24. Mr. Sandman, Bring Me a Dream
Mr. Sandman, Bring Me a Dream
THREE
Ishouldn’t do it. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help myself.
I have to see her.
The other six are asleep. I ease toward the front until I’ve grasped the lead. Even Seven is buried deep.
I usually prefer someone else to be in lead, but I can’t stop myself.
So I creep forward.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Taking lead feels like stepping into warm water one inch at a time. First, the weight of our hands. Then the pull of our lungs. The couch under our back. The itch of fabric at our wrist. The steady, living pressure of Snow tucked into our chest.
I blink.
The world sharpens.
The eclectic tattoo parlor comes alive around me in layers. Old brick. Ink. Lemon cleaner. Metal. The faint sweetness of Snow’s hair under all of it, warm and tart, like summer apples left in the sun.
My throat works around a sound I refuse to make.
She is asleep on us.
On me.
One of her knees is hooked over our thigh. Her hand is curled in the front of our hoodie, fingers gripping the fabric like she caught us and decided to keep us. Her cheek is pressed over our sternum. Every tiny snore slips through her nose and lands against our ribs.
With Snow snuggled close, this cramped little couch is somehow more comfortable than the bed in our apartment, and that’s saying a lot.
Despite our rather spartan living arrangements, the massive king size bed we have has the plushest mattress topper, feather down pillows, and a comforter that is like being held in a cloud.
That was mine and Two’s doing.
We value sleep more than the others.
Aside from the bed, our apartment has always felt too much like a prison. A place to read books, watch TV, and occupy ourselves with anything that kept us inside and out of the public.
Unless we were called out, which has been a lot recently.
At least inside, we were never alone.
But I could always escape our prison in a way the others couldn’t.
Right now, there is no one between me and this moment. No one between me and Snow’s hand. No one to blunt how badly I want to lower my face and press my mouth to the crown of her head just once. So I do it. Softly.
She sighs.
The sound goes straight through me.
And now I fully and completely understand every stupid thing Four has ever wanted to do. Every rule One has broken for her. Every time Two pretended not to care while leaning closer anyway.
Snow makes sense of us. Gives us some semblance of peace.
And I am desperate to get closer to that feeling. To her.
I close my eyes again and push myself into sleep.
The others fall asleep. When I do it, it’s an act of force. Soon, I find myself hurtling through time and space in that special way that makes me feel unmoored and slightly tingly.
Having Snow wrapped in my arms makes it easier to jump from thought to thought, from room to room, until my feet find their grounding. I push the hood down now that I’m here.
The furniture is old, and even the curtains look to be made of cheap, scratchy material that is barely filtering the predawn light. Two girls sit on the floor of the living room.
Teenagers. One is a little person with a high forehead, red hair, and a button nose. The other I immediately recognize as Snow. They both have matching, jagged cut bangs that are too high and uneven to have been done by a professional.
Two apples float between them as they giggle.
A lone pencil case with a unicorn on it looks like it’s wearing out.
In Snow’s dream, they hold hands, sharing a private moment.
Suddenly, I feel like a creep, sneaking into Snow’s subconscious, just to be near her. But it was the others who fought with her.
I want to be near her. No, I need to be near her.
"What are you doing here?" teenage Snow asks, suddenly turning to look directly at me.
My heart rockets in my throat as I stumble back a step.
Still, I twist to see if anyone is behind me, but there’s no one. She’s really looking at me.
"I—uh. You can see me," I stutter slightly. When I dreamwalk, I go unnoticed unless I try to make drastic changes to the person’s subconscious. Only small, subtle changes can be made without drawing attention to myself or screwing up someone’s head for a while.
Not that I’m here to influence her. That’s reserved for the powers that be who make big decisions, and I only do it when I’m told to. I’ve only ever preferred to be a quiet witness.
"Of course I can see you," teenage Snow says, getting up from the floor.
One of the apples drops to the ground with a thud.
The other girl continues on as if Snow were still sitting across from her, quietly giggling conspiratorially.
As Snow nears, her image flickers and morphs until she is the woman I know. Instead of the beige pajamas, she’s in her usual city stalking outfit. Her hair is long and unmarred once again.
White curtains flutter from the side, distracting me.
"I haven’t met you before," Snow says, bringing my attention back to her.
I shake my head. It’s difficult to find my voice for a moment. "No. You haven’t...exactly. I’m Three."
We’ve technically slept together but bringing that up feels like it would be a creepy voyeuristic flex.
"Let me guess, Three. Your power has to do with getting into other people’s heads?" Even while speaking to me, she can't keep her eyes off the other girl for more than a second.
I’ve seen her electric blue eyes in the flesh, and I’m still mesmerized. I’m tempted to reach out and trace a finger over the curve of her jaw and kiss the corner of her mouth. Instead, I clasp my hands behind me.
"Dreams," I explain, studying the scene she built instead of the curve of her mouth. "I can walk into dreams."
Again, I notice sheer white curtains whipping about in an open window off to the side. It doesn’t match this room. It’s a different memory, a different dream hovering at the edges of this one.
"Isn’t that kind of...I dunno, rude?" she asks, facing me again. Though there is no anger in her voice.
I scratch my head. "Probably, but it’s the best way I can understand people."
"You want to understand me?" She throws me a saucy yet challenging smile.
"I—" Again, words fail me. I’m not used to being in lead, talking to anyone directly, and I don’t want to say the wrong thing. "Who is she?" I ask instead.
"Rosie." Snow's smile slips at the edges as she watches the young girl. "She was...she was my friend. My sister." The words thicken with emotion.
Was. Past tense.
"What happened to her?"
Snow sighs and folds her arms as if to protect herself.
"There was an outbreak of some kind of sickness in the home where we grew up. I don’t even remember what kind.
Honestly, I don’t even remember feeling sick.
" She shakes her head. "But it was killing kids our age, and both of us caught it when we were sixteen. So we had to be treated for it."
The white curtains at the corner of my purview begin to wave and flap with more insistence. Another dream seeping into this one, invading it.
Snow just continues to watch Rosie on the ground, making the one apple float.
The curtains whip faster, harder, elongating, waving over the current living room until I can’t see it anymore.
Snow continues to stare at the spot where Rosie was.
"What’s over there?" I ask quietly, looking toward the source of the white curtains.
"My worst nightmare," she whispers, still staring straight ahead.
I shouldn’t do it, yet I can’t stop myself. I follow the flapping fabric until it slows, and a new scene reveals itself. The curtains calm, yet still slightly wave on either side of the large, nearly floor to ceiling window that’s open. The breeze flows into a makeshift hospital room with two beds.
A teenage Snow is waking up from one of them.
She looks around the room, taking in her surroundings before looking up at the IV she is attached to.
She pulls the needle out carefully. Slipping out of bed, she walks over to the window, hands on either side of the frame.
Her eyes close as the breeze lifts tendrils of her hair.
She’s wearing the same dull beige pajamas I’d seen her wearing before.
They resemble a prison uniform, yet she is beautiful.
Even as she stands at the window, I can see how free and untamed she is. Like her clothes, her surroundings, nothing could stop her from being who she is. Deep admiration wells in me. She’s like no one we’ve ever met before. Snow can’t be broken.
Whereas I am nothing but a collection of broken pieces. Just like that tattoo on her arm.
I feel a presence at my side. Adult Snow is standing next to me, watching with growing trepidation. She holds her arms around her body even tighter, as if both attempting to protect and brace herself.
Teenage Snow opens her eyes and sighs before facing the room, her attention trained on the lump in the other bed that faces the other way.
"Okay, Rosie, time to wake up, sleepyhead. I’m bored, and you need to talk me out of running away for the hundredth time." She walks over to the other twin bed, managing to get in it and squeeze her arms around her friend.
Teenage Snow stiffens. "Rosie?" Her voice is suddenly hoarse yet hesitant. Her arm slowly pulls back, and she lifts up onto her elbow. "Rosie?" she asks again, a little more panicked.
Snow tugs Rosie’s shoulder so she rolls onto her back. As soon as she does, a half gasp, half yelp escapes Snow even as she claps a hand over her horrified face.
The teenage girl's pallor hasn’t just paled; it has a distinct grayish blue tint. Eyes and mouth closed, there is no mistaking that the girl is dead.
This time it’s half squawk, half animal whimper of pain that comes from teenage Snow’s throat as she backs out of the bed onto unsteady legs. Silent tears stream down her face.
A strong breeze whips through the open window, the white curtains flapping and waving into the room with more energy.
I was wrong. Only moments ago, I watched Snow, believing her spirit could never be broken, and now I’m watching it happen in real time. The way she dulls, darkens, like a part of her soul is dying to lay alongside her friend. A void forms inside me as I feel her grief. Heavy, hollowing.
"She was the only thing I cared about," adult Snow says next to me. Her cheeks are also wet. I want to wrap my arm around her. Comfort her. Take her to a different part of her mind, but as I watch, delicate thin strands of opalescence criss-cross every which way around the scene.
This moment is precious. Subconscious defining.
"And she died." Adult Snow practically chokes on the words. "Maybe if we’d left earlier, we wouldn’t have gotten sick at the stupid home along with the other kids."
Even as adult Snow speaks, teenage Snow walks over to the bedside table by Rosie and picks up the unicorn pencil case I saw in the living room.
The moment Snow’s fingers close around it, the room pulses. Not the whole room. Just the pencil case.
A soft, pearly light slips between her fingers, thin as thread, winding once around her wrist before sinking under her skin. It pulses, like a heartbeat, the light seeping into her chest.
Teenage Snow doesn’t look down.
Both teenage and adult Snow are too shattered to notice anything except the girl in the bed. She clutches it to her chest as she backs away toward the window.
"She didn’t want to strike out on our own, but I should have made her. Forced her to go with me, and she’d still be alive."
Teenage Snow finally breaks her horrified stare and turns to the open window. The curtains still whip about in the strong breeze. One moment she’s standing there, the next moment she’s gone.
"I left. There was nothing left for me. But the world wasn’t what I thought it was. Without Rosie, I became smaller, and smaller until I felt like I was a timid little smudge on the floor."
More opalescent strands criss-cross over the room as the curtains elongate and flap until the beds are no longer in view.
"You could never be," I say, then reach out and take hold of Snow’s hand. It’s warm and firm in mine, but I feel her shudder. For a moment, I fear it’s in revulsion, but then I realize I unlocked a sob with my touch.
I don’t want her to be sad. The feeling hooks under my ribs and pulls until there’s nowhere in me it doesn’t hurt.
Cupping her face with my hand, I swipe my thumb along her cheek, brushing away her tears.
Then slowly I lean in. My lips touch hers, careful, testing. I pull back from the kiss and search her face. Her eyes are wet, her mouth parted, her breath catching like she’s waiting for me to decide whether she gets more.
So I kiss her again.