The Girl Who Could Not Dream (2 page)

Mom sighed. Sophie looked at her hopefully. She knew that sigh. It meant that Mom was about to cave. “Sophie, we won't hurt your new . . . friend. But we will need you to step away from him so we can turn him back into his dream self. Kenneth, pass me one of those dreamcatchers.”

“No!” Sophie shrieked. She threw her arms around the monster's neck. “Please, I promise I'll take care of him. You won't even know he's here.”

Her father climbed a stepladder and took down a dreamcatcher. It was a pretty one, a circle of soft wood with a spiderweb-like
tangle of string in the center. Charms and crystals hung from the strings, and feathers dangled from the bottom. He handed it to Mom.

The monster shrank back and bared his teeth.

“Give him a chance,” Sophie said. “He doesn't deserve to be sent away. He's special. Can't you see? And he likes me.”

“Sophie, dreams don't belong in the real world,” Mom said gently. “He shouldn't be here.” Holding the dreamcatcher, she stepped toward Sophie and the monster.

“But he is!” Sophie cried. “Maybe he's here for a reason! Maybe he's supposed to be my friend! I want a friend! You never let me have friends!”

Mom halted. She looked pained, as if Sophie's words had jabbed her. “That's not true. You have friends at school.”

“Friends have playdates! Friends don't keep secrets from each other!”

Her parents exchanged glances.

“And you think this . . . thing will be your friend?” Dad asked. “He's a monster. He could decide you're his midnight snack. He could rampage through town. Last thing this town needs is a rampaging monster.” He didn't say it with much conviction. Sophie sensed she might be winning.

Sophie squatted beside the monster. “If you stay, will you be my friend?”

The monster licked her cheek. He then looked directly in her eyes with his wide lemur eyes and said in a gravelly voice, “Yes. I will be an excellent friend for you, Sophie.”

Mom dropped the dreamcatcher. “He talks!”

Sophie patted the monster's head. “He's a very clever monster. Please, please let him stay!” The monster lolled his tongue out and tucked his extra tentacles behind him so he looked more like a cat or a stuffed animal than a monster. He turned his wide eyes on Sophie's parents.

“Oh . . . well . . .” Dad said. “We want you to have friends. Real friends. But . . .”

Mom knelt in front of the monster. “If you mean my daughter any harm, I will personally skin you before shoving you back into a dream. Understood?”

The monster managed to look solemn as he nodded.

Mom fixed her gaze on Sophie. Sophie had never seen her look so serious. “If we keep him—and I said
if
—you must make three promises to me. One, you will never drink another dream. Two, you will not let anyone see your monster. And three, you will never, ever, ever tell anyone that what you dream can become real.”

Sophie nodded vigorously. She wrapped her arms around her monster's neck. He wound his tentacles around her waist. One of his tentacles patted her shoulder.

Dad took Sophie's hand in his. “Repeat the promises.”

“I'll never drink another dream. I'll never let anyone see Monster. And I'll never tell. Can I keep him, please, please, please?”

“There are people out there who might . . .” Dad began.

“Don't scare her,” Mom said.

“She should be scared,” Dad said. “This is serious. We are taking a risk we might regret, and she must understand the consequences.”

The monster spoke again for a second time. “I will protect her.” He wound his tentacles tighter around her, comfortingly warm.

“Very well.” Mom stood and straightened her skirt. Now that this was resolved, Sophie could tell she was moving on. “We're having fish for dinner. What do you eat, Monster?”

“Small children,” he said hopefully.

Mom recoiled.

“Joking,” the monster said. “I am telling a joke. I am a funny monster, aren't I?”

“Hilarious,” Dad said drily.

Monster untangled himself from Sophie and trotted after Mom. “Just a few hamsters would be fine. Or mice. I like mice.”

And that was how Monster came to join Sophie's family.

S
OPHIE LIVED IN A PALE YELLOW THREE-STORY
house that her mother called “charming” and her father called “in danger of collapsing if a bird sneezes.” On the third floor, which used to be the attic, were two bedrooms, one for her and one for her parents, plus a tiny bathroom. Both bedrooms had plenty of skylights so you could see the stars (and plenty of buckets under the skylights to catch the rain that dripped in). Her mother liked to keep cut flowers in the buckets. Both rooms also had plenty of books, which were kept away from the drips, and homemade pillows everywhere so you could curl up and read the instant the reading mood struck you.

On the second floor were the kitchen, dining room, and living room, all stuffed with books too. There were so many stacks of books, in fact, that Sophie could cross from the stairs to the kitchen without touching the floor once. She usually went barefoot so she wouldn't dirty the books as she clambered over them.

Downstairs, on the first floor, was her parents' bookstore, the Dreamcatcher Bookshop. Sophie loved the bookshop. It was a labyrinth of ceiling-high bookshelves that were crammed with new and used books. It smelled of warm dust and fresh cupcakes. The cupcakes were baked every morning by their newest neighbor, a woman who had always dreamed of owning a bakery, and were sold from trays by the cash register. The shop had a bay window with a window seat where you could sit, read a book, and eat your cupcake. It also had three or four red velvet chairs with worn upholstery, tucked between the shelves. After closing, Sophie would intercept the unsold cupcakes on their way to the trash, and she and Monster would curl up on one of the red chairs. She'd eat one cupcake, and Monster would inhale ten. Monster had a sweet tooth, or several.

One of their favorite games was for Sophie to stand at the bay window (shades down so no one could see in) and toss cupcakes across the bookstore. Monster would run, leap, and catch them in midair. This often led to cascades of books crashing to the ground. Luckily, with his six tentacles, Monster was also skilled at restocking shelves.

But even better than the bookshop with its cupcakes and overflowing bookshelves was the basement. Hidden from ordinary customers was her parents' secret shop, the Dream Shop.

This was where her parents bought and sold dreams.

Sophie loved the Dream Shop more than any place in the world. Dozens of shelves lined the walls, each filled with bottles, sorted by the type of dream they held. There were beach dreams and outer-space dreams and falling-through-empty-air dreams, lost-loved-ones dreams and first-love dreams, ordinary-life dreams and late-for-the-bus dreams, and of course, monster dreams. Each dream was stored in a bottle and labeled with a number and date, and every dream was tracked in a massive leather-bound ledger where her parents recorded notes on the dream's contents, as well as details of every transaction with every supplier and buyer.

Her parents bought the dreams in their raw form, caught in a web of threads called a dreamcatcher. Sophie's whole family (minus Monster) made dreamcatchers. Dad would purchase bendable wood to make the circle frame. Mom would weave spiderweb-like patterns inside. Sophie would decorate them with crystals and beads and feathers. They then hung them in the windows of the bookstore, filling the entire bay window with sparkles. They'd become the bookstore's gimmick. Buy a book, get a dreamcatcher. Buy a cupcake, get a dreamcatcher. Want an extra? Fine, it's yours. But if it becomes worn, if the strings fray or sag, return it and take a new one. Often enough, these same dreamcatchers came back, either brought in by the customer or “found” by a supplier.

Her parents then took the raw dreams and put them into the distiller, a complex contraption of intertwining glass tubes, valves, and levers that sat on a table at one end of the workroom. The distiller extracted dreams from dreamcatchers, transforming them into liquid, which would drip into bottles. Sophie had never used the distiller on her own, but she had watched her parents countless times and practiced (without an actual dream) when they weren't looking. She hoped that someday her parents would let her use it for real. She'd tried pleading, crying, begging, demanding, and simply asking, but they always said, “When you're older.” They had been saying that for pretty much all of the nearly twelve years of Sophie's life. For now, her daily chore was to dust the distiller. It was boring, but even without ever having worked the distiller herself, she knew it was important to avoid specks of dust in the dreams. Producing a clear dream was a tricky process.

On the opposite side of the room, beneath the stairs, was the somnium. Also made of glass tubes, the somnium was a dream viewer. If you poured a liquid dream into the funnel at the top, the dream would appear in the bulge of glass in the center. It then could be collected again into a bottle for reuse. The somnium was an essential tool for sorting the dreams. They wouldn't know what kind of dream they had until they'd poured it into the somnium.

Sophie liked to wake early and spend an hour or even two before school at the somnium, watching other people's dreams. She never tired of it. She'd tuck herself under the stairs, out of sight, and she'd watch dream after dream. Often Monster watched with her. Sometimes he read books instead.

She loved all sorts of dreams: scary dreams, funny dreams, bizarre dreams. She especially loved the ones that featured improbable creatures like her monster or talking clocks or rabbits in waistcoats.

Watching them almost made up for never having any dreams of her own.

Except for the dream she stole, Sophie had never had a dream. She'd tried everything: warm milk and cookies before bed, no food or drink before bed, a scary movie in the dark late at night, a book under the covers with a flashlight, inventing elaborate stories before she fell asleep, picturing the best images from other people's dreams. But every night, she laid her head down on her favorite pillow, curled up under the quilt, and closed her eyes. And boom, it would be morning again.

After twelve years of no dreams (except the stolen one), she had given up trying. Almost.

“Good night, Monster,” she said on the night before her twelfth birthday.

“
Boa noite,
Sophie,” Monster said from the floor beside her bed. He slept in a dog bed fluffed with extra pillows.

She leaned over the bed to look at him. “What?”

“It is Portuguese for ‘good night,'” Monster said. “I am learning Portuguese.”

“Oh.” She lay back down and pulled her blankets up to her chin. The window next to her had a draft, or more accurately, a gap around the frame. A few fallen leaves had drifted inside and littered the floor. “Um, Monster, why are you learning Portuguese? We don't know anyone who speaks Portuguese.”

“In case I ever encounter a Portuguese man-of-war,” he said. “I would like to dissuade him from stinging me. They leave welts so painful that they last for two or three days.”

“I don't think jellyfish speak Portuguese,” Sophie said. “Or any language.”

“Men-of-war are colonies of multiple organisms,” Monster said. “They have to communicate with each other.”

“You need to stay out
of the biology shelves.” Sophie curled up on her side. Through the window, the street lamp lit the bare branches of a tree. A few golden leaves swayed in the wind. She listened to the wind whistle down the chimney. “It's my birthday tomorrow.”

“You may have the extra cupcakes,” Monster said graciously.

“That means it's a special night,” Sophie said. “A change night. I wake up someone different, a twelve-year-old.”

She heard the rustle of blankets. Reaching up, Monster patted her cheek with a tentacle. Monster's fur was softer than any teddy bear. “You are always special, Sophie. You do not need nighttime wonders to make you so.”