Chapter Six
Six
Someone grumbles. It sounds like my bed. My bed is grumbling.
No, not my bed. My couch, maybe. But it’s harder than that. A park bench? There’s a board underneath me that is moaning as I shift on it, trying to get more comfortable. It is solid and warm but in a way that is familiar and nice and feels—
“Oh my God!” I shout, as I jerk up and away from Marcus Riddick. Marcus is my bed, my human park bench. “What the hell are you doing, you jackass human?”
Holding me to his chest is what he was doing, but before he can try to make up some explanation, I’ve catapulted several feet from him.
Marcus sits up, slowly and stiffly. “What am I doing?” he asks, creaking like old furniture. “You’re the one who slammed into me.”
Instead of pointing out that none of it was intentional, I scramble even farther away from him and push up from the ground to a standing position.
I’m mad that I just had to tackle him to the ground to get something that rightfully belongs to me, and even madder that the Do Not Tackle Marcus Riddick alarm bells did not go off in my head before I jumped him.
And now I’ll never be able to wipe the memory of the feel of his body from my mind.
Speaking of my mind, what the hell was that?
It’s almost like I fell, blanked for a second, and then woke up basically cuddling with him. But it’s not like I hit my head or anything. It was more like a sneeze. A consciousness-losing split-second sneeze. Maybe I fell asleep for a microsecond. But I’m not about to admit that to Marcus.
“Where is the ring?” I demand, even as a flurry of muffled laughter sounds not too far from us. “The next time you take something of mine without my permission—”
“I didn’t take it. I just wanted to see it.”
Not moving from the ground, Marcus holds out his palm. “You’re…really going to wear it?” he asks, voice soft.
I take it from his hand, careful for our fingers not to brush. “I am.” I make sure to sound more certain than I feel as I put the small circle back on my ring finger.
“I’m going back downstairs. Please wait five minutes before following me,” I tell him.
“Five minutes?” Marcus protests. “Am I supposed to have food poisoning?”
“Not my problem. Have chickenpox, for all I care,” I say, moving toward the door of Jason’s room and then…I freeze. “Marcus?”
Because right as I’m standing there, the door of Jason’s room starts to wobble.
No, not wobble—disintegrate. One time, at a sleepover at Amber’s house, I got so wasted I felt like the ground was moving.
Maybe someone spiked Mrs. R’s punch. I wouldn’t put it past the soccer team, but as I whirl around to look at Marcus, he is staring open-mouthed at Jason’s closet door to my right.
“What…the fuck,” he half whispers, half growls.
I follow his gaze to the closet, and it is disappearing before my very eyes, the walls crumbling, dissolving into nothing.
“Marcus, what’s happening?” I whisper, so afraid I can hardly move.
“I don’t know, but…you’re seeing this too, right?” Marcus asks.
The answer is obvious, but I ask it back. “Are you?”
“Yeah,” he says. I’m instantly certain that this is more serious than spiked punch, because now a bright light is stinging my forehead. Sunlight. It’s so radiant, I have to hood my eyes with my hand to look up at the sky.
The sky. Which has replaced the ceiling in Jason’s room.
The sky that is the fading dusty orange of sunset, but with the almost-brightness of dawn.
“This is not okay,” I say, unable to think of better words, more eloquent phrasing.
I reach for the closest wall for something to lean against, but it’s gone instantly too, melts away into more nothing. I spin, looking around for Jason’s bed, but it’s gone. His dresser: gone. The huge TV he got for his birthday: disappeared. When it was just here seconds ago.
This is absolutely not okay.
I feel delirious, like I just spent hours staring at the sun and then stepped into a dark room, when the opposite is true.
I was in a dimly lit room and I’m now under the sky.
I start to feel lightheaded, all the blood gushing through my veins, pumping from my heart, faster, faster. I could run a marathon. I could—
I think I’m about to have a panic attack.
“Oh my God.”
Maybe I’m being punished for all the lies I’ve told the past few days.
It’s like the universe is doing an actual scenery change, remaking the background of everything around us until the carpet we were just lying on has turned to gravel.
“Are we dead?” My voice sounds high-pitched and vulnerable even to me.
Marcus doesn’t answer me, but his expression is wild, stunned. Under any other circumstances, it would be funny, seeing Marcus “doesn’t give a shit” Riddick look like he’s seen a ghost.
“Marcus?” I whisper.
“It’s okay,” he says instantly, as if feeling the urge to comfort me. Frankly, it is patronizing.
“Oh my God, we’re dead.”
“We’re not dead,” Marcus insists. “We’re, um…”
“Losing our minds?” I half shriek, because that’s not the least bit reassuring either. Maybe…maybe I’m high. I whirl on him. “Did you drug me?”
“Jesus, Cartwright, don’t even joke about that,” he says, and he seems legitimately disgusted.
“Then we’re dead,” I say, the only rational explanation I can see to all this. It’s devastating: the work I’ve put into having a good life, and I barely got to live it.
But Marcus shakes his head. “Think about it: a universe where we died and ended up in the same place?”
“Not possible,” I say quickly, just like he knew I would.
I look around as if checking for signs that say Purgatory This Way or Proceed to Soul Patrol.
Slowly, the spotty background starts to come back into focus, and instead of simply seeing all the things that are gone, I see the things that replace them.
The parking lot is half-full, bordered by trees with dull-looking leaves.
Though the bite in the air makes me think of autumn, the flower beds are crowded with still-alive bluish-purple flowers, violets and daisies and poppies.
In the distance you can see the highway and the lake.
It feels familiar, but it takes a second to figure out why.
I look around until I start to recognize the path, the trees, the sign outside Dot’s Arcade.
The lobster shack beside it. Okay, so maybe we’re really not dead.
We wouldn’t still be in Maine if we were, right? And definitely not in Sterlingwood.
Maybe I’m hallucinating. I blink once, twice, hard, but nothing changes.
“Hey!” Marcus yells suddenly. He’s calling out to a group of middle-school-aged kids crossing the parking lot, walking toward Dot’s Arcade. He starts to hurry after them.
Suddenly this seems like a great idea—maybe someone knows something about what happened to us, why we’re here. I follow Marcus’s lead, only more politely. “Excuse me! Hi!”
Seconds later, I’m cupping my hands over my mouth and yelling too. “Hey! What’s your problem?”
Marcus has gone quiet and stopped walking; he’s clearly thinking something derisive if his smirk is anything to go by.
“What?” I demand.
“Nothing,” he says. The kids completely ignore us as they go into Dot’s; they don’t even glance our way. There are five of them, young and fresh-faced. They remind me of me and my friends when we were in middle school, happy and carefree, laughing as they disappear through the aqua-colored doors.
We’re on our own again.
The migraine I had at lunch is gone, but my head doesn’t feel fully clear.
“Maybe I have a concussion,” I muse out loud. “I fell on you and got a concussion.” I was sure I didn’t hit my head just now, but maybe I did.
“You don’t have a concussion. I broke your fall,” Marcus says helpfully. “It’s more likely I have a concussion. Fuck, do I have a concussion?”
I roll my eyes. “You’re literally fine, Marcus.”
“No. I think I have a concussion.”
I turn away from him and speak compassionately to myself. “It’s okay, Zadie, you’re hallucinating. This is all a bad…episode. A bad dream.”
“A dream!” Marcus snaps his fingers like I’ve just said something brilliant. “We’re dreaming.”
“You think so?” I ask, embarrassingly hopeful.
My brain latches on to that hypothesis but when I pinch myself, I feel a very sharp, very real pain on my forearm. “Ouch!”
“That doesn’t work,” Marcus says belatedly. “Pinching yourself? That’s a myth.”
“How do you know?” I say, rubbing my arm.
“You’ve never been in a dream before?”
I look at him like he’s batshit, because I think he actually might be.
“So, if I’m dreaming…” I begin, trying to voice out the different scenarios.
“Who says I’m not the one dreaming?” Marcus asks, as if now is the time to argue. “The dreamer is the main character, usually the only one who’s aware that they’re in a dream. So you know what that means.”
I frown. “No, I don’t actually.”
“Well, since we’re having this riveting discussion, we have to both be in a dream. I’m pretty sure it’s our dream. We’re co-dreaming.”
I make a face, mostly because there is an unfortunate logic to his theory.
“Okay, hypothetically, one of us is dreaming. Or both of us are,” I add reluctantly. “Maybe when we fell, we like both got a concussion. It knocked us out, and now we’re in a weird dream?”
“Sounds possible,” he says, but his voice doesn’t have the urgency I would expect. It doesn’t contain the sheer panic mine does.
“Marcus, we were just at lunch. And now we’re not. Jason’s parents are probably going crazy looking for us.”
“Nah, because time works differently in dreams. They probably haven’t even noticed we’re gone.”
“For someone who knows nothing, you sure know a lot about everything,” I deadpan. “Where are you going?”
Marcus is walking in the direction of the arcade. “What do you want to do? Just stand here all day?”
I scan around us, unsure of what to do. It is still blindingly bright. We are very clearly outside the arcade strip on the northeast end of town. “We should try to get back to Jason’s, shouldn’t we?”
“That’s what you want to do? You find yourself in a dream where you can do literally anything in the world—”
“How do you know we can do anything in the world?”
“—and your first impulse is to go to Jason’s?” Marcus asks, disgusted.
“Okay, so what’s your brilliant plan?” I ask, folding my arms over my chest.
Marcus points toward the arcade. “I’m going in. Mind-blowing, right?”
“Oh, yes,” I say, all sarcasm. “Dream big!”
But as he gets farther away from me, I start to panic. I don’t want to be left out here all alone. What if something happens?
Marcus is taking the steps up into the arcade when a car suddenly pulls up behind us. It’s loud and big, a black SUV like…
“Jason!” I yelp his name, so full of a million feelings that I’m not sure I can even tease them apart.
On the one hand, it’s Jason. He’s climbing out of his car, looking like himself.
Tall and strong and handsome as ever. He’s running over to the passenger’s side of the car. Running. As in, his leg isn’t broken.
“Holy shit, this is a dream,” I whisper.
I’m in a dream.
But I’m just so incredibly happy to see him that I don’t even care.
Even if he was limping or looked totally different, if he wasn’t dressed in a polo shirt, his hair sleeked back like he wears it when he’s trying to make a good impression.
I don’t care what it is or why he’s here or how he’s here. Or how any of us are here.
I rush him. Like a bull charging, I hurry around to the SUV passenger’s side and throw myself on him. And find my body…on the ground. Hugging air. Hugging nothing.
I’m so stunned, so confused I can’t process it.
I look to the stairs of the arcade where Marcus is standing, smirking at me.
“Jason!” I say again. I’m so pathetic, I know, grabbing for his pant leg to stop him turning away, but my hand goes right through his body. And not only does he appear not to hear or see or feel me, but he’s opening the car door for someone. He’s here with someone.
Who?
I just have the presence of mind to realize that he’s wearing the dark blue polo he wore on our first date when she steps out.
“Holy shit,” Marcus and Jason say at the same time.
Jason is grinning from ear to ear.
Marcus looks horrified.
I can only stare as—the girl, Jason’s date—I step out of his car.