“What boy?”
“Do you have your crystal?” she asks, ignoring the question.
“What?”
“Your crystal cluster rock . . . the one Jacob gave you for protection.”
I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. At the same moment, I feel it—someone’s breath on my neck.
“I know you’re alone,” the male voice whispers into my ear.
I drop the phone and shake my head, my heart beating faster. I turn to look. At the same moment, a hand reaches around my neck, cutting off my breath. The fingernails cut into my throat.
I go to step back, to kick at his shin, but he grabs tighter, cutting off my breath.
A moment later I hear a door slam shut—hard. The sound wakes me up out of sound sleep.
I sit up in bed with a gasp.
Amber is there, at the door. “Hey, you,” she says, dropping her bag to the floor. “Hungry for dinner? I hear it’s burrito night in the caf.”
But I’m still shaking.
“What’s up with you?” she asks. “You look like you swallowed a cockroach—maybe you’ve already been to burrito night.”
“I have to go,” I say, finally. I scramble from under my covers, pausing a moment to look at the clay bowl by my bed. I take and unfold the piece of paper inside, my question staring at me—WHAT DO I NEED TO DO TO GET ON WITH MY LIFE? At least now I have an answer.
I throw my coat on over my pajamas, pull on my boots, and slip my crystal cluster rock into my pocket.
“Time out,” Amber says, still standing at the door of our room. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”
“I have to go out,” I say, scrambling for a rubber band to tie my hair back.
The images of my nightmare are still alive in my head, causing my pulse to race, my heart to beat fast.
“Where are you going?” Amber repeats.
“I had another nightmare.”
“About what?”
“Jacob.”
“What about him?”
“It’s a long story,” I say, snatching a rubber band off the dresser, “but I have to get to the president’s office before he leaves for the day.” I glance at the clock—it’s just after four.
“Why? What’s going on?”
“I have to help Porsha.”
“Who?”
“She’s obviously the girl-so-blue from my nightmare, the one I’m supposed to help or the boy will die.”
“What?”
“I’ll explain later.” I pocket my keys and my campus ID card. “I’ll call you if I’m going to be out late.”
“Wait,” Amber says, holding her head. “What does that have to do with Jacob?”
“I don’t know, but I have to find out.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“I know.” I give her a quick hug. “I’ll call you if I’m going to be late.”
“Stacey,” she shouts. “You’re in your pjs.”
“So?”
“Well, can I at least lend you a boa or something?” She nabs a big frilly pink one from beside her bed.
“It might be a little much,” I say, eyeing her bright red Mary Jane Doc Martens. But, with her matching fuzzy headband and puffy winter vest, she does look pretty cute.
Amber tosses me one of Janie’s Snapples from her fridge and stuffs my pockets full of tissues and Jujyfruits, mothering me a little more—but in a good way, a way that feels comforting.
She tells me we need to have a long talk later and then I head out, rushing my way across campus, dodging ice patches and snowdrifts the whole way. The entire campus is lit up since the sun starts going down around four. I finally make it to Ketcher Hall and bound up the stairs, two at a time, to find Ms. McNeal still sitting at her desk.
“I need to talk to Dr. Wallace,” I say, all out of breath.
“I’m sorry, but that isn’t possible,” she says, her squinty eyes narrowing on me, on my flannel pjs sticking out from my coat maybe.
“Please,” I say. “It’s really important. Don’t you remember me? I was here the other day . . . Stacey Brown. Dr. Wallace wanted to meet with me . . . ”
“I can leave him a message that you stopped by.”
“Please,” I insist, motioning to his office door and taking a step in that direction. “It’ll only take a couple minutes.”
“He isn’t here,” Ms. McNeal says, standing up, as though to stop me. “He had a late afternoon meeting and he isn’t coming back to his office. He’s a very busy man.”
I feel my chin shake. I grab the crystal cluster rock in my pocket for strength and inspiration, wondering what I should do. “Do you know Jacob?” I blurt, flashing back to my nightmare, knowing even before the words come out how stupid the question sounds.
“Jacob who?”
“Forget it,” I say, taking a step back, burying my face in my hands.
“Is there something I can do?” Ms. McNeal asks. “Would you like to talk to one of the counselors? You could use my phone to set something up. I’m sure they’d be willing to meet with you tonight, if you’d like.”
I shake my head, thinking how the last thing I need right now is to talk to a useless counselor.
“Well, can I get you a glass of water?”
“Is there any way you can call Dr. Wallace at home?” I ask, ignoring her offer. “I know he’d want to talk to me.”
Ms. McNeal takes a step back, as though suddenly creepified by my presence. “I think maybe you should be going now,” she says. “I’ll tell him that you stopped by.”
I shake my head, feeling a storm of tears form behind my eyes. I move toward the door and, just as I do, she walks right in.
Porsha.
“Is my father here?” she asks Ms. McNeal.
She’s dressed, once again, in dark layers—charcoal gray mixed with navy blue and black. The tips of her long blond hair are tinted a deep olive color. They hang in her face, practically covering her eyes.
“Porsha?” I ask, my heart beating fast.
She stares back at me, the corners of her eyes crinkling up in confusion.
“Porsha, dear, why don’t you take a seat at my desk.” Ms. McNeal ushers Porsha in that direction.
My heart beats fast, knowing that I’ve gotten her name right—that my nightmare predicted correctly. “Your father wanted us to meet,” I say. “I’m Stacey. Did he tell you about me?”
Porsha shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk to her,” she whispers to Ms. McNeal. She’s biting away at the tips of her fingers, looking around the room—from the wall, to the ceiling, to the floor, and then to me, perhaps waiting for me to leave.
“I think you should leave now, Ms. Brown,” Ms. McNeal says. “Now!”
“I’m sorry,” I say, keeping focused on Porsha. “I only stopped by because your father told me about you . . . about what you’ve been experiencing. He thinks I can help you.”
“I don’t want to talk to her,” Porsha tells Ms. McNeal again. She shuffles a bit from side to side, as though anxious.
“Do I need to call campus security?” Ms. McNeal asks. She picks up the phone, awaiting my next move.
“I know about your nightmares,” I say, ignoring the threat. “I know what it’s like to dream about the dead. I dream about it, too.”
Porsha breaks her eyelock on the ceiling to study me. Her eyes are red with dark circles under them, like she hasn’t slept in days, like maybe she’s been forcing herself to stay awake at night—to avoid her nightmares.
Just like I used to do.
“I don’t dream about the dead,” she says, finally. “I am dead—dead, dead, dead, dead, dead,” she sings, just like the little girl in my nightmare.
The whimsical tone of her voice saying that word sends shivers down my back.
Porsha ends her song abruptly and screams, “I don’t want to talk to her!” Then she plucks a pencil from Ms. McNeal’s desk and plunges it deep into her palm, stabbing the tip into her flesh, over and over again, until the pencil snaps in her hands.
Ms. McNeal tries to restrain her, to take the pencil away and get her to sit down, but Porsha is slapping the wall with her palm now, leaving splotches of blood, shouting over and over again how she doesn’t want to talk to me.
I leave, slamming the door shut behind me so she hears my exit. Maybe all those doctors are right. Maybe she should be put away. Maybe she is crazy. I take a deep breath to shake off her chill, knowing that the real crazy part in all of this is that I know where she’s coming from; I know what it’s like to feel just inches away from insanity. And I know firsthand what it’s like to feel dead.
When I get back to the room, no one’s there. I curl up on my bed and silently count to ten, still picturing the bloodstains on the wall from Porsha’s palm—just like in my nightmare.
The phone rings a couple seconds later, but I just let it. My heart is racing. My head won’t stop spinning. I just can’t shake this feeling—like something inside me is about to burst open, like every nerve in my body is about to erupt.
When the phone finally stops ringing, I roll over in bed and grab the receiver to call my mother. But before I can even get the words out—how I feel like I’m cracking, how I don’t know if I’m going to make it here—she just starts gushing. She rambles on for five full minutes about how proud she is of me, how she’s been bragging to anyone who’ll listen that I got into Beacon-fancy-schmancy-University on a full scholarship.
And how I’m her hero, too.
I take a deep breath, feeling my eyes fill up. I gather a wad of comforter in my palm and assure my mother that everything’s going great . . . better than I ever thought it could. And then I end the conversation by telling her that Amber and I are heading off to a party tonight, and that college is much more social than I ever expected.
Instead of lecturing me on how I’m here to study and not to party, on how I have a certain GPA to keep up, and how drinking and driving can—quote unquote—kill a friendship—all things she’d normally say BJD (before Jacob’s disappearance)—she tells me to have a good time and to call her in a couple days.
I hang up, feeling a stabbing pain in my chest. I take another couple deep breaths and grab my bowl of lavender pellets. I rake my fingers through them, waiting for my nerves to stop rattling, but I just can’t focus. I consider calling Amber on her cell phone, but I honestly don’t feel like disappointing her even more than I already have. Instead I call Drea. Her roommate picks up. She tells me that Drea and Chad went out for the evening and that she doesn’t expect them back for at least a couple hours.
I hang up, wondering if they’re back together yet again, and reach into my night table for my bottle of pills. I already know that it’s empty. What I don’t know is how I’m going to fall asleep tonight without a little help. Will a dream spell alone be strong enough?
I grab the phone again and my address book and look up Dr. Atwood’s cell number; she gave it to me in case of emergency.
I dial quickly, my heart tripping over from the mere anticipation of her response. Instead I get her voicemail.
“Hi, Dr. Atwood,” I stammer into the receiver. “It’s
me . . . Stacey. I was wondering if maybe you could call me back as soon as you get this. There’s something I’d like to ask you. Could you call me back? Thanks.”
I clunk the receiver back down on its cradle, feeling even worse than just seconds before. A couple minutes later, the phone rings.
“Hello?” I answer.
“Hi, Stacey, it’s Dr. Atwood.”
I let out a breath of relief. “Thanks so much for calling me back.”
“Sure,” she says. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I just wanted to talk to you.”
“How is your first week of college going?”
“Great,” I say. “I mean, hard, but I’m enjoying it.”
“Really.” She sounds surprised.
“Well, it’s hard,” I repeat, my voice cracking over the words. “But I’m working hard, too—meeting people . . . studying.”
“That’s good,” she says, reservation high in her voice. “Have you met with Dr. Sonja?”
“Who?”
“The therapist I recommended out there.”
“Not yet,” I say, practically biting through my lip. “I’m going to call her Monday, though. I just kind of wanted to settle in first.”
“Well, I guess that sounds reasonable,” she says. “But you should give her a call to set something up. She’s expecting it.”
“I know. I will.” More lip-biting.
“You mentioned there was something you wanted to ask me.”
“Yeah,” I say, switching the receiver to my other ear out of nervousness. “I need more tranquilizers.”
“What happened to the ones I prescribed you?”
I proceed to give her this lame little story about how I lost the bottle of meds in transit here, that I could have sworn I packed them in one of my suitcases. I tell her how I’ve even had my mother searching around at home, but that nobody, not even my roommates, has been able to locate them.
“I suppose I could do that.” She sighs. “But this is the only time. You need to meet with Dr. Sonja, okay?”
“Sure,” I say. “Monday morning. I promise, I’ll call her.”
Dr. Atwood tells me she’ll call the prescription in tonight and that it will be ready by tomorrow morning. I hesitate, almost wanting her to call it in to one of those twenty-four-hour pharmacies, but I decide not to press my luck. I hang up the phone and turn over in bed, noticing Amber. She’s standing in the doorway with her arms folded.
I freeze, my hand still curled around the receiver. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“What’s going on with you?”
I shrug.
“I mean, what’s going on with your nightmares? You ran out of here like someone was holding a tweezer to your ass—and not in a good way.”
I take a deep breath, relieved that she didn’t hear my conversation with Dr. Atwood. “You really want to know?”
“Well, yeah.” She rolls her eyes. “That’s kind of why I asked.”
“The little girl in my nightmare is Porsha’s mother, President Wallace’s deceased wife.”
“Wait, didn’t you say the girl in your nightmare was, like, eight or nine? How is that possible?”
“I can’t explain it; I mean, I don’t know why she’s appearing in my dreams so young. But if I don’t help her daughter, some boy will die.”
“And you think that boy is Jacob.”
“I don’t know.”
“This is all so freakazoid,” Amber says.
“Which part?”
“All of it. I mean, President Wallace asked you to help Porsha out. Now you’ve got his dead wife on your ass. Talk about pressure.”
“So you believe me?”
“That you’re having nightmares about President Wallace’s dead old lady in little girl form? Yes.”
“And that the boy could be Jacob?”
Amber looks toward her collection of boas, avoiding the question.
“They never found his body,” I remind her.
“I know.”
“Then what?”
“How come you never dream about fun dead people? You know, like Elvis?”
“This is serious.”
“Who’s joking?” She sighs. “You need some fun.??
?
“I need some sleep.”
“No way,” she balks. “This is your first weekend in college. I refuse to let you spend it in bed . . . alone, that is.”
“Don’t you understand . . . some boy’s life is at stake!”
“Probably not tonight,” she says, tossing me a leopard-print baby tee from her pile of clothes. “You’re coming to a party. You need a change of scenery.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I argue.
“You totally are,” she says. “I’ve met the cutest guys this week—one of whom you’ve already met.”
“Who?” I ask.
“Tim, that’s who. You’ve made quite the impression on him.”
“Excuse me?”
“He says you’re just his type—sexy yet standoffish, serious yet seductive.”
“Excuse me?” I repeat.
“His words, not mine. Apparently, he likes a challenge. I told him he’s got his work cut out.”
“How do you even know him?”
“When I told him I was rooming with Stacey-my-best-friend-from-prep-school, he got all quizzy, making sure you were you, the Stacey he’d already met.”
“Yeah, but where did you meet?”
“The lobby. He’s friends with some girls who live here. Small world, eh?”
“Too small,” I say, hiking the covers up over my head.
“No way,” Amber says, tearing the covers back down. “Tim’s invited us to an off-campus kegger. So hurry up—get that pajama ass of yours into some chicness. Do you wanna try some of my new No Screw With You?”
“Bug spray?” I ask, eyeing the slender bottle in her hand.
“My new eyeliner,” she explains. “It’s guaranteed not to fade or bleed—no screwing around with this baby. Maybe it’ll make your eyes look a little less Night of the Living Dead.”
“Thanks for the sweet offer,” I say, “but I need sleep.”
“Are you kidding? You’ve slept more than my dead Aunt Paula. You need to get out of this room before Janie gets back and stickers you to death.” Amber hurls a pair of faux-fur shorts at me, followed by her brand-new, straight-out-of-the-box knee-length sheepskin boots. “Get dressed!” she demands. “I’m getting you lucky tonight—whether you like it or not.”