“What the fuck?” My voice was squeaky. “Guys, are you also seeing Bobo moving around and hanging out on my friggingleg?”
“Can’t help but,” Layla said. “I actually watched him gobble down the frogs, pyramid, and shrooms. I’m thinking maybe he morphed into them, or something? They seriously don’t write manuals for this shit.”
My eyes strained to stretch wider. “Please tell me Bobo’s not about to start tripping balls on my leg.” I shook my head across the pillow. “You know what, guys? I’ve just figured it out. I’m dreaming, that’s it. Somebody wake me the fuck up already.”
“You know,” Hunt said in that way of his when he was about to spout some scholarly shit, “communal dreaming is believed to be a possible thing.”
“Then let’s all wake up,” Brady said. “Go back to before the Fischer House party.”
Hunt finally turned to face us, taking a seat in the corner armchair. “Even if communal dreams are possible, this isn’t one of them.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I’ve already tried everything I’ve ever read about that’s supposed to wake you up from dreams. Besides, if you die in a dream, you wake up in real life. Either that, or you die in real life if your mind believes that the body is actually dead.”
He slumped farther into the chair, crossing his hands over his waist. “This is all too real.”
I studied Bobo some more. His mouth was moving as if he were barking, but he made no sound. He wagged his tail some more. At least he seemed happy enough.
I sensed a butterfly a moment before it fluttered over to Bobo, landing on his nose. When I thought it would fly away, it did, and Bobo chased after it, growing smaller as he appeared to put distance between me and him.
While he was still an ink figure on the skin of my thigh.
And Layla had tattooed no butterflies on me anywhere.
“This has gotta be a bad trip,” I muttered to myself, still desperate to make sense of the situation that made no damn sense no matter which way I examined it. “Do you think I need to … feed him in there? In here?”
I shook my head at the absurdity crossing my lips but didn’t bother commenting on it again. My friends were definitely not missing how crazy life had gotten for all of us.
“Seriously, dude, who the hell knows?” Layla said. “Just keep an eye on him. He seems fine for now.”
“At least now you don’t have to worry about Magnum using him against you,” Brady said. “Silver linings, you know?”
I leaned my head onto my pillow and allowed my eyes to close for a few breaths. Bobo was prancing across my skin, just the outline and some simple shading, and I didn’t feel a thing.
“Do we know exactly how he got in there?” I asked.
“I watched it happen,” Griffin said, and I opened my eyes to look at him. “When you touched Hunt’s dad, and that guy’s zappy lightning jumped over to you, Bobo touched you, and when he did, he just kind of got sucked onto your skin. One second he was standing outside of you like usual, the next …” Griffin gestured to my leg. “Talk about freaking the rest of us the hell out.”
“And where did the clothes I was wearing then end up?”
Brady huffed. “What do you want those for? They reeked. You were right to want a shower, even if you did just about give us a heart attack trying to get you out of it before it fried you alive.”
“So that memory was real.Sweet. How did the current reactivate or whatever? I majorly need more accurate ways to describe all this stuff that’s happening to us.”
“No kidding.” Hunt’s eyes were grave. “We don’t know. Apparently, that’s the theme of our lives lately.” He frowned severely. Nothing bothered Hunt, the one with a beach-ball-sized sponge for a brain, more than not knowing. “But when we meet with our academic instructors, I’m going to ask to learn about everything that has even the slightest chance of affecting us. Magnum agreed meeting them could wait till you recovered.”
“So, my clothes?” I asked.
Layla waggled her brows obnoxiously at me in a blatant message. “I grabbed them.” For good measure, she also winked.
“Got it,” I said, in a hurry to stop her gestures which were so exaggerated she could have starred in an early silent film. “You know, I thought I wanted to wait to grab some fresh air, but now I think it’ll do me a lot of good.”
Griffin leaned forward. “Are you sure you’re up for it? It looked like you took some major voltage—twice.”
Layla said, “I’m surprised our girl can string two words together.”
Fuck my life.I smiled tightly. “I’ll be fine if I just go slowly. I really just want the fresh air and to think things over.”
