cool spring's promise of greens and shade trees
burned away by sudden summer sun,
came too soon, it came too soon
fall's dry curse has brought you to your knees
dead cold in winter's grip, will you never come again?
May, sweet May, May, May...
why'd you have to go away?
May, my dear sweet May...
passion's heat and lonesome's chill waylay
to mark off weeks afore a single day of May
summer's heat bore down from blue burning Sun
and like Icarus up you flew
flew too high, flew too soon
but it wasn't your choice to come undone
someone else took you there, never to return again
May, sweet May, May, May...
burned and left to go astray
May, my dear sweet May...
passon's heat and lonesome's chill now fray
the ends before begins a single day of May
foundation ripped from under you
yet now they say to build anew
but with wobbly knees and stick-like arms
how can you keep yourself from harm?
oh May, sweet, sweet May...
did no one keep the wolf at bay
from May, my dear sweet May...
it's hard to dream when you can't sleep
it's hard to sleep when you don't dream
it's hard to dream when you can't sleep
it's hard to sleep when you don't dream
yes, it's hard to dream of
May, sweet May
May, May, May, May
yeah, May, my dear sweet May
why'd you have to go away?
May, sweet May, May, May...
cold space pulls into the black, spins the earth
for another time round and round
spins too fast, spins too soon
your turn to push it on, show your worth
but how to move the heavens and live again
when you were barely holding on to start with?
oh May, my dear sweet May...
by summer's sun done burned away
came too soon, it came too soon
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
The Boxes
The children stared wide-eyed at the four boxes on the coffee table. Plain brown packaging paper wrapped individually over cardboard bottom and lid, bound tight with plain brown twine, and small enough to rest on two hands: the boxes possessed nothing impressive by outward appearance.
Yet the boxes called to them. The demure toggery only enhanced the mystery of the boxes’ importance, tantalizing the children’s imaginations with the prospect of what fantastic gifts might lie within such humble containers.
After all, Grandfather’s insistence of staid attention before receiving them meant something was different about these gifts in comparison to the others they had received at birthdays and Christmas. And also, today was nobody’s birthday, nor did the scent of pine and cloves hang in the air—only the sickening-sweet and ever-present smell of his pipe. Mother and Father disapproved of Grandfather’s old ways, not the least of which was his pipe; still the children would forever picture him with it hanging from his whiskers, and whenever in life they smelt pipe tobacco, they would remember his eyes sparkling from beneath bushy white eyebrows.
Even now, Grandfather sent a puff of tobacco smoke up toward the ceiling, as he sat on his easy-chair throne and regarded his subjects with a kind smile and a stern eye as they in turn stared at the boxes on the coffee table before him. He picked up one of the boxes, displaying it on two hands before the children.
“I told you these gifts were special,” Grandfather said. “And they are. They may be most precious in all the world.”
Little Mary, her hair up in ribbons and curls, gasped in appreciation.
“But,” Grandfather continued, his glittering eyes meeting each of his four grandchildren in turn, “they are also special because they are unusual. They are not for you to open.”
“What?!” cried Johnny in dismay. “What kind of stupid gift is that?”
“It is a gift that you give to someone else,” Grandfather said.
“Who?” asked Sally.
“The person you choose to love more than anyone else.” He smiled down at his grandchildren. “Do you understand?”
The children all nodded. They all eagerly reached forward with their hands, then flinched back self-consciously, unsure of how to accept a gift they were not going to open. All except for Billy, who patiently held his hands out in front of him.
Grandfather gave each their box, and dismissed them to go put it away and play childish games while the day was still young, and then retired to his study for his regular afternoon nap.
Johnny thought this idea of giving the box to someone else was rubbish. It was his box and he was going to open it. As soon as he was away, he cut the twine and tore off the lid. Inside lay a crystal ball, its surface lacking any defect. With breathtaking beauty, the ball captured whatever light shone on it, nearly dancing with scintillating sparkles and beams.
The crystal ball became Johnny’s toy. He learned to juggle with it. He mesmerized girls with staring into its interior and told them their fortune. Sometimes, he used its heavy weight as a weapon against other boys who threatened him. All this marred the perfectly smooth surface with scratches and chips until the crystal ball no longer caught and danced with the light, but lay dully on his bedside table. And Johnny grew old, having never fully given his gift to anyone.
Mary knew of Johnny’s crystal ball, and wondered if her box contained the same. One day she carefully worked at the twine around her box, loosening the knot ever so gently, and lifted the lid a smidge to peer inside. Inside lay a cake. Mary dipped her finger into the frosting and found its taste extraordinary. Her heart pounding, she slapped the lid back on the box and reworked the knots of twine so that no one would ever know that she had opened it.
A while later, Mary again loosened the twine so that it slipped right off the box. She tried out a full piece of the cake. Still later, she shared a piece with her boyfriend, and the boyfriends that followed after him. Each time, she carefully rewrapped the box so that no one would know that she had opened it at all. But when the day came for her to give her box to the person she chose to love most in all the world, only crumbs remained.
Sally shook her box, trying to guess what lay inside. She knew Mary had secretly opened hers, and wanted to be better than that—but at the same time, she did not want to be surprised when her own box was opened. She wanted to know what to expect. She wanted to be ready. She listened to stories of people opening their boxes. She went to the library and read books on boxes and what treasures they held. She learned that most boxes contained jewelry of some sort.
Sally loved jewelry. She shook her box again, wanting to ascertain what sort of jewelry it might be. She pinched its sides to feel its contents through the cardboard. She squeezed and bent and warped the box—but she was careful never to actually open it. (After all, she was better than Mary.) And through all her finagling, she decided that her box contained a pearl necklace.
The day came when Sally gave her gift to the person she chose to love more than anyone. He opened the box. Inside lay no pearl necklace. Shocked, Sally saw only a tightly wound rope with frayed edges. It had once been a sash, woven with the finest materials and brilliantly colored with intricate patterns—a grand symbol of respect and position. But it had been smashed and frayed and tangled and twisted through Sally’s prodding, and in her mind it could never be more than a ratty rope in comparison to a pearl necklace. Disappointed, Sally used the rope to fetter the person she chose to love more than anyone.
But Billy took his box and put it away in the back of his closet. He found that if he kept the box out of sight, then it also stayed out of mind. Of course, sometimes he would sit innocently minding his own business and the box would appear out of nowhere in his lap. At those times he would remind himself that the box was not his but someone else’s, and return it to its place in the closet; and he would puff on his pipe until his nerves calmed.
He shrugged off whatever he heard of others doing with their boxes. He laughed when he heard people say keeping the box unopened was impossible. He did not worry when his friends made foolish taunts or remarks, even when they hurt. He thought of the person he would choose to love more than anyone else, and he went out and bought expensive red paper and silk ribbons and wrapped up the box even more.
The day came when Billy gave his gift to the person he chose to love more than anyone. Her eyes sparkled as she unwrapped the box. Inside the box lay another, smaller box. The smaller box was hinged on side, its outside velvety soft and inside—Billy took the box from her hands. He knelt down and opened it before her, revealing the most beautiful diamond ring that the girl had ever laid eyes on. And she accepted his gift.
Yet the boxes called to them. The demure toggery only enhanced the mystery of the boxes’ importance, tantalizing the children’s imaginations with the prospect of what fantastic gifts might lie within such humble containers.
After all, Grandfather’s insistence of staid attention before receiving them meant something was different about these gifts in comparison to the others they had received at birthdays and Christmas. And also, today was nobody’s birthday, nor did the scent of pine and cloves hang in the air—only the sickening-sweet and ever-present smell of his pipe. Mother and Father disapproved of Grandfather’s old ways, not the least of which was his pipe; still the children would forever picture him with it hanging from his whiskers, and whenever in life they smelt pipe tobacco, they would remember his eyes sparkling from beneath bushy white eyebrows.
Even now, Grandfather sent a puff of tobacco smoke up toward the ceiling, as he sat on his easy-chair throne and regarded his subjects with a kind smile and a stern eye as they in turn stared at the boxes on the coffee table before him. He picked up one of the boxes, displaying it on two hands before the children.
“I told you these gifts were special,” Grandfather said. “And they are. They may be most precious in all the world.”
Little Mary, her hair up in ribbons and curls, gasped in appreciation.
“But,” Grandfather continued, his glittering eyes meeting each of his four grandchildren in turn, “they are also special because they are unusual. They are not for you to open.”
“What?!” cried Johnny in dismay. “What kind of stupid gift is that?”
“It is a gift that you give to someone else,” Grandfather said.
“Who?” asked Sally.
“The person you choose to love more than anyone else.” He smiled down at his grandchildren. “Do you understand?”
The children all nodded. They all eagerly reached forward with their hands, then flinched back self-consciously, unsure of how to accept a gift they were not going to open. All except for Billy, who patiently held his hands out in front of him.
Grandfather gave each their box, and dismissed them to go put it away and play childish games while the day was still young, and then retired to his study for his regular afternoon nap.
Johnny thought this idea of giving the box to someone else was rubbish. It was his box and he was going to open it. As soon as he was away, he cut the twine and tore off the lid. Inside lay a crystal ball, its surface lacking any defect. With breathtaking beauty, the ball captured whatever light shone on it, nearly dancing with scintillating sparkles and beams.
The crystal ball became Johnny’s toy. He learned to juggle with it. He mesmerized girls with staring into its interior and told them their fortune. Sometimes, he used its heavy weight as a weapon against other boys who threatened him. All this marred the perfectly smooth surface with scratches and chips until the crystal ball no longer caught and danced with the light, but lay dully on his bedside table. And Johnny grew old, having never fully given his gift to anyone.
Mary knew of Johnny’s crystal ball, and wondered if her box contained the same. One day she carefully worked at the twine around her box, loosening the knot ever so gently, and lifted the lid a smidge to peer inside. Inside lay a cake. Mary dipped her finger into the frosting and found its taste extraordinary. Her heart pounding, she slapped the lid back on the box and reworked the knots of twine so that no one would ever know that she had opened it.
A while later, Mary again loosened the twine so that it slipped right off the box. She tried out a full piece of the cake. Still later, she shared a piece with her boyfriend, and the boyfriends that followed after him. Each time, she carefully rewrapped the box so that no one would know that she had opened it at all. But when the day came for her to give her box to the person she chose to love most in all the world, only crumbs remained.
Sally shook her box, trying to guess what lay inside. She knew Mary had secretly opened hers, and wanted to be better than that—but at the same time, she did not want to be surprised when her own box was opened. She wanted to know what to expect. She wanted to be ready. She listened to stories of people opening their boxes. She went to the library and read books on boxes and what treasures they held. She learned that most boxes contained jewelry of some sort.
Sally loved jewelry. She shook her box again, wanting to ascertain what sort of jewelry it might be. She pinched its sides to feel its contents through the cardboard. She squeezed and bent and warped the box—but she was careful never to actually open it. (After all, she was better than Mary.) And through all her finagling, she decided that her box contained a pearl necklace.
The day came when Sally gave her gift to the person she chose to love more than anyone. He opened the box. Inside lay no pearl necklace. Shocked, Sally saw only a tightly wound rope with frayed edges. It had once been a sash, woven with the finest materials and brilliantly colored with intricate patterns—a grand symbol of respect and position. But it had been smashed and frayed and tangled and twisted through Sally’s prodding, and in her mind it could never be more than a ratty rope in comparison to a pearl necklace. Disappointed, Sally used the rope to fetter the person she chose to love more than anyone.
But Billy took his box and put it away in the back of his closet. He found that if he kept the box out of sight, then it also stayed out of mind. Of course, sometimes he would sit innocently minding his own business and the box would appear out of nowhere in his lap. At those times he would remind himself that the box was not his but someone else’s, and return it to its place in the closet; and he would puff on his pipe until his nerves calmed.
He shrugged off whatever he heard of others doing with their boxes. He laughed when he heard people say keeping the box unopened was impossible. He did not worry when his friends made foolish taunts or remarks, even when they hurt. He thought of the person he would choose to love more than anyone else, and he went out and bought expensive red paper and silk ribbons and wrapped up the box even more.
The day came when Billy gave his gift to the person he chose to love more than anyone. Her eyes sparkled as she unwrapped the box. Inside the box lay another, smaller box. The smaller box was hinged on side, its outside velvety soft and inside—Billy took the box from her hands. He knelt down and opened it before her, revealing the most beautiful diamond ring that the girl had ever laid eyes on. And she accepted his gift.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Summer of My Dreams
In submission to the Aug 27 Friday Challenge, "What I Did Last Summer."
I bubbled in the last spot on my Scantron, then set my #2 pencil down on the desk and looked around the classroom. The air was quiet with teen concentration, which hung over the room like an oppressive cloud, disturbed only occasionally by sighs and soft scribbles of lead on Scantron cards. I propped my arm on the desk and cupped my chin in my hand and sighed myself.
This was inhumane. Finally done, and still held captive.
I rolled my pencil back and forth between my thumb and my fingers, but the reverberations across the desktop seemed particularly loud in this quiet, so that I became exceedingly conscious of the noise. I worried that Mrs. Fletcher would look up and frown. A frown might mean that freedom would be deferred longer for one last lecture of the year.
I silenced the pencil.
I looked one row over and four rows up at Becky Lou Harrison's blond hair. Cut short, but still long enough to be considered "chin-length," it afforded me no glimpse of her face. But the hair was enough. Like cascades of shimmering sunshine, bobbing slightly as she read over her exam. She looked only halfway done, but that didn't seem right: Becky was head of the class. Oh, she must be checking over her work.
For a brief moment I considered whether I'd do better at my exams if I checked my work, too, then I tossed such a silly idea out the window in favor of continuing to stare at the graceful curve of Becky's neck. But after a couple of minutes my mind began to wander. I yawned.
Folding my arms across my desk, I bent my head down, sinking my nose down into the crook of my elbow so that my eyes were buried in the warm darkness of my arm. I continued to let my mind wander, but remembering my technique I stayed conscious of where it went, keeping it close at hand.
I decided to explore further the cloud of teen concentration. It condensed around me, blotting out the classroom in a dense fog. I wafted through it and realized it was formed by the steam pumping out of everyone's ears. I got up from my desk and walked around in the cloud. Mrs. Fletcher wouldn't be able to see me through the cloud. I walked straight to the front of the classroom and slipped quietly out the door.
The halls were empty. There was nothing to see in the halls. Besides, I needed freedom. I need the sun. I flew down the halls and burst out the double doors. A homeless man gave me a thumbs-up as I passed him, then shouldered his school bag and entered the building. Of course, it was summer, so he'd have a place to stay while school was out, and Mrs. Fletcher might even teach him to read.
I needed to find something unusual to see. The parking lot was no good. I rounded around the building and headed for the portables. I didn't have any classes this semester in the portables, so I never spent any time around them. They seemed more maze-like than I remembered. I frowned and kept going deeper into the portable jungle. I needed to find something unusual to see.
The arts and crafts portable had been turned into a zoo. A giraffe had its head poked out of the window, looking down at me. He licked my ears. I shrugged him off and kept searching. I needed to find something unusual to see, and I felt like it must be at the back portable.
When I got there, I peeked in the window. Just students taking their final exams. Mr. Dunlap pacing at the front of the room. This would not be helpful. I walked up and down the access ramp a couple of times. Then I noticed the kittens.
I did not hear them, of course. But I knew they were there. I hung by my toes over the railing at the end of the ramp and peered into darkness beneath the portable. A panel had come loose and hung lopsided. And just inside lay a stray mother cat and her kittens. The cat looked at me and I knew it growled. I didn't mean it any harm, I was just excited to see something unusual. Then Mama Cat opened her mouth and began ringing.
The door to the portable burst open and all of Mr. Dunlap's students began pouring out. Then their voices and footsteps slowly merged with the sounds of movement back in Mrs. Fletcher's class. I lifted my head and blinked blearily at the brightness of the fluorescent lights. The sound of the schoolbell stopped reaching my ears but kept echoing in my mind.
I yawned and stretched, and slowly stood up, gathering all of my things. Most of the students had moved much faster than me, and a hefty stack of Scantrons was growing on Mrs. Fletcher's desk. She bade everyone a good summer as they passed by.
I set my own Scantron down on the stack. "Later, Mrs. Fletcher."
She smiled almost happily at me. "Have a good summer, Michael."
"Will do, Mrs. Fletcher." I hurried out the door.
In the hall, I found Marvin waiting for me. "Dude, Mikey, that's it! It's summer! We're done!"
"Yup."
"This calls for a celebration! Wanna go see a movie or something?"
"Sure, but there's something I gotta do first."
"Like what?"
"Eh, just come along, it'll only take a second."
We headed out the back door of the school, walking against the flow of excitedly liberated teenagers. Marvin had to skip and jump to keep up with me as I wove my way through the crowd.
"Yo, Mike, what are you doing?"
"I just have to see something before I go."
"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure Becky was heading the other way, you know, to summer."
"Uh huh."
The crowd thinned out as we got into the portables area. I walked directly to the farthest one back, Mr. Dunlap's portable. Marvin followed me up the ramp, but chose to simply lean on the rails after I swung over them.
I crouched down to peer underneath the portable. Marvin peered down at me from above. "Got any big plans for the summer?" he asked.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness beneath the portable and I could somewhat make out a furry form. A couple of high-pitched mews struck my ears. I smiled.
"Yeah, I'm going to make Becky Lou Harrison fall in love with me."
Marvin scoffed. "Yeah right, like that's gonna happen. Maybe in your dreams, Mike."
I grinned up at him.
ONE MONTH LATER...
I squinted at the sunlight coming through the window. With a groan, I turned my face into the cool dark of my pillow. Don't wake up yet, I told myself. Remember where you just were. You had walked down the street, it was daytime. The Sanderses were throwing a lawn party for the CIA. You picked up some punch, continued walking, because you had some business to do at the church. Made it down to the church, looked up at the marquee....
I leaped out of bed, tossing the covers aside. Sprinting down the stairs, I burst out the front door. The sidewalk was still cool in the morning sun as I padded down the street. Mrs. Sanders watered her begonias to overflowing as she stared at me running past. I continued running, barely stopping to check for traffic as I crossed the street to the church.
I stopped at the foot of the church sign, my bare chest heaving as I gazed wide-eyed at the reader board with interchangeable letters beneath it.
It read:
SUNDAY SCHOOL
9 - 10 AM
SERVICES
NOON-03:01
For a moment, I wondered if I was still dreaming. The fact that I was standing out on the street in nothing but my boxers and more people were starting to stare (in addition to Mrs. Sanders) did not help me with that. But I could feel the cold and wet of the dew on the berm beneath my feet. I pinched my stomach hard and felt actual pain, not just pressure or knowledge of pain.
I was awake. And the sign had been rearranged.
I raced back home, as much with excitement as with desire to get away from my staring neighbors. I went straight for the phone.
"Hi, Mrs. Peterson. This is Mike Reeves. Is Marvin available?
"Marvin! Meet me at Sam's as soon as you can! I did it!"
Sam's Diner was situated just off the highway at Pleasanton and Main. It had the best ice cream sundaes in town, and Marvin and I often relished them in the far back booth of the diner.
Marvin was sucking the mixture of melted ice cream and syrup out of the bottom of his glass, the straw making loud percolating noises as he regularly caught air. He paused in mid-suck and squunched his eyebrows.
"Are you sure they were in the correct order before?" he asked.
"Listen, Marvin, this isn't something easily confused like with your dinosaur models. I know the sign read correctly yesterday. I wrote down last night that I wanted to reverse it. And this morning--"
"But I thought you couldn't read in dreams." He resumed his sundae woodwind performance.
"You can't. Well, not like when we're awake. But you can see text, and I just had the goal of switching ends back and forth. Cripes, bud, are you finished with that yet?"
Marvin stopped sucking on his straw. "How'd you reach the letters, anyway?"
I shrugged. "I dunno. Flew, or maybe I dreamed up a ladder."
"So what does the book say to try next?"
I pushed the empty glasses aside and wiped clean some space on the table before laying down my heavily dog-eared copy of Malachi Alfred Chaplin Hewett's The Untapped Mind. I opened it up to the section on Astral Projection.
"I'm basically there. The next step is communication with another dreamer."
"So you're gonna do it. You're gonna walk your dream self over to Becky Lou Harrison and tell her that you love her." Marvin looked like he was going to choke.
"Well, not exactly. That won't do much good anyway. Instead, I'm gonna hold her and tell her that she's safe with me."
Marvin squeezed his eyebrows together again. "Don't you think that's a little creepy? Crawling into her bed while she sleeps and brainwashing her to love you?"
I felt my face growing hot. "Well, of course it sounds creepy when you put it that way! Geez Louise, Marvin!"
"That's basically what you're doing, though."
"Not at all! First of all, this is not a sort of mind control; there's an entire other chapter on mind control and none of them are done by dream projections. And second, I'm not going to do anything inappropriate to her! 'Incubism is a perversion of the gift.' " I smacked a hand down on the book as I quoted from it. " 'But one can express deep affection, a closeness which is possible for the dream recipient to reject.' I won't be forcing her to do anything."
"Okay, Mike, if you say so."
That night I wrote down in my dream journal that I was going to the Harrisons' backyard to sleep in the hammock. When we had first started school last year, Mrs. Fletcher had made us all write essays about summer and read them aloud to the class, and Becky's had mentioned that she often liked to sleep out on the hammock on warm summer nights. I knew I had no ill intent, but Marvin's words had gotten to me, anyway, so I figured dreaming together on the hammock was less offensive than appearing at her bed.
I made it out to the hammock, but there were only stuffed teddy bears there. It began raining, and I wrapped a tree around myself to shelter from the rain. A cockroach danced about in the hollow of the tree, and then we all drained down together into the sewers.
The next night I could not remember my dream, but I knew I had been unable to reach the hammock.
But the third night I stood over Becky Lou Harrison as she slept in the hammock in her backyard. Her angelic blond hair was tangled and tossed over her eyes, but her cute little nose shone pale in the moonlight. She had a coverlet tossed over herself.
I slipped in from underneath. I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and we had spent the evening talking. The netting of the hammock felt tight along my back and legs, but the night air was pleasant and the pillow soft. Becky laid her head on my chest for her pillow, her eyes closed happily and her breathing soft and steady. She had accepted my presence. I had one arm wrapped at her side and the other hand over her hand on my chest. As I lay on my back, looking at the stars that appeared through the cracks in the leaves above, I realized that this was the happiest dream of my life. I never wanted to wake up again.
I dipped my head, letting my cheek touch that golden hair, and listened for her dream thoughts. I listened, and then I heard evil.
Evil was in the house. I floated up through Becky and the coverlet and appeared at the back porch. Something was not right. I entered the house and wandered through the dark rooms, looking for the source of the wrong. In the bedroom, Becky's bedroom, a man with a dark face and gloves -- a burglar!
I had to stop him. What if he left through the back and found Becky? I had to protect Becky!
The burglar was looking through her dresser drawers. "Hurry," I told him. "Rip out the drawers as fast as you can, there is not much time."
He began a more frenzied search of valuables. Jewelry? Drawers opening, shutting. How could I stop him? Maybe I should try to wake Mr. Harrison.
"Check the wardrobe," I advised the burglar. It was tall and dark and made of very heavy wood. I squeezed into the less than an inch of space between the wall and wardrobe. It was very cramped. The burglar was pawing through the other side. I squirmed up toward the top of the wardrobe and pushed, toppling the wardrobe over on top of the burglar with a tremendous crash. Then I ran out of the room to get the police.
I woke up in a cold sweat. At first I wanted to call 911, but then I figured the operator would laugh at me when I told her I had seen a burglar at the Harrisons' in my dream. So I went downstairs and got a glass of milk and sat at the kitchen table until dawn.
That evening, Dad looked over at Mom during dinner. "Did you hear?" he said. "The Harrisons' had a burglar break into their house last night."
Mom gasped. "Oh no, that's terrible! Is everyone all right?"
"Oh, yeah, and they caught the guy," Dad said. "Apparently he's a klutz, and knocked a wardrobe over on himself as he was looking for stuff to steal."
TWO MONTHS LATER...
"I can't believe summer is over already," Marvin whined, then tossed another potato chip into his mouth.
I hardly heard him. I crunched my empty brown bag up into a little ball.
"I mean, geez," Marvin continued, "Mr. Sura gave us homework already. The first day! What's with that, man? Who wants to write about what they did all summer?"
I kept gazing across the room.
"What are you gonna write about, anyway, Mike? It's not like you can write about all your dream adventures."
"I dunno," I said, "Maybe I could write some of them up and pass it off as fiction. Surely an English teacher would have to appreciate my creativity."
"Psshhh," Marvin scoffed. "No way. Teachers take points off when you don't follow the assignment to the letter. You'll get failed for not saying what you really did this summer."
"I'll write something boring then. Mowed lawns, read books, slept in, that sort of thing. Might as well let Mr. Sura know early I'm a slacker, for all the time I'll probably be sleeping in class."
Across the room, Becky Lou Harrison got up from her table. I bolted up from my seat.
"Huh? You going somewhere?" Marvin asked.
"Yeah," I said. "Dreams are fine, but one of the things I did this summer was grow up. It's about time for me to start making my dreams a reality."
Then, still awake, I went to hold a conversation with Becky Lou Harrison.
I bubbled in the last spot on my Scantron, then set my #2 pencil down on the desk and looked around the classroom. The air was quiet with teen concentration, which hung over the room like an oppressive cloud, disturbed only occasionally by sighs and soft scribbles of lead on Scantron cards. I propped my arm on the desk and cupped my chin in my hand and sighed myself.
This was inhumane. Finally done, and still held captive.
I rolled my pencil back and forth between my thumb and my fingers, but the reverberations across the desktop seemed particularly loud in this quiet, so that I became exceedingly conscious of the noise. I worried that Mrs. Fletcher would look up and frown. A frown might mean that freedom would be deferred longer for one last lecture of the year.
I silenced the pencil.
I looked one row over and four rows up at Becky Lou Harrison's blond hair. Cut short, but still long enough to be considered "chin-length," it afforded me no glimpse of her face. But the hair was enough. Like cascades of shimmering sunshine, bobbing slightly as she read over her exam. She looked only halfway done, but that didn't seem right: Becky was head of the class. Oh, she must be checking over her work.
For a brief moment I considered whether I'd do better at my exams if I checked my work, too, then I tossed such a silly idea out the window in favor of continuing to stare at the graceful curve of Becky's neck. But after a couple of minutes my mind began to wander. I yawned.
Folding my arms across my desk, I bent my head down, sinking my nose down into the crook of my elbow so that my eyes were buried in the warm darkness of my arm. I continued to let my mind wander, but remembering my technique I stayed conscious of where it went, keeping it close at hand.
I decided to explore further the cloud of teen concentration. It condensed around me, blotting out the classroom in a dense fog. I wafted through it and realized it was formed by the steam pumping out of everyone's ears. I got up from my desk and walked around in the cloud. Mrs. Fletcher wouldn't be able to see me through the cloud. I walked straight to the front of the classroom and slipped quietly out the door.
The halls were empty. There was nothing to see in the halls. Besides, I needed freedom. I need the sun. I flew down the halls and burst out the double doors. A homeless man gave me a thumbs-up as I passed him, then shouldered his school bag and entered the building. Of course, it was summer, so he'd have a place to stay while school was out, and Mrs. Fletcher might even teach him to read.
I needed to find something unusual to see. The parking lot was no good. I rounded around the building and headed for the portables. I didn't have any classes this semester in the portables, so I never spent any time around them. They seemed more maze-like than I remembered. I frowned and kept going deeper into the portable jungle. I needed to find something unusual to see.
The arts and crafts portable had been turned into a zoo. A giraffe had its head poked out of the window, looking down at me. He licked my ears. I shrugged him off and kept searching. I needed to find something unusual to see, and I felt like it must be at the back portable.
When I got there, I peeked in the window. Just students taking their final exams. Mr. Dunlap pacing at the front of the room. This would not be helpful. I walked up and down the access ramp a couple of times. Then I noticed the kittens.
I did not hear them, of course. But I knew they were there. I hung by my toes over the railing at the end of the ramp and peered into darkness beneath the portable. A panel had come loose and hung lopsided. And just inside lay a stray mother cat and her kittens. The cat looked at me and I knew it growled. I didn't mean it any harm, I was just excited to see something unusual. Then Mama Cat opened her mouth and began ringing.
The door to the portable burst open and all of Mr. Dunlap's students began pouring out. Then their voices and footsteps slowly merged with the sounds of movement back in Mrs. Fletcher's class. I lifted my head and blinked blearily at the brightness of the fluorescent lights. The sound of the schoolbell stopped reaching my ears but kept echoing in my mind.
I yawned and stretched, and slowly stood up, gathering all of my things. Most of the students had moved much faster than me, and a hefty stack of Scantrons was growing on Mrs. Fletcher's desk. She bade everyone a good summer as they passed by.
I set my own Scantron down on the stack. "Later, Mrs. Fletcher."
She smiled almost happily at me. "Have a good summer, Michael."
"Will do, Mrs. Fletcher." I hurried out the door.
In the hall, I found Marvin waiting for me. "Dude, Mikey, that's it! It's summer! We're done!"
"Yup."
"This calls for a celebration! Wanna go see a movie or something?"
"Sure, but there's something I gotta do first."
"Like what?"
"Eh, just come along, it'll only take a second."
We headed out the back door of the school, walking against the flow of excitedly liberated teenagers. Marvin had to skip and jump to keep up with me as I wove my way through the crowd.
"Yo, Mike, what are you doing?"
"I just have to see something before I go."
"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure Becky was heading the other way, you know, to summer."
"Uh huh."
The crowd thinned out as we got into the portables area. I walked directly to the farthest one back, Mr. Dunlap's portable. Marvin followed me up the ramp, but chose to simply lean on the rails after I swung over them.
I crouched down to peer underneath the portable. Marvin peered down at me from above. "Got any big plans for the summer?" he asked.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness beneath the portable and I could somewhat make out a furry form. A couple of high-pitched mews struck my ears. I smiled.
"Yeah, I'm going to make Becky Lou Harrison fall in love with me."
Marvin scoffed. "Yeah right, like that's gonna happen. Maybe in your dreams, Mike."
I grinned up at him.
ONE MONTH LATER...
I squinted at the sunlight coming through the window. With a groan, I turned my face into the cool dark of my pillow. Don't wake up yet, I told myself. Remember where you just were. You had walked down the street, it was daytime. The Sanderses were throwing a lawn party for the CIA. You picked up some punch, continued walking, because you had some business to do at the church. Made it down to the church, looked up at the marquee....
I leaped out of bed, tossing the covers aside. Sprinting down the stairs, I burst out the front door. The sidewalk was still cool in the morning sun as I padded down the street. Mrs. Sanders watered her begonias to overflowing as she stared at me running past. I continued running, barely stopping to check for traffic as I crossed the street to the church.
I stopped at the foot of the church sign, my bare chest heaving as I gazed wide-eyed at the reader board with interchangeable letters beneath it.
It read:
SUNDAY SCHOOL
9 - 10 AM
SERVICES
NOON-03:01
For a moment, I wondered if I was still dreaming. The fact that I was standing out on the street in nothing but my boxers and more people were starting to stare (in addition to Mrs. Sanders) did not help me with that. But I could feel the cold and wet of the dew on the berm beneath my feet. I pinched my stomach hard and felt actual pain, not just pressure or knowledge of pain.
I was awake. And the sign had been rearranged.
I raced back home, as much with excitement as with desire to get away from my staring neighbors. I went straight for the phone.
"Hi, Mrs. Peterson. This is Mike Reeves. Is Marvin available?
"Marvin! Meet me at Sam's as soon as you can! I did it!"
Sam's Diner was situated just off the highway at Pleasanton and Main. It had the best ice cream sundaes in town, and Marvin and I often relished them in the far back booth of the diner.
Marvin was sucking the mixture of melted ice cream and syrup out of the bottom of his glass, the straw making loud percolating noises as he regularly caught air. He paused in mid-suck and squunched his eyebrows.
"Are you sure they were in the correct order before?" he asked.
"Listen, Marvin, this isn't something easily confused like with your dinosaur models. I know the sign read correctly yesterday. I wrote down last night that I wanted to reverse it. And this morning--"
"But I thought you couldn't read in dreams." He resumed his sundae woodwind performance.
"You can't. Well, not like when we're awake. But you can see text, and I just had the goal of switching ends back and forth. Cripes, bud, are you finished with that yet?"
Marvin stopped sucking on his straw. "How'd you reach the letters, anyway?"
I shrugged. "I dunno. Flew, or maybe I dreamed up a ladder."
"So what does the book say to try next?"
I pushed the empty glasses aside and wiped clean some space on the table before laying down my heavily dog-eared copy of Malachi Alfred Chaplin Hewett's The Untapped Mind. I opened it up to the section on Astral Projection.
"I'm basically there. The next step is communication with another dreamer."
"So you're gonna do it. You're gonna walk your dream self over to Becky Lou Harrison and tell her that you love her." Marvin looked like he was going to choke.
"Well, not exactly. That won't do much good anyway. Instead, I'm gonna hold her and tell her that she's safe with me."
Marvin squeezed his eyebrows together again. "Don't you think that's a little creepy? Crawling into her bed while she sleeps and brainwashing her to love you?"
I felt my face growing hot. "Well, of course it sounds creepy when you put it that way! Geez Louise, Marvin!"
"That's basically what you're doing, though."
"Not at all! First of all, this is not a sort of mind control; there's an entire other chapter on mind control and none of them are done by dream projections. And second, I'm not going to do anything inappropriate to her! 'Incubism is a perversion of the gift.' " I smacked a hand down on the book as I quoted from it. " 'But one can express deep affection, a closeness which is possible for the dream recipient to reject.' I won't be forcing her to do anything."
"Okay, Mike, if you say so."
That night I wrote down in my dream journal that I was going to the Harrisons' backyard to sleep in the hammock. When we had first started school last year, Mrs. Fletcher had made us all write essays about summer and read them aloud to the class, and Becky's had mentioned that she often liked to sleep out on the hammock on warm summer nights. I knew I had no ill intent, but Marvin's words had gotten to me, anyway, so I figured dreaming together on the hammock was less offensive than appearing at her bed.
I made it out to the hammock, but there were only stuffed teddy bears there. It began raining, and I wrapped a tree around myself to shelter from the rain. A cockroach danced about in the hollow of the tree, and then we all drained down together into the sewers.
The next night I could not remember my dream, but I knew I had been unable to reach the hammock.
But the third night I stood over Becky Lou Harrison as she slept in the hammock in her backyard. Her angelic blond hair was tangled and tossed over her eyes, but her cute little nose shone pale in the moonlight. She had a coverlet tossed over herself.
I slipped in from underneath. I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and we had spent the evening talking. The netting of the hammock felt tight along my back and legs, but the night air was pleasant and the pillow soft. Becky laid her head on my chest for her pillow, her eyes closed happily and her breathing soft and steady. She had accepted my presence. I had one arm wrapped at her side and the other hand over her hand on my chest. As I lay on my back, looking at the stars that appeared through the cracks in the leaves above, I realized that this was the happiest dream of my life. I never wanted to wake up again.
I dipped my head, letting my cheek touch that golden hair, and listened for her dream thoughts. I listened, and then I heard evil.
Evil was in the house. I floated up through Becky and the coverlet and appeared at the back porch. Something was not right. I entered the house and wandered through the dark rooms, looking for the source of the wrong. In the bedroom, Becky's bedroom, a man with a dark face and gloves -- a burglar!
I had to stop him. What if he left through the back and found Becky? I had to protect Becky!
The burglar was looking through her dresser drawers. "Hurry," I told him. "Rip out the drawers as fast as you can, there is not much time."
He began a more frenzied search of valuables. Jewelry? Drawers opening, shutting. How could I stop him? Maybe I should try to wake Mr. Harrison.
"Check the wardrobe," I advised the burglar. It was tall and dark and made of very heavy wood. I squeezed into the less than an inch of space between the wall and wardrobe. It was very cramped. The burglar was pawing through the other side. I squirmed up toward the top of the wardrobe and pushed, toppling the wardrobe over on top of the burglar with a tremendous crash. Then I ran out of the room to get the police.
I woke up in a cold sweat. At first I wanted to call 911, but then I figured the operator would laugh at me when I told her I had seen a burglar at the Harrisons' in my dream. So I went downstairs and got a glass of milk and sat at the kitchen table until dawn.
That evening, Dad looked over at Mom during dinner. "Did you hear?" he said. "The Harrisons' had a burglar break into their house last night."
Mom gasped. "Oh no, that's terrible! Is everyone all right?"
"Oh, yeah, and they caught the guy," Dad said. "Apparently he's a klutz, and knocked a wardrobe over on himself as he was looking for stuff to steal."
TWO MONTHS LATER...
"I can't believe summer is over already," Marvin whined, then tossed another potato chip into his mouth.
I hardly heard him. I crunched my empty brown bag up into a little ball.
"I mean, geez," Marvin continued, "Mr. Sura gave us homework already. The first day! What's with that, man? Who wants to write about what they did all summer?"
I kept gazing across the room.
"What are you gonna write about, anyway, Mike? It's not like you can write about all your dream adventures."
"I dunno," I said, "Maybe I could write some of them up and pass it off as fiction. Surely an English teacher would have to appreciate my creativity."
"Psshhh," Marvin scoffed. "No way. Teachers take points off when you don't follow the assignment to the letter. You'll get failed for not saying what you really did this summer."
"I'll write something boring then. Mowed lawns, read books, slept in, that sort of thing. Might as well let Mr. Sura know early I'm a slacker, for all the time I'll probably be sleeping in class."
Across the room, Becky Lou Harrison got up from her table. I bolted up from my seat.
"Huh? You going somewhere?" Marvin asked.
"Yeah," I said. "Dreams are fine, but one of the things I did this summer was grow up. It's about time for me to start making my dreams a reality."
Then, still awake, I went to hold a conversation with Becky Lou Harrison.
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