Lucid Read online

  “Um… a few. Hang on.” Tiff paused as she searched for some links.

  I clicked on them as she posted. To my horror, I remembered a few from my dream. I recognized a petite woman who appeared to be in her thirties, a middle-aged man with spiky blond hair, and a dark, bald body-building dude. My heart began beating much too quickly.

  “Okay, what’s up?” Tiff was always on the ball. She was hyper-sensitive to people’s emotions, even through a computer. “Do you know anything about this weird stuff?”

  I hesitated for about ten minutes — a new IM record for me — before responding.

  “Promise not to be too skeptical when I finish?”

  ****

  Surprisingly, Tiff didn’t respond by typing “LOLOLOLOL OK” after I finished telling her about my dream. She didn’t even interrupt, which she normally did to make it seem like a real conversation. I could almost picture her on the other end, inching closer to her monitor while she analyzed my story.

  “Well?” I typed after giving her about twenty minutes to read my dream. It probably only took her three minutes to read the entire thing, but I knew she would want time to do some researching and to collect her thoughts.

  “It does seem like a weird coincidence,” Tiff typed, a little slower than usual. “But I don’t think you should jump to conclusions too soon. Maybe you had some weird connection with the universe and you’re just experiencing déjà vu. My great-grandma apparently used to dream about things that happened the next day all the time. And I mean, obviously, these people haven’t been abducted. They’re all asleep in hospitals. Still, just let me know if you have any more of these spaceship dreams.”

  “I will,” I replied. Tiff’s IMs of wisdom made me feel a little more relaxed. “You’ll be the first one to know, for sure. Thanks, Tiff.”

  “Sweet dreams.” Tiff added that last line with a wink before signing off.

  I didn’t think it was funny.

  Chapter 2

  Day 2

  Morning

  I woke up the next morning feeling pretty anxious. I had entered the spaceship again last night.

  After talking to Tiff, I felt a little more comfortable about falling asleep. Also, after four-thirty, my eyes were staying shut whether I wanted them to or not. I awoke the next morning especially drowsy. Lack of sleep and a lousy day of work ahead of me slowed my thought process. However, by the time I had brushed my teeth, I remembered my recent spaceship adventure.

  This time, I was on the ship before it took off. Now, I really felt like I was on a school bus. The land outside could have been rural Wisconsin; it was eerily familiar to a place I would visit in reality. I actually live right in the middle of a boring suburb, but I’ve seen pictures of farms, okay?

  The people on this little trip were not confused like the others. They all seemed pretty happy about being on the ship. I could almost feel the buzz of excitement coursing through the crowd. One old lady asked me why I wasn’t excited.

  “Surely being chosen for the first vacation resort on the moon makes you happy!” she exclaimed after I told her I was afraid.

  Someone told these people where they were going, and it just so happened to be a big, fat lie. But that meant that there was someone else who knew what this “dream” was really about. Maybe they were responsible for all these people not waking up again.

  “Who said that’s where we were going?” I asked her.

  “The nice, young lady who came on board before we left!” The old woman looked at me a little disdainfully. “She was wearing that electric blue uniform and had a megaphone. How can you not remember?” I scanned the room for anyone sporting electric blue attire. Whoever she was, she wasn’t on this ship anymore.

  The only other person who didn’t seem excited about the trip was a guy sitting in the back. He looked about five years older than me, college age, with wavy, blond hair and bright, grey eyes. That was another thing I noticed. All of the souls seemed to have dull eyes, like a cow. This guy, however, looked alert and aware of himself. I chose him as my bus mate.

  “Oh, this seat’s taken.” The guy started scooting away from me. His reproachful eyes met mine and his face relaxed. “Wait, you don’t think we’re going to some vacation, do you?”

  “No,” I admitted, sitting down next to him. “And neither do you?”

  “Nope. This thing is fake. I don’t know how I realized it, but I’m sure it’s a scam.”

  “Good. I thought I was going crazy.” I sighed with relief.

  “If you are, then I’m crazy, too,” he assured me. “I think we’re just dreaming.”

  “I know,” I replied. “I’ve been here before.”

  “Really?” He raised his eyebrows. Apparently my new friend was a first-timer. “So, do you know what really goes on here?”

  “No.” I frowned as I looked around the ship. It seemed less scary with an actual person sitting next to me. “I showed up for the first time yesterday just thinking I was having some weird dream, but then the old man sitting next to me appeared on the news the next day. He’s the old dude that they call the Living Shell on TV.”

  “And you saw him on here?” His grey eyes grew wider. “Man, are we gonna end up like him?” He looked up, startled, as the ship came to a halt. It was funny how I never felt the ship start moving. I also realized I didn’t even come on board the ship with the rest of the souls.

  “No.” I searched frantically for that little heat ball I used to escape last time. I found it lurking up in the luggage rack. (Don’t ask me why a spaceship had a luggage rack.) “Here, touch that.”

  “What is it?” the guy asked.

  “Our ticket home. We’re the only ones who can feel it, since we’re the only ones who know we’re dreaming.” I looked at the guy. “My name’s Devon Alexander, by the way. I think it would be wise if we talked more about this when we’re awake.”

  “Oh, right.” The guy nodded. “I’m Mitchell Stansky. You can add me online. My name is Mitch94.” I couldn’t help but smile. So, my screen name wasn’t boring. It was mature.

  “Alright, Mitch, I’ll add you.” I stopped as the remaining souls exited the bus. I was afraid that if we lingered on board, people were going to find us. If I saw an electric blue uniform, I was running for it.

  “Hopefully we won’t see each other here again!” Mitch said before he touched the ball of light and vanished.

  Did I look that cool when I disappeared out of here? No one was there to see me as I exited the creepy ship.

  .

  Day 2

  Afternoon

  Summer camp was a nightmare, as usual. I didn’t really mind scrubbing the boys’ urinals, though. Well, maybe I did mind it (I mean who would actually enjoy something like that?) but my mind was preoccupied. As soon as I woke up, I added Mitch to my friends list. Naturally, he wasn’t on at nine in the morning, so I had to wait until after work to check. I also left Tiff a quick e-mail, letting her know the dream happened again but this time I met another person who knew he was dreaming.

  I silently cursed myself for not asking any of the souls their names. Maybe Mitch would help me devise a plan to get the souls’ names. It creeped me out to think about all those souls being shuttled off to some unknown fate, never to wake up again. How long would it be before the rest of the world caught on? The two busloads I saw had at least fifty souls on board. If all these people didn’t wake up, mass panic and insomnia would surely ensue. I tried to avoid thinking about if one of my friends or family would be on the next bus. Would they recognize me?

  “You’re awfully quiet,” my mom said as I climbed into her car. She actually wasn’t on the phone for once. “Is everything okay? You look upset about something.” She looked at me with concern.

  Part of me wanted to tell her about the dreams, just to see her reaction. Another part of me didn’t feel like playing twenty million questions afterward, and I definitely didn’t want to go to some shrink about it.

  “I’m
just thinking about something.” I racked my brains for an excuse. “Summer reading.”

  “Oh, right.” My mom reached into her purse to extract her phone. Now that’s the mother I know and love! “Tell me when you've finished your first book and I’ll go get you the next one.”

  She knew better than to give me all three books simultaneously. My mind tends to jump around, and I’d never finish a single book with them all staring at me. I’d end up mixing all the plots. No teacher would believe I had read a page of my homework if I wrote about a science experiment that turns into a wolf during the full moon on his way to a lost planet full of dinosaurs. It might make a nice comic, though.

  As my mom chatted away to her coworker, I felt my own phone vibrate in my pocket. I jumped a little; the only person that called me regularly was my other best friend, Tom, and he was away for baseball camp. I pulled out my phone and saw it was Tiff. She never resorted to communication by phone. She had to have read my e-mail.

  “Hey, you read it?” I skipped the hello bit.

  “Yeah,” Tiff answered. I could hear her tapping away on her computer. “I can’t believe you met another person who was lucid on the bus!”

  “Lucid?” I heard of the word in one of my video games, but I didn’t know what it meant.

  “It means you were basically awake during the dream… listen—” she stopped what I was sure would have been a very long definition of lucid, “—can you come to my house this afternoon? I wanna do more research, but it’s a pain to send you all the links when we can look together. Plus, we’re going out to eat and my mom said I can invite someone.”

  “Sure, hang on.” I pulled the phone away from my face. “Mom, Mom.” I waved my hand in front of her face to get her attention.

  “DEVON!” My mother swerved, which was stupid. There wasn’t anyone around us on the road. “I’m driving!”

  “Can I go to Tiff’s?” I asked quickly. “Her mom said she can invite someone to dinner, but I wanna go over beforehand to chill.”

  “Oh.” My mom smiled, which made me roll my eyes. She and Kyle have been calling Tiff my “girlfriend” since third grade. It definitely wasn’t like that! “Sure, I’ll bring you on my way to yoga. You’ll have to be ready, though!”

  “Okay, thanks.” I turned back to the phone. “Hear that?”

  “Yeah, your mom goes at six, right?” Tiff asked. “That’ll give us an hour before we go to dinner, and you can stay later, too.”

  “See you then.” I hung up, knowing Tiff didn’t like to stay on her cell phone for too long. I was surprised she didn’t text me. She must be taking this dream thing seriously.

  .

  Day 2

  Evening

  “I’m picking you up no later than ten!” my mom called as she backed out of Tiff’s driveway.

  “All right, Mom, bye!” I waved as she drove away. There were no cars parked in front of the house, but that was normal. Both of Tiff’s parents worked pretty late.

  Tiff greeted me at the door after I rang the bell a couple of times. She looked just as she always did; short and very slender, with pale skin. Her long, dark-brown hair was pulled up in a messy ponytail, and she kept pushing her large, dark-framed glasses further up the bridge of her nose. She had on a baggy, black shirt with an anime schoolgirl on the front. It complemented her oversized grey sweatpants.

  What can I say? Tiff liked to dress up for her guests. Not that I had much room to talk. I still had my high-liter yellow summer camp shirt on. It was nice being able to visit a friend without dressing for the occasion. Not that I put on coats and tails for my other friends, but I made sure to wear a Seahawks shirt when I hung out with Tom, or he and his dad would throw a fit.

  “My parents are gonna be home in a half-hour.” Tiff beckoned me inside quickly to avoid as much of the setting sunlight as possible. She would’ve died working summer camp. “They shouldn’t bother us, though. Come on upstairs, and tell me more about Mitch.”

  I liked going to Tiff’s house. I always felt I was visiting a contemporary art museum. Her father thought of himself as an art snob, and he had lots of sculpture-like furniture downstairs. The furniture was subject to change often, too. My favorite was the chair that resembled an eyeball. The seat was heat-sensitive, so the iris changed colors according to how hot your butt was. The lighting also reminded me of some sort of coffeehouse. The very middle of her living room was the brightest spot, which her father used for monthly poetry readings. Tiff could never make up her mind if she did or didn’t like that her dad was into the art scene. It made her house look cool, at least.

  It was way cooler than my living room, anyway. My mom collects porcelain horses.

  Tiff led the way up the spiral staircase that was directly behind the living room. There were only two rooms (other than a bathroom) on this floor; Tiff’s room and her sister’s old room.

  Haley, Tiff’s sister, moved out last year. Tiff wasn’t mourning her absence, though. She no longer had to share the bathroom, and it only took her three weeks to convert Haley’s old room into a tech-junkie’s paradise. This was the room Tiff usually occupied. It was slightly larger than her bedroom, and there was a pretty cool balcony. When Haley lived here, there were bright pastel-colored curtains around the glass door. Now that it was Tiff’s, however, there were only her black curtains that virtually blocked out all sunlight. Tiff painted some silver stars on her curtains for variety, but the room was still the physical embodiment of gloom. She didn’t bother repainting the walls, so the pink clashed horribly with her black and purple decorations.

  She had more important things in her room and couldn’t be bothered with color coordination, though. Her top-of-the-line computer with three monitors, HDTVs, and video game consoles — each assigned to a TV — were much more important than frivolous decorations. She had a family game system, too, but her parents liked using the exercise games, so it stayed downstairs. Tiff only bothered with it when she wanted to humiliate someone at racing games.

  “Here.” Tiff got up after logging into her computer and let me sit down in the black leather chair. She sat next to me on a smaller, dark grey swivel chair, clutching her favorite Japanese-creature pillow. “Let’s see if that dream guy responded.” She smirked at her own joke.

  “He’s way too old for you,” I informed her. “He looks like he’s the same age as Kyle — hey, he’s online!”

  Tiff wheeled her chair closer to the screen and seized the keyboard. “I type faster,” was the excuse she muttered before typing away madly.

  “This is Devon, right?” Mitch typed after Tiff greeted him.

  “Yeah,” Tiff typed. “From the dream.”

  “Man, I’m almost afraid to go to sleep again because of that,” Mitch typed. He hesitated. “So you said you’ve been there before, right?”

  “I can’t believe this,” Tiff said to me, removing her hand from the keyboard. She slowly turned to face me. “It’s true. It actually happened.”

  “Thought I was lying?” I broke the tense silence. “Thanks, Tiff.”

  “What? Of course I didn’t!” Tiff snapped. “It’s just — I mean it seems realer because Mitch saw it, too.”

  “We didn’t see it; we experienced it.” I corrected her. I had to make sure she knew it wasn’t the same thing as just being in a regular dream where you’re taken on a ride but you can’t control your own actions.

  “Hey, you still there?” Mitch was typing again. “I gotta go soon, but I wanted to see if you have a plan for tonight. I saw some of the people on the bus from last night on TV. They were also in those weird comas they showed on the news. I think we should help.”

  “How about you ask the people on the bus their names?” Tiff suggested, her fingers poised over the keyboard. “Tell them that you and Mitch are the resort directors or something.”

  “Good idea.” I had barely said the words before she was firing away. “And we’ll check the names tomorrow.”

  “Sounds good,” Mitch
typed. “That’ll confirm if we’re really experiencing something other than a dream. Oh, one more thing.” He paused for a minute. The star next to his screen name started blinking again. “Did you tell anyone about the dreams?”

  Now Tiff was actually typing for herself. She explained that she had been helping me look up information about the coma crisis and she was also going to research lucid dreaming for both of us. She added that she was thoroughly convinced neither Mitch nor I were going insane.

  “Oh, good,” Mitch responded. “Well, I need to go now, but I’ll remember the plan for tonight. Guess I’ll see you on the bus.” He signed off.

  “Well, now you’ve got a plan, big hero.” Tiff turned around in her chair to face me. “I hope you don’t mess it up. Mitch will be there to help you.”

  “Hey, I was the one who entered the bus first!” I retorted, sounding a little more annoyed that I had intended.

  “Calm down.” Tiff stood up and looked out of her morbid curtains. “I think my parents are pulling in. We’ll worry about your space bus later.” She exited the room.

  I followed grudgingly. Even though I saw it first, I definitely did not want that creepy bus!

  Chapter 3

  Day 3

  Afternoon

  I awoke the next day in a cold sweat. As soon as my eyes opened, the vision of last night’s dream flooded my mind. The memories came back so quickly, I had an instant headache.

  Mitch and I barely escaped last night. That was the first time I truly feared I would never get off that bus. At least Mitch remembered the plan from the night before. Otherwise both of us would have been toast.

  *

  We had met on the bus, like the night before. The souls had already taken their seats and were as excited about going to the moon as last night’s bunch. I spotted Mitch instantly. It seemed he and I also had a certain glow about us compared to the souls. I guess it was because we were wholly conscious of the situation, and the souls were just being pushed along for the ride.