The Girl Who Could Not Dream (32 page)

Two trays were placed on the table. She noted their arrival and wondered why their owners didn't pick an empty table.

“Hey, Dream Girl, snap out of it,” Madison said.

Sophie looked up.

Madison sat across from her. Ethan was next to Sophie. “You got shepherd's pie again,” Ethan said. “On purpose?”

“Obviously not.” Madison reached across the table and swapped Sophie's shepherd's pie for an egg sandwich. “Eat this instead.”

Sophie picked up half the sandwich. “Uh, thanks. Um, why are you guys sitting here? And being nice to me?” She eyed Madison, then the sandwich, and wondered if it was poisoned or filled with spit or something. Just a couple of days ago, Madison would have rather showed up to school naked than talk in public to Sophie.

“Believe it or not, fighting a pack of imaginary creatures after being kidnapped by a creepy guy is surprisingly bonding,” Madison said.

Ethan shrugged. “We can't talk about this with anyone else.”

Sophie put down the sandwich. “I really don't want to talk about it.”

“Then we'll talk around you,” Madison said merrily. Leaning forward, she asked in a conspiratorial whisper, “Do you wonder what happened to the rabbits? Do you think they caught them all?”

“Maybe. Or they could have slipped out of the house. Where do you think Christina is?” Ethan asked. “Was Mr. Nightmare really her dad? Makes my own parents seem not so bad. I'd rather uninterested than evil.”

“Seriously,” Madison agreed.

“I wouldn't be surprised if the Watchmen already found her,” Ethan said.

Sophie looked at them both, talking so casually about things that not so long ago they would have considered ridiculously impossible. But now they sounded . . . excited and weirdly happy. “Aren't you guys mad at me? I mean, you wouldn't have gone through all that if not for me.”

They looked at her, and then they exchanged glances in a way that reminded Sophie of her parents. She realized they'd been talking without her. Or about her.

“Yeah, we know.” Madison reached into her pocket and pulled out a dreamcatcher. She laid it on Sophie's tray. “We want a commission. We'll come by after school to work out the details, but we think it's only fair. And if it turns out the dreams have too many personal details, we expect your parents not to sell them.”

Ethan handed Sophie his dreamcatcher. “This one isn't for sale. This one is for you.”

Sophie felt her face flush red. “I . . . uh . . . I don't understand.”

“We like you, Sophie,” Ethan said, “even if you don't want us to.”

“Not that we think you're suddenly cool or anything,” Madison said. “I don't want to be BFFs. But yeah, after school today. Your place.”

Madison and Ethan both nodded.

Sophie felt herself almost smile.

A
FTER SCHOOL, THEY MET IN THE
D
REAM
S
HOP.
Sitting on the stairs, Ethan was tossing a ball into the air over and over. Next to the somnium, Madison was filing her nails.

Sophie, with her father guiding her, was distilling Ethan's dream.

She chased the light through the tubes as it shimmered with flecks of gold. Her father whispered in her ear, “That lever. Yes. Now that one, fast. Good. Excellent.” She guided the liquid through another tube, steering it so that the flecks of light brightened into a steady glow. “You have a good eye for this.”

She didn't answer, instead concentrating on sending the liquid light through the next spiral of tubes. Dad reached across her and hit another lever, which sent it shooting into a tube to the left. It sparkled brighter.

“Get a bottle,” Dad said.

Scurrying to the shelves, she fetched an empty blue bottle. She placed it under the spigot. Drip by drip, it filled with Ethan's dream. When it was full, she carried the bottle over to the somnium, where her mother waited.

Catching his ball, Ethan stood and crossed to stand beside Sophie.

A moment later, the others all crowded around. Sophie watched the clouds in the somnium swirl. She saw the school music room, and Monster standing in front of Ethan, defending him from the gray creature. And then they were on the bus ride home, with Monster in her backpack, and then the bike ride where he was seasick. Sophie felt tears on her cheeks.

The dream shifted to show the night rainbow. She saw herself holding Monster in her arms as they slid toward the bookshop. And then another shift, and there was Mr. Nightmare's house—first the garage, then the bushes, then through the cellar doors, above the sandpit. The champion was in the ring, and Sophie saw herself fall on the sand . . . She began to turn away. If Ethan had dreamed about what happened next, she didn't want to see it. She'd replayed that moment in her mind over and over again, wondered if it would have been different if she'd been faster, if she'd been less gullible, if she'd . . .

“Sophie, wait,” her father said.

Reluctantly, she turned back. She didn't know why Ethan had insisted she see it. It was more a string of memories than a new dream, and she didn't want to remember. She certainly didn't want to relive it. As Sophie hugged her arms, the dream collected again in the bottle.

Her mother picked up the bottle carefully and held it out to Sophie. “Drink.”

Her friends were all smiling at her, hope in their eyes. And Sophie suddenly realized why Ethan wanted her to have this dream:

It had Monster in it.

Monster, alive, with her.

Hands shaking, she tilted the bottle to her lips, and drank.

Sophie was in school, in the music room, with Monster, Ethan, and the gray creature, and the feeling of déjà vu was so strong that she couldn't move . . . until she remembered this was a dream.

She walked up to the gray creature and pulled a dreamcatcher out of her pocket. She wondered briefly how it had gotten in her pocket and if it would work within a dream, and then decided it didn't matter if it
should
work so long as she believed it
would
work. Without a word, she pressed it against his hide. The gray creature swiped at her with his claws and missed. She continued to hold the dreamcatcher to him until he faded.

The dream-Ethan was curled by the piano. She didn't talk to him. Instead, Sophie went directly to Monster and knelt in front of him. “Is it really you?” she asked.

“Am I dreaming?” Monster asked. “I feel like I am. I can remember all the things that are going to happen, or, more accurately, have already happened—like that nauseating bike ride.”

“Technically, Ethan is dreaming. Or was. And now I am.”

“Ooh, sweet. So you're going to dream me to life again, and then I'll have a clone? Hey, that means one of us can be the good twin and one can be the evil twin, and anytime I do anything bad, I'll blame the evil twin.”

“No twin,” Sophie said. “Just you.”

“Oh. Why?”

“Well, you . . .” She swallowed a lump in her throat. “You're gone.”

Monster craned his neck to see his stomach and back. He waved his tentacles in the air experimentally. “Funny, I don't feel gone. Hey, is it that scary ‘champion' thing in the sandpit? Is that what gets me?”

“Actually, it's that girl Christina.”

“The one you greeted like long-lost family?”

“
You
are my family,” Sophie said. “And I want you to come home.” A horrible thought occurred to her. “Unless you don't want to come?” He was back in a dream, where he belonged. “You said once that the dreamer shapes the dream . . . Would you rather stay here? Be yourself?” It hurt to say the words, but she had to ask. She couldn't force him.

“Everyone, whether they're born in a dream or out of a belly, is shaped by the people they love. That's not necessarily a bad thing.”

“So you want to come?” She had to hear him say it.

“Of course, Sophie. You're my best friend,” Monster said. She hugged him, and he added, “Besides, you feed me.”

She grinned.

Monster wrapped his tentacles around her neck. “Okay, let's wake up before we have to relive the scary parts. You know, I don't like scary dreams.”

“Really?”

“Deepest secret. Don't tell, okay?”

Sophie laughed and then her laugh faded as another thought occurred to her. “But are you really
you?
I mean, this is Ethan's dream. He's only known you a little while.”

“This is
your
dream now,” Monster said. “You are dreaming, Sophie, no matter where the dream came from. Your mind is here. Your heart is here. And Sophie . . . whether I am in the world or not, I will always be with you, in your mind and in your heart. It's where I'm meant to be—where I
choose
to be.”

“Promise?” Sophie said.

“Nothing that's loved is ever really gone.” With one tentacle, he touched her forehead. With another, he touched her heart. “Believe that, Sophie, even if it sounds like a fortune cookie . . . Speaking of which, I'm hungry. Can we wake up now, Sophie? It's snack time.”

And with that, Sophie woke up.

Opening her eyes in the Dream Shop, she saw everyone in a tight circle around her, peering down at her. She lay on a pile of pillows, and for an instant, she didn't know if she was awake or still asleep. Curled up with her was a warm lump of fur. Blinking hard, she looked at him.

Monster lifted his head up. Out of the side of his mouth, he said, “Sophie, why is everyone staring at me? Did I sprout horns?”

Dad knelt next to Sophie and Monster. “Monster? Do you remember us?”

“Um, yes? Is that a trick question?” Snuggling closer to Sophie, Monster whispered, “Sophie, is your father all right?”

“He's just worried because you've been dead for a while.” Her voice cracked. She felt like crying. Her eyes felt hot, and her throat was tight.

“Dreams can't die,” Monster said.

“But they can be lost.” Sophie wrapped her arms around him.

He threw his tentacles around her. “And then found again.”

Mom and Dad exchanged glances, and then Mom asked, “Monster, if I told you there was a small child for you to eat, what would you say?”

Monster perked up. “I'd say, ‘Where's the ketchup?'”

Mom smiled. “It's him.”

Everyone crowded closer, patting Sophie's shoulder and Monster's head, and talking all at the same time.

“Wow,” Monster said. “This is like a party. Are we having a party?” He looked hopefully at Madison. “Just to be clear . . . that was a joke, right? About the ketchup?”

“Yes,” Sophie, Mom, and Dad said.

“Of course, just a joke.” He patted Madison, looking a bit disappointed. Confused, Madison scowled, and Sophie tried not to laugh. “Are there cupcakes?”

Sophie hugged him. “All the cupcakes you want.”

I'
D LIKE TO THANK THE MONSTERS UNDER MY BED,
in my closet, and in my basement, for all the support and inspiration, as well as for not eating me. You guys rock. I owe you imaginary cake. I'd also like to thank my fantastic agent, Andrea Somberg, and my magnificent editor, Anne Hoppe, as well as my wonderful publisher, Dinah Stevenson, and all the other amazing people at Clarion Books and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, for bringing this dream to life. Many thanks and much love to my family, and especially to my husband and my children, who are better than any dream and make me happy to be awake.

Photograph by Adam Durst