Blue Is for Nightmares

  PJ's still laughing, audibly now. His mouth is arched wide open and his green, candy-dyed tongue is wriggling out his mouth like an angry snake. He pounds his fist down on the desk in hysterics, but no one seems to be paying any attention. No one even looks.

  I don't have time to obsess on the subject of classroom injustice because suddenly... I have to pee. Bad! I place my hands over my stomach, cross my legs, and feel a droplet of sweat trickle down my forehead. I raise my hand to be excused, but Madame only laughs at me. She takes her seat at the front of the room and begins to correct my test, even though I haven't turned it in yet, even though it's still sitting on my desk, staring blankly up at me. This seemingly obvious setback doesn't seem to set her back from correcting it, however, because the next thing I know she's holding it up for everyone to see: a giant red F printed on the top.

  PJ's mouth fills with even more laughter when he sees it, and his snakelike tongue writhes and twists out his mouth, trying to break free. Madame folds the test into a paper airplane and launches it at me. The -plane circles the room a few times, but then lands in the center of my desk. I open up the folds and blink at the mass of words written in large, red, block letters across the paper: YOU KILLED MAURA AND DREA WILL BE NEXT.

  "No, I didn't!" I scream. "I didn't kill her!" My shriek wakes me up and everyone's just...

  staring. It takes me a second to put it all together, that somehow I nodded off to sleep, right here, in the middle of class.

  I look down at my test. It's still blank, still asking me for the subjunctive and conditional tenses.

  PJ reaches Out his clunky, braceleted hand to my forearm, but even that startles me.

  "Stacey?" Madame says. She stands up from her desk and looks me over, as though expecting to find some physical defect.

  I have no idea what to say. A sprinkling of giggles shoots out from the front corner of the room.

  "Students, please continue working," Madame says. "Stacey, are you all right?"

  I nod.

  More laughter, now from Veronica Leeman and her snotty friends.

  "I hope this wasn't some idea of a joke." Madame looks at them and then at me.

  I shake my head.

  "Why don't you hand in your test and go to the office. Now."

  The legs on my chair scrape against the linoleum floor as I slide myself back from the desk. I want to slither away as slyly as PJ's tongue, but I can't. I need to hurry or I won't make it to the bathroom in time. All eyes in the class, except for Amber's and Prs, reluctantly turn back to their meaningless French tenses. I walk to the front of the room and hand my blank test to Madame.

  She doesn't say anything else and I can't. I can only walk out of the room and resolve to stop whatever is going to happen. I have to save Drea and put Maura to rest in my mind forever.

  Six

  Dinner tonight looks gross. But since I skipped lunch after French class, mortified about what happened, I'm prepared to eat almost anything. I pluck one of the lemon-yellow trays from the stack, clank a handful of utensils on top, and peer over the row of heads in line to try to decipher what the gray mush being shoveled onto the plates is. Shepherd's Pie: bits of fatty scrambled hamburger in a mix of fake, waxy mashed potatoes and sweet, runny corn. So yucky.

  Veronica Leeman stands ahead of me in line. I check her hair for my pencil eraser, but can't seem to locate it in all that mass. Darn. She notices I'm behind her and looks down at me as though I'm a squashed bug.

  Veronica Leeman is one of the few people in this world I enjoy hating. Freshman year she organized a book drop in the middle of Algebra. At exactly 12:01, everyone except her and her three clone friends dropped their books. She and her friends just sat at their desks, hands folded, heads cocked to the side, feigning confusion. The result: the rest of the class, me included, got a week's worth of mind-deadening detention with Mr. Milano, the biology teacher, who decided it would do us some good to listen to him lecture for hours about his dissertation research--the mating habits of reptiles.

  The line moves forward, and me and Veronica are next. I watch as she grimaces over the selection of food. "Shepherd's Pie?" cafeteria-lady asks, an ice-cream scooper full of the chunky mixture aimed over Veronica's plate in plop position.

  "Heinous," Veronica says, waving her red acrylic nails like a stop signal. "Who eats this stuff?"

  "You do, now," cafeteria-lady says.

  "I don't think so. I'm a vegetarian."

  The woman plops some onto Veronica's plate. "Try it."

  "Didn't you hear me? I'm a vegetarian. Veg-i-tar-i-an. I don't eat an-i-mals. Which word don't you understand?"

  Cafeteria-lady smacks the ceramic plate back onto the counter and hands Veronica a cellophane-wrapped sandwich labeled TUNA.

  "Since when is a fish not an animal? Don't you have any salad?"

  lust corn and mashed potatoes."

  "Fine. I'll have that."

  A splash of corn juice hits Veronica's cheek as cafeteria- lady shakes the yellow glob onto the plate with the sCooper. So perfect.

  "Thanks a lot." Veronica clanks the plate onto her tray and moves away.

  I take the rejected tuna sandwich and sit at a table in the corner of the cafeteria, where the kids in the drama club congregate. It isn't my usual spot, but I want some peace and quiet and know they'll be too engrossed in arguments over whether or not Hamlet really had it hard for his mom to care about my episode in French class. Plus, sitting here also gives me the opportunity to piece things together.

  I consider the cards first. They say Chad is going to ask Drea out someplace but then cancel last minute, but that's really nothing new. They've both been active players in the game of date tag for as long as I've known them.

  She also got the Ace of Clubs, which is for a letter she'll receive; the Five of Clubs, for a package. But the card that really freaks me out the most is the Ace of Spades, the death card, which landed smack dab in the middle of both.

  The death card, just like the lilies.

  I tear up my sandwich into tiny pieces, remembering how one Easter Gram went completely ballistic when a neighbor brought a bunch of lilies over for the table's centerpiece. She ended up chopping the flowers from the stems and cramming them all down the garbage disposal.

  Then, the following day, she brought me to a garden shop and spent what seemed like hours teaching me about flowers and what they mean--like how lilies mean death.

  The man in my dream was holding a whole bunch of them.

  What about the smell of dirt? The scent was so potent in my nightmare; I can almost smell it now, just thinking about it.

  "Hey, Stacey" Chad places his tray down opposite mine. It's loaded with his usual amount--three ham sandwiches, two bags of ripple chips, a two-pack of yellow frosted cupcakes, three cartons of milk, an apple, and a banana.

  He doesn't normally sit with us in the cafeteria. Being the star goalie on Hillcrest's hockey team, he normally spends most of his time with teammates. I suspect he wants something.

  "Hey, Stace," Drea says, sitting down next to him.

  Amber and PJ join us, one sitting on each side of me. It's mourning silent, but I can still feel the laughter building up inside them, like a carbonated bottle about to blow.

  "Okay," I say. "Let's hear it."

  "Hear what?" PJ asks. "What's the matter, Stace? You look a little tired. Didn't you catch up on enough sleep in French class? Or were you too busy killing people?"

  Laughter released--a carbonated explosion. PJ and Amber high-five one another over my head.

  "Hysterical," I say. "So I haven't been sleeping great lately and dozed off during French. Can you blame me?"

  "I really think you need to talk to someone, Stace," Drea says. "Maybe a sleep disorder therapist or something."

  "And if that wasn't priceless enough," P.j begins, "seconds before she falls asleep, she goes all exorcist-chick on us and she spews out in Snotty Ronnie's hair."

  'A pencil eraser," I correct. '
And I spit it up; I didn't spew it out." Like it even makes a difference.

  "Speaking of..." Amber motions to the table to our right. Veronica is sitting there with her friends, pointing toward PJ and me and making that high-pitched cackle she calls a laugh. She focuses on PJ, makes the L-for-loser sign with her fingers, and places it up to her forehead.

  Veronica's lemming-friends follow suit.

  PJ focuses on his lunch, pretending it doesn't bother him.

  'Are you kidding?" Amber asks. "Don't back down. Tell that bitch off. Stacey, do one of your spells on her. Make her get fat."

  "Whatever spell I do comes back at me three times. I think I've gained enough this quarter."

  "So right," Amber says, glancing down at my waist. Amber can be such a bitch.

  "She's not worth it." PJ pours a bit of orange soda into his milk--a daily ritual he calls delicious and drinks in audible gulps. "I hate her, though. I wish she'd croak."

  "You don't mean that," I say.

  "How do you know?"

  I guess I don't know It's just weird hearing PJ talk that way about anyone. PJ, who refuses to swat at flies because of the karmic penalty, who got caught last year trying to free Mrs.

  Pinkerton's pet rabbit from its cage in the chemistry lab.

  "Speaking of death," Amber begins, "dreaming about killing people in the middle of class is kind of freaky, don't you think, Stace?" She peels open her peanut butter sandwich and layers the inside with barbecue-flavored potato chips.

  -Do you think it has something to do with those nightmares you've been having?" Drea scooches her chair in closer to Chad's.

  -Nightmares?" PJ turns toward me. "I didn't know you've been having nightmares. That's so famous. Do tell."

  -Was I not supposed to mention that?" Drea asks.

  -Why not," Amber says. "Everybody knows Stacey can sometimes see shit about people in her dreams. I'm just waiting for her to see shit about me. Like when I should expect Brantley Witherall to give me a jingle."

  -I think you've jingled enough this year," Drea says.

  Amber lizard-flips her tongue out at Drea in retaliation, exposing a size seven barbell. -Maybe he's already called." She reaches into her Hello Kitty lunch box of a purse for her cell phone. She presses at the buttons, waiting for it to work.

  "Let me guess," Drea says. "No charge."

  -Why do I always forget?"

  "Because your name is Amber." Drea forks a cubed tomato into her mouth. -Just put the phone away before we all get in trouble."

  Ms. Amsler, our gym teacher, is in charge of dinner duty tonight, but luckily she's more interested in the slop cafeteria-lady is serving up to concern herself with cell phones or barbells.

  I look down at my chips and see that I have arranged them on my tray in the shape of a heart.

  Completely mortified at my subconscious' perpetual desire to embarrass myself, I cover the chips up with what's left of my sandwich and peek at Chad to make sure he hasn't noticed.

  He's looking straight at me, his off-centered smile curling to the left. "So, what happens in these nightmares?" He flips the most perfect chunk of stray sandy-blond hair from in front of two equally perfect greenish-blue eyes.

  "Well, it's not really clear yet," I swallow, my voice cracking on the word really. "There's this guy and he's sort of following me."

  "Can you see his face?"

  I shake my head. "I can hear his voice though; it's familiar, but I can't place it."

  He leans in closer. "Maybe it just means you're running from something--or someone--who's close to you... and that you shouldn't be."

  I focus into the refuge of my tuna, feeling my cheeks warm over, feeling a smile fight its way across my mouth. Is he really saying what I think he's saying or am I completely reading into it?

  I look back up and he's smiling too, like we're both caught in some weird, romantic-comedy sort of moment. Lucky for us we have Drea to zap us back to the reality of cafeteria food.

  "You know, Chad," she begins, "that e-mail you sent me was so cute."

  "What e-mail?" He grins.

  "The nursery rhyme? 'The House that Jack Built'? So cute."

  -I don't know what you're talking about."

  "You don't have to be embarrassed," Drea says. "Stacey already saw it and I forwarded the link to Amber. Couldn't resist. Too cute."

  I'm not even sure he's still listening to her. He unzips his backpack, plucks out his English notebook, and folds it open to some notes on Beowulf.

  "Put that away" Drea snatches the notes away. "This isn't the library. Besides, so rude. It's lunch time and we're trying to have some intellectual conversation here."

  "Looks like you picked the wrong table," Amber says. Chad looks at me and smiles, like he's about to say something.

  "Hi, Donovan," Drea squeals, as Chad's roommate, Hill- crest Hornets' prize hockey center, walks by. She props Lefty and Righty, her two cuppiest assets, onto the table.

  Meanwhile, I'm still focusing on Chad, waiting for him to continue our conversation, hanging on by barely an eyelash because he's not even looking at me now His attention has wandered to Drea, flirting with Donovan, stuffing her hands into the pockets of his blazer.

  "I know you have gum for me." She glances at Chad, checking to make sure he's paying attention.

  He is.

  Donovan reaches into the inner pocket of his navy-blue uniform blazer and pulls out a pack of Juicy Fruit. He gives her a piece. Ànd one for later," she purrs. He gives her another.

  Amber pokes her finger into her mouth, I'm-gonna-puke style. I nod my agreement.

  Drea stuffs both pieces of gum into her mouth, crumples the wrappers into silver wads, and presses them into Donovan's palm. "Could you be a sweetie and dump these for me?" Without the slightest hesitation, he turns and walks the six or seven tables down to the trash can, slipping on a squashed grape in the process.

  "Such a catch," Amber says, fluttering her eyelashes toward Drea.

  Drea scowls. "Jealous that I have guys literally falling over me.

  When Donovan returns to the table, Drea makes room for him on the seat beside her. "I missed you in health class this morning. Where were you?"

  It's no secret that Donovan sweats Drea. She knows it. He knows she knows it. Everybody at Hillcrest knows it. As legend has it, Donovan has been sweating over Drea ever since the third grade, when they went to grammar school together, but she's just never given him a chance.

  "I was working on some of my art," he says. "I got permission from Mr. Sears to miss the class."

  "Got any pictures to show?" Amber asks. "I love looking at your work.- She leans her chin against his shoulder and smiles at Drea.

  Donovan pulls a mini-sketchbook from his back pocket and flashes us a charcoal drawing of a room, empty except for a cushy chair, a night table, and a door with no knob.

  "Talk about no exits," Amber says. "C'est trés Existentialiste of you."

  "Like you even know what that means," Drea says.

  'Are you kidding? Camus is my man. So deep. Such art."

  "That's Sartre, you nitwit." Drea pushes Amber out of the way to get a closer look at the sketchbook. She snatches it out of Donovan's hands and begins flipping through the pictures.

  "Wait-- Donovan moves to grab the sketchbook back, but Drea turns to avoid him.

  "I want to see," she whines. She flips the pages over sketches of flowers, bowls full of fruit, a pair of glasses, and then stops at a picture of a girl who has an unmistakable resemblance to herself

  "Is this me?" Drea asks.

  The sketch is done in bright violet charcoals. In it, the girl is huddled underneath an umbrella, wearing a short raincoat and an extra smear of shadowing under her eye, like she's crying.

  "It's just doodling." Donovan takes the sketchbook back. "It's from last week, isn't it? I recognize the raincoat." "Why were you crying?" I ask.

  "Parent stuff, what else?" Drea looks away, but then smiles at Donovan to break the tens
ion.

  "You could have at least made me look happy. And look at my hair. Do you know what moisture-filled air does to hair, even under an umbrella?"

  "I prefer drawing people exactly the way I see them. They're perfect just the way they are. Real, you know?"

  "You are so not the hockey type," Amber says, extracting a floral pair of chopsticks from her lunch box.

  "No, he's the perfect type. Creative, smart, and athletic." Drea links her arm with Donovan's.

  "Maybe you'd like to sketch me when I'm looking a bit... perkier."

  "I've got some time now," Donovan says.

  Drea smiles in Chad's direction, collects her tomato salad, and makes her grand exit with Donovan.

  "Why does that always happen?" Amber stabs her chopsticks into the table.

  "What?"

  "She always gets the guy"

  "I'm right here." PJ leans in for a kiss, but Amber jams a grape in his mouth.

  "I thought you always said Donovan was a creep," I say. "He is."

  "Then why do you flirt with him?"

  Amber shrugs, plucking out all the green grapes from her fruit salad with the chopsticks. I look over at Chad, who has fallen silent, his eyes locked on the image of Drea and Donovan walking away.

  It's late when I get back to the room. I ended up spending a good chunk of the evening studying for the French test I'm hoping Madame LeSnore lets me retake. I've already decided I will apologize to her first thing in the morning, saying that I've been having some family problems back home. It isn't so far from the truth. My mother couldn't have been happier when September rolled around and I had to go back to school.

  45

  It's not that me and my mother don't get along. We just don't get along well. Sometimes I think it might have something to do with my dad. He passed away when I was just seven years old.

  You'd think that would bring my mother and me closer--leaving just the two of us to brave the world on our own, to keep his memory alive. But it hasn't. I wonder sometimes if it just pulled us further apart--like maybe my mother would have been happier as I was growing up if she had a partner, a soulmate, to raise me with. It's not like she's some modern-day Mommie Dearest or anything. Some of my friends over the years have said they'd kill to have such a cool mom like mine a mother who still reads Seventeen and goes tanning and gets her acrylics filled. Who knows the names of all the boys in school because my friends dish to her about them--even more than they dish to me. The truth is we're just different. I'm more like my gram. That's why I miss her so much. And that's what irks my mother so much.