Dream Boy by Mary Crockett, Madelyn Rosenberg Read Free Book Online Page A

quite a trick.” The idea of someone going into my brain and picking up stray thoughts was kind of cool. But creepy. What if I didn’t want him in there? “How do you do it?”
    “It’s not a trick. It’s like part of me is still up there.” He tapped my forehead with his pinky. “I can hear stuff.”
    “Could you…could you maybe not hear it?”
    “Sure,” he said. “Sorry.” He took my hand again and held it as we walked.
    After a few seconds, I asked, “Does that mean ‘sure’ you won’t do it, or ‘sure’ you won’t let on that you’re doing it?”
    “I’ll try not to do it.”
    I’m thinking of a number between one and ten , I thought, and then looked at him out of the corner of my eye to see if he picked up on it. He seemed not to notice, so I went on, out loud, “So, where do you live?”
    “Oak Drive,” he said. “There was an old house for sale and I—we—got it.”
    “Who’s we?”
    “My parents,” he said. “And me.”
    “You live with your parents?” I asked, but what I meant was: you have parents?
    “It appears so.”
    As we walked on, I flipped the idea back and forth in my head: it appears he has parents, it appears he’s real. He sounded as surprised at all this as I was.
    “It’s not—you’re not living in the old Lucas house?” It was the only house on Oak Drive that had been up for sale, but the last time I’d seen it, it was basically uninhabitable. The paint was peeling, the front steps had fallen in, and there was a hole below the porch where groundhogs had chewed through. I’d always thought it was kind of romantic, though, in that shabby Victorian way.
    He nodded.
    “You’re in that old house with parents?” It was as if everything had shifted overnight. “And you’re really…?” I just let the question sit there, hoping he’d finish the thought for me, but he just nodded again.
    “Really…?” I repeated.
    “It appears so.”
    “You say that a lot.”
    “You say ‘really’ a lot.” His grin looked kind of like the one from the dream, but different, too. A little confused.
    “But what I mean is: you’re really… new here?” I found the idea vaguely freakish and I was half-hoping he was going to tell me no, that this was all just a joke, a segment in one of those prank reality shows.
    “You could say that,” he said.
    “This is so weird.” I shook my head. “I don’t know what to believe, what’s real and what’s—”
    “What’s not? I thought we’d gotten that part straight.” His smile faded into a straight line.
    “I didn’t mean you,” I said. “Sorry.”
    “Nothing to be sorry for,” he said.
    We turned down the winding side street that ran perpendicular to the river. The front yard of the ranch on the corner was overloaded in that obsessive-compulsive way with concrete birdbaths, fountains, and three-foot-tall statues of mostly half-naked Romans. Beside the cluttered front stoop, a concrete pig received the blessing of the Virgin Mary.
    I took a breath, looked up at Martin, and decided to get it over with. “So, how did you get here?” I asked.
    He rubbed his bare elbow and looked at me through the corner of his eyes. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
    “All I know is…” I lowered my voice, worried that maybe I had this all wrong and he was just some eccentric guy who happened to look like the guy in my dream, and who happened to be biking in my neighborhood, and who happened to be able to read minds, and who happened to examine his own skin like it was a new Sunday suit. I mean, he hadn’t outright said it, had he? I was the one in your dreams. And maybe all that other stuff was just coincidence and I was going to sound crazy. “All I know is that you were in my dreams, and then you were in my driveway.”
    “But you brought me here, right?”
    “Me!? With what? Fairy dust?” I tried to sand down the edges in my voice. “I mean, I didn’t do anything. I just dreamed.”
    We’d reached the river,