“No kidding,” Dan said, waving his cane in one white-veined hand. “My mom’s so freaked out, she’s shelling out big-time for the replacements. My new eyes are going to
Mr. Solomon sighed. “Indeed. And is there any great wisdom from you two lovebirds holding hands in the back?”
We pulled apart as everyone spun around, still quizzical at the two of us together. My friends blamed William Shakespeare for turning me into a meeker. They rolled their eyes at the old-speak that sometimes burbled out of my mouth.
But the changes had come from a place more primeval than they thought. The Bard had nothing on my subconscious.
“Well, Mr. Solomon,” Maria said, “I learned that those olden-day heroines weren’t nearly as wimpy as I thought. Turns out you really can die from running around outside in the cold. Especially if you’re wet.” With her free hand, she pointed to the dark patch of frostbite on her left cheek, which shone like a misplaced black eye. Her mother had made Maria promise to get a skin graft soon, but in the meantime she was seriously milking it.
“Fascinating,” Solomon said. “Though perhaps not as relevant to your original project as one might hope.”
“Oh, I assure you, Mr. Solomon,” Maria said. “Unbalanced hormones and Antarctic exposure go hand in hand.”
“An interesting observation. And you, Mr. Black? What have you to tell us about the rigors of sleep?”
What indeed? I took a deep breath, wondering what I was going to do after class ended today. Now that the final projects were over, I could reset my bioframe, switch on all those little nanos that would make my anabolic and catabolic processes simultaneous once more—no need to sleep ever again.
Did I still want my dreams? They weren’t so different from real life, now that Maria and I had connected out here in the waking world. But I kept wondering what else they might show me, what magic would be lost if I never twitched and blinked my way through Stage 5 again.
“I’m glad I tried it, Mr. Solomon.”
“Did you make it all the way down to REM sleep?”
“You bet,” I said. “Dreams, rapid-eye movement, drool, the whole deal.”
Maria shot me a sly look. We’d decided not to mention that she’d dreamed once, too, courtesy of acute hypothermia, combined with a little knock-out juice from her bioframe. Or to tell Solomon that my hormones had followed hers out of balance, since modern-day widgets weren’t calibrated for someone sleeping six hours a night. I’d gone mad enough to have teleported to a deluge in Denmark the night before, just to hold Maria’s hand in the freezing rain.
Our projects had overlapped in all kinds of interesting ways.
“And what exactly did you dream of, Mr. Black?” Solomon asked.
Maria reached over to squeeze my hand again, fingernails biting flesh.
“Scarcity, Mr. Solomon,” I said. “War, pestilence, famine. All the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that this world does not allow.”
“Really?” He raised an eyebrow. “
“Most definitely,” I said, hearing the sound of Maria scribbling in her notebook, tangling more words and images inspired by my lies. And I decided: no adjustments to my bioframe this afternoon, not yet.
At least one more night of dreams.
Excerpt from
1
8:11 A.M. REX
The halls of Bixby High School were always hideously bright on the first day of school. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, their white honeycombed plastic shields newly cleaned of dead insect shapes. The freshly shined floors dazzled, glinting in the hard September sunlight that streamed in through the school’s open front doors.
Rex Greene walked slowly, wondering how the students jostling past him could
Rex squinted in the brightness and pushed up his glasses with one finger, wishing he could wear dark shades over their thick frames. One more layer between him and Bixby High School.
The same faces were all here. Timmy Hudson, who had beaten him up just about every day in fifth grade, passed by, not giving Rex a second glance. The surging crowd was full of old tormentors and classmates and childhood friends, but no one seemed to recognize him anymore. Rex pulled his long black coat around himself and clung to the row of lockers along the wall, waiting for the crowd to clear, wondering exactly when he had become invisible. And why. Maybe it was because the daylight world meant so little to him now.
He put his head down and edged toward class.
Then he saw the new girl.
She was his age, maybe a year younger. Her hair was deep red, and she was carrying a green book bag over one shoulder. Rex had never seen her before, and in a school as small as Bixby High, that was unusual enough. But novelty wasn’t the strangest thing about her.
She was out of focus.
A faint blur clung to her face and hands, as if she were standing behind thick glass. The other faces in the crowded hall were clear in the bright sunlight, but hers wouldn’t resolve no matter how hard he stared. She seemed to exist just out of the reach of focus, like music played from a copy of a copy of an old cassette tape.
Rex blinked, trying to clear his eyes, but the blurriness stayed with the girl, tracking her as she slipped further into the crowd. He abandoned his place by the wall and pushed his way after her.
That was a mistake. Now sixteen, he was a lot bigger, his dyed-black hair more obvious than ever, and his invisibility left him as he pushed purposefully through the crowd.
A shove came from behind, and Rex’s balance twisted under him. More hands kept him reeling, four or five boys working together until he came to a crashing stop, his shoulder slamming into the row of lockers lining the wall.
“Out of the way, dork!” Rex felt a slap against the side of his face. He blinked as the world went blurry, the hall dissolving into a swirl of colors and moving blobs. The sickening sound of his glasses skittering along the floor reached his ears.
“Rex lost his spex!” came a voice. So Timmy Hudson did remember his name. Laughter trailed away down the hall.
Rex realized that his hands were out in front of him, feeling the air like a blind man’s. He might as well be blind. Without his glasses, the world was a blender full of meaningless color.
The bell rang.
Rex slumped against the lockers, waiting for the hall to clear. He’d never catch up with the new girl now. Maybe he’d imagined her.
