Hunted (14 page)

I
made an awkward gesture that I hoped took in the fact that I wanted
to know more, wanted to know what the future held.

"I
don't want to drag you into the middle of the fight your mother and I
are having, Adri."

"Are
the two of you going to get divorced?"

Dad
rubbed his eyes, but I was pretty sure it was more just to buy
himself time than anything else.

"You
know, when you were little anytime you asked me a question I didn't
want to answer I just distracted you with a toy. Sometimes I miss
those days."

"That's
a yes, then."

Tears
started pooling in my eyes, but my dad grabbed my hand before I could
run out of the room.

"I
don't know, Adri. I'm sorry, I wish I could give you an unqualified
no, but I can't any more. If you'd asked me even a couple of months
ago I would have said no without hesitating, but I'm just not sure
now."

"What
happened? Is there someone else?"

I
was old enough to understand that divorces happened, that it didn't
have to necessarily be my fault or Cindi's fault, but I knew that
they'd loved each other when we'd been little if nothing else. That,
seemed to demand that someone be at fault.

"No,
sweetie, there's nobody else. You heard the summarized version
earlier. Your mother feels like I've been an absentee husband and
father while I feel like she's been an absentee mother and wife. The
truth is that we're both right. And we're both wrong. It's just one
of those things."

I
knew my dad better than anyone else except for maybe my mother. I
could tell when he wasn't telling me the full story and this was one
of those times.

"What
else? That's not the only reason."

Dad
nodded. "You're going to think less of me for saying this, Adri,
but I'm tired of working and having nothing to show for it. I've been
in this profession for nearly two decades and at various times I was
making pretty good money, but even after all of that your mother and
I don't have enough in savings to cover a few hundred dollars' worth
of clothes for you. Our retirement is in just as bad a situation.
Honestly, at this rate I'll be working until the day I drop dead of a
heart attack."

"Don't
say that!" I managed to keep my outburst down to little more
than a whisper, but it took nearly every ounce of self-control that I
had. I managed it only because I knew that it would destroy Cindi if
she overheard what Dad was saying right now.

"I'm
sorry, Adri, but it's the truth. I tried to tell myself otherwise for
the longest time, but over the last few months things have gotten
even worse. We've gone from having only a little saved up to starting
to rack up credit card debt. The balances are small still, but they
get a little bit bigger every month. Your mother has nearly a hundred
thousand dollars in photography equipment down there."

I
didn't even try to hide my surprise. Dad tucked a stray strand of
hair behind my ear as he nodded.

"She's
been quiet about it, but every time I go down there to talk to her
she's got another lens or a new camera. She might wish otherwise, but
I can read our tax returns and last year alone she made nearly forty
thousand dollars. The truth is that I've been keeping a close eye on
her equipment as a way of proving to myself that she's reinvesting
all of her earnings. As bad as her current actions are, if she
started socking away tens of thousands of dollars into a separate
bank account somewhere that I didn't know about, that would be
worse."

"Because
it would mean that she was getting ready to leave you."

"Yes.
I hate to admit to having those kinds of doubts, but there it is."

My
stomach hurt and I suddenly wished that I hadn't eaten. If I'd
skipped dinner like I'd been thinking about doing then there wouldn't
be anything in me to come back up.

"I'm
sorry, Daddy. I didn't mean for Mom to buy all of those clothes for
me. I try not to ask for very much."

The
tears that had been threatening to escape earlier started down my
face now as my dad pulled me into a gentle hug.

"You
haven't done anything wrong, Adri. I love you and Cindi both. I don't
begrudge you the money we spent taking care of you. You've been a
real trooper and hardly ever asked for anything, and even some of the
extravagant spends on Cindi aren't her fault. I should have reined
your mother in years ago, but I just couldn't bring myself to deny
her any more than I could refuse you when you said that you wanted to
join the cheerleading squad. This is as much my fault as anyone
else's."

"What
are you going to do?"

As
much as I didn't want to hear the answer that I suspected he was
going to give me, I had to know. It would be better to know what was
coming than to have it hit me completely by surprise.

"Your
mom and I are going away for a week. We don't have the money for
anything fancy, but we need some time away from everything else to
try to reconnect. Your mom has all of the hiking gear we'd need and
she's agreed to pay down the credit card debt and buy a tent out of
her photography money, so we're going camping. We'll go up to St.
Croix and try to keep the distractions to a minimum. I'll bring my
cell phone but no way to recharge it and your mom will bring her
camera but no way to recharge it either."

"So
work will be able to call you if there is a real emergency, but they
won't be able to steal you away very much and Mom has a limited
number of pictures she can take before she's out of juice too."

"Yes.
We'll bring your mom's cell phone and a solar charger for it so that
you can get ahold of us if something happens, but other than that, it
will just be the two of us with nothing to do but talk to each
other."

"What
about your big project at work?"

"They'll
just have to get by without me for a week. Your mom suggested this
trip I think partly because she thought I wouldn't take the time off.
My boss isn't going to be happy about losing me on such short notice
like this, but you girls and your mom need to come first. I didn't
understand that as well as I should have early on in my marriage and
this is one of the consequences of that."

Cindi
didn't say anything when I finally went into our room to go to sleep.
I was a little worried that she'd overheard Dad and me, but there
wasn't anything I could do. If she hadn't overheard us, then anything
I did to try and make things better would just result in her finding
out what he'd said and being hurt as a result.

Once
I was ready for bed, I told Cindi good night and then fell asleep
almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. The dream about the Native American
had still bothered me a little when I'd been awake, but once I fell
asleep some of the raw terror I'd felt when he'd tried to kill me
again came back. It was odd the way that the dreams seemed less
important, less immediate, once I was awake.

It
was possible that it was some kind of mental defense mechanism from
having come so close to death. The more I thought about it the more
sense that made to me. My mind was probably shying away from the
sheer distress that the dreams had been causing me, but once I was
back in them it was bringing it all back so I'd have the best chance
possible of surviving long enough to wake back up.

I
was just outside of the school this time and there wasn't anyone
around. I'd been walking, but I stopped and pretended to tie my shoe
while I scanned for the telltale shimmer of someone trying to hide
themselves.

A
slow turn in place once my shoe was tied satisfied me that there
wasn't anyone watching me. I reflexively dusted my hands off and then
realized that in the dream there wasn't any dust. I'd put my hands on
the ground at one point to steady myself, but the ground hadn't been
made up of individual grains of dust and dirt, it had been one single
hard surface just textured such that it looked like real dirt from a
distance.

I
bent back down to look at the ground in closer detail and watched in
astonishment as the ground transformed before my eyes. I ran one
finger along it and this time my finger dug a track in the soft dirt
and came away just as dirty as I would have expected it to.

The
grass was just as unrealistic as the dirt had been a second ago, but
as I focused on it and remembered what it was supposed to be like, it
changed too. Individual blades of grass formed where before there had
been only a springy mass of green.

I
tickled the sharp, soft edge of a single piece of grass with my thumb
and then looked back at the dirt and found to my dismay that it had
returned to its former state. A few minutes of experimentation taught
me that I could, with great difficulty, simultaneously hold both the
grass and the dirt at a state that was close to what they were in
real life, but when I did so everything else around me became
obviously fake. The school took on a two-dimensional feel and some of
the trees in the skyline behind the school became misty and
disappeared at random times.

I
let the grass and dirt go back to their normal dream state and
watched as everything else around me became a little sharper, a
little more realistic. It was like my brain only had so much
processing power when it came to populating my dreamscape.

All
of that manipulating of my surroundings made me wonder what I could
do when it came to manipulating my own appearance. I made myself
taller, changed my hair color and even changed my shape from the
slightly plump version of me that I'd started out as to anorexic
skinny and then over to obese before shifting back to the pleasingly
skinny version of me that had been staring at me from the mirror this
morning.

Changing
how I looked was actually harder than changing my surroundings, and
the further I got from how I'd started out the dream the harder it
was to hold the change. It was interesting that my subconscious still
seemed to think that I was as chubby as I'd been a few months ago.
There was probably some kind of big insight there, but I didn't want
to dwell on my psychological issues right now. A better use of my
time would be to try to continue to learn whatever I could about
manipulating the dream. I didn't expect to make any huge
breakthroughs, but even small bits of knowledge might be what kept me
alive the next time I ran into the wax lady.

I
thought about trying to find the Native American again. Presumably if I was
subconsciously pulling him into my dreams somehow then I should be
able to do the same thing consciously, but so far neither of our
encounters had been pleasant. The first time he'd purposefully let me
go, but this last time, when he'd lost control of himself, he'd been
trying to hold me there inside of the dream. I was pretty sure that
he would have killed me if his wounds hadn't robbed him of the
strength required to hold me there.

I
didn't want to run into the Native American right now, but that didn't mean I
couldn't still try and acquire the skill of finding a particular
person. I might need it at some later point. It only took me a second
to settle on Sheree as the one that I wanted to find.

I
was torn on whether or not to keep my real face and body while I went
looking for her. So far all of my encounters other than the most
recent one with the Native American had been inside of someone else's dreams. I
was pretty sure that I'd actually been in the wax lady's dreams when
I ran into her, but there wasn't any guarantee that someone else
couldn't find me while I was with Sheree. In the end, I shifted into
as good of a match for Missy's tiny body and scowling, but beautiful,
face as I could manage.

I
had no real idea how to find Sheree, but everything else in the dream
world seemed to be based on visualizing what I wanted and willing it
into existence. I took a deep breath and then started thinking about
Sheree. The details were a struggle but I forced myself to create a
clear picture in my mind of her smile, the way that her wavy brown
hair perfectly framed her face, and the tiny frame that made her a
perfect flyer.

It
felt like my mind was stretching, like it was being pushed right up
to the edge of what I could handle and then slightly over that thin,
pulsing line. It hurt, not necessarily in a bad way, but in a way
that told me that if I pushed even harder that it could turn into the
bad pain of a tear rather than the good pain of a stretch held
slightly too long.

I
got the last bit of detail inside of my mind right and then
pushed
in the odd way that I'd done when I made the dirt and the grass
conform to my will. I opened my eyes and found Sheree standing in
front of me, perfect in every detail.

We
stood there for a couple of seconds, neither moving, and then I
recovered enough from the effort of bringing her to me that I managed
a smile.

"Hi,
Sheree."

"Hello,
Adri."

I
started to ask her what she'd been dreaming about before, but the
words died in my throat. I looked back down at myself to confirm that
I was still wearing Missy's body and found that I was. There wasn't
any way for the real Sheree to have known that I was Adri instead of
Missy. This wasn't Sheree, it was a construct that I'd created inside
of my own dream just like I'd changed my shape and size. She was
calling me by name because that was what my subconscious was
expecting her to do.

I
idly thought about seeing how good of a conversation this Sheree
would be able to maintain, but ultimately that was just a very
convoluted, very odd way to talk to myself. I sent her away without
really knowing what I'd done until after she was gone.

I
stopped for a minute to try and figure out how I'd made her
disappear. My mind felt different now that she was gone, it was
more…relaxed. I visualized a bench where there'd never before
been a bench and then tested it to make sure it was up to my weight.