Sam Saves the Night

by Shari Simpson

  Love & Kisses, The Mad Girlz

  “What the—?! Is she serious?!” Sam was horrified.

  “As a heart attack,” Arthur said gloomily.

  “But—but that’s, like, so, so… incriminating! Jaida’s parents are gonna call the police, and Jaida’s gonna pin it on Gina and Amy!”

  “Nah. Madalynn said the cops don’t bother coming anymore. ’Sides, it’s part of the gag, right? That’s the name of the website, but her friends are mad, too. Get it?”

  Never was the closing line “get it?” delivered more morosely.

  And Sam didn’t get it, didn’t even hear it, because she was stuck on the words “cops don’t bother coming anymore.” It was repeating in her head, in concert with Dr. Hopkins’s voice, “always find her in the same place, trying to break into someone’s house.”

  In that moment, she could longer ignore the truth: Madalynn wasn’t trying to help Sam make things even with her bully; Madalynn had her own score to settle with Jaida. And I’m her bootlicking lackey minion.

  Also in that moment? Madalynn stuck her head through the wall next to Jaida’s bed, screamed “FIRE!” and all H-E-double-hockey-sticks broke loose.

  Jaida leapt up with a shriek, ran for the doorway, hit the plastic wrap, and rebounded tragicomically, falling on her butt just as Arthur had promised. The Prank himself shrieked, dashed right through the plastic and down the hallway, hurtling through the closed front door like some kind of soul ninja. The Dreams watching through the window cheered in a joyless, thundering monotone. And then there was a loud SLAM! as a burly man in sweatpants and a dirty undershirt threw open his bedroom door and roared:

  “WHAT IS GOING ON?!”

  Sam knew he couldn’t see her, but she still cowered in abject terror, sinking behind a bureau. Her head was screeching Run! Run! but her soul was frozen, inert. Come on, idiot! This is the one and only thing that’s good about not being solid! You could walk right through him and he’d never know!

  The man strode over to the doorway and angrily ripped down the plastic.

  “Dad…” The sound was so tremulous and thin, Sam had to peer around the corner of the bureau to prove to herself that it was Jaida speaking. Her nemesis was still on the floor, pulling the coat around herself as if for protection. And very quickly, Sam understood why.

  “Shut up!” The contempt in the man’s voice was like a physical blow. “I can’t take this anymore!”

  “I’m sorry—” Jaida whispered.

  “You said this kinda stuff was gonna end when they caught that sleepwalker girl! What, are you such a loser that other kids are messing with you now?” he snarled.

  “Please… Dad…” Jaida was breathing hard. There was a rasp, almost a rattle as she sucked in air, her tortured inhale grating through Sam’s wispy being with sharp metal prongs.

  Jaida’s father lumbered over to the bedside table and picked up the glittery fanny pack. “Here. I pay enough for this crap. Use it so I get my money’s worth.” He threw the pack on the floor next to Jaida and the contents spilled out.

  An asthma inhaler. Two EpiPens. Benadryl. A medical alert bracelet.

  Sam gasped.

  Jaida’s head snapped up, and she looked around wildly. Sam yanked back behind the bureau. Oh please please please don’t feel me.

  “Don’t be stupid, use it!” the man growled. “I’m not taking you to the ER again!”

  As Jaida took a long drag off her inhaler, all the pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place for Sam in the worst ways possible. The fanny pack wasn’t a fashesty; it was a lifeline. The fact that Jaida never ate in the cafeteria wasn’t because she was stalking Sam; it was because she had bad enough allergies to need an EpiPen—all the food was a possible threat. And the vicious words that she’d used against Sam weren’t Jaida’s own; they came from her father.

  Who now stalked through the room, pausing only to kick angrily at the downed plastic, and then disappeared with a slam of his bedroom door. Which left Sam alone with her tormentor, witnessing the one thing that every persecuted soul is supposed to desire: tears streaming down the face of her enemy.

  So why was it making Sam feel so wretched?

  She knew it made no sense, but as Sam crept through the construction zone, she tried to hide behind pylons and heavy machinery. Like that’s gonna fool Madalynn. But when she’d escaped Jaida’s house to find the Dreams gone, Sam suddenly nursed a crazy hope that she was done, that Madalynn was going to let her off the hook now, and the worst thing that could still happen that night was if the Broadways appeared and sang a tragic ballad about how avenging yourself can backfire in a big, ugly way.

  “Now where are you going, you sneaky little Dream?”

  So much for crazy hopes. Madalynn was seated in the bucket of a hydraulic excavator, her sapphire eyes sparkling down on Sam, her purple-marabou-muled feet swinging as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Standing behind her were Bree and Zac, their ominous largeness silhouetted against the night sky.

  “Who, me? Uh, nowhere really, just gliding along, minding my own business,” burbled Sam.

  “Minding your own business? That is adorable.” Madalynn descended from the bucket like a falling angel. Her henchpeople plopped down beside her, much less gracefully. “No such thing, right? At least not for girls.”

  Sam’s eyes shot around wildly, looking for a tribe, any tribe, to rescue her. She’d even take a drunken Later right now.

  “Sam, don’t you get it? This is the way it works for us. We’re not allowed to be honest. Nobody wants girls to be all confrontational and in-your-face. So, we have to take care of everything behind the scenes. In the dark, where you can see what’s really going on.”

  Sam hated that the words struck something in her. She hated that Bree was nodding in agreement. She hated that enemies sometimes were sad, and perfect girls sometimes were cruel, and even cruel girls sometimes made sense.

  Why can’t light always be light and darkness always be dark?

  “Anyhoo…” Madalynn breathed. “As I said before, the key is to make everything even. If things work out as planned, Jaida and her minions will have the argument of the century tomorrow, since, obviously, they were the ones who pranked her. ’Cause nobody else knew about their bathroom conversation, right?” Madalynn seemed delighted by this line of thinking. “Boom! Unfriended.”

  “Uh-huh.” Sam’s mind was whirling. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. They’d have a big fight, and it would be over. Maybe it would be good for Jaida to get a little taste of her own medicine, as long as this was the end of—

  “Of course, just to make sure…” Madalynn’s silky voice stopped Sam’s defensive reasoning cold. “We do want to be certain Jaida learned her lesson. So, we reboot tomorrow night.”

  Sam gulped. “Reboot?”

  Madalynn nodded. “Arthur found another fab practical joke on that website your surveillance so kindly provided—what was the name of it again, Bree?”

  “Mad Girlz Prank. With a z.” Bree drew out the z with a little snarl, displaying her pointy beige teeth.

  “Right! So adorbs! Tomorrow night we’re going to take a bottle of Tabasco and drip it into Jaida’s mouth while she’s sleeping and leave a note that says, ‘Watch your tongue from now on.’ Perfect, right?”

  Um, yeah, perfectly evil. Well, at least this was clear and obvious. “We can’t do that. I just found out that Jaida has food allergies and asthma and stuff. It’s too dangerous.”

  And then the creepiest thing happened, because seriously, how creepy is it when someone is still smiling at you warmly and using a silky-smooth voice when a super-creepy threat comes out of her mouth?

  “Not as dangerous as saying no to me, Samantha.” Madalynn leaned closer, her fragrant soul breath caressing Sam’s face. Bree and Zac leaned in as well, their halitosis pretty much canceling out any sweetness. “There are just so many ways I can make your life unpleasant. Your nighttime life and your daytime one.”

 
On this dismal note, Madalynn and her disciples turned and hyper-crossed into the darkness like high-speed specters, leaving a residue of creepy behind that made all the construction machinery look like hulking monsters and demons. Before the walking harvester could pick Sam up in its mega claw and crush her into soul dust, she took off in the opposite direction, pushing like mad for her own hyper-cross, but pretty much only achieving sorta jacked-up crossing. All the while hoping that By the Spy was roaming somewhere in Fletch’s sector and could forgive her for being so incredibly stupid and naive, since Sam needed his help to stop a teenaged demon and her satanbabies.

  How could I have trusted Madalynn? She wanted to rest on the fact that even Fletch had been hypnotized by the Dream Queen’s seeming sweetness, but Sam’s annoyingly loud conscience wouldn’t let her. Madalynn didn’t use me; I used her. I ignored all the signs so that I could get back at Jaida, plain and simple. Her soul stomach knotted up in shame.

  When Sam reached the Juvenold’s park, she immediately knew something was up. The Juvies were still swinging and seesawing, but their laughter and play was muted, like someone had put a foggy filter over the scene. Sam found Alyssa sitting glumly on top of the monkey bars. “Alyssa?”

  Alyssa brightened slightly at the sight of Sam; she grabbed a handful of blue hair and waved it. “Hi there, you. Gonna join our tribe?”

  “Oh, uh, no.”

  “Aw, too bad. ’Cause, we lost one of us. Lost, lost, lost.” She made a mimed crying motion with her hands.

  “Lost?” Sam felt shivery in her middle. “What do you mean?”

  “A big tribe of nasties swooped in, and next thingy we knew, Minnie got sucked off the slide. Poor, poor Minnie Mouse… they sent her back.” Alyssa stuck her bottom lip out sadly.

  “Sent her back? Back where? What does that mean?” Sam was trying not to panic, but it was pretty obvious who the “big tribe of nasties” was, and “sent her back” sounded like what you do to bad food in a restaurant. But Alyssa was now twisting herself into a pretzel trying to get a better peek at her pouted bottom lip, so Sam decided to move on.

  “Alyssa, remember Byron, that Roamer I was with a few nights ago? Have you seen him?”

  “The one with the dimples?”

  Sam gritted her teeth. We’re having an existential crisis here; please don’t remind me of the cuteness. “Yeah, that one.”

  “I haven’t seen him tonight. You should check with the OCDeeds.”

  “Um, okay. They’re in this sector, right?”

  “Oh yeah. They’re usually over on Turner Avenue at the Container Store.” While Sam was processing this odd information, Alyssa leaned too far forward in the quest to ogle her own orifice and fell off the monkey bars right onto her blue noggin. “I think I broke my neck.” She erupted in giggles.

  Sam wasn’t sure this was actually possible due to a soul body’s lack of bones, but she didn’t have time to wait around to see if some kind of SleepWaker ambulance was going to pull up. She took off in the direction of Turner Avenue, misting indiscriminately through trees, traffic, and Later Zones, loudly cursing her sloth-cross speed all the while. Finally she slid through an underpass and came out across the street from the Container Store.

  Sam gingerly approached the window, sliding her face an inch or two through the glass. She blinked a few times, trying to make sense of the worker-bee buzz she was witnessing.

  Against one wall, SleepWakers were stacking Tupperware lids, file folders, and wastebaskets according to color. A small girl in ragged pajamas, her matted hair hanging like two dirty oven mitts on either side of her head, shouted, “Robin’s egg! Midnight! Navy! Cornflower! Cerulean! Cobalt! Teal! Turquoise!” as the stack of infinitesimally graded shades of blue mounted, while a chubby boy silently directed the progress of a tower of interlocking bins from petal pink to deep rose. In the middle of the showroom floor, three multi-pierced goth girls positioned and repositioned and re-repositioned bento boxes, carefully inserting the plastic sushi, foam sandwiches, and wooden juice box samples into their respective pockets. Just left of the window, a boy with a sleep dent in his massive Afro painstakingly organized a display spice rack alphabetically, murmuring, “Vindaloo curry… West African pepper… yellow mustard seed…”

  “Excuse me, I’m looking for—” Sam whispered.

  “Noooo!!” he wailed. “All I had left was za’atar! Now I have to start over at achiote powder!”

  “Oh! I’m so sorry—” Sam gulped.

  “Dev, don’t yell!” yelled one of the goth girls. “You made me mess up my bento!”

  “Well, you yelling about Dev yelling made me forget what comes after fuchsia!” yelled the chubby stacker of pink bins.

  Dev grabbed his dented Afro in anguish. “Get out! Get out!”

  Sam yanked her head back through the glass, barely missing getting bonked in the head with the Hungarian paprika the boy slung like a throwing star.

  “Shoulda told you, you don’t want to be messing with OCDeeds while they’re organizing.”

  Sam felt more relief than annoyance at Byron’s voice, but she still whirled around with a considerable amount of ’tude. “Yeah, that would have been good information pre-concussion!”

  Byron snorted. “How’s that gonna happen? You have to be able to be solid before anyone can hurt you.”

  “First of all, thanks so much for reminding me what a failure I am, and secondly, totally not true, because I’m already feeling pretty beat-up, dude!”

  “Yeah, well, whose fault is that?” Byron was ticked and it looked like he wasn’t about to let her off the hook. “Didn’t I say you weren’t ready to be on your own?”

  “Well, maybe if you didn’t go all bossy boy on me, I would’ve listened!” Sam cried. “And maybe if you’d told me the truth from the beginning that you were spying on me and reporting back to your mom, we could have avoided all of this!”

  At least Byron had the decency to look sheepish. He stared at the ground and cleared his throat. “Okay. That’s fair.” And then, with the faintest trace of dimple, “But I didn’t have to report back on how awesome you are. She already knew that.”

  All the ethereal blood rushed to her pretend face. Now she was staring at the ground. They remained in eyes-down silence for a moment.

  “Sam?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Do you mind if we move on? Because this is the kind of awkward that usually makes the Broadways show up, and I just can’t deal right now.”

  She had to smile. “Moving on.”

  “Great.” He gave her full dimplage this time, causing some swooniness that she chose to ignore since they were officially moving on. “So, I think we should go see Fletch.”

  Sam knew she needed the doctor’s advice, but the thought of confessing her SleepWaker sins to those judgy sclerae was almost too much for her. “Can’t you just help me with this? You’re, like, King Roamer, he who sees all and knows all.”

  “Sees and knows some, not all. Like, I can tell you that the OCDeeds have messy, screwed-up daytime lives, which is why their souls are so touchy about order, and that info might help you avoid getting clubbed with spices. But when it comes to the MeanDreams, I think we’re both in over our heads.”

  Sam grimaced. “Okay, but I hope he’s not having a pajama party with the S.S.S.S. I don’t think they’re too thrilled with me.”

  Byron nodded. “To be safe, we’re gonna do an indoor cross and that can be a little weird. Try to just keep… you know, moving on.”

  An “indoor cross,” as it turned out, was pretty much what it sounded like. Instead of gliding through the streets, they traveled through buildings, store to store, house to house, trying to stay inside as much as possible and away from an encounter with the MeanDreams. And it was definitely more than a little weird. The eeriness of the empty post office or an echoey Starbucks minus baristas and hipsters was nothing compared to the freaky presence of gym rats pumping iron in the 24-Hour Fitness or solitary figures trying to
pick up spares in the all-night bowling alley. But the journey through the deep night of people’s homes was the thing that almost did Sam in. A kid crying out with a nightmare, a couple screaming at each other in their bedroom, a man chain-smoking while staring out a window—it was all too lonely. Too much.

  People show who they really are in the darkness.

  They finally misted through the wall of the clinic to find Dr. Fletcher sound asleep on his examining bed, snuggling a bundle of electrodes.

  “Fletch. Wake up,” Byron said gently.

  The doctor’s eyelids peeled back slowly to reveal the glowing whiteness. “I hope you’re a Waker. I’m too young and too sane to be hearing voices.”

  “Oh, sorry. Forgot to be visible.” Byron made a quick, grim face that Sam thought looked more like he was trying to poop, but it seemed to work. Fletch jumped up excitedly.

  “Byron! You found her!”

  Sam gasped. She and Byron spoke at the same time:

  “Can you see her?”

  “You can see me?”

  Fletcher deflated slightly. “No, I can’t. But I can feel that she’s here.”

  “Oh, great,” Sam said sarcastically. “Everybody on the stinkin’ planet can ‘perceive’ me, but I’m still invisible. Story of my life.”

  “Don’t be a crybaby,” Byron said briskly. “You want to try again?”

  “Not really.” The last thing she wanted was to become solid just in time to have Fletch give her an “I told you so” white-eyeballed look.

  “Is she going to try to be solid?” Fletch sounded hopeful.

  “No, she’s feeling sorry for herself now,” Byron announced.

  “Dude. Not helping.”

  “Just tell me exactly what happened with the MeanDreams, and I’ll repeat everything to Fletch. And try to cut to the chase, we don’t have all night.”

  Sam was still irritated. “Maybe we can get the Broadways in here to rap about all my issues, how about that?”

  “Shut up. Talk.”

  “Fine, bossy boy.”

  Sam took a deep breath and started to explain, slowly at first, but soon the words tumbled over each other, words of confusion and fear about Madalynn and Jaida and Kyra and the MeanDreams stealing Minnie Mouse and sending her “back,” whatever that meant, and Sam’s own part in their scheme, and just plain old who the heck am I in my soul? really, because everything was laced with yelling thoughts of What do I do? Why do I care? Why can others feel me, and why do I feel what they’re feeling?