The Stream: Discovery

- Title Page

- Chapter One - Good Morning Is an Oxymoron

- Chapter Two - Fresh Starts Stale Quickly

- Chapter Three - Nothing Comes to Sleepers

- Chapter Four - The Cute Girl Awakes

- Chapter Five - "Failure Is Not the Falling Down, but the Staying Down" — Mary Pickford

- Chapter Six - The Invisible Man

- Chapter Seven - Only the Small Things Matter

- Chapter Eight - Charlie Brings the Light

- Chapter Nine - Nothing to Fear

- Chapter - Ten - A Hero Isn't Only a Sandwich

- Chapter Eleven - "Reality Is Nothing but a Collective Hunch" — Jane Wagner

- Chapter Twelve - Robin in Wonderland

The Stream: Discovery

By Bill Jones, Jr.

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2011 William E. Jones, Jr.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed in the book are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For my Father.

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the love and support of my family and friends, none of whom told me that I was crazy for pursuing a writing career, even though I clearly am. A special thank you to Amy E. Goudy of CRH Enterprises: my editor, web master, marketing consultant, and chief optimist. Additional thanks go out to my beta readers, Kay Parisot and Carla Hapke. Finally, thanks to Steven Novak for the awesome cover art.

Chapter One - Good Morning Is an Oxymoron

Charlie hated to dream. Nightmares were different, however, and he was in the middle of an excellent nightmare. He loved nothing better than a nightmare he could control — one that would only get odd, but not too scary. An eleven-year-old child of video games, he preferred his excitement with an off switch firmly in hand.

Charlie leapt out of bed, rushed, eyes closed, into the bathroom, and started to empty his bladder. Rather, he dreamt he left the bed. Unfortunately, Charlie was prone to dreaming that he had awakened, while remaining sound asleep. He was tardy five times the previous school year due to similar dreams. Charlie hated waking up in the morning.

He hated it not only because this would be the first day of school, and not only because he had the sleep habits of a caffeine-addicted vampire owl, but also because he woke up … well — like that. Mornings meant a surreptitious sprint to the bathroom. Once, his dad had caught him before he could pee, stopped, saluted, and said, "Ten Hut!" Charlie had no idea what he meant at the time, but when everyone else laughed, he knew it could not be good.

Though he had inherited his mother's caramel color, Charlie' skin seemed to flush at the slightest embarrassment. It was a gift, he reckoned, from his father, along with curly brown hair, deep dimples, broad shoulders, and spectacularly average height. It was one thing to be humiliated by virtue of a joke he didn't understand. It was another thing entirely to have his entire family be able to read his embarrassment.

Charlie shuddered at the memory, and opened his eyes.

What's the refrigerator doing in the bathroom?

It took him a full ten seconds to realize he was standing in the kitchen, dressed, facing the open refrigerator. He was certain there was a toilet there moments ago. He hoped he had not just peed into the open vegetable crisper; however, he decided against looking down to check. He was certain his mom would let him know if he had.

Breakfast consisted of a single kernel of oat cereal in a big bowl of water. Even in his dream, Charlie thought his breakfast a bit odd, but apparently, not odd enough to awaken him from his deep slumber. His hunger sated, he walked the quarter mile to his bus stop, and stood there, alone, waiting. After eternity passed, after the sun grew to a great orange ball of sputtering hydrogen, after the first two planets melted in admiration and all the stars in heaven were visibly moved, the bus finally showed up. It was a Greyhound with "Middul Skool" on the front panel.

Middle school is going to rock.

Charlie's excitement lasted exactly ten seconds. The inside of the bus reeked of cigarette smoke and cheap perfume. As he passed, the bus driver growled in his direction, but he didn't stop to listen. He was too busy trying to find a seat, while avoiding making eye contact with anyone on the bus. It was fortunate he was looking down, though, as a shard of clipped toenail grazed his face, just missing his eye.

Charlie looked up to see a swing set in the aisle of the bus. Fat Mrs. Martinez was sitting on the swing, humming a tune in Spanish and clipping her crusty toenails. Charlie wondered why he was certain it was Spanish since she was merely humming. As he squeezed past the swings, all the while ducking toenail shrapnel, he found a seat in the very back, next to, of all people, the guy from The Twilight Zone. No, it wasn't the old chain smoking guy with the creepy black shoe polish hair, but the newer, cooler one. Charlie found this not at all surprising.

The bus rode over an unfamiliar highway, past desolate-looking houses, most of which were clearly still asleep. At the distant end of the wide highway stood a set of high mountains, mostly made of barren, dark rock. The mountains sat in two distinct rows, the first rising two miles above sea level. They reflected a pinkish hue in the morning sunlight. Behind them, rising ominously until they disappeared into the clouds, were mountains of black obsidian. Gray clouds slumped down the mountain slopes where they had been abed for the night, obscuring the highway ahead in a blanket dense fog. A faraway part of Charlie's brain began to cry out that he had never seen mountains like these in eastern Virginia. Still, that is not what drew his immediate attention.

Instead, he wondered why there was only one other kid on his bus. He could not make out the shadowy figure near the front of the bus, except that it was obviously a girl, with long, dark hair. She sat with her back to Charlie, dressed head-to-toe in black. She never turned around, which Charlie decided was probably a good thing. From his position, she too-closely resembled a few Japanese horror movies he had surreptitiously downloaded onto his computer.

It was her again; he was certain. He had been dreaming her all summer. She never spoke to him, though lately, she had begun to smile on the rare occasions when he made eye contact. Charlie always woke himself up, or, if that did not work, would look down and hurry away. The girl never did anything out of the ordinary. In fact, most of the time, she would watch him, silently, as though his dreams were created solely for her amusement. Still, he guessed serial killers smiled at their victims too, once they decided to go in for the kill.

That thought birthed a creeping anxiety, which he soothed by making spit art on the bus' window. At the precise instant he was about to put spit eyes on a spit head, the driver slammed on the brakes, and Charlie rolled out of the seat, coming to rest directly under the Twilight Zone Guy's left leg. Twilight Zone Guy flicked a cigarette ash in his face, and deadpanned, "Off the shoes, kid." He was no longer the hip, modern host, but a black-shoe-polish-haired relic of an era Charlie estimated to be the 1930s, before God invented color.

Shoot. When did Mr. Shoe Polish show up?

From the front of the bus, Charlie could hear the female bus driver honking the horn, and ranting, "Move! Stupid freaking sheep!"

I've heard that lady's voice before. Charlie tried to recall her name, but it danced just out of reach. Whatever the name, her voice made him shudder.

Standing, he strained to see what halted the bus, but it was too dark, and the fog surrounding the bus obscured his view. Charlie sat, slid along the seat, and craned his neck through the open window. The air was crisp, cool, and smelled of wet wool. There were no sheep, but rather an immense flock of small children slowly crossing the wide highway. They were moaning, their cries echoing in the morning stillness like the bleating of a hundred sheep. The flock was herded by shepherds in hooded cloaks.

One small, brown-haired boy wandered directly under Charlie's window, but did not look up, even when Charlie called a concerned, "Are you okay?" A hooded shepherd turned in Charlie's direction and snarled, his teeth bared. It had the face of a wolf, though its hands, clenched around his shepherd's staff, were human. Charlie drew back inside of the window. Within moments the shepherd had prodded the boy into rejoining his flock, and the group disappeared into the darkness beyond the highway.

Charlie sat in silence for a time, as the bus continued on its way. He was beginning to fear, perhaps, this school would not be as cool as he had hoped. However, within minutes, he was lulled into a renewed sense of security by the bus' gentle motion. Unfortunately, as soon as he began to relax, the bus screeched to another stop, banging Charlie's head against the window frame.

Ow! Jeez-o-flip!

In addition to now having a headache, Charlie was choking on cigarette smoke, as the open window had drawn Mr. Shoe Polish's smoke in his direction. The cloud of smoke drifted into the form of a skull, which hovered over Charlie's head before dissipating. Charlie turned to Mr. Shoe Polish, who shrugged, and flicked his cigarette butt in Charlie's direction.

"Don't look at me, kid," he said, lighting another cigarette. "It's your dream, not mine. Your stop, by the way."

Charlie rose, and crept down the aisle, by now harkening to the sound of a chainsaw or knives being sharpened. As he approached the front door, he glanced back, and saw Mr. Shoe Polish still seated, obscured by a rancid smoke cloud. No knives. Charlie, however, was not reassured. The back of the bus was now ensconced in black and white, which he knew to be the dominion of absolute evil.

Charlie stood timidly at the bus' front steps, craning his neck to see the three-story entrance to his new school. "Welcome to the ZONE!" was emblazoned in dripping red over the enormous double doors. He gulped audibly, hoping against hope it was paint.

"Wow!" exclaimed the dark-haired girl behind him.

Charlie had completely forgotten she was there, and responded to her excitement by screaming in a lovely soprano.

"You are so funny," she responded, grinning, and ruffling his curly hair.

Charlie stood clutching his chest, checking for angina. He couldn't find it, as he wasn't entirely certain what it was. He had never seen the girl up close. She was a Cute Girl, with lightly tanned skin, large eyes outlined with black mascara, and dark hair that fell in loose curls around her face, from under which Charlie could make out three earrings on one side, and none on the other.

"Um, I-I think you lost an earring," Charlie offered, hoping his helpfulness would prevent her slashing him. Her eyes seemed to change from blue to hazel as he watched, but he decided against mentioning that. One never knows what will set off a psychopath.

"Oh, my left ear wasn't in the mood for decoration today," she said, without a smile. She poked him casually in the rib cage as she walked by. "Come on, silly, you're gonna be late for school." She descended the stairs without so much as a backward glance. Charlie stood dumbfounded. She didn't appear to be Japanese, but, rather, Hispanic. Importantly, though her poking had caused a second, smaller yelp, he wasn't bleeding. He was unfamiliar with Spanish-language horror movies, but thought he should look them up for future reference. This could still be a trick.

"Off!" yelled his former second-grade teacher, apparently now moonlighting as a bus driver, as she kicked him in the seat of his pants. He landed with a lovely splash in a fresh mound of (he hoped) mud and looked up. Standing over him was the biggest, ugliest kid he had ever seen. He thought it might be a girl … or a goat.

Maybe both, because it does have one of those goatee things.

Goatisha (he decided the she-goat was called) picked him up with one hairy-knuckled hand, and yelled, "I liked my new dress yellow, not mud brown! You are dead, kid." For the very first time in his life, Charlie learned what "saved by the bell" means. As one ham-sized fist (with spring pomegranate polish) entered gravity on a collision course with his smile, the school bell rang.

"I said, mama said, 'Wake up!'"

It was the unmistakable siren song of his sixteen-year-old, equally curly haired sister, Layla, who was holding Charlie's ringing alarm clock and earthquaking the bed. It was possibly the first time he had ever been glad to see her. He always believed she yelled so loudly in the mornings in the secret hope she would scare him into wetting the bed. She had only been successful in that endeavor once.

"Look, boy," Layla continued, "Mama said if you are late to school today, you don't get to visit the Senior Center this weekend. And that'd mean you might have to get an actual life of your own." Layla dropped the still-ringing clock in his lap and stormed off, muttering, "What kind of kid wants to spend his whole weekend hanging around a bunch of old folks?"

Layla treated Charlie as if he were an alien species, despite the fact that they were the spitting image of each other. Of course, neither of them would admit to bearing any familial resemblance at all.

Charlie sat on his bed, his eyes blinking blurredly at his orange and green walls. Now, for most people, a salmon-and-grass-colored bedroom would have indicated one was still caught in a nightmare. Regrettably, Charlie's walls were, in fact, orange and green. Indeed, it had taken him an entire week of begging to get his mom to agree.

"Yay," he said, dully, as realization set in. "I get to be the only kid in the world to go to my first day in the sixth grade twice."

Based on his past experience with school, he held little hope that the second first day would be much better than the first. This had been the third disturbing dream of the week, each more vivid than the last. Charlie had been prone to nightmares when he was six, but it had been years since he had a dream he even remembered. Now, entering middle school, the dreams had returned — in spades. As the summer had progressed, he found himself in one nightmare after the other. His hopes that it was just a symptom of puberty was beginning to fade into a fear that perhaps he was going crazy.

Nightmares were one thing, but dreaming about school? That was nuts. Charlie sighed and began to get dressed, hoping against hope there would be a Greyhound bus when he reached the stop.

Always keep the good bits, right?

Chapter Two - Fresh Starts Stale Quickly

I'm going to a new middle school.

Charlie was speaking in his crowded head. The words had become a chant, a private mantra that declared his liberation from the tyranny of elementary school and its bus rides full of three-abreast first graders. It was the 27th of August, and he was officially a big-time-middle-school kid. He was in the sixth grade, halfway to college, and halfway out of his parents' house. More important, was the word "new." A new school meant a new start, and possibly, an end to his interminable loneliness. Charlie was a bright, personable boy of eleven, whom almost no one knew. Ignored at home, bored at school, and without a close friend to speak of, he had become so accustomed to feeling invisible that he had adopted it as part of his persona.

Charlie was biracial, though he rarely thought of himself as such. His father was of Scottish descent, by way of Boston, and his mother was of African American origin, via Washington, D.C. Given he had never once seen his father wear a kilt, and his mother's closest connection to Africa was a collection of dusty wooden masks that gave him the willies, Charlie thought the whole idea of ethnicity a bit silly. His sister, Layla, self-identified as black. Charlie self-identified as Charlie. It wasn't that he did not feel black. Rather, he did not believe he had to choose just to make others feel more comfortable. He had felt as close to his late paternal grandmother, Kate, who had alabaster skin and blue eyes, as he did to his maternal great-grandfather, Joe, who was the color of dark chocolate. Now, surrounded by a sea of multi-hued students, he delighted in his ability to blend in and disappear. His skin was his camouflage. He was a Tan American, and that was that.

Charlie had attended the same elementary school for six years, and the closest he had come to developing a friend was Jannet Rogers, whom, he believed, sat next to him his entire school career for the express purpose of getting on his nerves. He had been able to tolerate his lack of a social life by spending weekends at the Senior Center with his great-grandfather Joe, who was a life-long adventurer, a great story-teller, and a first-class grump. Charlie adored him. His great-grandfather was Charlie's one bright spot; however, lately, Joe had begun to slip into the unforgiving arms of senility. It was, to Charlie, like watching a brilliant light bulb slowly dim. He intended to enjoy every bit of light he could before the shadows took over.

This day, unfortunately, was not the weekend. It was a school Monday. If weekends were a bright spot, then school days were a dark abyss of endless torment - either that, or just extraordinarily boring, particularly to a genius kid with no friends.

New middle school.

The words sat on his tongue, much in the way a long line of spit did when he let it dangle inches from the ground. Like drool, the words had a sickening aftertaste he tried hard not to think about. What if his new school were no different than the old one? What if the chance for a new start that his great-grandfather had promised was an illusion? What if being a lone wolf was to be his lot in life?

Still, the idea of a new school, and the hope it implied, made his heart pound in his chest.

New.

The irony of that word was no lost on Charlie. It was almost criminal to call a school new, he believed, when he was sure it had been built by slaves. Sadly, his southeastern Virginia school was not named "The Zone." Instead, it had the mundane name of "Upper Peninsula Middle School." The building was an old two-story cinderblock structure, painted over in what could only be described as cream of puke green. The window sills were painted a deep emerald that portended to complement the puke walls, but really served a much more functional purpose. One had to be within inches to notice the dark paint covered endless layers of old paint. The nauseating color ensured no one could stand near enough the walls to notice the shoddy paint job. This produced the secondary benefit of keeping you from noticing how musty the old building smelled. Yes, from a distance, one would even think the school was built by people who had possessed the gift of fire.

Unh, skool good! Charlie daydreamed, deciding that the builders would have celebrated, perhaps by sacrificing a goat. On closer inspection, Charlie was certain the school predated slavery — even ancient Egyptian slavery. He guessed that Adam and his sons Cain and Abel had probably directed Neanderthal migrant workers to build it. They would have used ground-up leaves for the paint color. Adam and Sons Construction, building schools since … well, the beginning.

Charlie was standing pretty much to himself, nearest the side entrance. There were groups of other kids talking around him, as he silently scanned the crowd. He was an average height to slightly short sixth grader in a world of eighth graders. Nearest him was one kid with a goatee who had either been sent down to the minors from high school, or was a precociously young teacher. The torn t-shirt and the semi-glazed stare suggested he might not be too bright. "Yup, teacher for sure," Charlie giggled to himself.

Shoot. Not to himself. (He really needed to work on that.)

He could feel Jannet (the Plannet) Rogers somewhere behind him roooollllinnng her eyes at him. She was a copper-haired, pencil-thin girl with all the charm and fashion sense of a eighteenth century schoolmarm. Charlie called her The Plannet (in his head) because of her world-class ego.

You'd think straight A's for life meant you were smart or something.

Charlie wasn't impressed with grades. That took way more paying attention than he wanted to deal with. He had taught himself to read at age four, mostly out of boredom, so had never acquired the skill of learning from others. Generally, he just daydreamed, and wished teachers would shut up so he could think.

Charlie's dad would yell at him because of his grades, when, unbeknownst to Charlie, he was prodded by his wife into energizing his son's ambition. Charlie's mom would just give her famous "Do better baby, okay?" speech, and Charlie would, for her. A grading period of daydreams was almost always followed by a period of all A's except one B. Charlie hated straight A's. Only followers got straight A's as far as he was concerned. It was important to establish a healthy sense of independence when dealing with teachers.

As this was an important day, Charlie was dressed appropriately. He had on his lucky jeans with the torn left knee, a red polo shirt, and his favorite red canvas sneakers, with "Charlie" signed in ink, just above Chuck Taylor's signature. That little bit of art had gotten him a First Rate Butt Slap, his first since he was eight years old.

"Charlie, how many days did you go to work this week?" his father had asked, completely rhetorically. In his defense, the literal-minded Charlie often did not understand the concept of the rhetorical question. He had made the mistake of answering "one," since he had been at work with his mom that Thursday. Being a "Smart Alec" (whoever he was) was generally not tolerated in the Patterson household, it turned out. Still, looking at how awesome he looked in genuine Charlie Autographed sneaks had made it worthwhile. He did hate that Alec guy though, he remembered, absently rubbing his bottom.

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," his left brain reminded.

Charlie called his left brain Chuck.

Now, it should be noted here that Charlie never thought of Chuck as his left brain. At eleven, the concept of left versus right brain was still alien to him. Nor did he think of it, exactly, as his logical side and his emotional side, though the two halves of his personality had been battling for control for as long as he could remember. No, to Charlie, he simply heard his mother's logical voice, Chuck, and his father's emotional one, Charlene. Chuck was tough, cool and efficient, like his mom, while Charlene was sensitive and emotional, like his dad. His dad wasn't gay, but he thought Charlene might be. A little. Chuck reminded him quite a bit of his Uncle Alexander, who was.

"Hey!" he heard himself yell, as he was crammed against the open door. He wondered, not a bit embarrassed, how long it had been open. The kids were in their first-day rush to establish territories in the new class rooms. It was positively the only day any of them would rush into the building when it wasn't raining.

All of the sixth-grade English classrooms were on the musty first floor except Charlie's. Due to an influx of newcomers in the area, there were more sixth graders than ever, and one lucky English class got to be on the second floor with the big shot eighth-graders. Charlie ran up the stairs, two at a time, looking as casual as he could make his face look. This decision could make or break his year. He couldn't mess it up.

Charlie hoped to sit in the middle of the classroom, the absolute center, nearest the windows and the faded pea-green walls. This was his strategic spot, the perfect placement. He rushed, in his most casual, "I don't care where I sit," walk that was, of course, about twice as fast as a casual walk should be. He didn't know for certain that anyone had figured out the perfect seat, but he reasoned he couldn't take chances with a decision as critical as location.

If he sat too close to the front, he was doomed on two levels. First, all the kids behind him, and they would all be behind him, would think he was a suck up. A teacher's baby. A sissy. Or worse of all, a "you think you're smart, doncha?" kid, the kind who is automatically a target for anyone who thinks in fact they themselves are not so smart. But he wasn't really so worried about them. If he sat way up front, Mrs. Taylor would know for sure he wasn't paying attention.

Mrs. Taylor had been Charlie's fifth grade teacher. She had probably been a sweet lady back in the old days — the 1980s — when she started teaching. However, too many years of the teaching the same thing had taken its toll on her patience, especially with smart-mouthed boys who did not seem to know their own potential. Still, even though she made picking on Charlie in class her hobby, and once made him cry, he could tell she liked him. That made it even worse.

Just when he was celebrating making her a faded memory, she announced she was following her "favorite goof-off" to teach in Middle School. Charlie had being having school nightmares ever since. Being supernaturally lucky — in the way that deer are lucky on dark roads when trucks are near — he had managed to get Mrs. Taylor for English.

"Yay." Charlie gave a flat-line cheer in his head at the thought of sharing puberty with her. Maybe it would stunt his development, and he'd never have to suffer through liking girls. No, anytime a girl would try to steal his soul with her dark magic, he'd just picture ol' Mrs. Taylor's pudgy red face. And her voice. The voice that made cats cry. He actually saw her make butter melt once just by singing to it. Really.

If he sat in the front of the classroom, she'd probably call on him just to embarrass him when he was drawing his important sketches in the margins of his notepaper. That was just … sick. He could imagine her scratchy, "I got you now, boy," voice, with her smug little half smile.

He could almost hear the kids giggle behind him as he sweated under her gaze. "Um, could you repeat the question," he would ask timidly. Her face would contort into a raptor's grin, and she'd actually begin to drool with the thought of fresh boy kill. And, with the appropriate perverse delight, she'd repeat the question, and add a second part to it since he wasn't listening.

Then, he knew, there would be an almost perfect silence. The room would fill with the sweet smell of anticipated humiliation. There would be nary a sound, as the kids behind Charlie wouldn't want to miss a second of his fumbling answer. The corner of Mrs. Taylor's mouth would begin to curl in an up-turned, knowing smile …

Then he would answer the questions. Correctly. He would then add some stuff she hadn't taught yet. Man, would they all hate his stinking guts — again. No, he'd been down that road before. The front of the classroom was right out.

As he entered the classroom, Jannet Rogers gave him her usual look, which he knew meant she considered him to be an alien life form. Jannet turned her head quickly away, her hair strands all moving in perfect unison, none daring to fall out of step. No, a misplaced hair would suffer the humiliation of a firm brushing, followed by chemical warfare. There were two kinds of hair in the world: good hair, and hair that you beat into submission. If you can't be good, at least be quiet. Jannet had quiet hair. Quiet, and red, an odd combination, to say the least. The thought of that made him snicker.

Jannet turned her eyes toward him, somehow not changing the position of her head, and gave him a full five-second eye roll before turning away. "Pa. The. Tic," was all she decided he was worth. Jannet was wearing a long white dress with small, tan polka dots. Her freckled face was fixed ahead, ignoring him. Charlie thought it odd that a pale girl dotted with freckles would choose to wear a dress the same colors as her skin. It was like some weird Rogers camouflage.

"Would you stop staring at me, Patterson?" Jannet startled him by saying. "You. Are. So. Creepy."

Charlie hadn't realized he was staring, and hoped she wasn't stupid enough to think it meant her liked her. To disprove that notion, he decided to ignore her back (as usual), and began putting his new pencils neatly on his desk, and grinning to himself in his inside grin. Outwardly, he had a look that resembled someone whom had just smelled cheese for the first time. But inside, he was grinning — big time. It was his perfect-middle-desk-spot grin.

Charlie could have probably lived with being stuck in the front, although the prospect of going through another year labeled as the weird, smart, all-day daydreamer made him cringe. Even worse than that would have been to be stuck in the back. First of all, you had the same problems as in the front. Only this time, Ms. Taylor would call on you quicker since she was sure the only reason any kid would sit back there was to goof off.

She had obviously never smelled her own breath.

Even scarier, in the back was where the Tough Kids sat. They were big, they were mean, they were dumb, and proud of it. The back was Willie Green(teeth)'s territory. (But you never, ever, called him green teeth to his face. To be safe, you never brought up the subject of pimples either, lest you make Willie start feeling self-conscious, whereupon he would pound you into dust.) If Charlie sat back there, in between getting smacked in the head, or punched in the arm, or just kicked all day long, he'd have to choose between answering wrong on purpose and living, or answering right, and risk getting killed after school. You do not come into Willie Green's territory and make him look bad. You also don't stick your tongue in a light socket. Well, you'd probably do that before messing with Willie Green. Willie had failed the third grade twice (rumor said) and so he was actually fifteen (supposedly) which is why he was huge.

"His mama is why he is ugly," Charlene offered. Charlie snickered again, which evoked a deep sigh from Jannet.

Charlie just couldn't risk being asked a question in the back of the classroom. He had rarely answered anything wrong on purpose in his life, and he was really afraid he'd forget. Once, in the second grade, he had tried that and got so scared he forgot what answer was wrong. So he froze, and said nothing. The teacher made him stay in the classroom until he gave her an answer. Charlie sat in the classroom, with the teacher, listening to the sounds of students' joyous departure. He heard the buses leave on by one, their diesel stench wafting through the windows and mixing with the classroom's normal musty smell.

His teacher had simply glared at him, and every ten minutes or so would wave her flabby arms at him and ask, "Are you ready to answer now, Mr. Patterson?" Of course, by then, he had remembered the answer, but couldn't think of a way to answer it, and still save face. So, he kept his silent vigil, and tried his best not to make eye contact with the teacher. His mom finally came and picked him up at 5:30. She was pissed. He would quit school before risking that again.

So, after much consideration, he had found his perfect spot — right in the middle with the normal kids (except Jannet, who was abnormal, but sitting right next to him), next to the window for a good sunny daydream, and nowhere near Willie Green.

Teeth.

He nervously looked around in case Willie might have heard him think that. Charlie saw people do that on Twilight Zone once, and had wondered ever since.

He satisfied himself that Willie didn't even know he existed, judging by how Willie was now busy chanting quietly to Jannet, "I see your hiney, it's pink and shiny." Charlie noted that although Jannet frowned appropriately, she didn't sigh or roll her eyes at Willie. That meant Charlie must be especially annoying, or she actually liked Willie. Well, she sure didn't like Charles Robert Spencer Patterson, which was just fine with him. Jannet usually refused to even call him Charlie, preferring the moniker Patterson, or Charles, lest he mistake her "for someone who cares."

Yep, this looked like it was going to be a normal, quiet year. Heck, if he was lucky, no one would even remember he was there.

###

Charlie, for being a thoughtful, insightful boy, had a knack for being absolutely wrong about many things. Maybe it could be attributed to his age, or the fact that he was smarter than he was wise. Whatever the reason, it was not at all unusual for him to be absolutely certain of a thing's occurrence, only to have the opposite happen. Quiet year? Hardly.

This became evident to Charlie, when upon climbing onto the bus for the trip home after his victorious first day, he looked up to see Mrs. Thornwood, his snarling second-grade teacher behind the wheel. Charlie almost jumped back off the bus, but remembered he didn't actually know the way home.

"Charlie Pee Pants," she sneered, her sallow teeth gleaming in the afternoon sun. Charlie could swear he saw a bit of drool dangling expectantly from the brown edges of her tobacco ravaged teeth. He resisted the urge to check the front of his pants to check if she was referring to a current… incident.

"Interesting to see you, Pee Pants," she leered. Her craggy smile was anything but pleasant, and Charlie shivered involuntarily. Mrs. Thornwood was no more than 42, but looked 55, her face an intricate spider's web of cracks and crevices. Her cheeks hung from her as if they no longer wanted to remain a part of her face and were attempting to blend in with her loose neck skin. Mrs. Thornwood's attempts to beautify herself only added to her garishness. The cracks were filled with a layer of makeup that reminded Charlie of when he'd helped his dad spackle his room before painting. The cloud of tobacco fumes that surrounded her in elementary school had been replaced by the putrid smell of old lady makeup that always made Charlie want to gag. The remarkably pale color of her made-up skin contrasted with the deep ebony of her hair and made her look even less alive than she was. In short, she looked a bit more like a zombie than a bus driver.

Despite her zombie skills, Charlie didn't like her.

The teacher-turned-bus-driver had dropped from a size twenty-two to a six, losing 110 pounds (as well as some of her left lung) after a bout with cancer that left her too broke not to work, but too weakened to teach. Charlie had heard his mother speak of her illness. Apparently Mrs. Thornwood's love of children drew her to a career that would keep her close to the little darlings.

Yeah, just like how the witch kept close to Hansel and Gretel.

"Sooooo good to see you Charlie lad," she purred in a voice that tasted to his brain like syrup mixed with vomit and nails. Fortunately, Charlie's compulsive need to be first to claim a seat meant no one else was actually in the bus to hear the Pee Pants comment. After all, he had only done that once, and he was seven then.

"Double P!" Crap. The unmistakable voice of Cody (nicknames for life) Bullock, official class clown with an idiot savant's memory for embarrassing details.

"Thanks, Mrs. Thornbush," Charlie mumbled, trying to ignore the laughter now building like a wave behind him. He plopped himself down in the nearest burnt orange seat, his backside hitting the hard bench with a concrete thud. In addition to the oldest school, he apparently had the honor of riding on the oldest school bus in civilization. Charlie wondered if Henry Ford had built it himself with used Model T parts.

He sighed, and filled his ears with music, shutting his eyes tight, and hoping against hope that idiot Cody would forget Just. This. Once. Charlie was upset enough that he had even forgotten to count the seats to make sure he was one past the center seat. He'd have to do better tomorrow, he reasoned.

Double P, rather, Charlie, listened to his Jamaican Ragga music while the bus squeaked and swayed in an equally hypnotic rhythm. There was a beautiful three minutes where the bus seat's movements squeaked and danced in perfect syncopation to his music. Charlie was soothed enough that his mind did what it did best ... it wandered.

He began to wonder if he should be concerned that Mrs. Thornwood had turned up as his real bus driver. Of course, in his dream, she was still large enough to barely fit in the seat, not slim like now. Still, in the dream, she had been both smaller and meaner than when he knew her in elementary school. True, he had never been her favorite, but she had never called him names in public before. Even in the classroom "answer me" standoff, she had called him Mr. Patterson. Moreover, he had no idea she'd become a bus driver.

He reassured himself by remembering how different his dream was from reality. This was certainly no Greyhound he was riding. There was no luxury to be found. In fact, Elena Martinez was sitting on the dusty floor in the center of the bus, rocking back and forth to unheard music. Elena was a sweet girl with large, chocolate-brown eyes and jet-black hair. Charlie liked her, and thought it a shame that no boy had given her his seat. True, she was heavy like ...

He sat bolt upright, his left earplug flying out and hitting the tow-headed boy next to him in the eye.

Her mom.

Charlie was starting to feel agitated. He would actually be glad to be home for a change, where things were predictably boring.

Chapter Three - Nothing Comes to Sleepers

It was after Coach Traynam's giant gym shoes kicked Charlie in the butt for the third time that he decided this wasn't an excellent nightmare. True, it was somewhat amusing the way they scampered about, giving orders that smelled vaguely of old fish. But they seemed overly enthusiastic with their work of "moving things right along" in his opinion.

"Move along Charlene," the dirtier left shoe ordered, its long tongue flapping in a silly, lop-eared bunny sort of way. Charlene was the name Coach gave Charlie during his one tryout for Pee Wee football. It had stuck in Charlie's head ever since. Charlie took solace in the fact the coach had two left shoes. That probably explained why his stint in the Pros didn't last more than four games. Coach Traynam was a huge, oily, bear of a man, who always seemed to be sweating, even in the coldest weather. Besides an impressive streak of consecutive losing seasons coaching youth football in the area, he was best known for wearing white socks and sneaks with his suit.

Charlie could picture Coach Traynam's rationale — you never know when an exercise emergency might break out, and you had to be ready. Okay, so that probably wasn't the reason, but still it was more amusing that guessing coach couldn't afford size 15EEEE dress shoes on his paltry part-time teacher's salary.

In this less-than-excellent dream, Coach himself was nowhere to be found, but left his butt-kicking shoes in charge of hall duty. As Charlie made the turn towards the looping corridor that housed the science classes, the shoe gave him one last swift kick in the butt. "What was that one for?" he whined, grabbing his cheeks with both hands.

Dirty Left spun away without a word, giggling with the familiar fish-breath, Coach-is-crazy laugh that kept the boys with good sense away from his football team. Charlie looked to its sparkling white twin left shoe for consolation, but it was busy breaking itself off in some knucklehead boy's butt. Charlie recognized Willie's dirty blond hair immediately. Willie was spending his first year in middle school in much the same way he spent the past five years.

Charlie considered offering a word of wisdom to Willie, but remembered the last time he "tried to sound all smart," and particularly recalled the bitterness of the blue dye in the toilet's water. He decided to keep his mouth shut. Instead, he dodged the masses of kids — most taller than he was — and tried to make his way to ... well, he had no idea where to.

By this point, Charlie was actively willing himself awake, as he often did when his dreams didn't go his way. For some reason, however, this time it wasn't working. True, it didn't always work right away; he often had to wake up from a dream two or three times in a row before his subconscious would relinquish control to the real world. Still, just knowing it was a dream would usually be enough to make it change in a direction he liked.

He walked along the corridor, obsessively (and furtively) counting the lockers, even though they were already numbered. The science geeks' locker numbers were laid out in beautiful algebra equations. The geeks were busily tapping in their handhelds, trying to match the equations with the answers they had been given. Second day of school was still a bit rough on the science geeks.

Charlie had the misfortune of being assigned a locker right in the Jocks' Wing. Now, in his actual school, there was no Jocks' Wing. But to an eleven year old boy with no visible athletic prowess, it seemed natural that the fawning public would build them one. He walked as quietly as he could, looking at his feet all the while. Somewhere in his mind he remembered someone telling him not to make direct eye contact. That story carried some vague warning about the Jockers being able to smell fear, and considering eye contact to be a threat.

"Hey mouse!" he heard someone call him from his left. Charlie bristled, but kept silent. He never started trouble, but he was definitely not one to run away either. As he continued his march, just now noticing that he was further from his locker than when he started, he considered telling the Jocker he was more cat than mouse. Instead, he decided to stare the Jocker directly in the eye, the equivalent of tugging on Superman's cape. For a genius kid, Charlie was pretty dumb.

Fortunately, the Jock, a blonde six-footer named Lars Somethingswedish was preening in the full-length mirror in his locker, and had already lost interest. Charlie caught enough of his reflection in Lars' mirror to notice that he was, indeed, a mouse. "Hmm," Charlie mumbled aloud. It seemed Lars was being genuinely friendly. Maybe some Jocks weren't too bad.

"You're awfully tall for a mouse," said a soft, familiar voice.

Charlie turned to see the first Really Cute Girl he had ever met. She had huge, almond-shaped hazel eyes, full lips, and long dark hair that started out straight and ended in bouncy curls just above her narrow waist. She smiled at him, mouth full of braces, and repeated her comment. Charlie instantly recognized her from the Greyhound bus dream.

He began to shrink.

Chapter Four - The Cute Girl Awakes

Cute Girl giggled, assuming Charlie changed into a mouse and shrank just to show off for her, and decided that boys were silly. This one was at least amusing, she decided. When she finally made it home from her Wonderful School, she'd have to remember all the interesting "people" she had met. She had never actually played basketball with a pair of basketball shoes before. You would think they'd be better at it. This pair was slow, and kind of smelled like farts.

She did wonder, however, how she got to this school from New Mexico. Her mom was going to be all mad at having to pick her up from school in Virginia. "Okay," she thought, "That clinches it. I can't be in Virginia already, or else I can't be awake." This little realization disturbed her very little. She was increasingly aware that she might be asleep, but decided not to wake up, just in case it got weird. She liked weird quite a bit — it made her feel at home.

She found it not at all odd that geography violated her sense of logic, while basketball-playing shoes seemed normal. This place had its own set of rules, she decided, and she would go with them. If logical things seemed troublesome, so be it. Logic was so overrated.

That's why boys are stupid.

The Cute Girl's name was actually Robin Mercedes LeBeaux, although she would have loved having been named Cute Girl if her parents had enough foresight to think of it. Robin entered the classroom, and was immediately hit with a wave of nausea that not even the puke green walls could explain. She heard the weird, mumbly mouse say something behind her, but then the school bell rang, and whatever he was saying became a dim buzz behind her.

No, not behind her, it was next to her — where her nightstand was. That buzzing was sounding suspiciously like her obnoxious alarm clock. Her mostly asleep brain warned her to wake up before the buzzing became unbearable. It was a loud whisper now, but it would advance to chainsaw volume in a minute, and then Mommy would come yell for her to get her "skinny butt up." Then Mommy would smile, but Robin's smile was broken before eight o'clock, and she never smiled back. Unless she smelled pancakes.

"Oh, shucks," Robin giggled. "It was just getting fun. If Virginia is anywhere near this weird … "

"You'll fit right in," her inside voice finished.

"Oh, just bite it," Robin said softly, almost to herself, but not quite — not really. She swung her right arm towards her alarm clock, and pounded it into silence with one blow from her slender fist. This was move day, her big day, and she needed to be ready. It was a week before school was to start in her bustling New Mexico town, and Mommy had told her just last week they were moving across the country. They'd be a week or so late for the start of school in her new home, but Robin was a quick study ("mi genio hija," her mom would say) and Mommy wasn't really worried. The absolute last thing on Robin's mind was school work. She was leaving her best friends!

Of course Robin's initial reaction was tears, followed by horrified phone calls to her crew of equally pretty twelve-year-old girls, followed by more tears, followed, inevitably, by heart-felt promises to Always Write and vows of Eternal Friendship. Robin at least, was sincere, though she doubted Lindsay Waggadorn could be consistent about anything for much more than six weeks. Becky, her best friend, would write, and they would webcam, and still be sisters and stuff. She'd probably need to find another Number Two to replace Lindsay, just in case.

In truth, most of Robin's dramatics were for Becky's sake, so she would never doubt Robin's love. But Robin's house, pretty though it was, was not a Good Place. It was full of clutter, and cat hair, and tears, and memories dripping from the stucco walls that refused to fade. When Mommy told her of The New Job Back East, and her chance for a New Start, Robin almost dared to hope.

Almost.

So now was the day the movers would come, and she'd hop on a plane, and be east (or north, she wasn't quite sure how to properly measure Virginia) for their New Start. She made herself think of her start in capital letters, because it just had to be. It had to, because she couldn't let herself fail. Not this time.

Not like with Reyna.

Immediately the tears came. They flooded from her bright eyes, green, the color of sadness, of disruption, of heartache. The tears raced a familiar trail down the sides of her small, perfect nose, leaving a salt-stained path down peach-colored cheeks, and bounding, joyously, to her satin pink pajamas. Her tears were rapturous, delirious in their conquest of her. She cried until she shuddered, her diaphragm contracting, doubling her over in pain. She gasped for air, and begged the tears to stop.

But still the tears came, until she could make no more. And, when the tears were done, she was washed of it. Finally clean of the sadness … at least until the next time she thought of her sister. She reached under the mattress where she kept Reyna's last photo, and held it to her chest, hugging her with both arms. She'd almost forgotten to pack it — almost left her big sister behind.

"I won't forget, Reyna. I promise I won't," Robin vowed.

She was an only child now, after a lifetime of being the "funny-looking little sister," her Reyna's little bird. Now as puberty awakened the long, lean beauty she would become, she was the pretty one — the only one left. Reyna's death had left Robin a wounded little bird, but it had freed her as well. She would fly from this place — her lovely little piece of Hell, and make her sister proud. She'd promised that, and she wouldn't forget her promise. Last promises have to be kept. They do.

And the tears came once more. This time, they threatened not to stop, until Mommy started coming down the hall. The tears were afraid of Mommy, and they never came when she was around. Mommy wouldn't understand the tears. No one would. No one ever could.

'Cause she'd never tell.

Chapter Five - "Failure Is Not the Falling Down, but the Staying Down" — Mary Pickford

A still-dreaming Charlie watched the Cute Girl turn the corner into her classroom, stop, and hold her head, swaying as if she might fall. Charlie called out, his voice an embarrassing squeak. "Are you okay?"

Great, thanks voice. Change now, why don'tcha?

The school bell began to ring for first period, and the Cute Girl suddenly perked up. Charlie at first thought this dream girl might be another book nerd like Jannet, but then she started raving to herself about alarm clocks, silly dreams, and waking to pancakes.

Cool. She's normal like me.

At that very instant, she disappeared. Charlie correctly surmised he was dreaming that she was dreaming all this. He could not understand why he would dream a kid he didn't know was having a dream. He didn't even understand how he knew she was. A more logical answer would have been that he's entering puberty, two months from turning twelve, and his hormones were telling him to seek out girls. But no, his always interfering, spoil-sport, logical left brain, Chuck, had to tell him she wouldn't have disappeared if he were awake. Cute Girls in the real world don't act like ghosts.

Wouldn't that be so cool, though?

No, he couldn't be awake, so this must be somebody's dream. And, if he had dreamed her, she wouldn't have vanished when she began talking about waking up. Heck, if he had dreamed her, she'd still be here — at least until he had found the courage to ask her name.

Charlene also insisted he was not awake. "Grandma said there's no such things as ghosts, and she used to talk to Jesus all the time, so she'd know."

He was also sure he wasn't dreaming her either. She, in fact, seemed to be having her own dream at the end, apart from him. So, maybe she was dreaming him.

Oh. My. God. What if there is no Charlie Patterson? What if my whole life, all 11.9 years, is just a brief instant in some girl's dream?

At this point, Charlie's emotional right brain was quite prepared to run with that thought, and had begun to write an entire scenario to explore a life within a flash of someone's dream, when Chuck interjected, earnestly wondering if there could be life after dream, and if so, if there is a dream heaven.

Wait a minute. That's stupid. If I can become a mouse for no good reason, then cute girls can disappear, just because I want them to stay.

Disappointed, Charlie surmised that dream girls must be remarkably like real ones. Except, he had never had trouble breathing around real ones before. Besides, if this was her dream, then why was he having thoughts? No, none of it made any sense … unless he was dreaming too. Nonetheless, all this left-brained thinking bored his right brain completely, and it decided it didn't want to dream anymore.

Now in firm control, his left brain woke him up. Good old Chuck. You rock.

Shoot.

He was on the bus, and the early morning sun told him he was heading to school. He had forgotten that he had awakened and boarded it. Indeed, he had forgotten the entire morning to that point. He hoped he had done all his homework, since the prior evening had melded into a blur of mp3, computer games, and being invisible. He had become adept at being invisible at home. Perhaps that was the result of not really trying. It certainly never worked for long at school, where he worked at it almost constantly. It was the third week of school, and he had only managed to stay invisible for around the first week, despite his perfect seat location in each of his classes (except Spanish, where Sra. Hawkins insisted the kids sit in a circle, old hippy style).

The bus stopped at his school with a lurch, and an unceremonious "OFF!" from Mrs. Thornwood. Charlie stepped off, head down, counting his steps, and bumped headfirst into what felt like his Aunt Carmel, with the huge … things.

"Hey kid, watch the tits," grunted the tallest ugly girl he had ever seen. She was built like an upside-down triangle, with massive shoulders and chest to match, along with a face that could only be described as gorillish. Though only thirteen, she was already almost six feet tall. Perhaps she was the ugliest tall girl he had ever seen. He was trying to figure out which when she pushed him ass over baseball cap into a mud puddle that was busy trying to convince itself it was a garden.

"Leave the kid alone, Tisha," came a voice from slightly behind, tugging gently on her frayed lavender sweater. Tisha turned, and grunted,

"Yeah, he ain't worth the detention, little perv."

"I doubt he put his head between your boobs on purpose," her friend calmed. "He doesn't look like the suicidal type." They both laughed, and Charlie curled himself into a little ball in the puddle, trying really, really hard to be invisible. His rescuer, a beautiful girl with brilliant blue (no, gray) eyes was looking at him with a soft smile, that he sensed wasn't vindictive. She was tall compared to him, and slim, and ... .

Crap. My dream.

Charlie recognized her as the Cute Girl from his dream, although she appeared to be much taller than he remembered in his dream. He felt — awkward — and not only because his dreams had begun to freak him out. It was just, well, she made him hurt. Inside. And his teeth felt itchy. He wondered if he had brushed his teeth after breakfast, as that could have been the cause.

The girl cocked her head to the side, and looked at him with a strange frown that registered surprise rather than anger. At least he was not the only one surprised to meet in real life. She followed Tisha through the ugly green doors, never taking her eyes off Charlie.

He was left alone in the drizzle as the first school bell sounded. He was cold, and wet, and muddy, and a little teary-eyed. Most of all, he was confused. He needed order, needed to know what to expect. One thing was certain, however — this was going to be anything but a normal school year.

Charlie wondered, as he wandered to class, if, perhaps, he had seen the girl around town before without realizing it. That would certainly explain her appearances in his dream, and her sudden appearance at school. Having dreams about a pretty girl you forgot you'd met was certainly more logical than a dream-invading serial killer. Still, it wasn't just the girl. First, Elena Martinez and Mrs. Thornwood, then Goatisha, now the Cute Girl.

Charlie's left brain tried to tell him these were coincidences, that there was a perfectly logical explanation. He just needed to get on the internet so he could find it. Yes, there was probably some dream research … but Charlie was not buying it. Logic wouldn't answer this puzzle.

Worst of all, the cutest girl on earth just saw him get his butt kicked by a female Wookiee, and it wasn't even nine o'clock yet. Too much of what happened reminded him of recent dreams. He thought about the other dreams he'd being having lately — the stupid, awful nightmares — and began to get worried.

Some dreams were not meant to come true.

Chapter Six - The Invisible Man

Much to Charlie's surprise and relief, the next school week passed mostly uneventfully. Mrs. Thornwood continued to drive the bus, and, apparently, to hate all the children on the bus — Charlie in particular. Charlie managed to stay below the radar in most classes most of the time, and if he concentrated very hard on being still and silent, teachers seemed to forget he was even there.

In fact, his one trip above the radar was caused by his being too effective at being invisible. Just before math on a Thursday afternoon, the teacher had shut the classroom door in Charlie's face, not even recognizing him as one of his students. For a time, Charlie considered not entering at all, but became concerned that the teacher would later refuse to admit him during a test. His failing math would give his father a fit, and he would never believe it wasn't Charlie's fault.

So, after fifteen seconds of deliberation, Charlie turned the doorknob to enter the classroom. He kept his head down as he entered, in part to avoid eye contact with Jannet, who would be watching — and, of course, snickering — but also in blind hope that old man Bachoven would not notice he was there. Unfortunately, the squeaky wooden floors (and giggles from the class) gave him away. Bachoven, already in the process of creating a hazardous cloud of chalk dust in blatant disregard for Charlie's asthmatic lungs, spun in Charlie's direction and looked over his reading glasses.

"May I help you young man?"

Charlie kept his eyes down, and shook his head "no" rapidly.

"Well, let me try again." Bachoven pointed his frowning forehead at Charlie like an accusing finger. "Why are you tip-toeing into my classroom?"

Charlene answered in Charlie's head immediately. "Because your breath stinks and I was hoping to keep your back to me."

Charlie had to stifle a smile. Instead, and far less interestingly, he answered, "Uh, I-I just didn't want to interrupt."

"Mission not accomplished." The classroom burst into giggles once more. Bachoven spoke slowly, his head at an angle, as if speaking to a moron, "Why are you in my classroom in the first place? Do you have a message for someone?"

"I'm here because I'm suicidal, and I was sure you could bore me to death." Charlene again. Chuck once again nixed his response.

Instead, he answered, "Huh?"

The class burst out laughing, and Bachoven held his hands up. He gave a condescending look that Charlie assumed meant the teacher felt it impolite to laugh at the special needs student. "Is there something you need, young man?"

"Uh. (Pause.) No, I'm in this class."

"Oh. Oh, I see," Bachoven answered. His words were curt, as if it hurt to speak them. "Well. This is advanced math class." He paused, as if waiting for Charlie to run, screaming in fear. Charlie stood by his desk. Bachoven sighed. "If you are new to the class, I should advise you it begins at precisely at 1:15 p.m. Please be on time in the future."

"Dude! I was here, you brainless twit. You slammed the freaking door in my freaking face! If you weren't so freaking high on chalk dust maybe you would recognize folks. Especially when they've freaking been in your class for three freaking weeks!"

Nope. That time it was Chuck. His logical mind was offended that Bachoven would assume he was new rather than the more obvious, late for class. He had tired years earlier of teachers' surprise at his being the smart kid. Melanin, his mom said, did not affect his math skills.

Charlie spoke to, but did not look at, Bachoven. "I've been here since the first day." He had almost added the words, "getting A's," but choked them down as if though they were made of glass shards.

The class erupted in laughter. From the back, someone shouted, "The Invisible Man lives!" Charlie would have been proud of the name were he not feeling completely exposed at the moment.

Bachoven told the students to be quiet, and Charlie to be seated. What he did not tell Charlie was that he was sorry for closing the door in his face, for embarrassing him, for failing to pay any attention to the best math student in the school district. Charlie was now feeling quite a bit more black than he had outside the school the first day. He resolved to score no lower than 100% in math from here on. He was his mother's child. To his surprise, when he stole a glance at Jannet, she was not laughing. In fact, she looked as if she might cry.

After class, Charlie was heading to his locker, and considering spending sixth period there, when he ran into, of all people, the Cute Girl.

There was Robin, by herself, standing in front of her locker. She was looking a bit sad, but otherwise, perfect. Charlie had been looking at his feet, the place he normally looked when he walked, and met a pair of ankle-length, tan, suede half-boots with a two-inch heels and frills where the laces should be. The frills reminded Charlie of the ruffles he'd seen in drawings of Elizabethan England. As he looked up, he saw two very long legs in dark gray stockings, and further up, a tan and dark gray checked skirt with a belt the dark gray of the skirt. It was three inches wide, and featured what looked like half a flower. She wore a light gray blouse with black lace near the buttons. On it was a flower the precise color of her shoes embedded with grays from the skirt. It could have been hand sewn, as it was made from cloth, and had been stitched into the blouse. Charlie loved that it took his eye from her neck to the belt and then the shoes, pulling the whole perfect picture together.

That he had time to notice all these details should help explain how very slowly he had begun to walk once he saw her - and how long he was staring before he realized it.

"Photos last longer," a voice said. It was hers.

Charlie's heart sank. She was looking straight at him. His right brain immediately began offering clever things to say like, "Yeah, but they couldn't do you justice," or "Well, I was really hoping to make a video," but his logical brain refused all suggestions. Instead, he just looked away quickly.

"I-I'm sorry. I was … I was kind of daydreaming."

"Oh," Robin answered, looking a bit disappointed. "I spent the entire night making the stupid flower to match the stupid belt and the stupid shoes. You should want a picture." Her face said it all: boys never notice anything. She began twisting her hair violently.

Charlie, being not at all unobservant, picked up the change in expression and mannerism immediately. He thought he should say something to her like … like, "I want to have your babies," Charlene offered. His eyes got as wide as the full moon, as for a horrifying second he thought stupid Charlene had actually vocalized that, using his mouth. He wasn't even totally sure what it meant, but he knew it wasn't possible. Robin meanwhile had turned back to the locker, her expression returning to the same sadness she was wearing when he saw her.

Charlie paused, took two steps away, then stopped again. "I … I'm sorry I was staring at you. That was rude." One more step. Stop. "Y-you look great." Whoa. Charlie swings blindly, and gets a base hit. The crowd goes wild! Robin looked up, her face vainly trying to suppress a smile. She was clearly pleased he was looking at her.

"Well, you should be sorry. That was very rude," she said, hazel eyes beaming through her stern expression.

Charlie suddenly felt subconscious about his own attire, which was a red and white striped shirt and dark blue jeans. He looked fine, but felt suddenly very young. Mustering every ounce of courage he had, he looked Robin in the eyes. She wore a look that almost made him faint, or bleed internally, he wasn't sure which. His eyes itched and he wanted to scratch them, but resisted the urge. As he blinked however, he could tell she wanted him to say … something.

Charlie knew this would be his chance to be a man, to step up and take charge of something he wanted for possibly the first time in his life. And, he almost did — almost. Her eyes widened in anticipation, and could tell she wanted him to talk. For once, it wasn't fear that stopped him. Truthfully, her presence felt oddly comfortable, familiar. Unfortunately, for the first time, all the clutter inside his head stopped at once, and he could think of nothing to say. Rather than responding, he gave a shrug, looked down once again, and settled for remaining a mouse.

"You still wearing that stupid flower?" came the voice of DeShaun Yancy, the bully, the purveyor of insults, the haver of very bad taste.

Charlie looked up just in time to see Robin smiling coquettishly.

"Smiling? Sir Thugsalot walks up, insults her, and she's smiling?" Charlene was outraged.

"Well, you could see she wanted you to talk to her, and you didn't. What did you expect?" the unsympathetic Chuck countered.

Charlie responded defensively. I can't help it if I suddenly couldn't think of anything to say. I have all this noise going on in my head, and when I finally need words … nothing.

"It seems like the logical thing would have been to ask her name. Or to have thanked her for not letting the big girl kick your butt by the bus earlier," responded Chuck.

Charlie decided that he freaking hated his freaking left brain. Behind him, he could hear more flirting from Robin, and more insults from DeShaun. Charlie decided to leave before he threw up.

"This year is going to really suck," Charlie said out loud. He didn't care if the other kids heard him say it either.

Chapter Seven - Only the Small Things Matter

Joe Tettleton, Charlie's eighty-five year old great-grandfather, sat against the wall of the third floor lobby of the Southside Senior Center. Joe was seated in a wheelchair, which always seemed as if it would be overpowered by his massive frame any instant. He was tall, just shy of six foot six in his prime, though age had stolen a couple of inches in recent years. Even so, his lean, muscular frame gave him the appearance of a much younger man — until, that is, you looked at his face. Joe perennially appeared as if he had forgotten to shave, white whiskers dotting his deep chocolate face. His semi-circle of white hair and broad nose gave him the appearance of an outsized, chocolate Gandhi.

Joe was watching a trio clustered in the corner. There his friend Bernard "Sarge" Sargent was being spoiled by his granddaughter and daughter. The women were on their bi-weekly "Saturday picnic" visit, although it had been awhile since they had actually gone outside with him. Instead, they had brought him a fine lunch of turkey on croissant, with not-quite-homemade cream of chicken soup from the upscale deli about a mile from the center. Sarge sat wide eyed, brows furrowed, as the women set up their feast. To an untrained eye, it appeared that Sarge was either frightened, or had little idea what was going on. Joe knew differently.

Sarge deserved a bit of spoiling, Sarge did. That distant, wide-eyed look was all that was left of excitement, dimmed by the ravages of dementia on Sarge's once razor-sharp mind. Sarge knew whom the two women with him were, today, and he even remembered where he was this time. It was a good day for Sarge.

The lobby was a surprisingly cold place, more hospital wing than home. The yellowed linoleum floor gave the room a sickly ambiance. Some administrator had long ago decided the once-white flooring would be in the seniors' best interest, since the floor would bounce the harsh, unfiltered fluorescent lighting back to the residents. It did, but now, aged, made most of them seem jaundiced. In the corner immediately to Joe's right, was a small lounge area, consisting of two loveseats and an arm chair, all a handsome red and blue striped pattern. They matched absolutely nothing. Close by sat a coffee table with reading material the residents had mostly memorized, stacked neatly. There was a display case that held mementos of the nursing center, but little of the residents who lived there. The air was stale, with an ever-so-faint smell of urine from the far end of the hallway.

They were on the third floor in the D wing, the Disappearing Wing, as the orderlies called it, where those residents who needed constant monitoring or serious medical care lived out their lives. This was a "graduated living" facility, where the residents started out in their own apartments, then gradually moved to the equivalent of dormitories, and eventually, hospital beds or the intensive care unit. As such places go, this was a relatively nice one, clean and certainly bright. When he got away with it, Joe would sit in his sunglasses in silent protest of the glaring lights. Protests in D wing were silent by definition. The nurses and the orderlies took no backtalk from the residents. Indeed, most of the orderlies seemed to think their jobs were the equivalent of prison guards rather than caretakers. The nurses were well-trained and well-equipped to do their jobs. But they were also overworked, underpaid, overtired, and oftentimes in pain from lifting, pulling, and cajoling elderly patients who couldn't care for themselves.

It was not coincidental that the Senior Center residents always sat facing the elevators. Most of them had few guests, some none at all. Their enjoyment was in welcoming visitors as they entered the third floor lobby, and inquire for whom they were intended. Gathering that information was the sole purpose of the nurse's station, but they knew that sharing in the excitement of a visit was as close as some of the residents would ever come to being visited themselves.

At times, a lovely, rare-souled visitor would sit in one of the empty chairs and visit with the crew of residents, asking about their lives, and, for a bit of time, giving them someone who cared about them. Charlie was one such rare soul, and it was his day to visit. The residents sat waiting in anticipation, along with Joe. Maybe, just maybe, Joe would be willing to share today.

Some Sunday nights, a local church group would stop by and chat for awhile. It might as well have been Christmas on those nights. To the residents, it wasn't about the church, or even about God. It was about being needed, talked to. It was about being important to someone once again. There were blessings and hugs all around, small gestures that mattered.

One fine day in April, another rare soul brought in an old Labrador Retriever that was being trained as a service dog. He visited the group, and each resident he touched perked up, became more alert, alive. The old dog had whimpered when he came to old man Grady, sniffing him vigorously, and whining. When the trainer tugged at the dog's leash sharply, the dog turned, pulled at the leash and let out a brief, but ferocious snarl.

The embarrassed trainer scolded the dog into submission with a wagging finger and took him away for "a little more training." Neither the trainer nor the dog had been back since. Perhaps if they had returned, the trainer would have discovered that doctors had found an advanced cancer in the old man's right kidney some weeks later. Perhaps he would have learned his special canine companion was a rare soul who could smell cancers that even MRIs couldn't detect. Perhaps the trainer wouldn't have returned the dog to the Pound to be euthanized. Perhaps the old man's roommate wouldn't have died of a similar cancer three months later.

Perhaps.

Rather than being repulsed by or bored with the old folks, Charlie seemed a bit of an old man himself, and would spend almost as much time with Joe's crew as he did with his great-grandfather. Joe was G'pa Joe to Charlie, the "G" standing for Great, "according to that silly boy," Joe reminded himself, with a smile, for the hundredth time. The sun and moon rose because of Charlie in G'pa Joe's eyes, and made the end of his long life's journey worth the trip. Today Charlie would be by, and the world would be just a little brighter.

Joe was seated in his usual spot in his oversized wheelchair. His position looked like a master sergeant reviewing his troops, perfectly parallel to the troops awaiting inspection. That was, of course, because G'pa Joe had spent years in the Army doing precisely that. These were his troops, albeit a bit withered at the edges.

"Old habits die hard, or they weren't hardly worth having," G'pa Joe would say. None of his crew minded G'pa Joe's large-and-in-charge demeanor, and a few even thought it amusing that a black man from the then-segregated US Army would find himself the de facto leader of a crew of mostly Jewish retirees from New York.

"At our age," G'pa Joe's friend Abe Singer offered, "we learn to be friends with whomever is available, can talk, and has the interest."

"Besides, we're too damn old to fight anyway," G'pa Joe added. Lovely sentiment, but it never stopped the two from constantly bickering. "C'mon over and eat with us when Charlie comes by, Singer," G'pa Joe said. He liked Singer, though he would never admit it to him.

"Thank you, but no. I don't want to intrude on your family."

"Man you know we share family up in here. None of us has so much we can afford to be stingy with it. Besides, what else you gon' to do with yourself on a Sunday?"

"I got plenty to do, Tettleton," Singer said, placing his thumbs in his suspenders.

"What, watch the soap opera reruns with the ladies? Real men don't watch soap operas, Singer."

Singer waved G'pa Joe off and pulled his round frame to its full five feet five inches. "You apparently also think real men don't use soap, Tettleton. And it's Saturday, you old fool. If you read, you'd see that on the calendar over there."

"Hey, I bathe, Singer. I even take showers." G'pa Joe ignored the reading comment. Just because he could read, didn't mean he did read.

"I'm sorry, Tettleton, but using wet naps after Charlie brings you KFC chicken does not qualify for a bath."

"Okay, that was a good one," G'pa Joe said, laughing. "But just for that, I'm going to tell him not to bring you any more chicken when he comes. In fact, maybe we'll just have a nice intimate pig's feet dinner," G'pa Joe shot back with a wry smile.

"You know, even Schicklgruber didn't serve those things in the death camps."

Joe decided to end the game there, knowing no way to respond without being on very dangerous ground. Some things, you couldn't joke about — lynchings were one, the Holocaust another. Singer could; he was a survivor, and that was also his way of saying "Game's over." Joe had been a good leader in his middle years, and a good leader knows how to listen, when to follow, and when to shut up.

"Okay, Abraham, I hear you," Joe said softly, returning his gaze to the trio who was just now finishing their picnic. He wanted to make sure he would get first dibs at the table once Charlie showed up.

Singer bristled at the mention of his first name. No one, but no one ever called him Abraham, though no one quite knew why. "Don't call me that, Joseph" he warned. "It's Mr. Singer to you."

"I'm terrified," G'pa Joe returned. Both men smiled, and gave each other a surprisingly warm glance. They irritated the heck out of each other, and that made life a little more interesting.

Chapter Eight - Charlie Brings the Light

The elevator's bell sounded at precisely four o'clock, signaling Charlie's arrival. He had never been late. "Just like his mama, that one," G'pa Joe said with a grin. Charlie stepped out of the elevator into the bright lobby and blinked, adjusting his eyes to the glare after riding in the slow, dark elevator car. He was carrying a large bag of KFC's finest, a gift from his mother to her grandfather. She would be by exactly at five o'clock, not a minute later, but always gave Charlie his hour of alone time with his favorite person on earth.

"G'pa!" Charlie shouted enthusiastically. He ran over to give his great-grandfather a warm hug, without the slightest hint of embarrassment. G'pa Joe braced himself on the arms of the massive chair, and stood, stooped forward at an angle a full five degrees short of vertical. Even stooped as he was, he stood six foot three and a half, and embraced Charlie with his long, broad arms such that the boy seemed to disappear into his chest.

"Missed you G'pa."

"Missed you too, Charlie boy."

Every single resident smiled in unison. Seeing a boy so obviously in love with his relationship with his great-grandfather was a prized to be shared. The ladies turned in their chairs, waiting for their hugs. Charlie was always good for a hug or two. For some, it would be the only hug they would get for a week, until his next visit.

At the small table across the room, Sarge's granddaughter, Cathy, gave her first almost smile, looking at and waving to Charlie as she cleaned the remaining mess from the picnic. Old Sarge, appetite sated, was now slumped in his wheelchair, leaning to the right side. His eyes were no longer wide, but drooping sleepily.

"Diggin' the scene wit' a gangster lean, Mr. Sargent?" Charlie asked with a smile. Old Sarge had no idea what he was talking about, but smiled politely nonetheless.

"Boy, we've got to get you some friends your own age," G'pa Joe grinned. "All your references are as old as I am."

"Not even Moses' references are as old as you are," Singer slipped in.

G'pa Joe turned toward Singer, pretended to scowl, and dropped himself back into his chair, his large frame threatening to overturn it. He turned to Charlie and whispered conspiratorially, loudly enough for Singer to hear. "We got to get a bell to put around that cat's neck." He gestured toward Singer with a sideways nod of his head. "You a pain in the you-know-what Singer," he added dramatically.

"Yeah, I love you too. Now where's my chicken?" Singer asked. "You didn't forget my wings, did you? You know the dark meat gives me gas."

"Hell, breathing gives you gas, you old bag of wind," G'pa Joe responded.

Charlie shook his head, his knit cap flapping back and forth. "Do you guys do this all day?" He already knew the answer; still, it amused him to ask. The ladies smiled and watched, also shaking their heads. The Joe and Singer Show was their favorite weekend form of entertainment, next to reruns of "Cops."

Mary, a slight woman with shoulder-length white hair and fair skin, pushed herself up from her chair, and sidled over to the men. "Room for one more, gentlemen?" she asked coyly.

"Always room for you Mary," G'pa Joe replied with a broad grin.

Charlie looked at his great-grandfather and tried to gauge his interest in Mary. Practically all G’pa Joe’s teeth were showing. However, the food was getting cold and if he asked any questions, they'd never get to eat. Besides, he really wanted to spend some time alone with G'pa before his mother came back. No time to waste, then.

"C'mon, Mr. Singer, I got your potato wedges."

Singer put a finger to his lips, and furrowed his brow, shushing Charlie, and looking over his shoulder at the nurse's station. There was no one there.

"You know those prison guards don't let me have fried foods," Singer whispered.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I-I didn't know. I can eat those, then. Can you eat corn on the cob?"

"Yes, I can eat corn on the cob. I have teeth. See?" Singer reached in and took out his uppers, and thrust them at Charlie.

"Gross!" Charlie, groaned, turning away.

"Put those things back, Singer," G'pa Joe countered, his eyes averted and hand extended in front of his face. "Pay that fool no attention, he's just trying to make you lose your appetite so he gets your share too."

Singer mumbled, looking annoyed. "I need a new friend. This one knows me too well," he said, nodding his head toward G'pa Joe. Singer reached in the box and pulled out a huge chicken breast, looked over at G'pa Joe, and thought better of it. He took a couple of baked chicken wings instead. Then he took the potato wedges and immediately popped one in his mouth, closed his eyes, and made a sound that Charlie thought must be a sound of pure joy.

"I thought you couldn't have those," Charlie objected.

"No, I said the guards don't let me. I can have whatever they don't see." He stuck the little box of wedges between his legs, just in case the nurses came back. Singer looked up in time to see Charlie slowly shaking his head at him again. "What, you want I should starve?"

By this time, G'pa Joe was eyeing Mary, who was still standing in the same spot. He waved at her, gestured for her to come over. Mary just stood there, eyes vacant, not seeming to notice.

"Charlie, go tap Mary, and get her to come eat," G'pa Joe said with marked tenderness.

Charlie did as instructed, a chicken leg in his hand. He gently took Mary by the elbow, and led her toward the table. She took two more steps, turned toward Charlie, and smiled, a warm, familiar smile. Then she began to scream. She screamed until her throat was raw. She screamed until the nurses came, then the orderlies. They tied her to a gurney, wheeling her down the hall, away from where she usually slept.

Charlie, having fallen over a chair at the first shriek, was visibly shaken and trying not to let the tears show. "What happened?" he asked the two silent men. Neither had moved, save for feeding themselves. "Why was she screaming like that? I didn't hurt her did I?"

Singer stopped nibbling on his second wing and looked up at the boy. "No, son, that wasn't you. Nothing happened that doesn't happen all the time around here. She just went somewhere, that's all."

G'pa Joe shot his friend a look that made the smaller Singer wince. Neither said a word for long moments. They didn't have to.

"Don't mind me," Singer said, filling in the growing silence. "I talk too much. Sometimes, there is … darkness even when the lights seem to be on. Maybe she remembered something dark. She'll be okay."

"Where did they take her?" Charlie was concerned, but sat down to eat his now cold food.

G'pa Joe answered in his most reassuring voice. "They probably just took her somewhere to calm her down, and maybe scan to make sure nothing was causing her pain. I'll check on her later, but she'll probably not even remember screaming. Heck, she'll probably be mad we didn't save her any chicken." It felt to Charlie like a lie, was a lie, but he readily accepted it. Sometimes, truth is overrated. G'pa Joe tried to make his face smile, but it refused. Charlie knew he was worried, and not just a little.

Charlie looked at the line of residents in wheelchairs sitting opposite the elevator. There were ten of them, all with their eyes closed, most gently rocking forward and back. He could not hear any sounds, but was sure their lips were moving. On the far wall was Mr. Patil, G'pa Joe's friend, standing, eyes closed as well, with hands slightly uplifted on either side of his face. He was not rocking back and forth like the others, but every few seconds his head would waggle side to side, looking very much to Charlie like an Indian bobble head doll.

Charlie frowned, his eyes darting from one to the next. "What are they all doing?" he asked.

Singer answered without looking at the group at all. He was still gnawing on the chicken bone. "Praying."

"Singer, shut the hell up and stop chewing that bone before you break your new teeth. You look like a old-ass Chihuahua with a chew toy."

Singer didn't respond, but stopped chewing, turned, and wheeled toward the group. Within a few seconds, his eyes were closed, and he was nodding back and forth in the same rhythm as the group.

"Wow," Charlie said, not sure if he was impressed or just uncomfortable. "Folks sure are religious around here. Is it the Sabbath or something?"

"Something like that, Charlie. Let's get cleaned up, and maybe watch some TV. Better yet, let's go get some sun. It feels too dark in here all of a sudden."

Charlie cleared the debris from the table, leaving the remaining chicken in the box. He knew it wouldn't go to waste. After wiping his hands on his jeans, he wheeled his great-grandfather toward the elevator. Charlie was crazy about Mary: she was funny, unpredictable, artsy, and he got the feeling she was once exceptionally smart. She still was, when she was lucid. Today was not one of those days. Her outburst had rattled him more than he wanted to let on. What he needed was a few minutes of alone time with G’pa Joe, and, more than anything, he wanted to be out of D wing, and in a hurry.

Chapter Nine - Nothing to Fear

Mary had been thinking how delightful to be having a picnic with her best friends on a lovely Saturday. Having Charlie was always a gift — he was such a clever boy, and always kind and respectful. She had closed her eyes and inhaled, wanting to cherish the rare morsel of anticipation in a life that had become mundane on even the good days.

With her eyes closed, she could hear Charlie chattering excitedly, and Abraham — she was the only one who got away with calling him that — was whistling softly.

Abraham always whistles so wonderfully. He had been a clarinetist for years in the New York Philharmonic, and never lost his musician's chops completely.

"I see I'm not the only one in a good mood," Mary offered cheerfully, her now open eyes bright with anticipation.

"No, mommy, this is going to be fun!" It was the voice of her five-year-old son, David.

Mary looked down in dismay at her two boys, dressed in matching dungarees and their lightweight navy blue London Fog jackets. Little Davey had on his favorite shirt with horizontal blue and white stripes, and his younger brother, three-year-old Michael, was wearing the only shirt he would wear at age three — his lucky red pullover. Mary knew exactly what year it was by the crimson of that pullover shirt. It was 1973, and that made this France. The family had spent all of 1973 and 1974 in northern France, living near the Ardennes, courtesy of her young executive husband's stint in the French wine industry. He had worked for two years, without much success, trying to build a relationship for the U.S. distributorship for which he worked. By late 1973, that lucky red shirt had been washed to faded tatters.

These memories were rushing in, washing away the grains of her nursing home existence like so much sand at ebb tide. She was disconcerted, and grabbed handfuls of her thick curly hair that shone copper in the sun. Mary had always run her hands in her hair when she was stressed. Sometimes she would twirl it absently, other times she would comb and re-comb the locks with her fingers. Those rare occasions when the thirty-year-old Mary would become very agitated, she would clamp the curly locks between her fingers as if she could press the unwanted curls out through sheer force of will.

She paused, two fistfuls of copper threading her thin pale fingers. Her hair had not been long for years, and hadn't seen its natural red color for decades. Her hair was interlaced with bits of mousy browns, and the summer sun would bake the ends a copper so bright it would shine yellow in the sun. No hair salon she could ever have afforded was capable of matching the gift God had given her at birth. The impact of her hair — her long-lost natural treasure — overwhelmed her.

True, she couldn't even remember when her boys were that age, but her sons were always her baby boys in her heart. The hair, however, meant she was young again, and beautiful, and alive. She couldn't wait to show Joe … no, wait, she would still be married to Stanley at this age. Stanley was 1973. Stanley wouldn't have noticed her hair if the copper strands were licks of fire dancing with the febrile heat of hell's own inferno.

Mary threw her hair back and laughed. It was more than laughter, it was a song, lyrical, passionate, beatific laughter. Her hair was tied in two perfectly formed tails that framed either side of her face. Her skin was alabaster — fragile, translucent in the bright daylight. Her lips were pale crimson with matching eye shadow, the only makeup she wore in those days. She had eschewed her usual jeans for a summer dress: a pale, almost white shade of pink that looked more appropriate for mint juleps on a hot turn of the century day than a 1970s picnic in the forest. This was a special occasion for her to have dressed up so, though she couldn't remember what the occasion might have been.

"Mommy, when we gonna eat?" It was Mikey, the always-hungry one.

"Why, I don't know what we have for food," Mary began looking around, trying to remember what she had brought with them for their weekend outing.

"I still have it!" Davey held up a basket with both hands, clearly struggling with its weight. "It's not too heavy," he added, bravely.

"Oh good honey. Here, let me take that, and you can hold Mikey's hand so he doesn't get lost." Mary knew Davey would object unless he had another equally important mission to fulfill.

"K. C'mon Mikey." Davey took his brother's willing hand and they began to march, giggling toward an opening in the forest. It was a huge expanse of forest, even larger than she remembered. The trees towered in a lethargic race to touch the sky. The air was thick with the fragrance of pine, mixed with the perfume of rich earth and decaying leaves. The ground was scattered with them, a carpet of gold, and brown, of yellow and orange covering rocky ground and yellowing grass.

The trio walked in silence, listening to the sounds of birds and the chittering of small animals angered at being disturbed in their afternoon peace. At the edge of the trees, the forest opened into a vast clearing of green hills, dotted with soft flower petals that recently abandoned their stems — a kaleidoscope of autumn's warm colors. They walked on, marveling at the solitude, the beauty of the place. This was Mary's church, her commune with God. God was strong in this place, she thought.

"Well, we might as well set up here, I don't think there's a more perfect spot on earth," she beamed at her sons.

The boys sent up a cheer in unison, grabbing the picnic basket, and pulling from it a soft blanket they had carried with them. Mary let her boys eat, preferring to lie back and stare at the cloudless sky. She thought of Stanley, wished he could have come, and wondered why she couldn't seem to quite remember his face. As she closed her eyes, the gentle autumn air kissed her skin — a lover's kiss — and she knew she had found her home at last. She was a child of the forest, a wood nymph, and this was her domain. She …

… heard her sons scream.

They screamed as if the world had suddenly become fire and shattered glass, and they were made of soft paper. She sat bolt upright, heart pounding, eyes wide. Her lips were pursed to form, "What's wrong?" but there was no need. Her boys, both, were lying on the blanket, eyes wide with fear, covered head to toe in spiders. They were a rust orange, gray, and brick red swirling mass, engulfing the small boys like a wave. The ground was spiders, a moving, chaotic wave that flooded the grass. They undulated around the boys in numbers so great she could hear the scrabbling of their tiny feet. Mary grabbed her sons, each by one arm, and tore them violently from the mass of arachnids. They were sobbing now, but they were moving, and moving was going to be important.

She was standing, not remembering getting up, and she was running, holding Mikey under her left arm, and practically Davey dragging by his. They leapt over the islands of spider clusters that spanned the sea of rolling green. No, not a sea, a vast, Atlantic ocean of green. The Ardennes were no longer recognizable, this was some … other … place. Behind her, she could hear the rustling of the dry grass as the spiders moved en masse to the only food they were likely to find before winter's winds set in and ended their season. Mary couldn't understand how she had mistaken them for flowers, why she could not see. She had put her sons in harm's way, and could find no way out. She stopped to get her bearing. In the classroom she had always taught her students that panic was the first step to ruin. She must be calm, and think.

There was an incessant drumbeat in the distance. For a brief moment she expected some Tarzan-movie-borne painted natives to emerge, weapons in hand, to rape, or kill, or worse. The beating increased, and she placed a hand to her slender chest, steadying herself. Her heart pounded to the rhythm of the drums as she bent over to catch her breath. The rustling of the spiders was behind her, softer, but there. They would not pursue, they would simply wait.

"Do you boys hears those drums?" Mary tried her best to sound nonchalant. She couldn't bear it if they started screaming again.

Both boys stopped whimpering and listened, turning their heads toward each horizon. After a brief while, they looked at each other and shrugged.

"I don't hear nothin'," Davey offered, shaking his shock of red hair.

"Me too," Mikey chimed in.

"You're sure? You don't hear anything?" She could still hear the pounding beat, it sounded like … her heartbeat. The sound was coming from her ears, the blood pulsing through her arteries. She had been on the verge of panic, and panic could cost her the boys' lives. She mustn't panic. Could not panic. She turned to survey the surroundings, to form a plan of escape.

Directly behind them were the pastoral hills still swarming with spiders. To either side appeared to be more of the same, as far as she could see, to either horizon. Ahead, past a rise, she could just make out the tops of trees. That had to be the way they came, through the forest, and back to the Ardennes.

"Okay, this way Kiddos," she smiled at the boys.

It was a painted-on smile, but one they needed to believe. If mommy wasn't scared, then they were safe. Her smile meant they were going home.

"I wish I coulda kept one of them 'piders," Mikey offered. He liked pets, and had never had a spider for a pet.

"You're crazy," was Davey's only response.

Mikey started up the hill, looking over his shoulder all the while, one eye on his mom, and the other on the spiders which had begun to move in their direction. Mary and Davey followed his gaze as his eyes began to widen, and they quickly followed him up the hill. Mary scooped up both boys, and ran up the hill toward the edge of the forest. The colorful tree-tops became thick trunks, broadening as the trio neared the peak of the hill on which the trees lived.

Five more feet.

Mary urged herself on, her legs and back straining with exertion. At the top of the rise, she could finally see the massive roots of the trees, and among them, eyes. Glowing, angry eyes were visible in the darkness of the dense trees. Mary stopped, and, unthinking, dropped the boys in a whining heap on the ground. She could not run; there was nowhere to go. From behind the trees emerged a large gray wolf with eyes the color of tarnished gold. It bared its massive teeth with a low snarl. A line of saliva could be seen glimmering in the declining sunlight. More emerged, one to the right, another to the left, further way.

In each, there was hunger, a visible clarion call of hunger. Mary could not escape. The wolves had strategically placed themselves between Mary and the forest. She could not risk their hunger, for her children were too small to outrun them. There was no turning back, for behind was a tsunami of spiders amidst the sea of grass. It was still daylight, but the sun was fading, and its sister moon had already shown herself. Night was near, and death was nearer.

The pack was attempting to encircle her and the boys. She knew she could not let them get behind her. Mary moved slowly, as slowly as she could, and tucked the boys under each arm. They were crying, but soundlessly, their eyes fixed on the wolves. They were their mother's sons.

The wolves began to howl, and it was beautiful — a song, chorus, a crescendo of anticipation. It was hunting time, time for singing.

Chapter - Ten - A Hero Isn't Only a Sandwich

Charlie knew his mother would return to the nursing home not a minute past five. She was as precise as a Swiss watch. Lately, she was as affectionate as one too. Charlie relished his rare private time with his all-time favorite guy. Actually, G'pa Joe and Albert Einstein were tied, except Einstein was dead. That made it G'pa Joe, since he was still alive. But G'pa Joe hadn't redefined physics, so that made it a tie again. In truth, the two appealed to the warring left and right halves of his brain, and Charlie had not decided for certain whether he was more scientific, or emotional. For a brief moment he thought how cool it would be if G'pa Joe and Einstein could be merged, but he snapped himself out of it. A daydream like that could waste a good ten minutes, and these days, if his mind wandered, G'pa Joe's wandered right along with him. They would never get to talk.

Charlie had visited his great-grandfather almost every weekend for as long as he could remember. G'pa Joe would regale him with stories of leaving his sharecropper home at age fourteen with little more than the clothes on his back and a mind full of hopes. He had met a young man who called himself Tennessee Toot. It was originally a shortened form of his given name, Toussaint Hebert, but G'pa Joe would tell Charlie most thought it referred to the tarnished horn with the slightly bent bell from which he managed to coax "heaven's own noise" for enough coins to eat. "That old boy," G'pa Joe would enthuse to his enraptured great-grandson, "saved my life more'n once. He was a bit of con artist, a liar, a thief … later even a pimp and a convict. But he treated me like a little brother, got me to Detroit in one piece."

G'pa Joe would tell Charlie about the adventures in the juke joints in 1942 Detroit, where he decided there was more opportunity fighting Hitler than there was at home. And the war stories — Charlie's mom would be horrified to know he heard them, but to a boy of eleven, G'pa Joe was the only true hero he had ever met.

Lately when Charlie visited, it seemed as if G'pa Joe was lost in his past. The stories that used to fascinate him now only made him sad. Visiting G'pa Joe had become like watching an old photograph fade. Still, Charlie came as often as he could. If G'pa Joe was going to disappear, Charlie would make certain that he went down fighting.

Charlie spoke, his voice soft, and somber. "G'pa, do you ever dream? I mean, do you remember your dreams?" Charlie knew that if he appeared to be serious, G'pa Joe would try to focus, and be responsive.

"Funny you should ask me that," G'pa Joe answered, looking up at Charlie who was still standing behind his wheelchair. "I was thinking earlier how I never used to remember dreams, and now I have trouble figuring out if a thing I remember is a dream or a memory. It's worse lately, 'cause I wake up sometimes and think I'm still back in Germany." G'pa Joe squinted, and considered Charlie carefully. "Why you askin' me that?"

Charlie walked around to the front of G'pa Joe's chair and looked at him. "I don't know, G'pa, I've just been having weird dreams lately, and kind of wondered if that was normal. You know, for someone my age. Mom says I should have outgrown the 'nightmare stage.'"

"You the most normal kid I ever met. You dream, you act up … you're a kid. That's how you supposed to be."

"Mom thinks I should start acting more adult." .

"Everybody wants kids to be little grown-ups. Time for growin' up later. You just do you for now."

Charlie smiled, weakly. "You don't think the nightmares are too childish?"

"So what if it is childish? You a child, boy. Sometimes … sometimes … " G'pa looked around as if he wanted to ensure he wasn't overheard, then leaned over conspiratorially towards Charlie. "Sometimes I wet the bed just to piss the orderlies off. Now how's that for childish?"

Charlie felt immensely better. G'pa Joe always knew just how to reach him. Charlie was a kid, not quite twelve years old, but he had never been comfortable with the idea of childhood. It seemed … silly to him somehow. Charlie smiled, and sat on the floor facing G'pa Joe. "Okay, so maybe it's normal for a kid to have weird dreams, but mine are so, like, alive. Sometimes, when I wake up, I can't tell when I dreamed something, or if it really happened."

"Maybe both things are true." G'pa Joe spoke as if he were talking to himself.

Charlie waited for a further explanation. When none came, he shrugged, and continued.

"Like the other day, I dreamed I was playing video games, and it was 9:15, and mom told me I needed to get to bed by 9:30. So I turned off the game, brushed my teeth and got in bed. The second I turned off the light, I remembered I had a take-home essay test and I had completely forgotten to do it. It was like half the grade or something."

"Uh huh, okay," G'pa Joe said, chuckling at Charlie's increasing dramatics.

"Well, I got up, and told mom, and She. Was. Mad. She was sooo mad, she told me to just go to bed, and I'd have to get an 'F' in the class this quarter."

"Now that was definitely a dream," G'pa Joe said with a chuckle. "Your mama ain't never gon' let you get an 'F' in nothing."

Charlie rolled his eyes and nodded. "I know, kill me. So anyway, I went to bed, and I was, like, really upset. Then I guess I fell asleep in the dream. The alarm went off and I woke up."

"Woke up for real this time?" G'pa Joe asked.

"Yes. But the dream was so real, I got out the bed and went to my homework folder to see if I could start the essay test before school."

"But it wasn't there."

"No. So, I panicked. I ran yelling into mom's room, asking her if she took it. She thought I was nuts. When I realized it was a dream, I almost cried, I was so happy."

G'pa Joe was laughing, enjoying Charlie's energetic gesturing. To everyone else on the planet, Charlie was silent to a fault. To G'pa Joe, he was an enthusiastic, storytelling chatterbox. G'pa Joe placed his massive hand on Charlie's broadening right shoulder, and patted him softly.

"Charlie, I don't think you should worry about it. I used to dream I woke up, got dressed for work, drove all the way in through that damn D.C. traffic, and then the alarm would go off, and I'd have to do it again."

"I had a dream like that about school. I went to my first day twice!"

"It ain't fair having to go to work twice in one day. I musta had that stupid dream once a month. I swear, one day I was in the same traffic jam twice."

Charlie smiled. He liked it when he was like G'pa. "Well, there is a little more," Charlie admitted.

"Ok. Let's hear it, Mr. Drama."

"I'm not being dramatic this time, I swear." He raised his right hand in the Boy Scout oath. "So I get to school that day, and the first thing the history teacher says is we're having an essay test, and it's forty percent of the grade." He paused, taking a deep breath for effect. He was, of course, being dramatic. "It's a take-home test."

Charlie looked at G'pa Joe, and waited for a reaction. He was not certain his story was a big deal, but, it felt like it might be. His great-grandfather was one of the few people Charlie knew who could be logical without being unemotional. His dad seemed to have been born without a logic center. He was a great dad, but not much use in a crisis. His mom, whom he adored, acted as if she showed any of the feelings she had inside, she might die. Charlie couldn't remember the last time he and his mom sat on a sofa, her arm around him. Grandma Kate, his father's mother, used to "love Charlie up" like he had been created for just that purpose. But Grandma Kate had died of cancer four years earlier. Charlie was furious at her when she died, thinking she just decided she would rather join her husband than stay alive for Charlie. G'pa Joe had been his emotional anchor ever since. To Charlie, having G'pa Joe render an opinion was critical. If G'pa Joe thought Charlie was nuts, he would be very gentle about it, which was always his way. But Charlie would be able to tell.

"You're awful quiet all the sudden, Charlie boy. What's goin' through that head of yours?" Charlie gave a half-shrug, and pursed his lips in a way that could have been a smile, but wasn't. Charlie's dimples never lied. If he wasn't really smiling, they were not showing up.

"Don't do that playin' dead thing with me boy. I asked you a question."

Charlie smiled, for real this time. Only G'pa Joe knew when to push. "It's just all of a sudden, I'm having a lot of dreams like that. I can't even tell I'm dreaming most of the time. Now they've started coming true, and it's weirding me out."

G'pa Joe's smile faded abruptly. He shifted his six-foot-five-and-a-half-inch frame in his chair, his arms straining at the once simple task. G'pa Joe held both of Charlie's cheeks in his massive hands. For a moment, Charlie's entire face disappeared into a G'pa Joe hand sandwich. "What kind of dreams you havin' boy?" G'pa Joe finally asked.

Charlie relayed in detail his experience regarding the first day of school, then his dream of a bus accident that he was later horrified to see on the evening news. He told G'pa Joe about the time he dreamed he was his friend Cody Bullock. Or, more accurately, he dreamed he was having Cody Bullock's dream. He, reluctantly, told G'pa Joe about the recurring dream about a thin, hooded man with an unusual walk. Those dreams Charlie considered to be nightmares, though the man did little but watch Charlie. G'pa Joe's eyes narrowed when Charlie mentioned the hooded man. He seemed to nod, almost imperceptibly, and his lip curled in distaste. Charlie was a very smart boy. G'pa Joe knew that dream, personally. He could tell.

Finally, Charlie told of dreaming of an odd girl, then meeting her at his school. Charlie tried desperately to hide the fact that thinking about her was making him blush. He avoided mentioning that she had appeared in his dreams almost nightly.

G'pa Joe sat back in his chair, silently considering Charlie for a long while. His face looked alternately sad, then proud, then distressed. Charlie cocked his head, curious, unable to discern what his great-grandfather was feeling. Finally, G'pa Joe spoke, in his gentle way. "Look, some people might think that dreamin' about a thing, then havin' it happen is a gift. I tend to agree, up to a point. It ain't as good a gift as say, dreamin' the lotto numbers before they happen, but it's still a gift." G'pa Joe looked at Charlie intently. "You don't dream no numbers now, do you?"

Charlie shook his head no energetically, his curly brown locks bouncing wildly. G'pa looked briefly disappointed, then rubbed Charlie's head, and sighed. "Had a cousin who could do that." Another sigh. "So maybe you won't get rich, but knowin' when you're gonna have a test is pretty good too."

"G'pa, I just wonder why all of a sudden I'm a dream factory."

"Everybody dreams, Charlie. Especially us Tettletons."

"Not like this."

"Lemme tell you something about dreams, boy. My daddy, God res' his soul, worked hisself till he dropped. He'd get up to work 'fore the sun got up, and come home when it was already dark. And when he got home, he owned less than when he left in the morning. My daddy was a sharecropper, and that man didn't even own the dirt under his nails. At his funeral I half expected somebody to come scrape his fingernails to collect the dirt. He was a good man, and strong. But see, his granddaddy was a slave, and his daddy worked like one. Workin' was all he knew, all any of us knew.

"But when I was fourteen, I had this dream, see? I dreamed there was a world out there where I could work for myself, and die free. Now I don't mean no Martin Luther King, 'I Have a Dream' stuff. I was really dreamin' this — droolin' on the pillow and everything." G'pa Joe stopped to laugh. "I dreamed even though I didn't go to school much, I would still rise up and be somethin'. So you know what I did?"

"You left home?" Charlie asked, already knowing the answer. He was beginning to fear he had lost G'pa Joe once again to his colorful past, which was much more intriguing than his gray present.

"Damn right. I left home. I left my family and everything I knew. All I had in my pocket was ten dollars. But I also had my dream, and that was worth more than any money or any fancy education. My dream is what got me through. First saw ol' Toot in that dream."

"Really? Like the girl I met?"

G'pa Joe nodded. "That’s how I knew I could trust him. So you see, maybe God is tryin' to tell you somethin'. All’s you got to do is keep dreamin', and listen." G'pa Joe pointed to his chest emphatically. "And when that voice in here says now is the time to believe, and act — well then you make sure you do." G'pa Joe pointed a long finger at Charlie. "Dreams ain't just for sleepin', Charlie boy. Dreams are for travelin' from where you are, to where you s'posed to be." G'pa Joe pointed out the window, and Charlie's eyes followed.

Charlie sat back, and smiled. "Thanks, G'pa. I guess I figured that dreams are for little kids, you know. Mom always tells me to quit dreaming and wake the blank up."

"Your mom ain't happy, that's her problem. That don't need to be your problem. Tell you what — she used to be the silliest, happiest kid you ever wanna meet."

Charlie placed his fingers on his chest and looked incredulously at G'pa Joe. "My mom? Name's Charlotte, dark brown hair, light brown eyes, really pretty? Maybe you're thinking of someone else."

"Nope, that's her, skin like caramel and all. Right up until she was about sixteen, Charley was a mess of fun. Always up to mischief too. Popular, track star, you name it. Your mama was a lot like you, boy."

"Wow. What happened?" Charlie meant no disrespect. G'pa Joe's description just seemed like another Charlotte altogether.

G'pa looked away, avoiding Charlie's eyes. "Your mama changed, that's all," he said, his tone sour. "Let me tell you a secret about us Tettletons. We always been dreamers, our gift from God. Just cause Charley forgot don't mean you have to."

"Why did mom change?"

G'pa Joe stared out the window, silently, long enough that Charlie began to think he had not heard the question. After a while, he turned to Charlie. "Sometimes, dreams don't work out the way you hoped." Charlie found the answer puzzling, but something in G'pa Joe's eyes made it clear it was all the answer he would get. "So, you got a girlfriend yet?"

Charlie knew this was a purposeful subject change, but he went with it. "No, I'm not so great with girls."

"You mean the pretty girl from your dream, right?"

"I never said she was pretty,"

"Them red cheeks of yours did."

Charlie grinned, but did not meet G'pa Joe's gaze.

"Let me tell you something," G'pa Joe said, looking around the room as though he was about the reveal the Absolute Secret of Life. "Here's the magic for being popular with women." Charlie leaned forward, unblinking. "If you want to get to know a girl, listen to her. She'll love the bad boys, 'cause they smooth, and got the best cars. But when that fool messes up, and he will, it's the one who's been listening that ends up with her heart." G'pa Joe sat back in his chair, a smug look on his face.

"That's it?"

"That's all you need to know." G'pa Joe closed his eyes. Charlie stood, took the handles of his wheelchair, and began rolling him toward the elevators. He knew the closed eyes signaled G'pa Joe's need to rest before his mom showed up. G'pa Joe reached back and patted Charlie’s hands affectionately. "You a good boy, Charlie. That's why you they gave you a mayor's badge for this place."

Charlie started laughing. G'pa Joe could always make him laugh. "I don't have a mayor's badge, G'pa."

"Well, you've got charm, and that's the same thing. Look, I know you don't see it. But you're handsome, you're polite, you make the folks here happier, and you know how to talk to people."

Charlie looked down. "I only know how to talk to you, G'pa. With anyone else, I never know what to say."

"You know what to say, you just never let yourself say it."

"Well isn't that the same thing?"

"That ain't at all the same thing. You have gifts, and just 'cause some idiots don't see 'em, you can't let that make you doubt you got 'em. Tell you what, you promise me something."

"Okay, what?" Charlie asked.

"Next time you see that pretty little thing, you just start talking to her. Don't matter about what. You just close your eyes and talk. Can you do that for me?"

"I'll try."

G'pa Joe grabbed the wheels of his chair, stopping it. "Boy, don't make me go Yoda on you."

Charlie laughed. "Okay, okay. I promise." Incentive to talk to his dream girl, he would gladly accept. “G’pa?”

“Yeah?”

“You do look a little like Yoda.”

“You ain’t too big for a whupping, Charlie Boy,” G’pa Joe said, laughing as the elevator doors closed.

Chapter Eleven - "Reality Is Nothing but a Collective Hunch" — Jane Wagner

Charlie lay in bed, tossing and turning for what seemed like hours. Sometime after midnight, desperate for sleep, he decided that staring at a single point on the ceiling would make his eyes tired enough to sleep. Unfortunately, not only did it not work, he began to see little floaters appear in his line of sight. He soon stopped, worrying his staring was doing permanent damage to his sight. At around one a.m. he decided he no longer cared about vision; he cared only about sleep.

Though he was increasingly certain he was causing himself to develop glaucoma (the only eye condition he knew) the floaters held a sort of fascination for him. He attempted to watch a floater fall all the way to the ground, to see where they go; however, as soon as he would tilt his head, it would either dance back toward the ceiling, or move to the other eye. That both eyes were now engaged was problematic. If he just lost one eye, there would be inevitable depth-of-field issues, certainly. Still, he was already lousy at baseball and did not hunt, so he reasoned binocular vision was not really that critical. However, if he lost both eyes to glaucoma, that would be a problem.

"Don't be stupid," a small voice said, quite distinctly.

Charlie initially assumed it was his left brain, Chuck, telling his Charlene side to stop being emotional, but he realized the voice was distinctly Caribbean. "I am not glaucoma, you idiot." It was the floater, hands on hips, and small wings clearly visible. Charlie could not understand why he hadn't noticed the wings before.

"Are, are you talking to me floater?" Charlie knew that was a stupid question, but he figured it was as good an opening line to a floater as any.

As if in response, the floater, its hands still on hips, came to rest directly in front of Charlie's nose. "I and I prefer to be called a mote," it said. "Mote don' float, me 'ave wings, seen?"

Charlie squinted, noticing a small brown creature with a bald head, wearing an orange robe, and carrying what appeared to be a microphone.

"You do realize we must be dreaming, right?" Chuck chimed in. Dreams bored Chuck, however, and he decided to go to sleep.

"Just you and me kid," the mote said. "Do you always start a dream by telling yourself you are dreaming? Seem like dat would spoil de fun."

"Well no, that only happens when I think I might be having a nightmare. Would you happen to know how I'm having a nightmare when I've been awake all night?"

"Shush, now, we don' have time for your foolishness. Do you want to go or not? We only have a little time you know." The mote was now looking at what appeared to be a very small cell phone. "It's 'leven-seventy-tree o'clock."

"Huh? Okay. I went to bed at nine, so I've been lying awake for … ."

"Bway, would you shut you face and come?" The mote was really getting impatient now. Its accent thickened with anger, and Charlie could no longer understand what it was saying. Charlie did recognize that the mote was very agitated, so he didn't ask. The mote walked through a door that wasn't there before, to the left of his bed. By this time, it had grown to be around three feet or so, and Charlie could clearly make out it had brown fur and a face like a bunny — a winged bunny with a bald spot. He wondered if there were bunny ears under the robe's hood, but didn't dare ask. As it reached the other side, It turned toward Charlie and placed its hand on its hips once again.

"Would you come on?" the mote asked, practically yelling. Charlie shook his head no, and decided to pull the covers over his head. Unfortunately, his feet and legs had been asleep during all this, and didn't get the message. So when the mote yelled for him to come, they immediately woke and jumped out of bed, dragging Charlie along for the ride. So there was Charlie, dressed in large gray t-shirt and black sweat pants, no shoes, walking toward the door. His legs and feet were in a hurry to catch up to the mote, while the upper part of his body leaned impossibly backward trying its best to get back under the covers. Given the upper half of Charlie was the half with the brain, back to bed was probably the smarter decision. Nonetheless, the head tends to go wherever the feet go, and Charlie was too confused to think to tell his feet to stop and return to bed.

Once through the door, he gave up fighting for the comfort of his lovely green down comforter, and decided to stand straight, less he develop a bad back to go with his obvious psychosis. "At least you can rule out glaucoma," Chuck offered sleepily. Charlie, straightened, bent side-to-side to stretch out his crumpled back muscles, and turned to go back through the door to his bedroom. His bed sat looking forlorn, lit romantically by the light of the moon. Soft music played as Charlie began to long to be back in its bosom.

He said, more to himself than the mote, "This is nuts. I'm going back to bed."

"You can't go dat way, bway," the mote corrected, pointing to the door.

"Why not? That's the way I came."

"Read the sign," said the mote.

It was pointing to a wooden sign above the door, on which was carved the words: "NOT AN EXIT"

"See, you haffe go this way bway."

Chuck chimed in. "You know it's impossible to read when you're dreaming. This is troubling."

Charlene responded. "That's the part you find troubling?"

Charlie was embarrassed and frustrated by the exchange, as the mote seemed to be able to hear it. To the halves of his brain Charlie said aloud, "This conversation is not at all helpful." To the mote he added, "I'm having a lot of trouble understanding your accent. I caught about half of the last thing you said. I'm sorry."

"Oh, that's quite okay. New travelers tend not to be very smart at first. I said you have to go this way." The mote was now speaking in a perfect British accent and pointing ahead of him. "By the way, is this one better? I can also be from Texas or Japan if you prefer."

"N-n-no, this one is quite fine," Charlie stammered. "What did you call me by the way — a traveler? I-I wasn't traveling at all. I was trying to fall asleep."

The mote replied calmly, "And so you have. I must tell you, sir, that you should really try to focus while you're in here. Things have a way of happening the way you think they will, even if that's not the way you mean for them to happen." The mote stopped walking, which was good for Charlie, since he was having a great deal of time keeping up. It walked over to Charlie, and looked him up and down, as if sizing him up for something.

The mote was indeed brown, and, as it threw off its hood, Charlie could see it was in fact a bunny — an ordinary-looking, run-of-the-mill, brown, lop-eared rabbit, with a bald head. It had the cute wiggly nose, the whiskers, the whole bit. Its feet were large, but since it was wearing high-top basketball shoes, Charlie couldn't really tell if it had normal rabbit's feet. It did have rabbit paws for hands, although it had furry fingers, and Charlie was certain normal rabbits did not have fingers. Even if they did have fingers, they wouldn't wear black nail polish, like this rabbit.

Charlie found himself asking questions bluntly, which was uncharacteristic for him. "Why do you call yourself a mote? You really aren't very small for a rabbit. In fact, you're fairly tall as rabbits go."

"I never called myself a mote."

"You absolutely did. You said 'I prefer to be called a mote.' Well, actually, I corrected your grammar, but it meant the same thing."

"No, you rude child, I said I prefer to be called A. Mote. That's my name — Abner Mote. Don't you prefer to be called by your name?"

"Well, yes of course," Charlie said, hesitantly.

"What if I decided to call you brown onion-head-doo-doo breath? It's a fairly accurate description, yes, but rather rude don't you think?"

"I never called you names, and I don't have doo-doo breath, rabbit." Charlie was getting rather impatient, by this … whatever-it-was' illogic. "I use mouthwash every night. I was simply trying to understand what you are."

"I am not a rabbit. That's what I are," Abner said, snippily.

Charlie clapped his hand to his forehead and exhaled. "Okay, that makes no sense. How can you explain what you are by saying what you aren't? That's like my saying I am not a mouse when someone asks me if I am a boy or a man."

"Well in your case, saying 'I am not a mouse,' would be a lie."

Shoot.

Charlie had the horrifying belief that he had somehow turned into a mouse again. He had completely forgotten the mouse episode at school.

Wait.

Not in school, in a dream about school.

"I know what you're thinking," said Abner, who was attempting to suck a piece of carrot from between his teeth. "You're wondering if you're actually a mouse. Admit it."

Charlie answered honestly, as was his norm. "Okay, well, the question had crossed my mind … only recently though. I had a dream about being in school and turning into a mouse. It was quite embarrassing."

"You haven't had that dream yet."

"Jeez-o-flip! Would you freaking stop that? I know what dream I had. You are the most annoying rabbit I've ever met."

"And yet, I am not a rabbit."

Charlie groaned, wondering if killing a rabbit that was not a rabbit was illegal in this place. As he considered that, he noticed for the first time he was not actually in a place. In fact, it just seemed to be him and the rabbit-that-wasn't. "If I ask you where we are, will you just tell me where we aren't?" Charlie asked, hoping for a truce. His head was starting to hurt, and he was afraid that might wake him up — or worse, it might cause his brain to hemorrhage in his sleep.

"Of course I wouldn't answer that way, child. It would take too long to explain all the wheres we aren't. Besides, you aren't in a where, you are in a when. And the when is some time ago, as it happens. You were a mouse in your school next week. So you see, you haven't had that dream yet."

"Ow." Charlie was holding his head.

"That might be a tumor," said Abner. "If you like, I can have exploratory surgery done on your head, just in case. I have it done all the time." Abner leaned over and showed Charlie a long curved scar on the top of his head. It appeared to be mildly infected, as it was tinged with crimson along its left side.

"Jeez-o-flip!! That's gross! Do you actually have surgery on your head all the time? Why on earth would you do that?"

"We're not … "

"Do not say we're not on earth," Charlie said, his finger pointed at Abner like a dagger.

"Okay," said Abner, clearly disappointed. "Then where should I say we are not? We are not on Mars either, if that helps."

"I'm going to kill myself." Charlie was now holding his forehead with two hands.

Chuck, the left brain, woke up, and hearing the discussion, offered a bit of advice. "Why don't you just ask him where he was taking you instead of trying to make sense of what doesn't matter?"

For once, Charlie thought, Chuck was turning out to be useful. "Why don't you just tell me where you were taking me," Charlie said. Thinking quickly, he added "Or to when you are taking me."

"Oh, I'm taking you to France. You would like France," Abner had shifted voices and sounded very much like a girl.

Charlie raised one eyebrow and stared, as he did when he was nonplussed. "Why do you sound like a girl?" he asked. "I am sorry if I'm being rude, but some questions need to be asked."

"I don't know, why do you act like a girl?" came the reply.

"Arrrgh! Just once, do you think you could answer a question normally?" Charlie practically shouted.

"The answer to that question is yes. And since you requested it, I will only do that this once."

Charlie threw a rock at the not-a-rabbit, not once wondering where he had gotten a rock. His aim was true, and it hit Abner straight in the forehead. Abner immediately fell over backward, motionless. Charlie ran over to him, gushing apologies.

"Oh crap. Oh shoot. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I am so sorry. I just lost my temper for a minute. I didn't even know I had a rock. I-it was an accident."

Charlie bent over Abner, and touched the bunny's wounded forehead gently. There was a small cut on Abner's forehead that was surrounded by a huge bruise. Had Charlie been able to see under the brown fur, he would have been able to tell it was a deep purple. Charlie didn't so much as touch the bruised forehead as he poked it. Repeatedly.

"A-are you alright?" Charlie was certain he didn't want to find out what jail was like in this place.

"No I'm not alright. You have quite effectively killed me. Congratulations." Abner kept his eyes closed, and folded his hands over his chest. As if on cue, a single, perfect white lily appeared in his left hand. It smelled like cheddar cheese.

"I didn't kill you," said Charlie.

"You threw the rock, so you absolutely did. Besides, there is no one else here yet."

Charlie was once again exasperated. "I admitted to throwing the rock. But you aren't dead!"

"Guilty!" called voices from the dark void ahead of them. Charlie looked up, and realized he was now at the edge of a large forest. The guilty verdict had come from somewhere amongst the trees.

"How did we come to be in a forest?" Charlie was more concerned with this bit of illogic than he was the guilty verdict, or wondering what creature might be condemning him. As it turned out, Chuck had become fascinated at the puzzles and was figuratively sitting on the edge of his, well, brain. Charlene, meanwhile, was trying to change the channel to something a bit more Disney, without success.

Abner answered without moving, or opening his eyes. "We didn't come to be in the forest, the forest came to us. That's why we weren't in a place. The place hadn't shown up yet. Now we are in a place."

"Okay, great," Charlie said. "Now we're getting somewhere. What's it called?"

"It's called The Forest," Abner said.

Charlie shouted a minor obscenity, then clamped his hands over his mouth. Abner continued, unperturbed. "It's the forest long ago, in France. I wish you hadn't killed me so I could see it. I do so adore France."

"I didn't kill … look, you aren't dead! Jeez-o-flip, if you just open your eyes, you'd see you're alive. Well, assuming you were alive when we started, you are alive and just fine."

A voice from the forest shouted again, and louder. "Guilty! Hang him from the nearest tree!"

The nearest tree, who happened to be named Frank, objected to having things hung from him. "I beg your pardon, if you want this thing hung, why don't you hang him from yourself? I, young lady, am not a Christmas tree, and don't appreciate having things hung from me."

Charlie sat on the ground next to Abner, and started to giggle. This wasn't a puzzle, it was schizophrenia. If he was going to be psycho, he may as well enjoy it. He lifted Abner's hand, and gently began stroking it. The soft fur was as soothing to Charlie as the stroking was to Abner. As he continued gently stroking Abner's furry hand, he looked in the direction of the forest, which was becoming bathed in light. It was not as if the sun was rising exactly, more as if the night was setting. As the night fell slowly behind the horizon, the very top of the sky began to shine brightly. It was as if the night time sky were a big curtain that hid daylight behind it. As the curtain of night fell, day appeared in a straight line across the entire sky. Within no more than ten minutes, it was fully daytime. It seemed to be around noon in fact.

Abner, having been sufficiently soothed by all the stroking, opened his eyes, looked up at Charlie, and said "I forgive you, but I promise I will be dead again if you throw another rock at me. Besides, did it occur to you that the rock might have liked where it was sitting?"

"What? What are you talking about?" Charlie asked, smiling this time.

"Do you know how long it takes a rock to get to a place? It could be another million years before it gets back to where it was, and you just … casually fling it at any random head you see about."

"I didn't move it, it just showed up in my hand. And I already said I was sorry." Charlie stifled a giggle.

Abner continued, as if Charlie had not spoken. "What if it had a family? Don't you think the kids will miss their dad when he's gone for a million years or so? His wife will probably have remarried."

Charlie noticed for the first time, now that the light was strong, that Abner was, in fact, a rabbit, but he was wearing a hooded bathrobe and wings from an old angel costume like the one Charlie had worn on his second Halloween. "I am terribly sorry," Charlie said, "and I do apologize to you and Mr. Rock. I will gladly transport him back to his family if need be."

"Oh don't be silly. Rocks don't have families. It was an illustration for goodness sake. You are very literal aren't you?" Abner was shaking his head and making clucking noises with his tongue.

"I've been told that, yes." Charlie admitted. He had, in fact, been told that all the time. "Can I ask you a question? Well, I have several, but one is sort of more urgent."

"That's why I'm here, to answer your questions," Abner said, his expression sincere.

"That's why you're here?" his left brain interjected, having managed to work Charlie's mouth before he could stop it.

"Certainly," Abner said. "You ask, I answer. It's just that your questions are not the boss of my answers."

"That scares me, because I actually understand that."

"As well you should. There is hope for you yet. Good. Your education has begun; congratulations." Abner gave Charlie what was clearly a rabbit smile.

"Huh? Okay," Charlie said. He cleared his throat, not for effect, but because it seemed to him to be the equivalent of a change in paragraph. This conversation needed a new paragraph desperately.

"New paragraph." He was being literal again. "My question is why are you wearing angel wings and a robe? I hope that isn't a rude question, I still don't quite know the etiquette in 'The Forest.'" Charlie made quotation marks with his fingers when he got to "the forest" part.

"Oh," said Abner, "I was being an angel of death."

"Oh."

Pause.

"Um … "

Longer Pause.

"Why were you being an angel of death?" asked Charlie.

"Dunno really, I just show up dressed the way you guys want me to be dressed. You were dreaming of floaty stuff, and I thought 'Fairy', or 'Angel of Death.' Angels of Death are much cooler. I wish you had been thinking of motorcycles though, I could have been a Hell's Angel of Death. That would have rocked."

"Again, that somehow makes sense," Charlie said. "Is this place making more sense, or is it me?"

"It's you. This makes no sense at all … well it does, but it shouldn't to you. Not yet." Abner cocked his head at Charlie quizzically, then broke out in a broad grin.

Charlie had closed his eyes, and had cocked his head at a 45 degree angle. He was thinking. In fact, he had his index finger on his temple, which meant he was solving — hard. "So, you come in wherever my dream is, and you have to first be part of my dream, then you bring me here. Right?"

Abner nodded, then grinned harder.

"So why am I here? And did that tree talk back there? Well both those trees?"

Abner walked over to the nearest tree, and sat on one of the broad roots that looped above the ground. "This is Frank. Say hello, Frank."

Frank the tree, being a smart alec, replied, "Hello Frank," in an booming voice. The sound seemed to come from an opening two-thirds the way up the trunk in what could have been a mouth, but which also was a home for a family of swallows. Frank was a rather handsome oak-apple tree, with both acorns and green apples currently in ripe abundance.

Abner patted Frank affectionately on his trunk. "Frank is my oldest friend." He paused, apparently expecting laughter. "That's a tree joke." Charlie looked at him blankly. "Never mind," Abner continued. "The other voice, however, is not a tree. I thought she was a friend of yours, although the 'hang him from the tree' comment does give me pause."

Frank dropped an apple directly on Abner's head. Abner frowned, but didn't rub his head, refusing to acknowledge the insult. The tree then lifted the entire set of looping roots on his right side, and a small figure appeared from behind him. It was the Cute Girl again. She was wearing a lovely brown skirt with a red top.

Charlie loved the color red.

Chapter Twelve - Robin in Wonderland

"Hi," Robin said. "Sorry about the lynching thing. I thought you killed the rabbit and I wanted to scare you so you wouldn't do something like that again."

"It's okay, I wasn't really scared," Charlie lied.

"I didn't really mean it, I'm actually non-violent. I am relieved you are only guilty of felonious assault. The kids would have missed you."

"Kids … " he said, his voice trailing off.

Abner waved his hands at Robin, shaking his head vigorously. Robin looked confused, but stopped talking. "I guess I should introduce myself," she said, after a pause. "I'm Robin, and I'm dreaming you. I am sorry about that."

Charlie laughed out loud. "No, I'm pretty sure I'm dreaming you," he said.

"That's not true," she said. "Why are you arguing with me?"

"Well, first of all, we've already met – at school," Charlie said. "A tree and a Robin? It's too good to be real. I mean, who on earth would name a girl after a bird? Clearly that is something I made up."

Robin gave Charlie a hard look, and walked straight up to him. She was about four inches taller than he was, her long legs ending slightly above his waist. She leaned her nose until the tip touched Charlie's. Charlie could just make out the fullness of her lips as he looked down to avoid eye contact. Thinking he was about to be kissed, he closed his eyes and tried not to faint.

She slapped him. Hard. Twice. He had a knack for being profoundly wrong at the most inopportune times.

"Do. Not. Make. Fun. Of. Me." She was speaking through clenched teeth. "I have to take that out there, but I do not have to take it in my own dream. No siree, Bob."

Charlie was rubbing his left cheek, and trying hard not to let his eyes water lest she think he was crying. He looked up towards the sun and blinked, pretending it was a light problem his eyes were having, rather than an "I just got pimp slapped by a girl" problem. After composing himself as best he could, he responded in his most calm voice (that only quivered a very little, to his credit). "Why did you slap me?"

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