Chapter Nineteen
Nineteen
The words aren’t, technically, a call for my demise and the demise of everyone I love, but they might as well be. They feel like a threat.
I end up with arrows going everywhere, infinite possible candidates for the person targeting me on Instagram.
Truthfully, it’s a little ridiculous. And hard to read.
“Okay, new plan,” I tell myself as I get up and light a lavender candle. It says on the box it came in that it’s supposed to encourage sleep. Or at least, peace and relaxation. Which is probably necessary for dreams.
The dreams have been like a magnifying glass, zooming in on things I never noticed and answering questions I never thought to ask.
This last dream was different because there was no one moment or incident that was drawn out, so I have to believe that I was supposed to get something bigger from it.
Something less specific, but I have no idea what it was.
Which all comes back to me needing as many dreams as I can get—to clarify things, to answer my original questions, to home in on things I’ve been ignorant of.
I wonder if more dreams don’t just have to show me what happened with Jason.
Maybe they can show me other things too.
Maybe they can lead me to who I should be suspicious of, help me narrow down who might be out for my blood.
I try a bunch of dream-stimulating techniques I find online, including visualization and journaling and yoga. I suddenly can’t even nap, as though that’s ever been a problem for me.
Finally, after an entire afternoon of trying and failing to force a dream, there’s really only one place I can think to go.
Marcus’s dad’s car shop, The Fix, is on the upper north side of town. It’s attached to a single house, three cars lining the front of the shop, three others parked in a line beside the curb.
As I leave my car, dark streaks of grease are like a trail leading me up the long driveway.
The air smells of engine oil and cigarette smoke, and rock music is playing in the background.
There are leaves almost all colors of the rainbow littered on the ground.
I’m wearing a puffer vest because it’s been raining the last couple of days.
The weather has fully committed to chilly, stopped hopscotching between summer and fall.
I hear tinkering beneath a car deep in the garage; I imagine all of them are in varying states of disrepair. I’m not sure where to go, but then, as if summoned from the belly of a demonic whale, a body slides out from the bottom of the car where all the noise was coming from.
It’s Marcus. His hair is tied in a ponytail, and he’s wearing a ratty gray T-shirt covered in oil. I expect him to look like a kid playing with toys that are too big for him, but he doesn’t. He looks different and serious, older or something.
“Hey,” he says, sliding all the way out. He looks just as surprised to see me as I feel to be here.
Before I can answer, the door of a small office with glass windows opens, and out comes Tommy Riddick, Marcus’s father.
I saw him at the hospital the night of Jason’s accident and at the lunch for Jason, but this is the first moment I realize how much older than Jason’s dad he looks, despite being the younger of the Brothers Riddick.
He must have heard me come in—they must both have heard me come in—because he calls out a “Hello?” as he shuffles out of the office.
“Hi, Mr. Riddick,” I say.
Marcus gets up. “Dad, it’s okay, I got it.”
“Good man,” Marcus’s dad says, turning around.
Marcus is wiping his hands on a rag, and there’s something perplexing about this idea of Marcus as a good son, a hard worker, someone who has been helping to carry the weight of keeping his father’s garage open.
But also, he seems like more than sleepy Marcus Riddick here.
Capable and solid and relaxed. He feels like a hot stranger, and I suddenly wish I’d thought to wear something cuter.
“So, hi,” I say turning back to him. “I’m here about the dreams.”
“Really? I thought you might be here about Little Women,” Marcus says with a smirk.
“Oh. I mean, if you wanted to talk about some of the links I sent you…”
“I really don’t,” Marcus says, and he’s giving me a strange look.
“Listen,” I say finally, because this is more than a little awkward. “This whole dream thing is obviously a…very weird thing that happens.”
I have no idea what I’m actually trying to say, and it shows. “I don’t know why it happens the way it does, with it always being my memories and…”
“Was there a point to this?” Marcus whispers, stepping forward till the tips of our shoes are almost touching. For some reason that I’ll never understand, my stomach dips.
You’re beautiful as fuck.
“I’ve never been able to make one happen. Even when I sleep, I have other dreams. Normal dreams, but not like our dreams.”
“You know, when you phrase it a certain way, Zadie Cartwright, it kind of sounds like you’ve been dreaming about me,” Marcus says, back to being his annoying self.
I roll my eyes. “And let me guess, you…” My voice fades as I catch sight of something behind Marcus. “Holy shit, is this one?”
I’m moving past Marcus to look at the palm-sized bird made out of light brown wood. I can tell that it’s not totally done, with just the basic bird shape and the head recognizable. There are no wings yet, and I can see the start of a tail but not much else. And already it looks incredible.
Marcus seems embarrassed as he comes to where I’m standing.
“I just started this one,” he says. He pulls out paper drawings of a bird from a workbench.
“This is the template.” He puts one of the drawings over the wood so I can see how it’s starting to take shape from a two-dimensional drawing to a three-dimensional bird.
“This is so cool,” I say, and I’m not sure why I’m whispering. “Can you…do a little bit?”
“It’s really not impressive. Just something to pass the time,” he mumbles. “I just like working with my hands.”
But he picks up one of the knives on the bench. He shaves pieces of wood off the body of the bird, carving until it’s more rounded. His hands work quickly and easily, and then he holds out the knife to me. “Your turn.”
I guffaw. “Yeah, right. I like my fingers, thank you very much.”
“It’s easy,” he says, explaining what a whittling knife is and then showing me more slowly how to carve with it. When he gives me the knife, the handle is warm from his hand. I carefully follow his instructions and am immediately alarmed by how sharp it is.
“Nope,” I say, handing it back. “I don’t want to ruin your masterpiece.”
Marcus grins. “First, not a masterpiece. Second, I have too many of them already. This one can be yours.”
“Do you sell them?”
He nods. “The birds are more for me these days. But I do turtles, fish, mice, mini furniture and sell those. It’s all just a hobby for now, but we’ll see.”
I find myself feeling weirdly sad. Wishing I had something I was indisputably great at. Something that could give me even the slightest hint on what to do with my life.
“That is really, really cool, Marcus,” I say.
Just like when he first told me about carving, his cheeks are pink, and after a bit, I realize we are just standing there smiling at each other.
“So, the dreams,” he says.
“The dreams,” I say, remembering what I came for. “I still don’t know what happened with Jason and I don’t know who the Instagram bully is, but I think the dreams could show me both. Which is why I think we should make one happen. A specific one.”
Now, he looks at me like I’m crazy. “Damn, Cartwright. I didn’t realize that, in addition to making a mean yearbook, you knew how to control REM sleep.”
“Somebody has been doing their research.”
Marcus smirks.
I sigh. “There has to be a way, right? I mean, there’s a science behind everything, and we know it involves me and you and a place and a memory.”
Marcus seems to consider this for a moment. Then he looks at me. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Maybe,” I say. Feeling a tickle of excitement, I add, “Let’s say it on the count of three. One. Two. Three…”
“Mind melding,” I say at the same time Marcus says, “Pot brownies.”
“Are you kidding me?” I don’t bother to hide my disappointment.
But he maintains his arrogance. “Mind melding. That’s your brilliant plan?”
“Our minds would be overlapping, sharing thoughts—only this time instead of it happening on its own, we’d make it happen,” I explain.
“I thought we could try to go to this one memory; it’s the closest thing to a fight that me and Jason ever got into.
You guys had an away game, and I hadn’t been able to reach Jason all night.
But then there he was on TikTok, doing shots with his boys and these cheerleaders from another school. ”
Marcus narrows his eyes. “And that’s the memory you want to see because?”
“Well, it is Jason and me at our most imperfect. Even if we did end up resolving it very maturely,” I can’t help but add.
“There could be something in the memory that shows when things started to fall apart. Plus, if someone does have it out for me, they’d probably be thrilled about me and Jason fighting.
Maybe this dream can show me who my haters are.
All we need is to get into that specific memory. ”
“Just get into it,” he says, solemn. “Like a cabinet or a bank. An enemy compound. We’ll scale the walls. Break in.”
“You don’t sound like you have a ton of faith in me, Riddick,” I say, hands on hips, pretending to be annoyed.
“Oh, I have faith, Cartwight,” Marcus deadpans.
I hide my smile. “You should. I have methods. Do you have time now?”