Free Dream Factory by BRAD BARKLEY

question,” Robin Hood says, nodding. “And furthermore, do you think he’s naked inside his costume?” Anna seems not to realize this is directed at her.
    “J. Worthington Foulfellow is from Pinocchio,” Mark says, gesturing with his fork. “Also known as Felonious Fox. He wears a tattered vest and a top hat, carries a brass cane.” Ella leans into him and smiles, like she is really impressed by his encyclopedic knowledge of Disney crap. I think maybe that’s his calling, that one day Matt/Mark will publish The Big Book of Disney Crap, and I almost say it, but don’t. I just know that she is smarter than that, and that right now she ought to be looking at me across the table and rolling her eyes at Prince Dork, not smiling at him admiringly like he just cured cancer—in his head, over a plate of eggs. So why isn’t she?
    “I just think it’s strange,” Amy says. “You never see him.”
    “Maybe he’s Walt Disney’s secret love child,” Jesse says, still chewing. “Hidden away forever inside his costume. Oh, dear God !” He says this last part loud enough that everyone stops for a second and looks at him, all of us laughing.
    Except Ella.
    I watch her, and while everyone laughs, she just half smiles. And it’s not like she is all depressed, unable to laugh, but more like she is only half here. Half-listening. Half-laughing. I think how pretty she is, her brown hair falling in strands around her face, her arms freckled from the sun, her green eyes flecked with bits of copper, and I wonder where her other half is, what her other half is, that keeps her from really being here. I can see it in the way she sits there, pulled into herself. Or like the way someone’s eyes lock onto nothing when they’re caught in a daze, except that’s not how she is, exactly. Her gaze is locked onto something , and it makes her eyes soft and distant, like she is looking at her own phantom, something far off and invisible that none of the rest of us can see, that she can’t stop looking at. I want to know what it is, and right then, sitting there over bacon scraps and cold coffee, I have to resist the urge to lean across and just ask her. But that’s not my job, I guess. I’m not the one walking off with her into the shadows of the castle. I think about that, about how that night felt when Mark walked out of the shadows and she left me, and suddenly I’m fighting back tears, blinking my eyes, pretending like I have something in them.
    Amy isn’t done talking about secrets. She still has the mouse hat filled with everyone’s card.
    “I feel like God,” she says. “I know everything.”
    “Hey, God,” Robin Hood says, “lower the temperature by thirty degrees, okay? And make all the moms today be babes.”
    Amy smiles. “I will take that under advisement.”
    “It’s not like the cards are a big deal,” Jesse says. “I mean, you don’t know who wrote them. You have limited omniscience.”
    “Because that’s so hard to figure out,” Amy says, smiling.
    Jesse rolls a pancake around his scrambled eggs, then eats it like a wrap. “Well,” he says, chewing, “that’s my point. It is hard.”
    “My sweet Jesse,” Amy says. “You know, Jesus will be royally pissed that you stole forty dollars from the collection plate when you were twelve.”
    “Well, he’s your son,” Robin Hood says. “Tell him to settle down.”
    Jesse chews and nods, blushing. “Okay, lucky guess. Or likely guess, I should say.”
    “You will never guess mine,” Anna says. She adjusts the green bikini top she always wears to breakfast and smiles at us. Amy just cuts her eyes at the rest of us and slowly shakes her head.
    Finally Ella does catch my eye across the table and gives me a smile with just the corner of her mouth. I know that she thinks I’m all mad at her after that night, that I’m jealous. And it probably seems that way because since that night I have been all over Cassie, giving her constant attention, telling her