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She rummages around in her pocket and produces a ten-dollar bill. “For breakfast,” she says.
He shakes his head and pushes it away. “Let me think of this as our first date, will you?”
She looks at him for a long moment. Feels her stomach flip. “Okay,” she whispers.
He touches her cheek. “You look exhausted. Can you sleep?”
“Until somebody else does, I suppose.”
His eyes turn weary again. “What does that mean, Janie?” He puts his arm around her shoulders. She rests her head against him and doesn’t answer. In minutes, she is sleeping gently. He takes her hand with his free hand and strings his fingers in hers. Looks at her hands, and lays his cheek against her hair. After a while, he is asleep too.
9:16 a.m.
Janie is outside, in the dark. She looks behind her, and the shed is there. She walks around the shed this time, to see him coming.
He looks normal—not a monster—standing at the back door of a house, looking in. Then he slams the door and marches through the dry, yellow grass. The middle-aged man bursts out the door after him, yelling, standing on the step. He carries a rectangular can in one hand, a beer and a cigarette in the other. He screams at Cabel. Cabel turns to face him. The man charges, and Cabel stands there, frozen. Waiting for the man to approach him.
The man punches Cabel in the face and he goes down. He squirms on his back like a scared crab, trying to get away. The man points and squeezes the rectangular can, and liquid hits Cabel’s shorts and shirt.
Then.
The man flicks his cigarette at Cabel.
Cabel ignites.
Flops around on the ground in flames.
Screaming, like a poor, tortured baby bunny.
And then Cabel transforms. He becomes a monster, and the fire is gone. His fingers grow knives. His body grows like the Hulk.
Janie watches all this from around the corner of the shed. She doesn’t want to see it. No more of it. Feeling so sick, so horrible for witnessing it. She turns around abruptly.
Standing behind her, watching her in horror, is Cabel.
The second.
9:43 a.m.
Janie waits an eternity for her sight to clear. For the feeling to come back. She sits up, frantic. She reaches for him.
Cabel is leaning over, his head in his hands.
He is shaking.
He turns to her, his face enraged.
His voice is raspy. “What the fuck is wrong with you!?”
Janie doesn’t know what to say.
His silent anger shakes the seats.
10:05 a.m.
Cabel doesn’t speak until they arrive in Stratford. And then all he says is a harsh “good luck.” He gets off the bus and heads for his hotel room.
Janie watches him go.
She closes her eyes, then opens them again, and follows the cheerleaders in the other direction to their room.
Once inside, they don’t acknowledge one another.
Janie’s quite good with that.
2:00 p.m.
The students meet in the lobby. Camelot starts in thirty minutes. Janie boards the bus, exhausted, and sits in the back row again.
Cabel doesn’t show up.
2:33 p.m.
The play begins. Janie excuses herself from her orchestra seat and finds a spot in the near-empty balcony. She sleeps soundly up there for three hours, awaking in the closing scene. She slips back down to the orchestra seats and follows the others back to the bus.
6:01 p.m.
The bus stops at Pizza Hut. They have one hour to eat before going back to the evening play.
Janie grabs a Personal Pan to go, eats it on the bus, and sleeps. Sleeps right through the play, in her backseat spot. Nobody seems to notice she didn’t get off the bus.
11:33 p.m.
The bus arrives, most kids exhausted, back at the hotel. Janie falls into bed. She is numb, but not from anyone’s dream. Not this time. She thinks about Cabel. Cries silently in her pillow in the dark room. The heat register hums loudly. Savannah, the captain of the women’s soccer team, collapses on the covers next to her. They don’t speak. They hover at the edges of their bed.
October 15, 2005, 1:04 a.m.–6:48 a.m.
Janie jumps from one dream to another.
Savannah dreams about making the U.S. women’s soccer team, and meeting the legendary Mia Hamm, even though she’s retired. Big
surprise—this dream could totally be an episode of Lizzie McGuire. Just when Janie wonders if Savannah has even the slightest bit of depth to her, Savannah’s dream turns to Kyle, who sat in front of Janie on the bus. Interesting combo, there. Janie’s intrigued.
Until the switch to Melinda.
Melinda, no surprise, has a three-way sex party going on with Shay Wilder, who is in bed next to her, and with Carrie. The sex is normal at first, then unbelievably tacky, in Janie’s opinion. The bodies of Carrie and Shay are, to use a crass phrase, blown out of proportion. Janie manages for the first time in someone else’s dream to turn away.
Janie counts it as a major victory.
And then there’s Shay.
Shay dreams about Cabel Strumheller.
A lot.
And in a lot of different ways.
By morning, Janie hates Shay with all her heart. And she has very dark circles under her eyes.
8:08 a.m.
Shay, Melinda, and Savannah head down to breakfast. The matinee is at 10:00.
“See you on the bus,” Janie says, even though she is starving. The other girls don’t bother to answer. Janie rolls her eyes.
She takes a shower, wraps a towel around her head, and falls back into the bed. She sets the alarm for noon. The bus will be back for the luggage, and the students who didn’t elect to take in a third play, at 1 p.m.
8:34 a.m.
Janie dreams for the second time in her life. She dreams that she is alone, drowning in a dark lake, and Cabel is on the shore with a rope, but he won’t throw it to her. She waves frantically to him, and he can’t see her. She slips under the water slowly. Under the water, she sees others like her. Babies, children, teens, adults. All of them floating just under the surface of the water, no one able to help.
It’s because they’re all dead.
Their eyes bulge.
She is screaming when the alarm goes off. Her towel has fallen off her head, and her hair is in tangles. She can’t see beyond it.
There is an urgent knock on the door.
And it’s him.
He’s holding a bag of food.
Looking mournful.
