of a swing and pumping her legs like mad, going higher and higher on each pass. Sam gasped. Alyssa Del Rio?! Alyssa was in the eighth grade at Wallace! But it was only the bright blue hair whipping in the wind that clued Sam in; other than that, Alyssa was unrecognizable. By day, she was an all-black-wearing, eye-rolly girl who sported a prodigious face full of makeup and bragged about all the high school seniors she was dating, notorious for her response of “What… Evvvv… Errrr…” to any question posed by her long-suffering teachers.
But that was not the Alyssa that Sam was observing in the middle of the night; the Alyssa rocking the swing was barefaced, smiling ear to ear, and singing “100 Bottles of Milk on the Wall” at the top of her lungs. Sam wasn’t sure what was more mind-blowing: that there was another sleepwalker at Wallace, or that this was who that sleepwalker turned into in the darkness.
“They’re something, huh?”
Sam started. She had almost forgotten Byron was there.
“So… according to Fletch’s theory, this is who they really are, inside?” Sam said slowly. “Like, they were sleepwalking because their souls actually wanted to ride on frog seesaws?”
“Well, if you’re gonna bottom-line it, yeah,” mused Byron.
“But wait, there’s one thing I don’t get. How come they can hold on to the swings and sit up on the bars without sliding right through?” Sam lifted her mist fingers. “It’s not like we’re, you know, real people with workable hands or anything.”
Byron appeared to be mildly offended by this. “Uh, we are real people. You just have to practice being solid.”
“Right, right, ‘solid.’ And how does that work?”
He looked at her without a shred of irony. “You have to believe.”
This was too much. “And if I clap my hands, the fairies won’t die, either?”
Byron kept his steady gaze. “I’m serious. You have to believe in the weight and possibilities of your own soul.”
Sam smirked and looked away. “Oh, well, then, I’m in big trouble.”
“HEY! HEY, YOU! I KNOW YOU!” Alyssa had slowed her mad swinging. She leapt from her wobbly perch and dashed over to Byron and Sam. “I know you from school, right? You’re in seventh?” Her grin was so big and infectious that Sam couldn’t help smiling herself.
“Yeah. Hi, Alyssa. I’m Sam.”
“Sam!” Alyssa made a move to give her a hug, but Byron intervened.
“Whoa! Hang on, Juvie, Sam doesn’t know how to be solid yet. Don’t freak her out on her first night by falling through her.”
Sam mouthed a “thank you” to him.
“Your first night?! Awesome! Come and play with us!” Alyssa jumped up and down, spun like a hyperactive toddler, and fell on her butt. Laughing uproariously, she bounced back onto her feet and looked at Sam with fervid anticipation.
“Um…” Sam was laughing now, too, although possibly with an edge of hysteria. “I don’t think I’m a… Juvie.…”
“You don’t have to be,” Byron interjected. “You can try out all the tribes until you find where you belong.” He directed his next sentence at Alyssa, who was now scraping her blue hair into a ponytail fountain springing from the top of her head. “But since Sam is still a bit, uh, hazy, maybe another night.”
“Sure! Cool! Whatever!” Alyssa’s catchphrase took a perky twist that Sam wished her teachers could hear. “And listen, Sam, I probably won’t talk to you at school, but don’t take it personally, ’kay?”
“I won’t,” Sam promised. “I get it.”
“Neato!” Alyssa crowed, then proceeded to skip back to the playground, colliding with another Juvenold. They both toppled to the ground, screaming with laughter. “This is Minnie!” Alyssa shrieked, pointing at the slender girl who was doubled over, guffawing. “I call her… Minnie Mo
use!” This sent both of them back into paroxysms of glee.
“Wow.” Sam shook her head in disbelief.
“Right?”
“You have no idea who that person is in the daytime.”
Byron grinned. “Oh, I think I can guess. Ready to move on?”
“Lead the way, Roamer,” Sam said wryly. As they walk-hovered away, she looked back at the Juvenold tribe, tumbling and playing. They all seemed so… what? Pure. It was a word she’d never thought before, much less used in real life, but it fit.
“They’re all kids,” she pointed out. “Where’s the adults? Do they have their own tribe?”
“I asked Fletch the same thing. Apparently, it’s really hard to spring grown people. Fletch says their souls are too attached to their bodies. He did manage it with one, but then the guy tried to sue him, so that was that.”
Almost as if on cue, the shape of a man appeared before them and Sam squealed. Head down and shoulders hunched, he walked slowly into their path.
“It’s okay, he can’t see us,” Byron said offhandedly. Sure enough, the man crossed in front of them and continued on his plodding way. “He’s a Later.”
“A what?”
“A Later. A person who’s out late in his physical body.” Byron laughed at her skeptical expression. “Hey, listen, I didn’t make up all the tags. Some of them are a little on the nose.”
The guy’s slouchy back and lumbering gait as he walked past the Juvenold made her rather sad, for some reason. It didn’t seem right that their joyousness was invisible to him. “So how can you tell who’s a SleepWaker and who’s a human?”
“ ‘Later,’ please. It might be a stupid name, but we’re all humans, so that one doesn’t work. You just have to look for the cord. Wakers have the cord, Laters don’t.”
“The cord? You mean, like, the silver cord? You can see that?!” Sam immediately looked but didn’t observe any kind of shiny rope attached to Byron’s soul body. She did notice, however, a whole lotta muscles defining his snug T-shirt; pretty cool that someone’s consciousness could be so ripped. Okay, get a grip, girl.
If Byron noticed her dreamy gaze, he was nice enough not to embarrass her. “There,” he said, pointing. “Do you see?” Sam gasped. How could she have missed it? A delicate, spiderweb-thin trail of light fluttered behind her, stretching into seeming infinity. She knew it wasn’t real infinity, the cord only reaching back to her physical body, but it struck her as having the pulse and color of life itself.
“That’s… unbelievable.”
Byron nodded. “Sometimes it’s a little hard to spot at first, but once you do, you’ll never miss it again,” he said softly. He briskly started moving up the sidewalk. “So don’t worry about the Laters—you’ll know them. And since they can’t see you unless you want them to—”
“Yeah, how is that?”
“It’s pretty much the same as being solid. You have to decide if they’ll see you or not. To be honest, though, I don’t know why any Waker would want to be seen. Unless, of course, you’re a Prank and you like messing with people’s minds.”
This made Sam wince, but she tried to be light about it. “I’m guessing a Prank is, hmmm, let’s see, someone whose secret desire is to play pranks?”
“Told you some of the tags were a little obvious.”
“Gee, ya think?” Her tone was suddenly acid, and Byron looked at her quizzically. “Sorry. I just… I know some people who play mean tricks during the daytime and don’t bother to hide it.” It gave her a soul-ache to think about Jaida and her evil clowns.
“Well…” Byron said gently, “maybe if they were SleepWakers, they’d be nice to you at night. Opposites, right?”
She smiled at him gratefully, and they glided along in companionable silence.
“I’m going to take you to meet the Achieves, and that should be enough for tonight. Don’t want your consciousness to explode,” Byron teased. He started moving faster, and Sam managed to keep pace. It was getting a little easier, this motion of her essence through space. The breeze around her even seemed to agree with her progress, helping the flow with smoothly imperceptible gusts.
“Byron, were all those Wakers in the park Fletch’s patients?”
“Doubt it. I don’t know all of them, but probably some are from the other docs.”
“Other doctors?” Even though Dr. Fletcher had sort of half mentioned this, Sam was still shocked. “How many people are making a career of springing kids’ essences out of their bodies?”
“Well…” Suddenly his face darkened. “Right now, there’s five.” Then he added quickly, “That we know of.”
“Really? Five?! Where are they all? Do they know each other? Did they learn how to do it together, or did one of them teach the other ones?” All her questions came out in a rush.
“Hang on, we’re coming into a Later zone,” Byron cut her off. “Even though they can’t see us, you don’t want ’em walking through you—it feels nasty.” They were nearing an intersection with a gas station and a bar. Blaring music poured forth as a group of people stumbled out. They were talking to each other in unnecessarily loud voices, and laughing, although their laughter was as different from the Juvenold’s in the playground as night from day.
One couple lurched toward Byron and Sam, the obviously drunken man fumbling for his car keys in his date’s purse. The woman giggled, “Wait, wait,” tucked a lock of her curly hair behind her ear, and dug around in the bag herself. She pulled out the keys and was rewarded with a patronizing pat on the head and a sloppy kiss, eliciting an audible “ewww” from Sam.
The curly-haired woman paused for a moment, looking around with a curious expression. Byron shot Sam a warning glance, and she froze, completely confused. Did she hear me? The woman shrugged it off and followed her boyfriend to his car.
When the car door closed, Sam hissed to Byron, “I thought you said they couldn’t see us unless we wanted them to!”
“They can’t,” he said slowly. “But once in a while… sometimes there’s a Waker who can be… I don’t know, I guess, perceived? Not sure if she saw you, or heard you, as much as she… felt you.”
Sam was mildly horrified. “That’s not good, dude! I don’t want to be felt!”
He gave her a reassuring smile, although it seemed a bit forced. “Don’t freak out. You’ll be able to control that, too. Probably.” He turned on his heel and cruised off.
“Probably?” Sam yelped. But before she could follow, she had to deal with the incredibly uncomfortable feeling of a car passing through her soul body. The curly-haired woman in the passenger seat looked back with the same curious expression. Sam shuddered. That was nasty. Note to self: Don’t let people drive through you.
She took off, follow-floating Byron down a hill. They reached a two-lane highway that seemed pretty deserted, for which Sam was grateful. “Hey, Byron? Where are we? This doesn’t look familiar anymore.”
“We’re going to Fairleigh Dickinson. That’s where the Achieves meet.”
“Fairleigh—the college? Isn’t that in Madison?” Sam questioned.
“Yep.”
“But that’s like fifteen miles away!”
“Not anymore.” Byron pointed to a sign about a block ahead. Sam squinted to read Madison Train Station.
“How…?!”
Byron smiled mischievously. “We may have… sped up a bit. Not hyper-crossing, not yet, just a little… uh, jacked-up crossing.”
Sam shook her head, dazed. “I didn’t feel like I was zooming or anything. Were we going, like, car fast or airplane fast?”
Byron shrugged. “It’s soul speed. I kind of describe it as the speed of imagination, except you can’t go to pretend places or another planet or, like, heaven or anything. You gotta stay on Earth.”
“Oh. Good. Staying on Earth is good,” Sam said faintly. “But if it’s like the speed of imagination, why can’t we just, I don’t know, think it and we’re there?”
“You’re still not ge
tting the soul thing. A soul isn’t just your mind or your thoughts or even your—what did you call it before?—your essence. It’s a real thing, in the real world. It has weight and—”
“Possibilities, yeah, yeah, I remember,” Sam said rather grumpily.
“Anyway, you don’t have to stress it tonight, ’cause we’re staying in Fletch’s sector. He’s got Jersey.” Byron tossed this off as casually as if he were making a vacation recommendation. “We can do another state tomorrow.”
Despite her nerves, her mist heart performed a jumping jack of excitement. “Like… Pennsylvania? Can we go that far?”
Byron just grinned. “You’ll see…” he drawled. The jumping jack turned into a full-fledged thrill-burpee.
Within moments, they were outside a large brick building. This time Byron didn’t even stop to encourage her; he just disappeared right into the wall. Sam sighed; apparently having a window and a car pass through her soul wasn’t enough for one night. She followed, noticing that the sensation of brick moving through her essence was decidedly different than either glass or metal. Great, she thought, my physics teacher would be so proud.
Sam found herself in some type of common room, filled with SleepWakers. There was so much going on, it took her a few minutes to process what she was seeing. There were Wakers practicing violin concertos while repeating phrases in Mandarin from Rosetta Stone software while extending their legs on a ballet barre; a group avidly comparing passages from the Bible, Qur’an, Torah, Tao Te Ching, and Upanishads while performing the most pretzel-y yoga positions Sam had ever seen; there was even one lone Waker hanging upside down from an acrobat’s bar while performing some sort of science experiment with his dangling hands. He noticed Sam staring and smiled at her, saying proudly, “Algae biofuel lab.” Sam smiled back weakly. “So?” Byron appeared beside her. “What do you think of the Achieves?”
“Well… they’re definitely… achieving,” was all Sam could manage.
He laughed.
“Okay, but what I don’t get is… if this is the stuff their souls want to do, why can’t they just do it in their real lives? You know, in the daytime?” Sam questioned.
Sam Saves the Night Page 5