The Cure for Dreaming by Cat Winters Read Free Book Online Page A

paddle.”
    â€œI’m so sorry about that. Here”—I dug into my bag and tugged out
Dracula
—“keep it. It’s yours now.”
    â€œKeep it?” he asked. “But you love it.”
    â€œIt’s the least I can do.”
    He flipped the novel over and studied the cover illustration of Dracula’s angular castle perched atop a lumpy hill. “I like the way the little bats are soaring around the towers. It looks like a corker of a book.” His eyes returned to mine. “But I don’t know. I think you owe me more than just a ghost story. Don’t you?”
    I shrank back. “I—I—I don’t—”
    He cracked a smile and nudged my arm with his elbow. “Don’t look so terrified, Olivia. I just meant I think you need to work even harder to persuade your father to let me take you to that party.” He reached out and stroked a piece of my hair and, with it, my cheek. “Will you do that for me, Sleeping Beauty?”
    â€œYes, of course.” I peeled my eyes away from his red ear. “I’d be happy to.”
    â€œGood.” He dropped his hand to his side. “Tell him I won’t bite, unlike”—he patted the novel—“your friend Dracula here.”
    He tucked the book into his satchel and wandered away.
    Frannie’s face came into view from around the corner to the stairwell, and as she approached she peeked over hershoulder at Percy disappearing down the steps. Without slowing her stride, she grabbed me by the elbow and steered me toward the music room at the opposite end of the second floor.
    â€œSo,” she said, “was he kind to you when he drove you home last night?”
    â€œVery kind. But something awful happened to him just now.”
    â€œWhat?”
    We passed a boy named Stuart from English who was pantomiming Mr. Dircksen’s attack on Percy to a group of his friends in front of the library.
    I lowered my voice. “Mr. Dircksen smacked Percy in the head in front of the class . . . and he threatened to send him down to the principal for a paddling. Percy and I had just been exchanging whispers about
Dracula
.”
    â€œA paddling on the backside?” Frannie lifted her chin, her eyebrows raised. “Well, now. That’s highly appropriate.”
    I stopped and shook her arm off mine. “Why on earth do you hate Percy?”
    â€œIt’s nothing,” she said, but her face went red and splotchy.
    I took her by the arm and pulled her aside, one door down from Stuart and his friends.
    â€œIt doesn’t seem like nothing, Frannie.”
    â€œI just . . .” She shifted her weight between her feet. “I just think he’s a snob, that’s all. And snobs are only fun in Austen novels.”
    â€œAre you sure you don’t have a particular reason for hating him?”
    â€œJust watch yourself with him—that’s all I’m going to say.” She hooked her arm again through mine and pulled me toward the opened chorus room doors. “I’ve heard he flits from girl to girl and doesn’t care about their reputations. Watch out for his hands.”
    â€œHis hands?” I asked.
    â€œOn your bottom, you ninny. I’ve heard he’s a grabber.”
    She tugged me into the music room, and we sealed the subject of Percy closed.
    I OPENED MY MOUTH AS FAR AS MY JAW COULD STRETCH and joined my girls’ chorus sisters in rehearsing “Silent Night” for the Christmas concert.
    In the middle of the second verse, just as my vibrato was gaining strength and feeling good in my chest, my friend Kate entered the room with a folded piece of paper tucked between her fingers. Her new black shoes with buttons on the sides clip-clopped across the floor to the beat of the metronome sitting on Mr. Bennington’s piano.
    Mr. Bennington stopped conducting and scratched his waxy mustache. “Let us take a short break,