Chapter Eighty-Four I’ve Been Totally Threading This
The second our lips connect, everything stops.
My heart.
Our world.
Even time itself.
Everything grinds to a halt, until there is nothing but Jude, nothing but me, nothing but us and this moment that’s been a lifetime—an eternity—in the making.
Need.
Friendship.
Pain.
Absolution.
Reassurance.
Fear.
Love.
It’s all there.
In the slide of his hands over my skin.
In the gentle caress of his fingers against my cheek, my shoulder, the nape of my neck.
In the give and take of his mouth against my own.
Every moment before this and every moment that will come after this somehow meld together, and I can see them all.
Sweet and sexy.
Fun and terrifying.
Easy and more difficult than anything I’ve ever imagined.
They’re all right there, a million points of light spread out before me, so close I can almost touch them. And Jude is in every single one.
For the first time in my life, I understand why the Ancient Greeks saw life as a thread to be spun and, eventually, cut. Because that’s what I see in this moment when Jude and I are broken open and laid bare. Thousands of multicolored threads connecting us to the world, to our friends, to each other. Thousands of multicolored threads woven together to—
“Oh my God!” I pull back as it suddenly comes to me.
“Clementine?” Jude looks freaked out as he lets me go. “What’s wrong? Did I hurt—”
“Nothing! Nothing’s wrong! I know what to do!”
I don’t waste time explaining it to him. Instead, I grab his hand and pull him down the stairs to where our friends are.
They’re lying around or still dozing. But around them I can see the men and women of the past, dressed in suits and beautiful dresses, as well as other people in clothes the likes of which I’ve never seen before. They’re obviously people from the future. Only now, they’re not separated by space or time. They’re together, mingling and talking, dancing and laughing and whirling around the room. The past and the future combined into one beautiful tapestry of life.
One couple—a man from the future and a woman from the past—get a little overenthusiastic and crash into a table that isn’t there in the present. Ember, who is lying in that spot, screams and leaps up from where she was napping.
“Did you hear that?” she asks.
“Hear what?” Mozart starts looking around.
“That! People are laughing! Can’t you—” And that’s when I realize she can feel them. Not just as a nebulous brush against her arm or a shiver down her spine. At this moment, she can actually hear and feel the people from the past and the future who are gathered around her.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Remy tells her soothingly, and I realize he can see them, too. That he’s always been able to see them.
“The monsters—” she starts.
“Not the monsters,” Remy says, sharing a conspiratorial smile with me. “The future.”
“And the past,” I add.
“The fuck?” she asks.
“There’s a party going on right now, and it’s getting a little rambunctious.”
Ember makes a face. “We have to figure out how to fix this shit soon, because it’s really freaking me out.”
“One problem at a time,” Luis tells her. “And I say the monsters are a little more important right now.”
“That’s because you can’t hear a bunch of people talking about their favorite song.”
“Actually, I can,” he tells her. “I’ve just been ignoring it—and the horrible swing music—for the last hour.”
“That’s not swing music,” Izzy comments, rolling over onto her side. “That’s 1950s rock and roll.”
Luis gives her a look. “I don’t know what kind of rock and roll you listen to, girl, but Elvis is definitely not in this building.”
I’m particularly fascinated by their argument because I’m hearing the Beatles. To be fair, what else would be playing while kissing Jude?
“Is that what happened upstairs?” Jude asks, looking fascinated. “You heard all this?”
“No. I mean, yes, but it’s been here all along. I saw something else, and it gave me an idea to fix the tapestry so we can trap the monsters.”
“Oh, yeah?” Remy asks. “How?”
Suddenly everyone looks a lot more interested than freaked out as they wait for my answer. “We’ve got to unravel the tapestry.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Simon asks. “You want to unravel the only thing we have that can actually stop the monsters?”
“I do. Because it’s the only way to fix it.”
And just like that, the enthusiasm is gone.
“That’s a pretty big move,” Mozart tells me. “If you’re wrong, we’re completely fucked.”
“To be fair, we’re completely fucked already,” Izzy says. “In case you haven’t noticed…”
She’s right. We are. The wind is rattling the windows continuously, and lightning flashes across the sky every couple of seconds. All of which means it’s only a matter of time before buildings start getting damaged. The only thing I want less right now than to be out in the elements is to be out there with a bunch of nightmare monsters.
“If we unravel the tapestry and we can’t put it back together, I’ll never be able to channel another nightmare again,” Jude tells me. “I’ll have nowhere to put them and no way to upload them back into the ether.”
“You can’t channel them now anyway, not with the tapestry broken.” I put my hand on his arm and watch as the nightmares start spinning around from the contact. “But that tapestry is made of nightmares, right?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“And you can control nightmares, right?”
“Yes…”
“Then you can unravel the tapestry.”
He looks completely horrified. “Why would I do that?”
“If each thread is a different nightmare, once it’s unraveled, then you’ll have all the different threads separated and can weave them back together any way you want.”
I can see the second my plan starts making sense to Jude, because, instinctively, he starts to back away. “I can’t do that. There’s no way I can control that many nightmares at the same time. What if I lose one?”
“What if you don’t?” I shoot back.
“Seriously?” he demands. “After everything that just happened?”
“You won’t be alone this time, Jude.” I close the distance between us so I can wrap an arm around his waist. “We’ll all be there to help make sure none of the nightmares go anywhere.”
“And how exactly do you think we can do that?” Luis asks.
I shrug. “In the last two days, we’ve fought off squidzilla, an angry snake monster, and a bunch of mutant chricklers—all of which are made from a ton of nightmares. How hard could a few more nightmares be?”
Jude still doesn’t look impressed, but Simon is definitely coming around. “You know, she’s got a point, Jude.”
“Do you have any idea how many threads make up a tapestry?” Ember says. “It has to be thousands. So how is he going to store them all? I mean, he’s big, but I’m pretty sure they won’t all fit on his body.”
“Good point,” I say. “But there has to be a way.”
“How do you store them now?” Luis asks.
“In jars,” Jude tells him reluctantly.
“Jars?” I repeat as things start to become clear to me.
“Yeah, jars,” he answers, looking even more wary.
“Like canning jars?”
“Canning jars?” Mozart says. “There’s no way—”
“Yes,” Jude finally admits with a sigh. “I store them in canning jars.”
“That’s what you were doing at the root cellar yesterday. Channeling nightmares into the jars there.” I shake my head. “How did I never think of that…”
“To be fair, most people don’t see a jar of jelly and think, Oh, that’s my worst nightmare,” Luis says dryly.
“So we need to go to the cellar,” I tell them. “You can pull the tapestry apart as slowly as you want and store the nightmares in the jars there. Then, when you’re ready to weave them back into the tapestry, you can pull them out the same way. You’ll be in total control.”
Jude doesn’t immediately jump at my suggestion, but I can tell he’s thinking about it.
Even as Ember asks, “What happens if you’re wrong?”
I don’t like to think about that, because if I’m wrong, we’re fucked. But we’re also fucked right now, like Izzy said. Plus, I don’t know if it’s the being able to see the past and the future thing I’ve got going on or what, but I have a really, really strong feeling that I’m right.
“Then we come up with a new plan,” I tell her after a second. “But unless anyone else has a better plan right now, I think this is the one we go with. Does anyone else have a different idea?”
I look around, but none of them volunteers anything. So then I turn to Jude and say, “I know this sucks. But I promise, whatever happens, you’re not in it alone. I’ll be there, and so will everyone else. I swear, we’ll figure it out.”
“Okay.” He nods.
“Okay?” I repeat, because I really didn’t think it would be that easy.
“You said you’ve got me, right?” His eyes search mine.
“I’ve definitely got you.”
“All right, then,” Jude says, sounding anything but enthusiastic. “Let’s go unravel some nightmares.”
“You sound like a damn psychologist.” Simon snorts. “Maybe we should all start calling you Dr. Abernathy-Lee. You can tell us what our dreams mean.”
“Or I can make sure that the first nightmare I accidentally let slip is directed straight at you.”
“That doesn’t sound like much of an accident,” Simon protests.
Jude smiles thinly in response. “Exactly.” Then he turns to me and says, “You ready to do this thing?”