Dreamrider (11 page)

Small magic.

4
.

We caught the bus to Leah's place, the same bus I'd take to get home. She lived about half the distance from school that I did. We got off and walked for ten minutes. I didn't say much. I was nervous. It was important to me that Leah didn't think I was mad. But I wasn't sure how to start. As I rehearsed it in my head it sounded unlikely, almost unhinged. I would have to trust her. Just tell her. Leah seemed to understand my need for quiet. We walked in comfortable silence.

I walked straight past her place. I'd taken about five steps before I realised she was no longer at my side. I stopped. She was halfway up a driveway, grinning at me. I smiled sheepishly and retraced my steps.

Leah's house was exactly the kind of place I had always wanted to live in. An elevated Queenslander with a wide balcony sweeping around two sides. Palms in pots stood behind decorative railings. The front door had inlaid stained glass. The grass had been freshly mown. It was big and bright and welcoming. Even before I went in I knew there would be polished wood floors and a kitchen full of light. I could smell baking bread.

Leah noticed me staring.

‘What do you think?' she said.

‘It's amazing,' I said. I meant it, too.

‘Well, come in and meet Mum. Dad won't be back from work for a few hours.'

‘Are you sure it's okay?' I asked. ‘I mean, your mum's not expecting me.'

‘Don't worry. My friends are always welcome. I told you that.'

She took me by the hand and led me around the back. The yard was beautiful. There was a big kidney-shaped swimming pool, and palm trees leaned over it, giving shade. A chatter of lorikeets filled the trees. A small dog appeared and jumped up at me. It was wiry – one of those breeds you either love or hate. I loved them. It skipped around my ankles, twisting its body in excitement, yelping and springing at me. I knelt down and scuffed my hands through the fur of its neck. It froze, its head turned up, bathing in pleasure. Its eyes were pure milk.

‘You've made a friend, Michael,' said Leah. ‘That's Scamp. Scamp, this is Michael.'

‘Is he blind?' I asked.

‘Yes,' Leah said. ‘But it doesn't seem to bother you much, does it, mate?' The dog squirmed his way over to Leah. She picked him up and hugged him to her chest. ‘The vet reckons it's too dangerous to operate on his eyes. Says Scamp's ticker mightn't be up to it.'

The backdoor opened and Leah's mum came out. It had to be Leah's mum. They had the same warm eyes. Even their hair was cut in a similar style. Leah put the dog down and it yapped around my ankles again.

‘Mum, meet Michael Terny,' said Leah. ‘Michael, this is my mum.'

I put out my hand and wondered if it was sweaty.

‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs McIntyre,' I said.

Her smile was a clone of Leah's.

‘Pleased to meet you, too, Michael,' she said. ‘But you can forget the Mrs McIntyre business. Call me Carol.'

For a moment, I felt dizzy. It was the strangest thing. It stirred old memories. I didn't mean to say anything. It just came out.

‘That was my mum's name.'

Mrs McIntyre paused and cocked her head to one side.

‘Was?' she asked.

‘She's dead,' I replied.

‘I'm sorry to hear that, Michael.' She was too. It was written in her eyes. ‘Come in and have a drink,' she continued. ‘Are you staying for tea?'

‘Well . . .'

‘Yes, he is, Mum,' said Leah. ‘He just needs to ring home to let the olds know.'

‘Well, don't just stand there, girl. Show Michael the phone, while I get some lemonade together. Homemade lemonade all right with you, Michael?'

‘Yes, Mrs McIntyre. Thank you.'

‘Call me Carol, remember?'

Leah took my hand and led me inside. The kitchen was as I imagined it – bright and warm with spotless wooden surfaces. The smell of baking bread made my mouth water. Leah took me into the hall to the phone.

‘Come outside when you're done,' she said. ‘We'll have our lemonade by the pool.'

I rang Mary and told her I was going to be late. She was so pleased she could barely speak. Two friends, she must have been thinking. Two friends. Like a dream come true. And then she found words. I almost had to hang up on her, she gabbled so much in excitement.

Out in the garden Mrs McIntyre was setting a table under a broad sailcloth and Leah was carrying a tray with glasses and a jug of icy lemonade. The dog was scurrying around her legs. Mrs McIntyre waved me over.

‘Come and make yourself comfortable, Michael,' she said. ‘Would you like to go for a swim? I guess you won't have brought any swimmers along, but you can swim in your shorts.'

‘Thanks, Mrs McIntyre, but I'll pass on the swim. If I jumped into a pool, I'd drain it.'

She reached over and tapped me hard on the head.

‘Hello?' she said. ‘Anyone in there? It's Carol. Does your friend suffer from short-term memory loss, Leah? Anyway, who cares about the pool? I think it can cope with you, Michael.'

I smiled. ‘Thanks anyway, Mrs . . . Carol, but I won't today. Maybe some other time.'

‘Right. Your choice. Now, you'll have to excuse me. I've got about ten things on the go in the kitchen and if I don't get back to them, we'll be eating charcoal tonight. Just shout if you need anything. Better still, bring out some snacks and dips, Leah. Tide you guys over until tea.'

She disappeared back into the house. Leah and I sat in silence. Scamp jumped up on her lap and slobbered at her neck, making her giggle. After a while, he settled down and curled into a shaggy ball, his head hanging over the side of her legs. With an outsized sigh, he closed his eyes and fell asleep. I stretched back in my chair and looked around the garden.

The afternoon sun dappled the pool. Little waves of light reflected up from the water's surface and made the fronds on the palms shimmer with gold and yellow. Tiny birds dipped in flight and brushed the water, sending more ripples across the pool. Everything danced in light. I reached for my lemonade. Even that seemed perfect, the way the beads of moisture glistened on the glass. I pressed it to my forehead and shivered at the chill. I almost didn't want to drink. I didn't want to alter anything. Maybe Leah felt that too. We listened to the chatter of the birds, bathed in the sun's reflection and said nothing. When I finally took a long drink of lemonade, I had never tasted anything so good.

I knew Leah was waiting for me to start. But the words I had rehearsed now seemed stupid. Instinctively, I checked for differences. This world was like a dream. I couldn't be sure I wouldn't suddenly wake in a dark and comfortless bedroom. But differences were all around. The air was alive with change, the shadows and patterns of light always moving. I gave up. Sometimes you have to trust.

‘Leah,' I said. ‘I want to tell you some things I've never told anyone else. But . . .'

‘But you're afraid I won't understand, or I'll think it's stupid. That I'll show you, in some way, that you were wrong to trust me. And, if that happens, you'll feel more alone than you do now.' Leah kept her gaze fixed in the distance, beyond the palms. She stroked Scamp's head.

‘Mum died when I was six.'

I hadn't meant to talk about that. I was going to talk about the Dream. But the words just came out. Now they'd started, I let them carry on. ‘She was killed by a drunk driver. Hit her car head on. Mum was trapped in the car. She . . . she died. I don't remember much about it. The other guy. He was all right. Hardly a scratch.'

I remembered some things. I remembered Dad and me in a courtroom about a year later. I remembered the guy being hugged by his friends and family. I hadn't known what was happening, but I could remember the expression on Dad's face. It was as though his life simply drained away at that moment. The guy got off on a technicality – something to do with the blood tests the police had done. All I knew was the person who'd killed my mum was free, surrounded by love. Not a scratch.

‘Dad started drinking. He couldn't work. He couldn't sleep. He couldn't stay still for any time at all.'

But that didn't tell the whole tale. How can you describe watching your father curl into a brittle and dry husk, moving from place to place in search of something always out of reach? How can you explain about a seven-year-old boy, fat and unhappy, cleaning vomit from a bedroom floor while his Dad howled at the ceiling or, worse, just stared at the walls, unseeing, unresponsive?

‘We travelled. Dad would suddenly pack up our things, stick them in the ute and we'd take off.' To dusty, flyblown settlements with parched earth and a single pub, or cities where everyone moved with purpose. Except us.

‘He'd find a job. I'd go to school. But it wouldn't last.' Because sooner or later, there would be a fight, or Dad would crawl into the bottom of a bottle and stay there. ‘We'd move on. Dad got thinner and thinner. I got fatter.' How predictable. It was almost shameful to talk about it. Dad's prop was grog, and mine was food. We were two walking clichés. ‘And school got worse and worse.'

I glanced over at Leah. She hadn't moved, but her eyes glistened. I sucked in a deep breath and continued.

‘And then Mary, my step-mum, came along. Literally appeared, standing on the doorstep, smiling at me. Dad hadn't mentioned her. He'd stopped talking to me by then. He was at work when she turned up.' I smiled as I remembered. ‘She came in, made herself a cup of tea, the first of thousands, and we sat and talked for hours. Mary told me she was here to stay, that I could rely on her.' I didn't believe her, of course. Not then and not for a long time. I didn't want another Mum. Anyway, I figured she'd never be able to put up with Dad and me. I was shocked that Dad had even tried for another relationship. He was only happy in the company of Jim Beam or Johnnie Walker.

‘But she stayed. And school was bearable because she stayed. It took a long time for me to believe she wouldn't leave. At times I still can't believe it. Now I know that without her, I wouldn't . . . I don't know. I don't think I could go on. There are two things in my life that are precious. One is Mary. The other is the Dream.'

I laughed. ‘That was what I wanted to tell you about. The Dream. The rest of this stuff . . . I don't know. I didn't mean to talk about it. Sorry.'

I finished my lemonade. My throat was dry. I couldn't remember the last time I had talked so much.

‘Have you heard of lucid dreaming, Leah?' I asked.

Leah frowned. ‘I know what “lucid” means,' she said. ‘It means clear or well-spoken. I've no idea what it has to do with dreaming.'

So I explained again. And while I did I thought back to the very beginnings of the Dream. After Mum died, my dreams became more and more vivid. Some were nightmares, sure. But other dreams, ordinary dreams, as well. I would wake five or six times in the night, bathed in sweat, images burned on my mind. I'd fall back asleep and the dreams would take up right where they'd left off. It was as if they were calling to me in some way.

Riding the Dream came shortly after. I had a particularly vivid and recurring dream. I was in school, standing on the oval surrounded by four boys. I couldn't get away. I had to stand while they baited me, faces twisted in hatred. Five nights of the same dream, before I spotted the first difference. It was small – I think a shirt changed colour – and then other differences flooded in. The way the sun shone, the colour of the grass, the sounds and smells. This time, I didn't wake up. I stayed asleep. And rode the Dream.

I didn't tell Leah what I did to the boys in the Dream. But I did mention the glass – how I encountered it on the way back to the real world. She'd hardly said anything throughout my explanation. I couldn't see her eyes, and I was desperate to know if there was understanding or contempt or pity in them. I hesitated. But it was too late. I'd come this far. I might as well finish the journey.

‘Now . . . oh, God. This sounds crazy, I know it sounds crazy. I think I might have found a way for things in the Dream to affect the real world.' I told her about my visit to Mr Atkins's house. I described what I found, what I did. I told her about the cube of sugar. I babbled, eager to get it over and done with. When I finished there was silence. Even the chattering of birds was muted. Sweat beaded on my forehead and I reached out to refill my glass. My hand was shaking.

‘I know this sounds stupid,' I said finally. ‘I'm sorry if . . .'

‘We need to find a way to test it,' Leah said.

I stared at her. Her eyes were bright and fixed on mine.

‘What?' I said.

‘This link between the Dream and the real world. We need to test if it's really there. Or if you've dreamed it all. That's right, isn't it?'

‘You mean you believe me?'

Annoyance flashed briefly across her face.

‘Of course I believe you. Why shouldn't I?' She ruffled Scamp's fur. ‘Now just shut up a moment, Michael. I think you've done quite enough talking. I need to think. You can do what you like in the Dream, go anywhere, do anything. And you're in control. So we need to devise a test. When you dream tonight, you could do something specific. Something that changes the real world in a way we can check. That can't be beyond us.'

She smiled.

‘What?' I said.

‘Let's see if you can work a simple miracle tonight, Michael. Then we'll know, one way or another.'

She hugged the dog to her chest.

5
.

The supermarket was ugly. Big cream tiles made it look like a public toilet block. Inside, the aisles were narrow and crowded with boxes. The fluorescent lighting flickered.

I hadn't made a list, but I knew we needed bread, milk and eggs. There were other things, but I reckoned I'd see them as I wandered down the aisles. I liked shopping. I liked to take my time in each the aisle, examining the shelves. There's always interesting stuff. Tins of Asian vegetables, shrink-wrapped cheese from Norway, CDs, DVDs, choker chains for dogs. Sometimes, I imagined the lives of people who bought these things. Homesick people or old people who lived in apartments with only a dog and memories. So many lives out there, closed to me. I liked unfamiliar supermarkets in particular. Because I didn't know the layout, I had to go down every aisle. I got to see everything.