Chloe turned in time to see a wisp of smoke vanish beneath the papers. “Okay, that’s bizarre.” She swept away Nick’s screenplay and gave the table a hard stare. “I don’t have time for eye tricks.” She jammed the dented first reel onto the projector.
“Oh, God, I need a miracle here. Let the break be during the public service announcement!”
“Hey!” Nick yelled. “That better not be my screenplay I hear getting all crinkled.”
“You threw it, you goof.”
Click. The preview started.
“And as for you, Nick. Here!” She hissed, punctuating each word by stuffing a paper into his hand. “Once again, I’ll pick up your screenplay, and this time I promise I … won’t … ever … mess … with …. your … dumb … screenplay … again.”
She braced for his comeback. There was none, and she slumped to the floor.
“Is the movie playing?” Nick whispered.
“Yeah, no thanks to you.”
Nick inched toward the clicking reel. “Can I … can I feel the projector?”
Chloe puffed out air. “Fine.” She stood and grabbed his hand and pulled him forward. He stroked the machine, placed his ear and cheek against it.
“Can I look through the lens?”
“You can’t —”
“Can I look through the lens?”
Chloe gently pushed his head against the glass viewer in the rear.
“Light.” He pulled back, repositioned his eyes, and again pressed forward. “I saw light. Red. Green.”
Chloe frowned and stared out the window at the big screen, at the red sky above a field of green. “You’re just seeing the opening scenery — Wait, you can see?”
Nick jumped and rocked and rubbed his eyes. “More. I want to see more.”
Chloe glanced down the stairs and turned back into the room. “You know, maybe this isn’t the time —”
Gone.
Nick and Hobo were gone. Chloe spun around the booth, stared out the window, and gasped.
A boy and his dog walked toward the screen inside the projection beam, hovering above the audience. As if light was solid.
It was Chloe’s turn to rub her eyes. None of the customers seemed to notice the small beings above their heads.
“Hello!” she called out. “There’s a boy? In the beam? Doesn’t that bother any of you?”
She jammed her eyeball against the viewer, felt a sucking sensation, and soon stood blinking inside the blinding light of the beam. “This isn’t happening. I must’ve fallen and smacked my head and turned delusional.” Chloe glanced straight down as Little Jim dumped his weakened soda on the floor.
“Hey, knock it off! I have to clean that up!”
Ahead, on the screen, Nick groped about the room, bouncing off screaming children.
He’s in the worst scene! He’s in the movie!
“Chloe!” Nick screamed.
“Stay put, I’m coming!”
Nick heard her, and froze center left. The other kids vanished from the room, and through the crack beneath the room’s door appeared a wispy, grayish hand.
Chloe reached the screen, leaped, and felt the surface give like a trampoline, before it jelloed and sucked her in. Chloe gasped and sprung to a stop beside Nick and Hobo.
“This has never happened before! Why is this happening now?” Chloe saw Mr. Simonsen and the rest of the audience at Aldo’s staring at them.
“Hey!” she yelled and waved her arms. “It’s us. Get my mom! Turn off the projector!”
Hobo barked, loud and frightened, and a second wispy arm materialized.
The Vapor!
“Nick.” Chloe ran to him. “We need to get out of this room.”
“Why? The screaming stopped.”
Chloe chanced a look at the two arms stretching toward Nick’s legs. Hobo bristled and throated a low growl but stood his ground.
“Let’s just say I’ve seen this movie before and this isn’t the best scene to be stuck in.”
She grabbed Nick and pulled him toward an open window. The Vapor massed inside the doorway, its apelike arms grasping toward them.
“Nick, we need to jump.” She raised her head over the sill. “It’s about a ten foot drop. Can you do that? Can Hobo — Wait. This window’s bright blue. It’s never been blue before.”
“Blue? A blue window? That’s my way in. I wrote that! Follow me.”
Nick felt his way forward. The mist gained, nipped at his heels. Nick stumbled, landed hard on the sill and scrambled through.
“Nick!” Chloe screamed.
The Vapor roared, gathered itself, and moved toward Chloe. Its fingers climbed up her legs, which fell numb at the touch. Falling to the ground, she dug her fingernails into the floor, but still she slid farther from Nick and toward the door.
“Help!”
Hobo leaped onto the creature and sank teeth into its nothingness. For a moment, the Vapor’s grasp eased, Chloe’s feeling returned, and she ripped her legs free. She stood and flung her body out the window.
Thump.
She quickly rose and whipped around toward the window, glowing brighter blue. Chloe looked at her feet. She had not fallen. Instead, she’d landed on water, and now stood on an ocean or lake so vast she couldn’t see its shore. Hobo’s bark faded into the distance.
“I’m standing on a lake. I’m not sinking.”
Neither was the shack with the blue window from which she’d escaped.
“Okay, none of this is in the movie. Not a lake. Not a floating shack …”
Her legs trembled.
Not me. “Can anybody hear me?” Chloe took an anxious step backward. “Mom? Grandpa?”
Then she heard it.
“Hey! Look at me! Watch me!”
Nick.
She spun and rubbed her eyes. Nick ran. Not a hesitant run, a free run. A confident run. He raced on top of the surface of the water. “I can see. I can see you, Chloe! This is exactly how I wrote it!”
“What are you talking about?”
Nick ran up to her and stopped, his eyes focused and clear. He lifted his finger to her face. “Eyes, nose, mouth, scar. Oh, big scar. I can see it all!” He bounded off.
Chloe reached up and stroked her neck. Still me. “Where are we, Nick?”
“Retinya. My screenplay. When my screenplay fell and your film snapped, the two must have spliced together into one story and … oh, who cares? We’re here!” He leaped and pumped both fists. “And I’m not blind in Retinya!”
Chloe grabbed his arm. “That’s great. That’s — But how do we get home?”
“Home? Who wants to go home? Chloe, I can see.”
“But what about your family and Hobo?”
Nick paused. “I’m not going back through that window.” He pointed at the grayish arms still reaching out toward them. “If you want to go, that’s your business. But I’m going on a walk, a long, sighted walk, that-a-way!” He pointed away from the shack, and started to skip. “I forgot how beautiful blue was!”
Chloe glanced back at the window.
“Hobo, are you still in there?” She listened, heard nothing, and cupped her hands. “Hey, Nick, did you write another go-home window ahead? I left the ending to you, so I don’t know what’s there …”
Nick didn’t answer either.
Chloe shook her head. “Oh, Grandpa Salvador, what do I do?”
CHAPTER
10
GRANDPA SALVADOR LOVED TO DREAM. While he slept, Grandpa said he sailed through the air, met old friends, and explored the Arctic. “I wake with a smile on my face, dear Chloe. It is a wonderful way to greet a day.”
Chloe’s dreams rarely brought smiles. She routinely fell off cliffs, suffocated, or received fatal war wounds in dark, desolate lands. This was Chloe’s first clue that she may not be dreaming, for she stood in bright light with no sense of dread.
Clumps of white mist rose from the surface of the lake on which she stood and skimmed over her shoes. It was
a strange, weighty mist. She bent over and found it smooth and solid to the touch.
What did you dream up, Nick? Wait … what did we dream up?
Chloe stared at the fog. “I changed the lake with Hobo. I know we did. If I remember right, if I step up on top of the fog …” She gently placed her foot on the mist. The wispy patch skimmed forward. It was waterskiing without touching the water.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Chloe smiled, hopped aboard, and away she zoomed. The lake sparkled like glass, and behind her, fish jumped and splashed in her wake.
“I invented this! Well, according to Grandpa, Aldo had the idea first, but I put it on paper!”
Her hair whipped her face and it took effort to keep balanced, yet she found that with many tiny weight shifts, she could remain upright. Inside, a feeling awoke, one dormant since the loss of her horse. Chloe felt free, alive, and her heart wanted the ride to last forever.
Her legs didn’t.
A deep ache soon eclipsed the thrill, and she tottered, bent down, then steadied on all fours. Chloe caught her breath and tried to recall all the scenes she had described, all the places she knew in Retinya, but this didn’t feel like anyplace from the script. Still her heart quickened, like she was near something familiar, something good.
Finally, her transport slowed, and Chloe straightened. Ahead, she saw a thin, brown shoreline. Nick stood in front of it, standing on his own wispy patch. As Chloe came to a hovering stop feet from land, she stepped out onto the water and marched forward.
“Stop!” Nick grabbed her wrist. “Stop here.”
“Why? I’m stuck in your world, so I might as well look around.”
“We’re not in Retinya yet, but I just found out something about this place.” Nick reached into his pocket and took out his house keys. He tossed them onto shore, where they disappeared into the dirt with a splash.
“Nothing is as it seems,” he whispered. “That’s where we are. Nothing is as it seems.”
Chloe stared at Nick. “We can’t walk on land? What can we do? I need the rules, at least until I come to something I recognize. There were entire scenes missing when you gave me the script … this must be one of them. I figured you knew what was supposed to happen. You do, right?”
Nick gnawed his lip. “I don’t know any more than you, other than Lake Atmos. That was mine, but these little fog riders, I don’t know where they came from —”
“Me!” Chloe smiled. “I put those in.”
Nick peered around nervously. “So we’re stuck in a gap, sort of like a black hole, and we need to find Retinya, but we don’t know anything or how to get there.” He rubbed his face and moaned. “Why didn’t I fill in the pages right after the lake?”
Chloe breathed in deeply. “I wouldn’t say we don’t know anything. I sort of stuck a character in this space, you know, for future use. But until we find him, what do people in this world eat? Did you make notes about that? Please tell me there are nachos or burritos in this place. If you knew how hungry —”
“Come over here, Chloe.”
To her right, a young man, maybe Q’s age, sat in a rowboat and bobbed in the sandy shore. He poled his tiny boat directly in front of Chloe.
“Nob, at your service, lady. It’d be my pleasure to take you to food.” He paused and winked. “And a meetin’.”
“Don’t go.” Nick gulped.
Nob frowned and pointed. “Who is this?” He jabbed Nick’s chest with his pole. “It can’t be the other one.” He glanced around and frowned. “If he was, I would have seen Scout. Scout’s never late.” He squinted at Nick. “Is this boy giving you trouble? Did he follow you?”
“No.” Chloe smiled. “I followed him.”
“You know this guy?” Every inch of Nick seemed to be frowning.
Chloe felt her cheeks warm. “Yeah, I thought about him once or twice.”
Nob’s face was young and kind, with long, wild brown hair. His clothes were ripped and tattered, with suspenders holding up trousers shredded at the bottom. He resembled the actor in Tom Sawyer, except that Nob’s arm muscles rippled.
“That’s Nick.” Chloe swept back the hair from her face and gave Nob a sideways glance. “You are just going to help me find something to eat.”
Nob crossed his pole over his chest. “It’s a promise.”
“Nick? Stop looking at me like that. It does us no good to die of starvation arguing on a patch of fog.”
Nob reached out his hand and helped Chloe into his boat. “Will your friend be joining?”
“No, he will not be joining.” Nick crossed his arms. “How do I know where you’ll take us?”
The boatman nodded. “You absolutely don’t. It takes trust.” He smiled at Chloe. “And now, let’s see about you, lady.”
“Lady.” That’s a nickname! Chloe pointed back to her cloud transport. “When you first called me, how did you know my name?” she asked. “I mean, I know you. I thought you up, right? But you …”
Nob chuckled and pushed back with his pole.
“Thinkin’ you created me now, huh? You must come from a very strange world.”
“Wait!” Nick reached out to the boat, breathing hard. “I’m coming. I’m not letting you take her away.”
Chloe smiled. “How very knightly of you.”
Soon Nob’s rowboat whisked through high grass, which parted and rippled as it rushed by.
Nick bent over and whispered, “You wrote him in. What’s he like?”
“Like Bert.” Chloe grinned.
“Bert and Ernie? Sesame Street?”
“No, like Bert the chimney sweep in Mary Poppins. He treated Mary like a fine —”
“Lady, hold on. You too, lad. It gets bumpy from here.”
Chloe slipped into the bottom of the boat and grabbed her seat. “Then don’t you think you should sit — whoa!”
The boat pitched and lilted. Nob had reached a hill, but instead of floating around it, he poled straight up its side. They reached the top, tipped over the edge and, like the water ride at Valleyfair, plummeted down. A soaking combination of green grass and brown earth splashed over their heads.
“How many more?” Chloe sputtered.
Nob didn’t answer. He powered their way up the next hill, and the next, each one larger and steeper than the one before. Chloe’s stomach lurched; the empty spot now felt only sick.
She closed her eyes and curled up in the boat. Nick thunked down beside her. “Your help is trying to kill us!”
Dirt washed over them, and Chloe fought back sobs. “You were right. We should never have left the lake.”
“Not now, lady.” Nob’s kind, calm voice drifted to her ears. “Wipe your eyes. We’re almost there.”
She sat up, and immediately the boat jarred into a firm bank that looked no different than the liquid earth.
“See?” Nob leaped out of the boat and spread his arms. “Solid.” He helped Chloe onto dry land. “And here I’ll be waitin’. Never do I go beyond this point.”
Chloe stopped. “Hold on. You’re not coming? I came for food. How do I find it?”
“It’s not so much that you need to find anything. Just put yourself in a nice place where you can be found.”
Totally a Grandpa Salvador sentence.
“Come on, Chloe. We don’t need him.” Nick jumped out and trudged ahead.
She turned from Nick to Nob. “Nob, do you know where I’m from? This doesn’t feel like a dream, but it’s not real either. Am I asleep?”
“I don’t know where you’ve come from. I don’t know if you’re dreaming.” Nob lay down in the boat. “I know I was sent to collect the two of you — and I have. And I can’t go with you because what you hear is for you alone.” He nestled down and closed his eyes. “I’ll be waiting, or resting … or maybe sleeping.”
Chloe’s stomach growled. “I see that helpfulness was not a trait I wrote into your character!” She rejoined Nick, and together they walked toward a line of trees, feet soon crunc
hing the twigs carpeting a lovely wood. She rubbed moss and stroked bark — the trees felt real and solid and smelled of oak and maple, the same aroma that hung lazily along the banks of the Snake. The scent calmed her.
Mom’s got to be panicking right now. She’ll freak when I tell her.
And just like that, the wood ended, and Chloe blinked in the warmth and light of a large clearing.
“Anything look familiar?” Nick asked.
Chloe blinked hard. “The trees, where we just were, it felt like home, except —”
“Shh!” hissed Nick. “Listen.”
Humming. Chloe heard humming. But this was a man hum, and it struck her ears as odd. Unlike the noises her dad and his workers made — too loud and too wild — this sound was deep and soft, and she stretched her neck to see.
Across the clearing was a garden — a garden Chloe’s mom would love, filled with rich, black dirt. The plot spanned at least two acres, and in it, bent over a hoe, was the hummer.
He was an average-sized man, dressed no differently than the migrant workers she’d seen in fields back home. A loose shirt hung on his tan, worked body, and sturdy boots protected his feet. Chloe couldn’t see any house nearby, but this property was every bit as beautiful as Finnegan’s.
He doesn’t seem dangerous.
“You’d be surprised.” The man straightened and turned as he waved them closer. “You’re hungry. You’ve had a long day.” He nodded toward a small grove of fruit trees near the garden’s edge. Oranges, apples, and pears hung large and inviting, and Chloe’s throat burned.
“It’s yours for the picking.”
Chloe didn’t need to be told again. She jogged into the grove and ate until sticky juice coated her chin and neck and her insides were content.
“Can you believe how this tastes?” She plucked one last handful of grapes from a wandering vine and stuffed them in her mouth, then turned a slow circle. “Nick?”
Chloe stared back toward the woods. Nick still stood at the edge, rubbing his stomach and staring at the trees.
“Why won’t you eat?”
“He is terrified of me,” the gardener said quietly.
Chloe walked toward the man slowly. He was reaching for his walking stick. Reaching and grasping and not finding.