Wake

But she’s curious to know if, after all these years, Melinda still dreams about Carrie with ginormous boobs.

OH, CANADA

October 14, 2005, 3:30 a.m.

Janie meets Carrie under the black sky in Carrie’s driveway. They offer little greeting besides sleepy grins, and Janie climbs into the passenger seat of Carrie’s Tracer. They drive in silent darkness to school. Janie’s just glad she doesn’t have to drive at this hour.

They pass Cabel Strumheller when they get close to school. He’s walking. Carrie slows and stops, rolls down the window, and asks if he wants a ride, but he waves her off with a grin. “I’m almost there,” he says. Up ahead, the Greyhound bus gleams under the school’s parking lot lights. Janie looks at Cabel. He catches her eye briefly and looks down. She feels like shit.

Cabel and Janie’s non-fight in the parking lot began a long series of non-fights. Not only do they not fight, they no longer speak.

But Janie sees him, kisses him, in his library dreams.

She also sees him, a raging maniac. A scarred-faced lunatic with knife-fingers, who repetitively stabs, slices, and beheads one middle-aged man, over and over and over again. She feels only slight relief that he doesn’t kill anyone else.

Not yet, anyway.

Not her, so far.

And every time he dreams it, the bell rings before Janie can figure out how to help him. Help him do what? Help him, how?

She has no idea. She has no power. Why do all these people ask her for help? She can’t do it. Just.

Can’t.

Do it.

But she sure doesn’t get much done in study hall these days. 3:55 a.m.

The oversleepers, latecomers, and don’t-give-a-shitters have either arrived or been written off by the teacher chaperones. Carrie sits with Melinda, near the front. Janie sits in the last row on the right, next to the window. As far away from everyone as she can get. She stows her overnight bag in the compartment above her seat. She is glad to note that the restroom is at the front of the bus. She twists the overhead TV monitor so its blue glow doesn’t blind her, and puts her seat back. It only goes a little way before it hits the back wall. Before the bus is loaded, Janie is dozing.

4:35 a.m.

She is jarred awake by a splash of water in her face. She’s in a lake, fully clothed. She shivers. A boy named Kyle is yelling as he falls from the sky above her, over and over and over, until he finally lands in the water. But he can’t swim. Janie feels her fingers growing numb, and she kicks out with her feet, trying to stop it, trying to get out.

And then it’s done.

Janie blinks, and sits up, startled. A shadowy face appears above the seat in front of her. “What the fuck?” says Kyle. “Do you mind?”

“Sorry,” Janie whispers. Her heart races. The drowning dreams are the worst. Well, almost. She hears a whisper in her ear as she struggles to see clearly. “You okay, Hannagan?” Cabel slips his arm around her. He sounds worried. “You’re shivering. Did you just have a seizure or something? You want me to stop the bus?”

Janie looks at him. “Oh, hey.” Her voice is scratchy. “I didn’t know you were there. Um…” She closes her eyes. Tries to think. Holds up a weak finger, letting him know she needs a moment. But she feels the next one coming already. She doesn’t have much time. And she has to prepare him. She doesn’t have a choice.

“Cabel. Do not freak if—when—I do that again, okay? Do NOT stop the bus. Do NOT tell a teacher, oh God, no. No matter what.” She grips the armrests and fights to keep her vision. “Can you trust me? Trust me and just let it happen?”

The pain of concentration is excruciating. She is cringing, holding her head. “Oh, fuckity-fuck!” she yells in a whisper. “This was a stupid, stupid idea for me to come on this trip. Please, Cabel. Help me. Don’t let…anyone…gah!…see me.”

Cabel is gawking at Janie. “Okay,” he says. “Okay. Jesus.”

But she is gone.

The dreams pelt her, from all directions, without ceasing. Janie is on sensory overload. It’s her own physical, mental, emotional, three-hour nightmare.

7:48 a.m.

Janie opens her eyes. Someone is talking on a microphone.

When the fog fades and she can see again, finally, Cabel is staring at her. His eyes, his hair, are wild. His face is white. He is holding her around the shoulders.

Gripping her, is more like it.

She feels like crying, and she does, a little. She closes her eyes and doesn’t move. Can’t move. The tears leak out. Cabel wipes her cheeks gently with his thumb.

That makes her cry harder.

8:15 a.m.

The bus stops. They are parked in a McDonald’s parking lot. Everyone files off the bus. Everyone except Janie and Cabel.

“Go get some food,” she urges in a tired whisper. Her voice is still not back.

“No.”

“Seriously. I’ll be okay, now that everyone’s…gone.”

“Janie.”

“Will you go and get me a breakfast sandwich then?” She’s still breathing hard. “I need to eat.

Something. Anything. There’s money in my right-hand coat pocket.” The effort to move her arm seems too difficult.

Cabel looks at her. His eyes are weary. Bleary. He removes his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose, then rubs his eyes. He sighs deeply. “You sure you’ll be okay? I’ll be back in five minutes or less.”

He looks unwilling to leave her.