doesn’t know what to say.
His silent anger shakes the seats.
10:05 a.m.
Cabel doesn’t speak until they arrive in Stratford. And then all he says is a harsh “good luck.” He gets off the bus and heads for his hotel room.
Janie watches him go.
She closes her eyes, then opens them again, and follows the cheerleaders in the other direction to their room.
Once inside, they don’t acknowledge one another.
Janie’s quite good with that.
2:00 p.m.
The students meet in the lobby. Camelot starts in thirty minutes. Janie boards the bus, exhausted, and sits in the back row again.
Cabel doesn’t show up.
2:33 p.m.
The play begins. Janie excuses herself from her orchestra seat and finds a spot in the near-empty balcony. She sleeps soundly up there for three hours, awaking in the closing scene. She slips back down to the orchestra seats and follows the others back to the bus.
6:01 p.m.
The bus stops at Pizza Hut. They have one hour to eat before going back to the evening play.
Janie grabs a Personal Pan to go, eats it on the bus, and sleeps. Sleeps right through the play, in her backseat spot. Nobody seems to notice she didn’t get off the bus.
11:33 p.m.
The bus arrives, most kids exhausted, back at the hotel. Janie falls into bed. She is numb, but not from anyone’s dream. Not this time. She thinks about Cabel. Cries silently in her pillow in the dark room. The heat register hums loudly. Savannah, the captain of the women’s soccer team, collapses on the covers next to her. They don’t speak. They hover at the edges of their bed.
October 15, 2005, 1:04 a.m.–6:48 a.m.
Janie jumps from one dream to another.
Savannah dreams about making the U.S. women’s soccer team, and meeting the legendary Mia Hamm, even though she’s retired. Big surprise—this dream could totally be an episode of Hannah Montana. Just when Janie wonders if Savannah has even the slightest bit of depth to her, Savannah’s dream turns to Kyle, who sat in front of Janie on the bus. Interesting combo, there. Janie’s intrigued.
Until the switch to Melinda.
Melinda, no surprise, has a three-way sex party going on with Shay Wilder, who is in bed next to her, and with Carrie. The sex is normal at first, then unbelievably tacky, in Janie’s opinion. The bodies of Carrie and Shay are, to use a crass phrase, blown out of proportion. Janie manages for the first time in someone else’s dream to turn away.
Janie counts it as a major victory.
And then there’s Shay.
Shay dreams about Cabel Strumheller.
A lot.
And in a lot of different ways.
By morning, Janie hates Shay with all her heart. And she has very dark circles under her eyes.
8:08 a.m.
Shay, Melinda, and Savannah head down to breakfast. The matinee is at 10:00.
“See you on the bus,” Janie says, even though she is starving. The other girls don’t bother to answer. Janie rolls her eyes.
She takes a shower, wraps a towel around her head, and falls back into the bed. She sets the alarm for noon. The bus will be back for the luggage, and the students who didn’t elect to take in a third play, at 1 p.m.
8:34 a.m.
Janie dreams for the second time in her life. She dreams that she is alone, drowning in a dark lake, and Cabel is on the shore with a rope, but he won’t throw it to her. She waves frantically to him, and he can’t see her. She slips under the water slowly. Under the water, she sees others like her. Babies, children, teens, adults. All of them floating just under the surface of the water, no one able to help.
It’s because they’re all dead.
Their eyes bulge.
She is screaming when the alarm goes off. Her towel has fallen off her head, and her hair is in tangles. She can’t see beyond it.
There is an urgent knock on the door.
And it’s him.
He’s holding a bag of food.
Looking mournful.
He pushes past her into the room, closes the door and locks it, takes her hand, and holds her. He is pleading. “I don’t understand,” he says. “I just don’t understand. Why did you do that to me?” He’s broken.
And so is she. “I can explain,” Janie says. And she buries her face in his shirt and cries. “Just get me home.”
They fall on the bed, and they just hold each other quietly.
That’s all they do.
And then, it’s time to go home.
2:00 p.m.
Janie and Cabel are in the back seats again. Carrie and Melinda sit in front of them. Across the aisle, Savannah and Kyle