I’d lost my grip. “Wake up!” she shouted from farther back in the alley.
A foot smashed my face, and my mouth filled with blood. I ran my tongue over the jagged end of a chipped tooth.
Great,
I thought.
That’ll look nice.
Another blow made my senses scatter. Everything was falling apart.
First thing in the morning I’ll have to call a dentist.
My mind seized on that thought.
Morning. In the morning.
White Blade pulled his sword free and raised it over my head.
I woke.
My head lay on a pillow. I kicked off the hot, sticky sheets.
Just a dream,
I told myself, relieved that I’d made it out. My tongue flicked over the edge of my teeth, finding the front one chipped. Pain surged through my jaw from the exposed nerve. I touched my face, and my fingers came away wet with blood.
A sword slid between the elevator doors, prying them apart.
Panic gripped me. Then I remembered that I’d fallen asleep twice — it was still a dream.
Wake up, damn it!
I hissed, slapping my cheeks. The pain from my tooth became excruciating.
My chest seized, and my eyes flicked open. The room appeared gray. I stared at the pattern of springs on the mattress above me. Touching my face felt no more real than it had in the dream, except there was no blood. Still, my jaw ached.
The clock on my desk said it was 5:47 AM, but I didn’t want to risk going back to sleep. I staggered to the bathroom. My breath caught when I looked in the mirror.
Black lines stained my face. Written in large block letters across my forehead were the words BEAT ME.
THE MARKER MUST HAVE BEEN permanent, because no matter how much I scrubbed, it didn’t come off. Dickie had lines on his face, too, but not nearly as bad as mine. I guess that was the advantage of sleeping on the top bunk.
I tried wearing a bandanna low across my forehead, except it made me look like a demented hippie. Dickie decided to pretend everything was normal and let other people freak about it. Easy for him to do — he didn’t have any words on his forehead (although they had colored the tip of his nose red, and I noticed that he tried very hard to get
that
off).
The best I could do was to scribble over the “B” with another magic marker so instead of BEAT ME it said EAT ME. It wasn’t much, but I thought it made a better statement.
By the end of first period, at least a hundred students had asked about my forehead. I started making up ridiculous stories to explain it. I said it was a political statement, and I said it wasn’t marker, but a tattoo. Then I told Beth Lindbergh, who was incredibly gullible, that it was how they marked admission at this nightclub in Chicago, and I made her swear not to tell anyone I’d snuck off campus to go there. She nodded, taking it very seriously.
In a way, the nightclub story felt the most true to me. My memories of the burrows were as vivid and real as anything I’d experienced in my waking life. I even grew nervous walking around corners, as if White Blade might be waiting to attack. Logically, I knew the writing on my face had little to do with my dreams. It wasn’t hard to guess who the real culprits were, and the Steves’ laughter when they saw Dickie and me only confirmed my suspicions. Still, I couldn’t shake the sense that it was more than coincidence. My dreams didn’t feel like dreams anymore. They were spilling out. Taking over.
Dickie and I decided to pretend that we’d marked ourselves. We didn’t want to risk having the administration get involved. Fortunately, no one made a big deal about the marks — at least not until last period rolled around and I had to go to Mr. Funt’s English class.
Since his divorce, Mr. Funt had become a bit too focused on school. A balding, unpublished writer with a ponytail, he hung around campus for long hours after classes ended, grading papers, drinking coffee, and sponsoring every club that crossed his desk. He was a good teacher — smarter than most of the adults at ASMA. While a lot
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