Blue Is for Nightmares

  -The hardest part is getting out the blood," she continues. "Usually I just send them to the cleaners. Is that why you changed?"

  I nod.

  -Ode to the joys of being a woman."

  Relief She doesn't know.

  While Drea arranges her newly acquired lobby treats in an already crammed mini-fridge, I kick the soiled bedsheets

  underneath my bed and finish muzzling the clean one over all four corners of the mattress.

  "Decided to burn some incense, I smell," she says. "You've been burning a lot of that stuff lately"

  I ignore the comment and walk barefoot over to the broken glass. I begin sweeping it up using a brush that hasn't touched my hair in days and my math notebook, feeling a tinge of self-pride that I'm finally putting both to good use.

  I walk the clump over to the wastebasket, but then stop, mid-dump. I snatch my eyes shut.

  Clench my teeth together. Hear a catlike cry whine out my throat. The sting shoots up my leg, up my spine, and forks into my shoulders and neck.

  I missed a piece of glass. I lift my foot and turn it upward to look. The diamond-shaped chunk is still sticking out.

  "I'll call the health center," Drea says. "Do you need an ambulance?"

  "No. I think I can get it." I hobble over to my bed for a better look. I can see where the piece entered. A clean, sideways slit. I take a deep breath, grab the point that sticks out, and pluck the glass from my foot in one quick movement. A bright red piece, still dripping.

  "Eauuw!" Drea dives headfirst into her bed, drowning her face into the sea of pink paisleys patterned across the comforter.

  "I need you to go into my spell drawer," I tell her. "I need you to get me a potato."

  'A potato?" Drea peeks out from the bed ruffle. "Please."

  She diverts her eyes toward the ceiling as she makes her way past me and into the bottom drawer of my dresser. She plucks out a hearty Idaho Gold.

  "Cut it in half. There should be a plastic knife on the silver tray in there."

  "Should I be worried?" she asks.

  "Only if you don't hurry up."

  Drea slices the raw potato in half and hands it to me. I press the damp, white center against the flesh and hold it there for many moments to clot the bleeding, an old family remedy even my mother uses. I top the cut off with a few drops of lemon juice and then bandage it up with some tape from the first-aid kit.

  "Are you sure you're going to be all right?" she asks. "I'm fine. Are you all right?"

  'Actually I feel a little faint," she says. "Let me call the health center."

  "For you or for me?" I joke. "It's two in the morning. It'll be fine for a few hours." I climb into bed and drag the covers up from the floor. "You know what's weird, though?"

  "More weird than you and your potato?"

  "Ha ha.- I grab the half-burned candle with Drea's initials and stuff it into my night table drawer.

  "I cut my foot in my nightmare too."

  "Hmm," she says. "That is weird. But sometimes nightmares come true."

  I hesitate, wanting to say something, but don't. Even though I know I have to tell her soon. I have to tell someone.

  Four

  It's 4:30 in the morning when the phone rings in our room. I'm up anyway, paging through back issues of Teen People for about the kagillionth time, trying to take my mind off those lilies in my nightmare.

  I thankfully pause from last December's horoscope, the Taurean blurb reminding me how unsuccessful my love life has been, and nab the phone. "Hello?"

  "Is Drea there?" An unfamiliar boy voice--lazy, muffled, distant.

  I glance over at her. "She's sleeping," I say.

  "Wake her."

  "Um... no. But I'll have her call you at some normal time. You know, when people aren't sleeping? Can I ask who's calling?"

  'A friend."

  "Can you be more specific?"

  But instead of answering, he hangs up. And so do I. "Who was that?" Drea grogs.

  "Some guy who wanted to talk to you," I say. "But he wouldn't give me his name."

  Drea smiles.

  "You know who it is?" I ask.

  "Maybe," she says.

  "Who?"

  "Just some guy I've been talking to."

  The phone rings again. I pick it up. "Hello?"

  This time it's quiet on the other end. "Hello?" I repeat. "Give it to me," Drea says.

  I hand it to her and she turns away, cuddling up into a ball and talking in a whisper, so I can't hear her.

  Maybe Chad's available after all.

  I look over at his jersey, tacked up over the broken window, and imagine him wearing it the sleeves scrunched up toward the elbow, a snug fit across the shoulders. I suddenly have the urge to go up, press my nose into the fabric, and lose myself in pheronaonal bliss. But I know Drea would get all pissy on me if I even ventured a toe within a three- foot radius of the relic.

  After several minutes of a whisper-filled conversation, Drea hangs up, and I'm still gawking at the jersey. "So who is this guy?" I ask.

  "Nobody," she giggles.

  "What do you mean, 'nobody'?"

  "I mean, I don't want to talk about it right now," she says.

  "Why? What's the big deal?"

  "Let's end it, okay? It's no big deal."

  "Fine," I say, paging past a string of shampoo ads in the magazine. I have no idea why she's getting all secretive on me.

  "Chad's jersey really came in handy" she says, changing the subject.

  "How come you still have it?"

  "I don't know." She twirls a strand of hair around her finger and brings it up to her lip, mustache-style. "It's comfy and it still smells like him--the cuddly cologne he wears, the way his skin smells after a shower."

  "Do you think you guys will get back together?" I ask. "Naturally. We're so the same about everything. It's just a matter of time."

  I squish down into my covers and try to conjure up his scent. The day we scarfed down mouthfuls of cherry pie at Hillcrest's homecoming pie-eating contest. The afternoon we spent searching for pinecones--an environmental science project--or cleaning up the campus for Earth Day. The time we almost kissed... and then did. But somehow, for some reason, even though the blood quakes through my veins just thinking about all these things, I can't remem her how he smelled the sexy, steamy scent that Drea is talking about.

  There's a knock on the door. 'Anybody order room service?"

  It's Amber, our friend from upstairs. I hobble over to the door, my foot still stinging from the glass cut, and let her in.

  "I totally couldn't sleep," she says, pushing past me. 'And then I was walking by, heard you gals chattering away, and I figured I'd join you."

  "Lucky us," Drea says.

  "Oh my god." Amber folds her arms in front. "It's so totally freezing in here."

  "We had an accident." Drea points toward the window. "Bummer." Amber glances at the jersey-patch-up job for about half a second.

  'Amber, it's 4:40 A.M.," I say. "Why are you up?"

  "Hunger. You girls got anything to eat? I'm so starving." She boogie-dances over to Drea's mini-fridge, the pink and green shoes patterned across her woolly pajamas hopping along with her.

  She makes a "yuck" face at the selection inside--tongue slightly curled, sticking out to the side, one eye squinting, the other rolled upward--but then plucks out a granola bar. "So, why are you gals up?"

  "We're up," I begin, "because some weird guy called Drea, but she won't talk about it."

  "Who was it?" Amber asks.

  "Just some guy" Drea says.

  "Come on, Dray, you can do so much better than that," Amber says. "Info please."

  "There is no info. It's just some guy I've been talking to. That's it."

  22

  "So, Chad's history?" Amber asks, winding one of her tiny orange pigtails around a periwinkle-blue nail-polished finger.

  "Never history."

  I reach for my school bag, slumped on the floor besid
e my bed, and pluck a deck of cards from the side compartment.

  "Oh, Stacey," Amber begins, "tell me you're going to do a love spell. I'm so in. It's been a while, if you know what I mean."

  "Oh, please," Drea says.

  "Have some fun, will you? You're sixteen years old, in the prime of your life, at a coed boarding school with a boy to girl ratio of four to one. Advantage-in, if you know what I mean."

  "For your information, I have lots of fun," Drea says. "I know. I read it on the wall in the boys'

  bathroom." "What were you doing in the boys' bathroom?" I ask. "Writing stuff about myself.

  Gotta let the boys know I'm

  still in circulation."

  "Maybe you'd have more luck if you took out a billboard ad on Route 128," Drea says. "What's it been, like, a year since you had a date?"

  Amber sticks her tongue out at Drea, revealing a mouth- full of granola. "Six months, for your information. Almost as long as you and Chad have been broken up. God, you two were a lifetime ago."

  "Eat your granola," Drea says.

  "Takes more than granola to keep these lips shut," Amber says. "Listen, if you're not doing a love spell, I'm outta here. I've got toes to paint."

  I peer down at her toenails, the pink and blue smiley faces with missing eyes and half-worn-off smiles. She ends up borrowing a bottle of nail polish remover from my desk and then raiding Drea's fridge for a Snickers bar and two cans of Diet Coke before leaving.

  Meanwhile, since I'm pretty sure I won't be getting any more sleep tonight, and since the cards are already shuffled, when Drea asks for a reading, I should, but I don't, refuse.

  We sit cross-legged on my bed, the cards in between us and thick, purple candles lit on both night tables. The rulebook says we aren't supposed to light candles or incense in the dorms, but nobody really pays attention to the rulebook anyway. Plus, Madame Discharge is usually too busy living vicariously through the contestants on Blind Date, blasting from her portable TV in the lobby, to even notice.

  "Cut the deck into three piles," I say, "and make a wish before you make the third pile."

  "Why the purple candles?" she asks.

  "To help give us insight." I look down at my amethyst ring, remembering how I dreamed about it, remembering how my grandmother gave it to me when I was twelve, just before she passed away.

  Drea makes her piles and I take seven cards from each to make one stack. "To your self," I say, placing the first card facedown. "To your family" I say, setting the second down next to it. I lay four more cards facedown and say their categories: "To your wish. What you expect. What you don't expect. What's sure to come true."

  "Why don't you just use Tarot cards?" Drea asks.

  "Because they're not as true. My grandmother taught me to read playing cards, just like her great-aunt taught her. The real way"

  I lay the remaining cards down atop the others, creating piles of three and four. There are two cards left over, which I place to the side. "These are your surprise cards."

  I turn the wish pile over to reveal a Nine of Spades, a Jack of Hearts, a Two of Clubs, and a Three of Spades, and feel the corners of my mouth turn down.

  "What's wrong?"

  "You made a wish about Chad."

  "How can you tell?"

  I point to the Jack of Hearts. 'A fair-haired young man next to the Nine of Spades."

  "What's a Nine of Spades mean?"

  "Disappointment. The Two of Clubs tells me he's going to ask you out somewhere. But then he's going to disappoint you at the last minute."

  "And the Three of Spades?"

  "The Three of Spades is for tears."

  "There's a surprise."

  I place the wish pile to the side, facedown. "Do you want me to keep going?"

  She nods.

  I pick up the what-you-don't-expect pile and spread the three cards out to reveal an Ace of Clubs, a Five of Clubs, and an Ace of Spades.

  I feel my face freeze up.

  "What?"

  "Nothing," I say, turning the cards over.

  "If it doesn't mean anything, then tell me."

  "Be careful, all right?"

  "Be careful of what?"

  But I can't answer. Can't say the words, like that will make them true.

  Drea looks away to avoid eye contact--the way she always does when she doesn't get her way.

  "Fine, forget it," she says. "Don't tell me. I don't have time for games."

  I focus a moment on the candle flame, following a tear of wax as it drips down the side. I don't know what to say, how to tell her, or if I should.

  I peel the three cards back over and spread them out with my fingers. I swallow hard, try to think up something quick that will sound convincing. But instead I say, "Be careful you don't say something you might regret."

  The expression on her face curls into a question mark. "What?"

  "You know, watch what you say" My voice cracks. "'Watch what I say?' Are you serious?"

  "You may get into an argument with someone over it. Someone close to you."

  "I do that anyway" she says. "Wow, Stace. You're a real mystic. You should open up your own shop and start charging people." She swings her legs off the side of the bed. "I have e-mail to check."

  I hate having to lie, but it's better than telling her the truth. Even I don't want to face it. I collect the cards, but hold Drea's what-you-don't-expect pile aside.

  "Why did Chad send me this?" Drea turns from her computer.

  "What is it?"

  "Some weird link about nursery rhymes. It's 'The House that Jack Built.--

  I join her to look. A computer-animated man in overalls and a tool belt moves around in a sort of computerized gait, laying down long slats of wood in the form of a house. In a matter of seconds, the construction is complete and the man has begun painting the exterior a creamy beige color.

  "This is different," Drea says.

  When the painting is done, a pearly white cat pounces down from a window ledge. It chases a rat across the front porch. The man wipes a stream of sweat from his brow and hammers up the finishing touch: a bright gold Welcome sign for the front door.

  Drea clicks on it. A grandma-looking woman, wearing a long peach dress and a frilly apron, comes out on the front porch. She reaches into the pocket of her apron for a thin red book labeled Nursery Rhymes.

  "This is the house that Jack built," the grandma-looking woman begins. "This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built."

  "Someone has a weird idea of humor," I say.

  The wiry voice continues, "This is the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built."

  "Chad's such a weirdo," Drea laughs. "I was telling him the other day that I've been having trouble sleeping. I guess this is his idea of a bedtime story. You know, to lull me to sleep. He's so sweet." She clicks the page closed and checks her other messages. "Something from Donovan,"

  she says,

  reading from the screen. "He's not going to be in health class, so can he borrow my notes." She types back a quick reply and sends it off.

  "You know that's just an excuse," I say, moving back toward the bed. "He's probably missing class just so he can borrow your notes. Like health notes are even important."

  Drea smiles; she knows it's true. "Nothing else from Chad," she sighs.

  "Don't you think 'The House that Jack Built' is enough for one night?"

  "I guess. I guess I just kind of miss the way he used to email me good night." She flops back onto her bed and crawls under the covers. -Good night," she says.

  "Good morning, you mean." I place Drea's cards into the night table drawer and roll the covers up over my shoulders. We still have another hour and a half before the alarm goes off. An hour and a half that I will spend staring up at the ceiling, thinking of Drea's card reading and of what I didn't couldn't--say.

  There is no way I'm going to fall asleep now.

  Five

 
D-period French. I slide down into my chair, sink my teeth into the pencil eraser, and flip through the four pages of the test. The subjunctive of pouvoir? The conditional past of aller? Is Madame LeSnore serious? She said this was going to be easy.

  The room is church-silent as the traitor herself prances up and down the rows doing a final cheat-check, probably giggling on the inside at the sight of my sweaty face, twisted up in utter confusion. As she makes her way to the other side of the room, PJ, who sits beside me, and Amber, two chairs up, snicker silently back and forth about the shimmery blue tint Madame's sporting in her hair today. A definite Clairol emergency. Though I'm not sure why PJ thinks it's funny. He dyes his hair spikes more often than a chameleon changes color. Today he's settled on camouflage swirls to match his nail polish.

  "Ten minutes left," Madame Lenore announces. "Stacey, stop daydreaming."

  I blink my stare away from the ugly clay planter on her desk--a gift, she told us, from a former student who appreciated the values of discipline and hard work. Translation: a royal kiss-up.

  PJ slides his test toward the end of the desk and then tilts it up in my direction. But all I can make out are the miniature doodles of comic-book characters playing cards and eating cheeseburgers that he's drawn in the corners.

  "Your own work, please," Madame snaps. I bite the eraser completely off the end of the pencil and feel it wedge itself in my throat. A reflex shot: the soiled red nubby shoots out my mouth and into Veronica Leeman's bullet-proof hair. I'm all prepared to mouth out an apology, but with all that hair spray and gel, she doesn't even notice.

  PJ rocks back and forth in silent laughter, his hands gripping over his stomach. "You rock," he mouths. I'm thinking Veronica senses the mockery because she turns around and gives him the finger.

  I, on the other hand, am too tired to laugh. I need sleep more than this test. Besides, even attempting to fill in any of

  these blanks is a waste of fine pencil lead. I'll be begging Madame after class for a retake anyway. Why waste breath and school supplies?

  I suddenly feel my eyes begin to droop closed and am literally fighting my head from bobbing back. I scrunch down a bit farther in my seat, hoping the back of the chair will help keep me propped, looking alert.