The Dream Thieves

37

This was the dream: sitting in the passenger seat of Joseph Kavinsky’s Mitsubishi, the odor of a crash clinging to Ronan’s clothing, the white dash lights carving

Kavinsky a gaunt and wild face, foully seductive lyrics spitting from the speakers, the vein-covered peaks of Kavinsky’s knuckles on the gearshift between them. The smell in the car was sweet and unfamiliar, toxic and pleasant in the way Ronan had always thought marijuana would be before he came to Aglionby. Even the feel of the racing seats was unfamiliar; they held Ronan’s shoulders and sucked his legs into the very depths of the car like a trap. Every bump in the road transferred directly to Ronan’s bones, sharp and immediate. A touch of the wheel and they darted one way or another. It was like a car built to both feed on and produce anxiety.

Ronan didn’t know if he loved it or hated it.

They didn’t speak. Ronan didn’t know what he would say anyway. It felt like anything could happen. All of his secrets felt dangerously close to the surface.

Kavinsky drove out of Henrietta, past Deering, into nowhere. The road turned from four lanes to two and pure black trees pressed out the dull black sky overhead. Ronan’s palms sweated. He watched Kavinsky change gears as he snaked along the back roads. Every time he shifted into the fourth gear, he missed the sweet spot. Couldn’t he feel the car hanging when he did?

“My eyes are up here, sweetheart,” Kavinsky said.

With a dismissive noise, Ronan lay his head back in the seat and looked out into the night. He could tell where they were now; they were nearly to the fairground where the substance party had been. Tonight the great floodlights were dark; the only evidence of the fairground was when the headlights swept over the bunting. They were only in the light for a moment, like colorless, ghosts of flags, and then there was nothing but brush as Kavinsky pulled onto an overgrown gravel track before the fairground.

A few yards in, Kavinsky stopped. He looked at Ronan. “I know what you are.”

It was like after the crash. After waking from a dream. Ronan was frozen in the sea, staring back at him.

The Mitsubishi charged forward, and the road gave way to a limitless clearing. In the headlights, Ronan saw another white car parked up ahead. As they pulled closer, the lights illuminated a huge spoiler on the trunk, and then revealed a portion of a knife graphic on the side. It was another Mitsubishi. For a moment, Ronan thought that it might be the old one, somehow, its damage miraculously hidden by the poor light. But then the headlights swung to another car parked beside it. This second car was also white with a large spoiler. Another Mitsubishi. A knife graphic peeked around the shadowed side.

Kavinsky pulled forward another few feet. It brought a third car into focus. A white Mitsubishi. They kept creeping forward, field grass rustling against the low bumper. Another Mitsubishi. Another. Another.

“Goldfish,” Kavinsky said.

It wouldn’t be the same.

But these were the same. Dozens upon dozens— now Ronan saw that the Mitsubishis were parked at least two deep — of identical cars. Only they were not quite identical. The longer Ronan looked, the more differences he saw. A bigger wing here. A splattered dragon graphic there. Some had strange headlights that spread across their entire fronts. Some had no lights at all, just blank sheet metal where they should’ve been. Some were slightly taller, some were slightly longer. Some of the cars had only two doors. Some had none.

Kavinsky got to the end of the first uneven row and turned to the next. There had to be more than one hundred of them.

It wasn’t possible.

Ronan’s hands fisted. He said, “I guess I’m not the only one with recurring dreams.”

Because of course these were from Kavinsky’s head. Like the fake licenses, like the leather bands he’d given Ronan, like the incredible substances his friends would travel hours for, like every impossible firework he sent up each year on the Fourth, like every forgery he was known for in Henrietta.

He was a Greywaren.

Kavinsky hauled up the parking brake. They were a white Mitsubishi in a world of white Mitsubishis. Every thought in Ronan’s head was a shard of light, gone before he could hold it.

“I told you, man,” Kavinsky said. “Simple solution.”

Ronan’s voice was low. “Cars. An entire car.”

He hadn’t even imagined it was possible. He had never even thought to try for more than the Camaro’s keys. He’d never thought there was anyone outside of himself and his father.

“No — world,” Kavinsky said. “An entire world.”

After the party had dwindled to nothing, Gansey crept down the back staircase, avoiding his family. He didn’t know where Adam was — he was meant to sleep in

Gansey’s old room as guests of his mother occupied all of the other spare bedrooms — and he didn’t go looking for him. Gansey was meant to sleep on the couch, but there would be no sleep for him tonight. So he quietly went outside to the back garden.

With a sigh, he sat on the edge of the concrete fountain. The nuances and wonders of the English garden were many, but most of them were lost after dark. The air was thick with the scent of boxwood, gardenias, and Chinese food. The only flowers he could see were white and drowsy.

His soul felt raw and battered inside him.

What he needed was to sleep, so this day would be over and he could start a new one. What he needed was to be able to turn off his memories, so that he could stop replaying the fight with Adam.

He hates me.

What he wanted was to be home, and home wasn’t here.

He was stretched too thin to consider what was wise or what was not. He called Blue.

“Hello?”

He pressed his eyes closed. Just the sound of her voice, the Henrietta lull to it, made him feel uneven and shattered.

“Hello?” she echoed.

“Did I wake you up?”

“Oh, Gansey! No, you didn’t. I had Nino’s tonight. Is your thing done with?”

Gansey lay down, his cheek against the still sun-hot concrete of the fountain bench, and looked out of the midnight garden at the sodium-vapor paradise that was Washington, D.C. He held his phone to his other ear. His homesickness devoured him. “For now.”

“Sorry for the noise,” Blue said. “It’s a zoo here, like always. And I’m just getting some — uh — yogurt and I’m — there we go. So what do you need?”

He took a deep breath.

What do I need?

He saw Adam’s face again. He replayed his own answers. He didn’t know which of them was wrong.