very careful if Christopher had a bad dream because bad dreams were the imaginary side poking around to see if you knew about them. So, if things got really scary in a dream, Christopher was supposed to just run to the street.
She can’t get you if you’re on the street.
“Who?”
“The less you know about her, the better. I don’t want her to find you.”
Christopher then asked the nice man to come to the real side with him, but the nice man said he couldn’t. He had a job to do. Then, the nice man mussed his hair and closed the door.
In an instant the cotton candy smell turned back to cold air. Christopher returned to his body on the real side. He saw Special Ed with the tree house door open in his hand.
“Come on, Chris,” Special Ed said. “It’s almost six. We’re going to be late.”
“Yeah,” Mike said. “We gotta get back to the golf course.”
“We don’t want to get grounded again,” Matt agreed.
Christopher followed his friends out of the tree house. He was the last one out. He closed the door behind him, shutting the imaginary world inside like a coffin. Then, he climbed down the little 2x4s like baby teeth. When they reached the ground, Christopher looked at the white plastic bag back on the low-hanging branch.
And he smiled.
Because he wasn’t alone.
“Chris, are you okay?” Matt asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Your nose is bleeding.”
Christopher reached up and dabbed at his nose. He brought his fingers back into his field of vision like rabbit ears and saw them spotted with blood.
The power will…
The power will…come at a price.
“It’s nothing. I’m fine. Let’s go.”
Then, he knelt down to wash the blood off in the pure, white snow.
“Christopher, are you asleep?” his mother asked.
Christopher followed her voice back to the present. He didn’t know how much time had passed, but his mother had already reached the end of the baby book.
“No, I’m wide awake,” he said.
Then, he asked her to go back to the beginning of the baby book and look at the old pictures again. It was the only thing that made his brain stop itching.
He had no idea why.
Chapter 37
Ambrose opened the baby book.
It was one o’clock at night. His room was still. He opened the window and listened to the snow falling outside. It was barely audible. Someone without gauze covering their eyes probably couldn’t have heard any of it. But he could. Wet, heavy drops falling on the ground like feathers. David used to love to play in the snow. God, his little brother loved to play in the snow.
Ambrose held the baby book.
He remembered the time David begged him to take him sledding on the 3 Hole Golf course. “You’re not old enough, kid.” But David could be persuasive. And that time, he won out. They went sledding. David wore his favorite hat. It was a ski hat with the Pittsburgh Steelers logo on it and a yellow tassel on top. Back before the Immaculate Reception, when the Steelers were a terrible football team. But Ambrose won the hat at Kennywood and gave it to his little brother. That hat was still David’s favorite. That and the baseball glove Ambrose bought him. He still remembered that baseball-glove smell.
Ambrose stood up.
He remembered going down the steep hill of the 3 Hole Golf course. The wind turning their cheeks red like the apple that scared David when he saw Snow White. They went sledding all day, the snow sneaking its way under David’s mittens, making his wrists ache with cold. When they finally left for home, his nose was caked in frozen snot. Mom and Dad were out, so Ambrose made them two TV dinners with the tinfoil peas and lumpy mashed potatoes. They sat down and ate together and watched the Steelers lose to the Bears.
“God damn Steelers,” Ambrose said.
“God damn Steelers,” David said.
“Watch your mouth. And take off that hat while we eat.”
David took off the old Steelers hat and smiled when his big brother mussed up his hair.
Ambrose was getting older, and over the years, it was getting harder to remember details about his little brother. But some things he would never forget.
David’s hair.
Ambrose could still remember the color. Not quite black. Not quite brown. Textured so perfectly that a bad haircut was an impossibility. Ambrose remembered his mother taking a lock of the hair to put on the front page of David’s baby book. It sat proudly right next to the little hospital bracelet