The Dream Thieves

“And it’s stress related?” Richard Gansey II broke in. Although he didn’t know Adam well, his concern ran deep and genuine. Adam was his son’s friend, and so he had inherent worth. “Dick, do you know what he might be stressed about?”

It was clear this was a problem that all of the Ganseys were intent on solving before Gansey returned to Henrietta with Adam.

“He just moved out of his parents’ house,” Gansey said. He had started to say trailer, but he didn’t like to think of what his own parents would do with that visual. He thought for a moment and then added, “His father beat him.”

“Jesus Christ,” his father remarked. Then: “Why do they let these people breed?”

Gansey just looked at his father. For a long moment, nothing was said.

“Richard,” his mother chastised.

“Where is he staying now?” his father asked. “With you?”

He couldn’t know how much or why this question smarted. Gansey shook his head. “I tried. He’s staying at a room that belongs to St. Agnes — a local church.”

“Is it legal? Does he have a car?”

“He’ll be eighteen in a few months. And no.”

“It would be better if he stayed with you,” Richard Gansey II observed.

“He won’t. He just won’t. Adam has to do everything himself. He won’t take anything that looks like a handout. He’s paying his own way through school. He works three jobs.”

The other Gansey faces were approving. The family as a whole enjoyed charm and pluck, and this idea of Adam Parrish, self-made man, appealed to them immensely.

“But he has to have a car,” Mrs. Gansey said. “That would surely help. Can we not give him a little something to help him get one?”

“He won’t take it.”

“Oh, surely if we say —”

“He won’t take it. I promise you, he will not take it.”

They thought for a long moment, during which Helen drew her name in large letters and his father paged through A Brief Encyclopedia of World Pottery and his mother discreetly looked up transient global amnesia on her phone and Gansey contemplated just throwing everything he possessed into the Suburban and driving away as fast as he could. A very small, very selfish voice inside Gansey whispered, What if you left him here, what if you made him find his own way back; what if he had to call you and apologize for once?

Finally, Helen said, “What if I gave him my old college car? The crappy one I’m going to donate to that broken-car charity if he doesn’t want it. He’d be saving me the trouble of arranging the tow!”

Gansey frowned. “Which crappy car?”

“Obviously I would obtain one,” Helen replied, drawing a fifty-eight-foot-yacht on the blotter. “And say it was mine.”

The older Ganseys adored the idea. Mrs. Gansey was already on the phone. The collective mood had buoyed with the implementation of this plan. Gansey felt it would take more than a car to relieve Adam’s stress, but the truth was that he did need a vehicle. And if Adam really did buy Helen’s story, it wouldn’t hurt a damn thing.

Gansey couldn’t shake the image of Adam by the side of the interstate, walking, walking, walking. Knowing he was forgetting what he was doing, but unable to stop. Unable to remember Gansey’s number, even when people did stop to help.

I don’t need your wisdom, Gansey.

So there was nothing he could do about it.

43

Okay, princess,” Kavinsky said, presenting a six-pack to Ronan. “Show me what you can do.”

They were back in the clearing near the fairgrounds. It was hazy, shimmering, dazed in the heat. This was a place for more dream math. One hundred white Mitsubishis. Two dozen fake licenses. Two of them.

One day.

Two? Three?

Time had no meaning. Days were irrelevant. They marked

time with dreams.

The first one had been just a pen. Ronan woke in the frosty air-conditioning of the passenger seat, his fingers motionless over a slender plastic pen balanced on his chest. As always, he hovered above himself, a paralyzed non-participant in his own life. The speaker thumped out something that sounded goodnatured, offensive, and Bulgarian. Biting flies clung hopefully to the exterior of the windshield. Kavinsky wore his white sunglasses, because he was awake.

“Wow, man, this is . . . a pen.” Taking the pen from beneath Ronan’s unprotesting fingers, Kavinsky tried it out on the dashboard. There was something dazzling about his total disregard for his own property. “What’s this shit, man? Looks like the Declaration of Independence.”

Just as in the dream, the pen wrote everything in a dainty cursive, no matter how the user held it. Kavinsky quickly bored of its single-minded magic. He tapped the pen on Ronan’s teeth along with the Bulgarian beat until feeling came back to Ronan’s hands and he was able to knock it away.

Ronan thought it wasn’t bad for a dream object produced on command. But Kavinsky regarded the pen scornfully.

“Watch this.” Producing a green pill, he flicked it into his mouth and washed it down with some beer. Pulling off his sunglasses, he pressed his knuckles into one of his eyes, grimacing. Then he was asleep.

Ronan watched him sleep, head thrown to the side, tapping pulse visible through the skin of his neck.

Kavinsky’s pulse stopped.

And then, with a violent start, Kavinsky jerked awake, one of his hands fisted. His mouth cracked into a grin at Ronan’s surprise. With a theatric twist of his hand, he presented his dream object. A pen cap. He twitched his fingers until Ronan handed over the dream-pen.

The cap, of course, fit perfectly. Right size, right color, right sheen to the plastic. And why shouldn’t it be perfect? Kavinsky was known for his forgery.

“Amateur,” Kavinsky said. “This is the way to dream back Gansey’s balls for him.”

“Is this going to be a thing?” Ronan demanded. He was angry, but not as angry as he would’ve been before he started drinking. He put his fingers on the door handle, ready to get out. “Like, is this going to be what’s funny to you? Because I don’t want this that bad. I can figure it out myself.”

“Sure you can,” Kavinsky said. He cocked a finger at him. “Give him that pen. Write him a little note with it. In f**king George Washington letters, ‘Dear Dick, drive this, ex-oh-ex-oh. Ronan Lynch.’ ”

Ronan wasn’t sure if it was Kavinsky using his real name or the refreshed memory of the ruined Pig that did it, but he dropped his hand from the door. “Leave Gansey out of this.”