The Girl Who Could Not Dream (12 page)

Ethan held out both hands. “Wait. Slow down. Monster dreams? Mr. Nightmare? Sophie, what's going on?”

“You need to explain,” Monster said, “before he overreacts.”

She looked at Ethan, whose eyes were nearly as wide as Monster's. Trying to sound calm, she said, “You asked how dreamcatchers work. They catch the dreams in their strings.” She pointed to a pile of unfinished dreamcatchers that sat on one of the counters. All they needed were beads and feathers, and they'd be ready for display in the bookstore. “My parents distill the dreams into liquid, with a device that used to sit here.” She next pointed at the empty table. Her hand was shaking. She lowered it before he saw. “And we watch them there, so we can sort them.” She turned to point last at the somnium. “And then we label the bottles and put them on the shelves to be sold.”

Ethan turned in a slow circle. “Dude, are you serious?”

“Those bottles have happy dreams.” She waved at one shelf of bottles, then another. “Here, the falling dreams, and next to them, the embarrassment dreams. Over here are the food dreams. There are lots of those, split between happy food dreams and bad food dreams.”

“Bad food dreams?” Ethan repeated, dazed.

“You know, pizza with live fish. Peanut butter and ketchup smoothies. Spaghetti that transforms into worms—you'd be surprised how common that one is.” She was amazed at how calm and ordinary her voice sounded, when inside she was shrieking.

“And you sell these?”

“My parents do. Food dreams sell really well to buyers on diets—some want happy food dreams so they can eat without eating, and others want bad food dreams so they can train themselves to want less food. It helps people. All our dreams help people.” Sophie took a deep breath. She was
not
going to panic. Panicking wouldn't help with anything. She was going to stay calm, think about this rationally, and find answers. “Mr. Nightmare is a buyer. He bought a dream from my parents yesterday but didn't like their prices, I guess. He left a note in my locker. My parents planned to meet with him today to sort it all out. And now they're missing—and so is the distiller and the bottled nightmares with monsters in them.”

And then Sophie burst into tears.

S
OPHIE GULPED SOBS—BIG, UGLY GASPS LIKE A
fish on shore—while tears poured out of her eyes. She wiped them furiously with the back of her hand. Leaping from the table, Monster wrapped himself around her ankles. She sucked in air, telling herself to stop, stop,
stop!

Ethan patted her back awkwardly. “It's okay. You're okay. Everything's okay.”

“It's not okay! Don't say that!” She got herself under control and yanked away from Ethan. Spinning to face the shelves, she clenched her fists and forced herself to take deep, hiccupping breaths until her eyes and nose quit leaking like a broken faucet.

“We'll find them,” Ethan said. “Your parents, I mean.”

Sophie wiped her face with her sleeve. “How? Where?” She took another deep breath. There. She had control again. She felt as if her face was lobster-red, and wished Ethan hadn't seen her freak out.

“I don't know. But don't . . . cry, okay?”

“Okay.”

He was silent. Tentatively, he asked, “Are you okay?”

“Fine . . . I just . . . I didn't expect this.” She waved her hand at the empty distiller table, the shelves, and upstairs. She felt as if she was going to fly apart again, and she scooped up Monster and hugged him tightly. He wrapped all six tentacles around her middle.

“Yeah, know the feeling.”

They stood in awkward silence again. Sophie tried to think of a not-terrifying explanation for the missing distiller and dream bottles. Maybe her parents had sold them all. Maybe they were out celebrating their new wealth. Maybe they were buying her a pony.

“So . . .” Ethan said conversationally, as if she hadn't just lost it. His voice was falsely cheerful. “I'm supposed to believe each of these bottles is a dream?”

“Believe whatever you want. It's true.”

“But why would anyone buy bad dreams?” Hands clasped behind his back, he examined the shelves with bottles. The liquid swirled inside, sparkling like glitter paint. She didn't believe for a second that was the question he most wanted to ask. He was just trying to keep her from crying again.

“Same reason some people love to ride roller coasters. Or read horror novels. Or see scary movies. Except dreams are even more immersive. Mom says it's therapeutic for people. Dad says it's also fun.” If Mr. Nightmare had bought all those dreams, why? She'd never heard of anyone buying so many. And she didn't know why her parents would sell him the distiller.
They wouldn't,
she thought, and she swallowed a lump in her throat. “That buyer—he calls himself Mr. Nightmare. Guess he really likes nightmares.”

“You think he stole them?” Looking at a pile of unfinished dreamcatchers, Ethan picked one up and then put it down quickly, as if it had stung him. He put his hands behind his back again.

Monster leaped onto the empty shelves. “Stole them and kidnapped her parents. They'd never sell the distiller. And they're always here when Sophie comes home from school. It's the only logical explanation.”

Sophie clenched her hands into fists to keep herself from bursting into tears again. It was no different from what she'd been thinking, but hearing it said out loud . . .

“Then we should call the police,” Ethan said.

Pivoting on his hind paws, Monster drew himself upright and fluffed his fur. He spread his tentacles wide, waving them in the air. “You cannot!”

At the same time, Sophie cried, “You can't!”

Ethan shrank back. His eyes shifted from side to side, as if checking for the nearest exit. “Why not? If they're missing—”

Sophie tried to sound calm and logical. She didn't want him to bolt, babbling her secrets to whoever would listen. “What do we tell them? A man called Mr. Nightmare wanted to buy some dreams and now my parents and the machine that liquefies dreams are gone? They'll never believe us.” Or worse, the police
would
believe them and tell the world . . . and then the Watchmen would hear and come. She couldn't risk that.

“But if they're—”

“No police.” If the Watchmen came, they'd destroy the shop. And when they found out about Sophie, they'd take her away, or worse. If that happened, she might never see her parents again. At least now there was a chance she was wrong and her parents were at the supermarket and everything was fine, and they'd be together, laughing about how silly she'd been to overreact. “They can't find out about all of this—the Dream Shop, my family . . . It's a secret, okay? It has to stay a secret, or everything's over.”

“Then what do we do?”

“
We
don't do anything.
You
go home.” She'd been stupid to tell him. He wasn't family. She couldn't trust him. “And you don't tell anyone anything. Please!”

He shook his head, though he continued to retreat. “I'm not leaving you with your parents missing. Plus what about the gray creature? It's still out there, somewhere.”

She had forgotten about the giraffe-man. Pressing her hands over her face, she wished she
did
have nightmares and this was one and she could wake up.

“Listen, what if we call the police and tell them your parents are missing”—he held up a hand to stop her from interrupting—“but not mention any of the dream stuff. There's still the mess upstairs, right? That's evidence.”

Monster snorted. “Yeah, they'll be very impressed to hear a few books fell over. Her parents haven't been gone long. They'll pat Sophie on the head and tell her to be patient. Or worse, they'll take her into the station, call Child Protective Services, and keep her there. Then we'll lose our chance to look for them.”

Lowering her hands from her face, Sophie looked at Monster. “You think we can find them?”

“Of course.”

Ethan shook his head. “Where? How? Do you know where this Mr. Nightmare lives? Do you even know his name? ‘Mr. Nightmare' can't be his real name.”

“Check the ledger,” Monster suggested.

Yes,
she thought,
the ledger!
“Monster, you're brilliant.” Mr. Nightmare might have stolen dreams today, but he'd bought one yesterday.

“Obviously, but don't feel too bad. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent,' which is a little victim-blaming, if you think about it.”

She brushed past Ethan to the counter by the dream shelves. Monster jumped up onto the counter beside her and stuck his tentacles into the lock on the drawer that held the ledger. Twisting his tentacles, he unlocked it with a loud
click
. Hands shaking, Sophie pulled open the drawer and took out the ledger. She set it on the counter with a thud.

“What's that?” Ethan asked.

“It's a book,” Monster said.

“I
know
it's a book. I meant, how's it supposed to help?”

“Most answers can be found in books,” Monster said solemnly. “As a wise man who wasn't Eleanor Roosevelt once said, ‘Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read.'”

Sophie shot him a look. “This is serious, Monster.”

“Just lightening the mood.”

“Yeah, don't.”

The ledger was bound in brown leather. A thick red ribbon marked the middle, and several pages were dog-eared, stained, and torn. It was at least a thousand pages, with more than half of them filled. She opened it.

Here was every dream, every sale, every purchase. She flipped through pages, seeing her mother's neat handwriting contrast with her father's scrawl. They recorded everything here. “My parents make every buyer and supplier leave their name and address . . .”

Ethan peered over her shoulder. “Why?”

“It's a safety thing,” Sophie said. “This is a reputable dream shop, and my parents want to be sure they aren't dealing with criminals.”

“How would they know that?”

Sophie paused. She hadn't thought about that before. “I don't know. It's just what they do. If you want to buy or sell us a dream, you have to say who you are.”

“Clearly didn't work, since they got robbed.”

Swallowing a lump in her throat, Sophie flipped faster.

“What's to stop a criminal from lying?” Ethan asked. “I mean, ‘Mr. Nightmare' doesn't exactly sound like a real name. Plus, if I were a thief or whatever, I wouldn't give out my real home address.”

Sophie stopped at yesterday's date.

And there it was, in her mother's clear handwriting, in blue ink:
Eugene Federle, 263 Windsor Street, Eastfield
. They'd made only one sale yesterday, a nightmare filled with mythology. This was it. Sophie stepped back from the book. Her heart thumped wildly.

Ethan scooted past her to read. He put his fingers on the words, and his mouth moved silently before he spoke. “
That's
your Mr. Nightmare? Eugene Federle? That doesn't sound nightmarish.”

“Where's Windsor Street?” Sophie asked.

Ethan pulled a phone out of his pocket, typed in the address, and then showed it to Sophie and Monster, who inched closer. “Across town, other side of the baseball fields, I think. Look, how's this for a deal: we go there, look around, try to figure out if it's really his house and if he left any clues, and if we see anything suspicious, then we call the police.”

It was . . . not a terrible plan.

She found herself nodding, then stopped. “Wait. ‘We'? Why are you being so nice to me? Why come with me?”

“As Monster said before, I'm involved.”

“Yeah, not really. We don't know that the gray giraffe is after you. It could be a random coincidence. It might not have anything to do with Mr. Nightmare or my parents. And I could be wrong about Mr. Nightmare and my parents anyway. Why not go home, play basketball, and live your normal life as if none of this had ever happened?”

Ethan opened his mouth, then shut it as if he was considering what to answer. Finally, he said, “Because you need help. And I can help you. Or at least try.”