“What did we all dream?” Charlie said.
“I asked you what’s going on.”
He smiled patiently.
“James?”
James looked up at me nervously. “I want Paul to go first.”
Charlie shook his head. “No.”
“I don’t want to say what I dreamed.”
“I’ll do it, then.”
Charlie held out his hand for James’s dream diary, the gesture delivered with total confidence that his command would be obeyed.
“You don’t have to,” I told James.
But Charlie’s hand remained out, and I watched as James did exactly as he’d been instructed. He didn’t want his entry to be read out, but such was the hold Charlie had over him that he was incapable of refusing.
Charlie opened James’s diary.
“‘I dreamed I was in Room C5b,’” he read. “‘Charlie and Billy were there too. Paul wasn’t. The air was strange and liquid, so it was like swimming through water. When I went to the door, I looked through the window at the side and Paul was standing there.’”
James glanced at me, and then quickly away.
“‘I couldn’t see him properly,’” Charlie continued. “‘His face was distorted and it was like he wasn’t properly in the dream. He seemed frightened. I started trying to talk to him, but I don’t think he could hear what I was saying. And then he wasn’t there anymore.’”
James was staring down at the floor now, completely unable to meet my eye. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. His dream matched mine almost exactly, and even taking incubation into account, there was no way they could have ended up so similar. There was only one explanation I could think of for what I was hearing.
He’d written his diary entry after talking to me on the bus.
I want Paul to go first.
Because I would have read my account of my dream, and then he would have read his, and they would have been the same. And in that moment, he would have impressed Charlie and proved him right, even though he knew deep down it was all a fantasy and a lie.
Jesus, I thought.
After everything we’d been through over the years—all those times I’d stuck up for him and protected him—he was so far gone that he was prepared to use me to help confirm Charlie’s delusions.
“Bullshit,” I said.
Charlie broke off from reading.
“What?”
“I said this is bullshit.”
“Why?” Charlie looked from me to the book and back again, playing confused. “This is what James has written down. What are you saying?”
For a moment, I was too angry—too hurt—to answer. I looked from one of them to the other. Charlie waiting for my reply. Billy indifferent to it. And James, still looking down, so obviously ashamed of himself that I couldn’t get the words out.
I’m saying my best friend is a liar.
“Paul?” Charlie said.
“Finish reading what James dreamed.”
But instead, Charlie put James’s diary on the desk.
“You’ve always doubted this, haven’t you?” he said. “Why don’t you tell us what you dreamed? I can finish James’s account afterward.”
I looked down at my bag, on the floor at my feet with my dream diary inside. But I couldn’t read from that now, could I? Not without either confirming what James had written or challenging him outright about it, and both seemed unbearable to me right then.
“Just finish reading what James wrote,” I said.
“In a minute,” Charlie said. “But actually, I think I’ll read from mine first—or rather, Billy will. That way we can avoid any doubts or suspicion. You go first, Billy.”
They swapped dream diaries and Billy started reading.
“‘Billy and James and I were here in the room,’” he said. “‘At first, I wasn’t sure if the two of them were lucid in the same way I was, but I thought they were. Paul wasn’t there. I could sense that he was somewhere close by, but he didn’t want to join us for some reason. I was disappointed, because I knew it might take all four of us at first to accomplish what we wanted to do. It would be much harder with just three, especially if there was someone nearby who didn’t believe. Paul didn’t want to join us—’”
Charlie held up a hand. “Stop there, Billy. I’ll read the beginning of yours now.”
I shook my head. “This is fucking crazy.”
“‘Me and Charlie were in the room,’” Charlie read. “‘James was there too, but he was flickery, like he hadn’t managed to be as there as me and Charlie were—like he wasn’t as connected. I could see Charlie clearly, though. Paul wasn’t anywhere around. He wasn’t there at all.’”
Charlie stopped and looked up at me. “What did you dream, Paul?”
I didn’t answer, and the silence in the air began ringing. After a moment, James looked up at me, with an imploring expression on his face that only intensified the sick feeling inside me. In his own sad way, he was doing this in an attempt to bring me back into the fold. To give me an opportunity to invest in Charlie’s fantasy the same way he had.
I stared back at him, my face hardening.
“I didn’t dream anything like that,” I said flatly. “I wasn’t there. I didn’t see any of you.”
“That you remember,” Charlie corrected me. “James wrote down that he saw you.”
“I think I’m done with this whole thing.”
“Yes.” Charlie leaned back. “I think that might be for the best. You being involved is hampering the three of us. That’s why we couldn’t connect properly—because you weren’t properly committed.”
“James?” I said.
And then I stood there, waiting to see if James was going to say anything. Come to his senses and confess, perhaps; put an end to this whole charade. It was obvious from Charlie’s words that he was attempting to banish me from the group right then, and this was my supposed best friend’s chance to speak up and stop all this.
To leave here with me.
But he said nothing.
“You’re right.” I came back to life and picked up my bag. “I guess I’ll see you guys around.”
I walked over to the door. When I reached it, I paused and looked back. Because even though I knew that nothing could possibly have happened, the fact remained that Goodbold was not in school today.
“How did it all end?” I called over.
“The dream broke apart,” Charlie said. “Because of you. I remember James and Billy drifting away from me, and the dream beginning to fade. Red Hands and I got as far as Goodbold’s house by ourselves, but I knew the two of us wouldn’t be strong enough to get inside by ourselves. All because of you.”
I shook my head and gave a half laugh.
“So nothing happened.”
Charlie smiled.
“We managed to kill his dog,” he said.
TWENTY-THREE
Goodbold was back at school the next day.
For obvious reasons, I found myself watching him out of the corner of my eye. On a superficial level, nothing about him had changed: he still lumbered about the same as always, rolling his shoulders, that whistle on a cord around his neck. But if you knew to look for it, it seemed to me that he was walking a little more slowly than usual, the way someone might while recovering from an operation. And every now and then I caught him looking around suspiciously, as though searching for someone.