Free Dream Factory by BRAD BARKLEY Page A

we should go to the beach for a week when they finally let us out of here. I even bought her a little garnet ring in the gift shop for our one-month anniversary. So, to Ella, I’m like some guy in a stupid teen movie, the guy who plays it up big with some new girl because he’s jealous, because he just wants to put the other person’s face right in it— see what you missed? All a game, and at the end, you know the boy and girl will get together. But this isn’t like that. “Life is not a movie,” my father used to say all the time, and he should know. The only girl I will get is the one I have. That’s how it’s supposed to be, right? Date the right girl, take the right job. It’s like a Zen riddle—why do you do what you’re supposed to do? Because it’s what you’re supposed to do. And Cassie? She’s perfect. Chip and Dale makes sense. Cinderella and Dale? No one wrote that story yet. No one ever will.
    “So, Luke,” Ella says, “what was on your card?” I know she’s saying this for the whole table, but somehow, when I glance up, she is really looking at me, like she wants to see into me, into my bones and heart.
    “His middle name,” Jesse says. “The biggest secret of them all.”
    “Not bloody likely,” I say, smiling. I glance back at Ella, and she is still looking at me, waiting for my answer. Just then Cassie shows up carrying her tray—nothing but fruit—and she sits beside me.
    “Morning, you,” she says, and lifts her hand to give my hair a little tug in back, then leans over for a kiss.
    “You guys should switch to Tweedledee and Tweedledum,” Ella says. “Then you’d have built-in pet names. ‘Dale’ is a little low on the cuteness factor.”
    I look at Ella, trying to catch her eye, wanting just then to take her away and tell her what I started to write on my card before I ran out of time, or maybe to ask what she wrote on hers. And I know this isn’t her, either—playing at the jealousy thing like there is going to be some sniping catfight. When she gets like this, pulled back, taking potshots at people, I know, know , that something is really bothering her.
    “I was wondering,” Cassie says, “when you sing ‘Someday My Prince Will Come,’ is that like a single entendre?” Jesse laughs, but most of the others seem not to get it.
    Ella just frowns at her bowl of Cheerios and looks at me as she gets up from her seat. “Nice girl,” she says.
    We all watch her leave. Finally Mark thinks to get up and follow her, and I convince myself not to. “What a freak,” Cassie says, sliding her hand along my thigh. Mark runs out after her, the same stagy, practiced run he uses during the wedding every day, and I think for half a second that when he gets outside, all he will find is her shoe, lost on the cafeteria stairs. That seems about right, the same story getting told over and over, and everyone knows how it ends.
     
    I finally talk to Ben that afternoon on the phone. He tells me that he and Dad were supposed to go to Brazil next week to look over a job site, but they had to cancel because Dad isn’t feeling too well.
    “And Mom?” I say.
    “She hasn’t dug out the biohazard suit yet,” he tells me, and I laugh. The whole time we were growing up, she was the most squeamish person you could imagine. One time, when I was seven, I threw up in the living room, and she just put an upside-down bucket over it and called a cleaning service. And when any of us were sick, she went around the house in yellow rubber gloves, like the kind you use to wash dishes. A scraped knee meant she just handed over the box of Band-Aids. Later on, if we wanted to be left alone, all we had to do was act like we were about to throw up. Now it’s Dad, who is never sick, and I can only imagine how freaked-out she is.
    “Did Dad hurl? Did Mom move to a hotel yet?”
    He laughs. “Nah. He keeps saying it’s headaches. The doctor thinks it’s just tension or heatstroke from golf. I think it’s