The Hunter Page 0,41

your nightmare next."

"Good job, Mr. Tactful," Dee said under her breath.

They explained about the nightmares to Summer. She wasn't as disturbed as Jenny thought she might be.

"Anything to get out of here," she said.

"I know. I've only been here twenty minutes, and I hate the place already," Dee said. "Anybody for claustrophobia?"

In front of the door Jenny hesitated with her finger on the button. "I don't suppose you want to tell us what you drew for your nightmare," she said. She didn't have much hope; none of the others had told.

"Okay," Summer said readily. "It was a messy room."

"A messy room?" Michael said. "Oh, horror."

"No, really, Summer," Audrey said with a briskly adult air. "It'll help if you tell us."

Dee flashed an amused ebony glance at her.

"I did tell you. It's a messy room."

"It's all right, Summer," Jenny said gently. "Well deal with it when we get there." She pushed the red button. The blue light went on. The door slid open.

It was a messy room.

"You see," Summer said.

It was Summer's bedroom, only more so. Ever since Jenny had known Summer, her room had been messy. Summer's parents were refugees from the sixties, and everything in their house was slightly frayed or weathered, but as Michael said, Summer herself had clutter down to a fine art. When you visited her you usually couldn't see the handmade tie-dyed curtains at the window or the bright patchwork quilt on the bed, because of the things hanging from them or piled up in front of them or scattered on top of them.

In the room behind the mirrored door, Jenny couldn't even see the bed. There was a small clear space in front of the closet-everything else was obscured by piles of junk.

Dee and Michael were giggling. "Trust you, Sunshine, to have a nightmare like this," Dee said.

Jenny sighed, not nearly as amused. "All right, everybody, let's go in. I suppose we have to clean it up-there must be a door somewhere along one of the far walls."

"Hey, wait. I don't do the C-word," Michael protested, alarmed. "Besides, dust is bad for my allergies."

"In," said Audrey, taking him by the ear.

They all squeezed in between the closet and the piles. The door slid noiselessly shut behind them-and disappeared.

"Talk about claustrophobia," Michael gasped.

"Cette chambre est une vrai pagaille," Audrey said under her breath.

"What?" Jenny asked.

"I said this is one messy room. Summer, how can you stand it?"

Summer's delft-blue eyes filled with tears. "My real room isn't as bad as this. This is my nightmare, dummy!"

"Well, why this kind of nightmare?" Audrey said, not softening.

"Because my mom never yells about my room, but once my nana came to visit, and she almost passed out. I still dream about what she said."

"Don't make her feel bad," Jenny whispered to Audrey. "Try to clear a path around the edges," she said aloud, "and check every wall for the door."

The piles of junk were amazingly varied. There were heaps of rumpled clothes, year-old magazines, disjointed Ray-Bans, spindled cassette tapes, unstrung string bikinis, crushed frozen yogurt cups, bent photographs, mismatched sandals, dry felt-tip pens, chewed pencils, twisted headphones, musty towels, endless mounds of underwear, and a zoo of bedraggled stuffed animals. Also a dog-chewed Frisbee, a mashed Twister mat, and a futon that smelled like somebody's bottom.

"It's spider city here," Dee said, gathering up one of the heaps. "Haven't you ever heard of Raid?"

"I believe in live and let live," Summer said vaguely.

It really was a nightmare of sorts, Jenny thought-a nightmare of tedium. But Dee worked with tireless energy and Audrey with fastidious precision, and slowly they forged a path through the debris. Michael was no good at all-he stopped to leaf through every magazine he picked up.

They were getting to a different type of garbage-a type that made Audrey wrinkle up her nose. Blackened avocado husks, mildewed newspapers, and plastic glasses with the dregs of unidentifiable liquids in them.

Then Jenny lifted a box of odds and ends and saw something like a pressed flower on the hardwood floor underneath. But it wasn't a flower, it was the

wrong shape. At first she didn't recognize it, then she saw the little muzzle and the tiny curled-up feet. It was a flat and desiccated mouse.

She couldn't help gasping.

I can't touch that, I can't, I can't.

Dee scraped it up with a 1991 calendar and threw it in the closet. Jenny felt a whisper of terror inside her, unease that went beyond disgust at the mouse.

The garbage got worse and worse-like what you'd