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I’M DREAMING OF A cat with bone white fur. It’s leaning over me, inhaling as if it’s trying to suck the breath from my lungs. It bites out my tongue instead. There’s no pain, only a sense of overwhelming, suffocating panic. In the dream, my tongue is a wriggling red thing, mouse-size and wet. I want it back. But the cat is carrying it away in her mouth, padding toward a partially ajar door. I spring up out of my bed and grab for her, but she’s too lean and too quick. She runs. I give chase.
I wake barefoot, teetering on the cold tiles of a slate roof. Looking dizzily down, I suck in a breath of icy air. The dream still clings to me, like cobwebs of memory. My heart thunders.
Being a sleepwalker is being at war with your unconscious. It wants you to do things you did not consent to do. It wants to take you places you never agreed to go. For instance, my unconscious appears to be steering me straight to an early grave.
Above me are stars. Below me, the bronze statue of Colonel Wallingford makes me realize I’m seeing the quad from the peak of Smythe Hall, my dorm.
I have no memory of climbing the stairs up to the roof. I don’t even know how to get where I am, which is a problem since I’m going to have to get down, ideally in a way that doesn’t involve dying.
Teetering, I will myself to be as still as possible. Not to inhale too sharply. To grip the slate with my toes. To fight down the rising tide of panic.
The night is quiet, the kind of hushed middle-of-the-night quiet that makes every shuffle or nervous panting breath sound loud. When the black outlines of trees overhead rustle, I jerk in surprise. My foot slides on something slick. Moss.
I try to steady myself, but my legs go out from under me.
I scrabble for something to hold on to as my bare chest slams down on the slate. My palm comes down hard on a sharp bit of copper flashing, but I hardly feel the pain. Kicking out, my foot finds a snow guard, and I press my toes against it, halting my fall. I laugh with relief, even though I am shaking so badly that climbing is out of the question.
Cold makes my fingers numb. The adrenaline rush makes my brain sing.
“Help,” I say softly, and feel crazy nervous laughter bubble up my throat as the ridiculousness of this moment commingles with terror. I bite the inside of my cheek to tamp it down.
I don’t want to shout for help. I’m in my boxers. It will be embarrassing.
Looking across the roof in the dim light, I try to make out the pattern of snow guards, tiny triangular pieces of clear plastic that keep ice from falling in a sheet, tiny triangular pieces that were never meant to hold my weight. If I can get closer to a window, maybe I can climb down.
I edge my foot out, shifting as slowly as I can and worming toward the nearest snow guard. My stomach scrapes against the slate, some of the tiles chipped and uneven beneath me. I step onto the first guard, then down to another and across to one at the edge of the roof. There, panting, with the windows too far beneath me, nowhere left to go, and no plan, I decide I am not willing to die from embarrassment.
I suck in three deep breaths of cold air and yell.
“Hey! Hey! Help!” The night absorbs my voice. I hear the distant swell of engines along the highway, but nothing from the windows below me.
“HEY!” I scream it this time, guttural, as loudly as I can, loud enough that the words scrape my throat raw. “Help!”
A light flickers on in one of the rooms and I see the press of palms against a glass pane. A moment later the window slides open. “Hello?” someone calls sleepily from below. For a moment her voice reminds me of another girl. A dead girl.
I hang my head off the side and try to give my most chagrined smile. Like she shouldn’t freak out. “Up here,” I say. “On the roof.”
“Oh, my God,” Justine Moore gasps.
Willow Davis comes to the window. “I’m getting the hall master.”
I press my cheek against the cold tile and try to convince myself that everything’s okay, that no one worked me, I haven’t been cursed, and that if I just hang on a little longer, things are going to be fine.
* * *
A crowd gathers below me, spilling out of the dorms.
“Jump,” some jerk shouts. “Do it!”
“Mr. Sharpe?” Dean Wharton calls. “Come down from there at once, Mr. Sharpe!” His silver hair sticks up like he’s been electrocuted, and his robe is inside out and badly tied. The whole school can see his tighty-whities.
Of course, he’s not the only one in his underwear. If he looks ridiculous, I look worse.
“Only one way down,” I call back. “That’s the problem.”
“Cassel!” Ms. Noyes yells. “Cassel, don’t jump! I know things have been hard…” She stops there, like she isn’t quite sure what to say next. She’s probably trying to remember what’s so hard. I have good grades. Play well with others. Maybe she figures anyone with a mother in prison and a brother in the mob has to have problems.
