Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Nevan
The book is upside down.
I figure this out after about ten minutes of staring at a page that isn’t making any more sense than the ones before it, which is when I notice the chapter number at the top of the page is a mirror image of what it should be.
The letters are doing the thing where they flip and slide into configurations that don’t exist in any language I’m aware of.
I turn it the right way up.
It doesn’t help.
The words rearrange themselves into something almost English. I catch a sentence about REM cycles before it slides into gibberish, and I lose another one about reality checks entirely before I even get halfway through.
I close it.
Open it again.
Close it.
The swing creaks under me. It’s cold out here, proper autumn cold now, and I’ve been sitting in it for twenty minutes in a hoodie that isn’t quite enough, because going back inside means doing something. There are towels to fold, radiators to bleed.
But right now, the list of things I can do without wanting to put my head through a wall is very short and mostly involves sitting on this swing holding a book upside down.
It’s been four days since she drove away.
During that time, I have slept a combined total of maybe eleven hours.
That wouldn’t be a problem if the hours I was awake were spent doing something useful, but mostly they’ve been working, the book, the swing, the cold, and the loop that starts with I kissed her, ends with she ran, and then starts again.
My mouth still remembers it.
Feels unfair.
As if the rest of me didn’t get the memo that we’re currently regretting things.
Worse yet, I’ve been finding myself in strange places. Apparently, I have been tiring myself out so badly that I fall asleep randomly and not in my sleeping bag.
Not bad places but wrong ones. Woke up the first night on the kitchen floor with my cheek against the cold tile and one of my mom’s books in my hand—this book—which was my own upside-down situation in miniature.
Second night, I made it as far as the living room bookshelf before whatever part of me that wanders at night got bored, tired, or ran out of direction.
I came back to myself standing there in the dark with my fingers on the spines, reading titles I couldn’t read even in daylight.
No walls or spray cans, only drifting.
It would almost be better if I knew why.
Renée Bennett showed up the evening after my birthday party.
She didn’t make a thing of it, just said Paul had asked her to cover the dinner service.
She’s been covering every shift since, and I haven’t once gone in to check on it.
That tells me more than anything how bad these few days actually are.
High season ended last weekend. There are maybe six guests left, the last stragglers, and even knowing that every one of them deserves to be taken care of properly, I can’t make myself care.
I care about almost nothing right now except what I understood that night, standing in a parking lot, which is roughly that she can go places in her sleep. Ridge can too. Somehow, Tessa Vaughn, who is basically the town’s myth, is involved. That’s it.
That’s the full picture I walked away with.
She is lucid dreaming.
The book is supposed to fill in the blanks, but it’s not cooperating.
I could ask someone. That’s an option that technically exists. Derek was in that parking lot and knows what’s happening. If I asked, he’d probably tell me, even if I don’t really know him.
Except that would lead to Derek telling Ridge I asked. If I wanted him to know that, I would ask that asshole myself. But I don’t have Ridge’s or Paul’s number, and they’re the ones who actually know what any of this means.
So I’m sitting here with a book I can’t read because the alternative is walking up to a man who told me I’m stupid and asking him to explain dreams to me like I’m six years old, or the other man whose girlfriend I kissed and that’s… no. I can’t do that.
I could call Lennon.
But every time I have pulled up her contact, my hands started sweating so badly I had to set the phone down.
She ran.
Whatever that means, it doesn’t mean “call me, and we’ll talk it through.” It means she needed space, and I should give it to her. Also, if what I picked up from that conversation isn’t completely crazy, she may be unconscious anyway, so circumstances somewhat resolved the space issue.
So, the book is the remaining option.
Teach myself. Figure it out from the pages of a book that is genuinely actively fighting me, because at least a book doesn’t know I’m struggling and can’t report back to anyone.
And goddammit, I know this world. Maybe not like Ridge does, or Paul apparently, or Lennon herself, but I’ve stood at the edge of that world my whole life.
My mom was always going somewhere I couldn’t follow, and apparently, Lennon is too.
The letters blur.
I blink, and they blur again. This time I recognize that it’s not the usual problem, because it doesn’t make the page go hot and swimmy like this. This is something else. It’s the thing I’ve been outrunning for days, finally catching up.
My throat closes.
Don’t.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, press hard, but the burn behind my eyes doesn’t care.
This is all my fault.
She’s gone because she ran from me, and if she hadn’t been running, if I’d kept my hands to myself, my mouth shut, and just…
The pages blur again.
I brush my sleeve across my eyes before anything can actually fall, which is stupid because there’s no one here to see it, but I’ve been not crying in front of people my whole life. It’s a habit that runs deep.
“Okay, who needs their throat chakra aligned?”
I startle so hard the book nearly goes off the swing entirely.
Jasper is standing three feet away in the garden, head tilted, curls askew from however fast he walked here.
“Where did you just come from?”
He’s wearing two different socks and one earring shaped like a tiny sword, because of course, he is.
“School ended early. Not the point.” He closes the distance and drops onto the other swing, the one she sat on when I kissed her. He doesn’t look at it like it’s significant, but fuck, it is for me. “What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Your eyes are red.”
“It’s cold.”
“Then what are you doing out here?”
“Taking a break.”
He gives me a long look. “You are taking a break.”
“Yes.”
“You…” he points at me, “… Nevan Shaw. Sitting still on a Wednesday before a logging shift?”
“I’ve got some time before I have to get there.”
“What happened to depression can’t hit a moving target.” He mocks me in a deep voice, repeating what I always answered when he told me to take a break.
I shrug and brush my sleeve across my face again, mostly for something to do, then ask, “Did you just offer to punch someone in the throat for me?”
“Yeah.”
“What is wrong with you?”
“Today or in general?”
I huff, and it’s almost a laugh, which is the thing about Jasper. He can pull that out of me when nothing else can, when I’m running on no sleep, guilt, and a book I can’t read. He can still get an almost laugh.
“I love you, you know that, right?”
Jasper’s eyebrows shoot up. “What?”
“My thing with not liking all the…” I gesture vaguely at his rings, the deck of cards presumably somewhere on his person, “… the woo-woo stuff. That’s not about you.
That’s just me not understanding it and being weird about what I don’t understand.
” I look at him properly. “You’re the best brother anyone could ask for. I should say that more.”
He’s quiet, then asks, “Did you get a diagnosis? Do you only have a few months to live? Is that what this is?”
“Jasp.”
“Wow, that wasn’t in my cards.”
“Who would even diagnose me? That stuff costs money.”
“I could do a reading.”
“That’s not…” I exhale a laugh. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant.” He’s still watching me, careful now, the usual Jasper energy dialed down. “Are you finally gonna tell me what happened with Lenny?”
“I… I don’t know. I fucked up, I guess.”
“What did you do?”
I look at the book in my hands.
Lucid Dreaming: A Practical Guide.
I can read the title, at least, but only because it’s a large print, clean font, and I have already read it fifty times by now.
“I’ve been trying to read this,” I deflect, letting my fingers glide over the title. “For four days. To understand what… what she’s doing, I guess. What all of it means.” I turn it over once. “I’ve read the same page maybe fifteen times, and I still don’t know what a reality check is.”
Jasper looks at the book, then back at me. “I don’t mind reading it to you.”
“I know.” I set the book down on my knee.
“I wanted to be able to get it myself. For once.” The last two words come out rougher than I meant.
Jasper doesn’t say anything, which means he heard the thing underneath them.
“I think what Paul and Ridge meant is that she’s in there somewhere…
in her sleep, and Ridge is in his sleep, too, and Paul is doing whatever Paul does, and I’m sitting on a swing with a book I can’t read because…
” I trail off, but Jasper simply waits me out.
“Because I kissed her, and she ran. And then she was gone. And now everyone has a job to do, and I don’t even know what’s happening.”
The cold wind cuts through the branches, shifting the fairy lights. Jasper looks at them for a moment, then at the book on my knee, then back at me.
“Give me the book.”
“Jasp.”
“You said you wanted to understand what’s happening.” He holds out his hand. “Let me read it to you.”
“Jasper,” I almost plead.
“It’s not a big deal. I wanted to re-read that one soon anyway,” he adds, which is exactly the right thing to say and exactly the reason he says it.
Jasper has known since he was about seven years old that the fastest way to get me to accept help is to make the help seem like nothing. I don’t know when he figured that out, but I know he consistently uses it, and it works every time.