Free Dead Dreams by Emma Right Page A

me.
    “You went shopping and bought me new clothes?” Why did I say that? Maybe it was because some of her snide remarks about my poor taste in fashion. Saggy pants just didn’t make the cut for trendsetter Sarah, Most of us don’t have twenty thousand, tax-free, to play with each month.
    She squinted and wagged a finger. “Close, but not quite. You must have powerful intuitive powers.”
    I’d been told that, especially with the dream thing. Some of my dreams actually came true. That was why my nightmares of the last two days worried me. Was someone trying to kill us? Both of us? Naturally, intuition wasn’t why I’d known about the shopping.
    “Wait.” With that, Sarah skipped out my room.
    I quickly jumped out of bed and waved the air around me in an attempt to disperse the perfume smell that had clung to my pores when I’d hidden in her closet.
    What should I tell Sarah? That Jackson wanted her out of the apartment? That I agreed? She was going to feel hurt, rejected. Always, she’d complained friends were only using her, only after her money. They always betrayed her, she’d said, once they were done with her. But, I was just a roommate. Not her “Best Friends Forever” or anything. With her money, she could stay alone, although I knew she was afraid to.
    She sashayed back into my room, her hands filled with four or five of the glossy paper bags she’d earlier dumped on her bed. She dipped her hand into one of these and tossed out first an LV backpack identical to hers, which incidentally looked just as spanking new as this one. From another glossy shopping bag, she fished out a black leather jacket that had that heavenly new calf-leather smell and, still, from the blue sack, a shoebox. She dumped these all onto my bed. I sat down and stared at the offerings. Amidst all our burglar problems, she was thinking of a Brie makeover. Exactly what the doctor ordered.
    “It’s not my birthday,” I blurted. How else could I explain this overly generous gesture?
    “Don’t be silly. These are not birthday presents. They’re too cheapskate for that. Wait.” She waved both hands vigorously as if they felt hot. Clearly, she was excited about something. “You’re gonna love this one.” She pulled out a transparent box. It was filled with something dark red, in a clear container with a black net over it. Hair?
    “What do you think?” She pulled out the wig and propped it on one hand. It was about shoulder length, with ringlets on the sides.
    “Tell me you didn’t scalp someone,” I said.
    “Fun-neee. But, it is real hair. The best wigs are made with human hair, you know.”
    “You don’t fancy my hairstyle?” I asked as I twirled my light-brown tresses around my finger—a gesture I’d seen her do to her own coiffure cut. Some had called me mousey on account of my hair color, and definitely when I’d gone to the salon, the hairdressers always bickered at the amount of hair on my head, but I didn’t think my hairdo was that bad. I do try to work the knots out every morning before I ponytailed it.
    “Your hair is gorgeous. But, it’s too light for you to be me .”
    Come to think of it, the auburn wig was the exact shade and cut as hers: bobbed, with a straight bank across the front and ringlets on the sides. Did she want a twin? I opened my mouth to protest. I didn’t like the plan, even before I heard it.
    “Sarah, I have many issues, but a split personality isn’t one of them. Why would I want to be you? I need to be able to at least boil H2O.” Needless to say, I was the one who made her coffee whenever we were home together.
    “Shh!” She glared at me and glanced at the window. “I need your help.”
    “Right. Your uncle wants you dead, and your lost brother, whom no one has seen for the past nine months or so, is seeking to criminalize you? So, you want them to mistake me for you, so they can kill me instead….” I bit down on my lips the moment I said “kill” and saw her face