Chapter 7
“Dot.”
“Dot.”
“Dotty.”
“Wake up, you silly goose. It’s almost ten o’clock.”
Warm hands grip my shoulders and shake.
My eyes fly open as panic grips my chest. I struggle under the covers, wiggling until my captor lets go, rolling until my legs are untangled from the sheets and finally free, but that sensation is immediately replaced with another—I’m falling.
My hands hit the wooden floor, protecting my face. My knees aren’t quite as fortunate.
“Holy fuck!”
The intruder bounces into the bed above me. “Good grief, you sound like a sailor, Dotty. Where did you pick up that one? Have you been over to the barracks?”
The intruder flips on a lamp. And as my eyes adjust, I look up and see she’s just a girl.
A teenager. Maybe seventeen or eighteen?
Her hair is blond, parted to one side and curled in a style that reminds me of old movies.
She’s wearing a white dress that falls just below her knee.
It’s sleeveless with a boatneck and a bright blue ribbon trimming the bottom that matches the sash tied around her waist. In her mouth is a lollipop.
She pulls it out every time she speaks. I can’t tell if her lips are pink from it or from lipstick.
“Who are you, and what are you doing in my bedroom?” I manage to push up onto my elbows and then get to my feet.
She rolls her eyes. “There’s no need for all of the dramatics. We were only supposed to be pretending to sleep until your daddy left. He’s gone, though. I heard his truck on the road. Are you ready? Maybe you should fix your hair again.” She points to a full-length mirror in the corner of the room.
My mouth goes dry as panic floods my chest for a second time.
I take a frantic look around the room—the old wooden desk, the unmade bed, the mirror—and realize not only is there a stranger in my room in the middle of the night, but it’s not my room at all.
“Where the hell am I?”
The girl jumps from the bed and, before I can object, pushes me toward the mirror. “Jeepers, Dotty, you can’t go around speaking like that tonight. We need to sound every bit as good as any of those city girls. Do you hear me?”
I nod, even though I have no idea who this Dotty person is or why this girl seems to think I am her.
There is a long moment where I consider making a run for the door and taking my chances with whatever lies past it, but my gaze lands on the mirror and the reflection staring back. I’m me. Same blond hair. Same blue eyes. But I’m dressed almost identically to the strange girl.
She appears behind me with a brush, and as she pulls it through my hair, I realize that I was wrong. My hair isn’t quite the same. It’s parted to the side and curled, just like hers is.
A dream. I must be in a dream.
Except my dreams aren’t vivid like this, or at least I don’t think they are. They usually feel fuzzy, like bits and pieces are out of place. There’s never that sense that things are real around me, yet in this one—
“Ouch!”
The brush catches on a knot, and for a moment, my head is yanked, sending a searing shot of pain to my scalp.
“Sorry.” The girl sets the brush down. “You look perfect. And we should go. I don’t want Beau wondering where I am.”
Something in the back of my brain clicks.
Beau.
Dot.
“Kitty?”
She turns around at the sound of her name.
“Yes.”
I still need further confirmation.
“Kitty St. Clair?”
Her face breaks into a wide smile.
“Oh heavens. Can you imagine? It would be a dream!” She twirls in a circle, her dress billowing out around her. “It even sounds perfect. Kitty St. Clair. Mrs. Beau St. Clair.”
It must have been the wine.
And the diary.
And the day.
All three forming the perfect storm to whip me up and drop me into a wildly lucid dream.
“Are we…going to the dance hall?” I ask, guessing at the narrative about to play out.
“We’d better be.” Kitty reaches out and places a cool palm on my forehead. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay? You seem a little, I don’t know…disoriented, maybe?”
That is an understatement.
“You know what?” I take a step back, suddenly done with this unnecessary charade. “I am not feeling so hot. Maybe you should do whatever it is you’re going to do without me.”
I step toward the bed with the idea that maybe if I crawl back beneath the sheets, I can will myself to wake up. However, the moment I move, Kitty moves too—with a swiftness I don’t anticipate.
“No.” She jumps between me and the bed, folding her arms in front of her. “I am not leaving you behind.” She grabs me by the shoulders, spinning me away from the bed. “Life has opened up a door of opportunity tonight, Dotty. It’s up to us to walk through it.”
Now that’s a Kitty-ism if I’ve ever heard one. And with that, she shoves me hard on the shoulder blades, throwing me off-balance so that I stumble out through the literal door into the hallway.
It takes me a moment to recover, and in that brief interlude, Kitty grabs me by the wrist and pulls me down the stairs and out the front door before I can even consider protesting again.
When we step outdoors, I immediately hear the familiar waves of Lake Huron in the distance, and it has an immediate calming effect. It even smells like West Lake. That same faint scent of earth and pine.
Kitty begins to walk down toward the water, and I find myself following along, more out of curiosity than anything else.
I was right in my earlier assessment that as far as dreams go, this one feels different.
My thoughts are clear, and the world around me seems normal.
My old history teacher isn’t chasing me to hand in homework I never knew existed.
My feet don’t feel like they’re walking through a pool of Jell-O.
I’m not jumping from one space to another with no clear idea of how I got there.
I’m just walking down a regular old street in West Lake in the middle of the night, like I’ve done a thousand times before.
Except the details are off.
The moment the thought forms, I begin to notice a slew of things that are close but not quite right.
The Hendersons’ cottage is blue instead of white, and there’s a span of wild beach grass where the new addition they put on last spring should be.
Then I see the Fry truck is missing from its spot in the far corner of the beach access lot, next to the 7-Eleven.
Speaking of the 7-Eleven. It’s gone, too.
But the hardware store is there.
So is the Okay Cafe, but the sign with the giant cafe au lait on the roof is missing.
It’s West Lake, but it’s not West Lake.
We continue to walk, and I find myself at a loss for what to do next.
I don’t recall being this conscious in a dream before, but maybe I have been and just didn’t remember.
Kitty does not seem to share the same level of distress.
She’s so light on her feet that she almost skips along the road beside me.
“So, um, is Beau like your boyfriend?” I don’t even know why I’m asking. It’s not as if this Kitty can answer. She is a fabrication. A figment of my own imagination. She can’t know things I don’t.
“He will be.” Kitty flips around and continues to walk backward.
“He’s been writing me letters since he left last August. He told me that if my mama lets me go to the dance hall this year, he’d have me as his partner for every dance.
Until my feet got tired or the band packed up to go home.
” She twirls, letting her hands fly up over her head.
“You’re going to love it, Dotty. Just wait! ”
The streets get busier the closer we walk to the center of town. Young women wearing dresses like Kitty’s. Men, some in dress shirts and pants, others in summer suits. Everyone seems to be headed in the same direction.
I hear the dance hall before I see it. Trumpets and saxophones cutting through the night, kept in tempo by a lively, even drumbeat.
We turn the corner, and it comes into view, soft yellow light spilling from its windows. A covered wooden porch spans the entire front of the tall gray stone building.
The sight stops me in my tracks.
“Come on, Dot,” Kitty calls, her walk turning into a skipping run.
I know this building.
Take away the porch out front, the music, and the soft yellow light.
“1243,” I say aloud to no one but myself.
“Hey, Kitty!” I call.
This time, she stops.
“Is the dance hall’s address 1243 St. Mary Street?”
She holds up her hands. “Yes? No? Maybe. Why does it even matter?”
It’s a good question.
This is just a dream. It shouldn’t matter. Yet I get the strange feeling that it matters a lot.
We join the line of others waiting to get inside. Kitty’s hand finds mine. Her palm is hot and damp, and she squeezes my fingers, mashing them together when we finally reach the front.
“Evening, Kitty,” says the young guy standing in front of the big wooden doors.
His role, I gather, is to determine who is allowed in.
He looks a little older than Kitty. Nineteen or twenty.
A mature face with a sharp nose but a body still boyish and gangly.
His hair is slicked with some kind of pomade or gel.
He has a dark smattering of freckles across his nose and a faded blue-green bruise under his right eye, as if he were in a fight a few days earlier.
His eyes are a bright green and very much fixated on Kitty in the kind of way that I imagine is reserved for her alone.
“Hi, Knots,” Kitty replies, ignoring the way he’s smiling at her, looking past him for something beyond his shoulder inside.
“I’m working the ropes inside in a little while,” he tells her. “They let us dance for free once we take all the tickets. Maybe you can save one for me later?”
Kitty nods, her eyes finally meeting his. “Sure thing. I’ll see you in there.”
He pushes open one of the doors and lets us pass.
As we step inside, I’m hit with the smells of perfume and sweat, of stolen gin and summer.