The Dream Thief by Kerry Schafer

looking back, not pausing, I kept on putting one slow foot in front of the other. Now it was starting to hurt and I knew he was feeling it, too. I also knew he wasn't going to give in without a fight. As kids we'd once broken a toy we were in conflict over, right down the middle, because neither one of us would let go.
    The next step was harder, the one after that made me feel like I would soon be moving my feet but staying in the same place, like tires spinning on ice. But the light changed, as I knew it would, and he pulled up beside me.
    "Jesse, get in."
    "I have to go see your dad."
    He had options. He could floor it, drive until the pain crashed us both. He could cruise along beside me. Beat me into submission. Not that Will was into hitting women, but you've got to remember we'd been more like siblings than anything when we were kids. Probably I'd given him a black eye or two, and yes, he once bloodied my nose. I deserved it; no hard feelings on that one.
    If he'd ever had a right to pummel me, it was now, but he wouldn't. I wished he would. There was no other way I could think of to make things right between us. And I kept setting myself against him to make him hate me more. Nothing to be done about it, though.
    His dad was important. According to Will, he had seemed fine until the argument with my mysterious absent mother, who had left me test tubes full of what I feared might be dreams.
    The truck continued to roll along right beside me. The driver of the car behind us, impatient, laid on the horn. Will gave them the finger. "J. Get in. Tell me what you think my dad has to do with all of this."
    It was the use of the old pet name that melted me. I opened the door and clambered back in, refusing to look at him.
    "I think—" but I couldn't finish it, half choked on the words. It sounded so stupid in the bright light of day. "What do they think happened to your dad?" I asked, instead.
    "Nobody knows. Dementia doesn't usually hit so hard and fast. I thought it must be a stroke or an aneurism. Something medical. Docs ran all of these tests—CT scans and MRIs and whatever—and his brain actually looks relatively fine. Early Alzheimer's, but nothing that accounts for how he is. His memories are gone and his reasoning ability is shot to hell."
    He glanced at me sideways, and I felt his body go to goosebumps as it hit him. "You think your mom had something to do with it."
    "I don't like coincidences."
    "Sometimes they're just coincidences." His voice was more gentle than it had been since I'd fessed up to my sins, and that gave me the courage to go on.
    "She left me something. A couple of test tubes with liquid inside. They look like the dream stuff, only different. I don't know what she was doing with them."
    "Damn."
    His acceptance of my insane premise without the need of any explanation scared me more than anything that happened so far, but I kept my mouth shut and let him drive.

Chapter Seven
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    T he Lakeside Care Center was about as far from the lake as you could get and still stay in Williamsville. It pressed up against a hill in back and was fenced all around in front, presumably to keep the dazed and confused from wandering off on their own. And when we walked in the front doors, well, remind me to shoot myself before I get old. Or maybe crash the bike into a cliff at high speed.
    An old woman sat in a wheelchair right inside the door, neatly combed and dressed in a stylish linen pantsuit. A low growl came out of her throat and she rocked, back and forth, back and forth, that constant low sound assaulting my brain at a level that made me want to burst into screaming.
    Somebody else was doing precisely that, deeper into the building, with a shrill, "Help me, help me, help me."
    Will went cold and remote and I realized that he hated this place more than I did. Of course. His father was here. He probably felt the same about it as I did about the graveyard.
    He led me down one hall and into another