Dreamland by Robert L. Anderson Page B

Connor’s focus. He wasn’t putting enough energy into the world outside of his apartment. Her feet crunched on the accumulating snow as she jogged across the empty street. She kept glancing up at his window, paranoid that he might look outside and see her again.
    That would be very bad. That was majorly against the rules. And even though she was technically, technically , about to break the rules, she didn’t see how this would hurt. He wouldn’t know she was responsible.
    She stopped in front of the deli, stretched onto her tiptoes and curled her fingers around one end of the Christmas lights. One sharp pull, and they were down, blinking in her hand. She would have to hurry. She had no idea how long this dream would last. Any second, it might morph into something else, and she might find herself on a battlefield or in the middle of an ocean.
    She knelt. Moisture seeped into her jeans. It gave her a small thrill. She loved the way Connor’s unconscious mind expanded, reacted to her presence, pushed back and made things difficult.
    It took her a while to get the Christmas lights just right. The wires were stiffer than she’d expected, and in the end she had just enough material to work with. She straightened up, her knees now aching and her shoulders sore. She imagined Connor moving to the window again and seeing the words she’d written out in blinking letters, nestled in all that gray snow.
    I’m sorry .

SIX
    She woke up to simulated church bells, one of her mom’s favorite clocks sounding dolorously through the house. Sunday. The down part of the wave. The shore was hurtling toward her—Monday, seven thirty a.m., first bell—and she couldn’t do anything to stop it.
    Overnight, the seasons had shifted. Summer was gone. Rain was pounding the window, as if it were trying to get in, pasting blackened leaves against the glass like flattened palms. Dea could hear the wind, like the distant whistle of a teakettle, and the air was cold. The shimmer of gold was washed out of the fields, replaced by a dull, flat monochrome, a wet mulch-ycolor. When she went to the window, she could see Connor’s dad make a quick dash from the front door to the car, sloshing through puddles, holding a paper over his head as a makeshift umbrella.
    She pulled on jeans and her favorite sweatshirt, which she’d had since Chicago—even though there were now two fat holes at the elbows and a coffee stain by the hem—hoping it might serve as good luck. She finger-combed her hair. When she checked her reflection, she saw she looked good, rested and relaxed, and felt a brief moment of guilt. Sometimes she felt like a giant leech: she fed on other people’s dreams.
    She wasn’t speaking to Miriam. She’d decided that, definitively, this morning. Since her mom was the primary person Dea talked to, it seemed like a drastic measure. But deserved. She didn’t even want to see Miriam, but she was starving and she could already hear Miriam banging around in the kitchen, like she was trying to startle Dea into forgetting she was mad.
    Dea’s mom looked good, too—she looked as if she’d gained weight overnight. Her skin was smooth and her eyes were clear. Dressed in a big cashmere sweater and leggings and big socks, she looked like a model from a magazine about Healthy Mountain Living. She was almost through a plate of eggs. Dea knew that meant that Miriam had walked a dream the night before—her mom never ate in the mornings unless she had—and felt even more resentful. After their fight, after Dea had called her out on being a fraud, it was a direct reminder of how screwed up everything was.
    Of how screwed up she, Dea, fatherless dream-walker, was.
    â€œDea?”
    Dea didn’t answer. She banged the cabinets loudly when she got her cereal, which she ate plain, shoveling it into her mouth with a serving spoon.
    â€œDon’t you want some milk with