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I rest my head back while holding the toy sanctuary in my lap. The light is no longer on me. I can still feel Rufus’s eyes on me, though it’s probably in my head. At first it feels weird, but then nice, even if I’m wrong, because it feels like I have a personal guardian looking out for my time.
My Last Friend is here for the long run.
RUFUS
10:39 a.m.
I gotta take a photo of Mateo sleeping.
That sounds creepy, no shit. But I gotta immortalize this dreamy look on his face. That doesn’t sound any less creepy. Shit. It’s the moment, too, I want. How often do you find yourself on a train that’s having a blackout with an eighteen-year-old kid and his Lego house as he’s on his way to the cemetery to visit his mother’s headstone? Exactly. That’s Instagram-worthy.
I stand to get a wider shot. I aim in the darkness and take his picture, the flash blinding me. A moment later, no joke, the train’s lights and fans come back and we continue moving.
“I’m a wizard,” I mutter. No shit, I discover I have superpowers on my End Day. I wish someone got that on camera. I could’ve gone viral.
The picture is dope. I’ll upload it when I have service.
It’s good I got the photo of Mateo sleeping when I did—yeah, yeah, creepy, we established that—because his face is shifting, his left eye twitching. He looks uneasy and he’s breathing harder. Shaking. Holy shit, maybe he’s epileptic. I don’t know, he never told me anything like that. I should’ve asked. I’m about to call out for someone on the train who might know what to do if he’s having a seizure when Mateo mutters “No,” and repeats it over and over.
Mateo is having a nightmare.
I sit beside him and grab his arm to save him.
MATEO
10:42 a.m.
Rufus shakes me awake.
I’m no longer on the mountain; I’m back on the train. The lights are on and we’re moving.
I take a deep breath as I turn to the window, as if I’m actually expecting to find boulders and headless birds flying my way.
“Bad dream, dude?”
“I dreamt I was skiing.”
“That’s my bad. What happened in the dream?”
“It started with me going down one of those kiddy slopes.”
“The bunny slope?”
I nod. “Then it got really steep and the hills got icier and I dropped my ski poles. I turned around to look for them and I saw a boulder coming for me. All of a sudden it got louder and louder and I wanted to throw myself off to the side into this mound of snow, but I panicked. I was supposed to turn down another hill where I saw my Lego sanctuary, except it was as big as a cabin, but my skis disappeared and I flew straight off the mountain while headless birds circled overhead and I kept falling and falling.”
Rufus grins.
“It’s not funny,” I say.
He shifts closer to me, his knee knocking into mine. “You’re okay. I promise you don’t have to worry about boulders chasing you or flying off a snowy mountain today.”
“And everything else?”
Rufus shrugs. “You’re probably good on the headless birds, too.”
It sucks that that was the last time I’ll ever dream.
It wasn’t even a good one.
