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Being a dream worker sounded silly. It sounded like crystals and clouds and rainbows. Only babies were afraid of nightmares, after all.
Lila remembered one of her father’s friends, Fat Jimmy, laughing when her father told him what her talent was.
“A cute kinda curse for a kinda cute gal,” he said, chuckling.
She took off her glove and poked him in the arm. That night he had the dream she’d seen wandering around in her father’s head—one of being shot over and over and over again by each one of his friends. The next time she saw Fat Jimmy, he couldn’t quite meet her eyes.
Cursing people was something that you shouldn’t do. It was illegal, for one thing, but since she was a member of the Zacharov family, no one she knew thought breaking the law was a big deal. It was rude though, as her mother reminded her.
But it was also easy. If she could touch someone without them noticing, then she could crawl around in their dreams, learn their fears and their desires. She could give them dreams suggesting things. She could even, she discovered, make people move while they were asleep. Once, she convinced her mother to go to the kitchen and make a cup of cocoa without ever waking.
The bad thing was that it ate away at her sleep. No matter if she gave people nightmares or watched their dreams like television or made them dance around the living room with their eyes closed, the price was insomnia.
She would lie awake for days at a time, until she finally cursed herself to resting. Then, when she woke, she had to pay for that, too.
Once, she made a boy come out of his house and kiss her under the streetlight. It was her first kiss. She thinks it was probably his, too.
She never told him and she never, ever will.
