Free Dream Boy by Mary Crockett, Madelyn Rosenberg Page A

“probably not so many as a thousand.”
    “And in these dreams you…did what?”
    “Lived, I guess. I mean, lived the way we live there.”
    He looked at me to see if I was getting it.
    “Most of it wasn’t so bad,” he said. “Some was, but the dreaming never lasted very long. It was the in between that was the worst. It lasted forever.”
    “In between?”
    “Between dreams. When we don’t do anything. We just wait.”
    “Wait?” I was an echo.
    He dropped my hands and leaned back in a stretch, as if talking about it made him tired. “Like there was one woman who dreamed she was in a doctor’s office. In a waiting room? She was waiting to find out if she had cancer or not, and I was one of the people in the waiting room.”
    “Did she have cancer?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t go into the examining room; I was just waiting. But when you’re a dream, that’s what you’re doing all of the time. You have no idea how long it can be, waiting for the next dream.” It didn’t sound so different from the waiting I was doing: waiting for the weekend, for my dad to call, for my turn in the bathroom. Waiting to meet a boy. “Unless you’re in a dream,” Martin went on. “And then you’re, you know, doing whatever the dreamer has in mind—swimming in a lake or something.”
    “I thought swimming was your idea,” I said.
    He picked up his fork and held it like it was the neck of a guitar. “It was your dream, Annabelle. Not mine.”
    I pondered for a moment. “So dreams have dreams, too?”
    “No!” He dropped the fork, making a loud clatter on the tabletop.
    “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
    “No, no, it’s just…where I come from, the ones who try to dream, well, they’re not very nice.”
    “I see,” I said, though of course I didn’t see. “Like, how?”
    “Well, it’s not natural, is it? For a dream to take control. The whole thing about being a dream is that it’s not up to you. Where you are, what you do. You just have to accept it.”
    “But that’s crazy. It’s not like we control what we dream.” I picked up the syrupy plastic menu from the little stand behind the ketchup. “We don’t place an order. ‘I’ll take Being-president-for-a-day, with a side of Flying Monkeys.’ Dreams just happen. And even if our subconscious is what makes things happen, our subconscious is”—I tossed the sticky menu onto the even stickier table—“sticky.”
    We were quiet for a minute, and in the silence, I kept thinking about all of the dreams I’d had—and the nightmares, too, like last night’s snake extravaganza, which Cynthia Rêve says represents temptation, sexual feelings, or hidden fears. Whatever. I certainly didn’t choose any of that. I hardly get to choose how I live when I’m awake, much less when I’m sleeping. I thought about those hundreds of dreamers Martin had had—all controlling him. “So in a dream, have you ever kissed—” I stopped, embarrassed, but he laughed.
    “Yes,” he said. “Haven’t you?” I thought about Daniel, and then I tried not to think in case Martin was in my head.
    I nodded. There was a pen on the table, and I picked it up and doodled a blue jay on the flat part of my palm just under my thumb. “But did it ever—”
    Maybe he was in my head because he seemed to understand what I was asking without me finishing. “This is all new to me, Annabelle. I didn’t realize it could happen. There were rumors,” he stumbled over his words, “but I didn’t really believe—I’ve never been here.”
    “But why?” I asked. “Why now? Why me?”
    He reached across the table and touched the back of my hands. His fingers were sticky, too. “I think it’s because of you somehow,” he said. “You’re special, Annabelle. You’re…perfect.”
    That word again. My heart shot straight into my throat and I started to cough. I took a sip of water to settle myself, but ended up coughing it up, too. Out my nose. Smooth. I