Dream Life Page 6

  Saffron tucked her camera in her sweater pocket. “Only if you want to,” she said, training an endearing smile on me. Then she turned to Mom. “We should probably get out of her hair for now. Claire should think it over.”

  Though you wouldn’t think it, having been an actual functioning member of the real world for the past few decades, Saffron’s pretty grounded. I think she just gets silly when she’s palling around with my mother.

  Saffron started for the door and my mother took her time making her exit. “Do it,” she mouthed to me on her way out.

  I waited until the door had fully closed, then straightened my polar bear rug and put my plush ham and cheese baguette back in its rightful place. I lay down on my bed, wishing with all my might that the noise outside would die down and my phone would ring. I needed to hear from Becca. None of today made any sense. I closed my eyes and willed every molecule in my body to settle down.

  Sheila was wearing star-shaped sunglasses and was tucked into the passenger seat of a vintage convertible, letting the dimpled guy to her left do the driving while she coolly took in the slate-colored scenery—rolling hills, elm trees and, weirdly, a clan of polar bears. I was running alongside and trying to hop in, offering all these presents that she kept pushing away. It wasn’t until I produced a huge lollipop that she let me dive into the backseat.

  Next thing I knew, my eight-year-old brother Henry was bearing down on me, handing me a message he’d written on the back of a Batman party bag.

  GO TO BECCA’S AT NOUN TOMORROW

  My heart skipped.

  “You’re the best, Hen.” I was too happy to hear from my friend to tease him for his spelling and he’d already started to scamper toward the door. “Hold up. Aren’t you going to wait for your tip?” I reached under the bed and felt around for a piece of chocolate. The area under my bed doubles as a candy storage unit.

  “There’s none left.” His face went pale when he realized what he’d effectively admitted.

  I sat up. “How do you know what’s under my bed?”

  He hiccupped. “Charlie W came over before.”

  “And you let him plunder my chocolate supply?” I could feel my face turning purple in anger. “You know you’re not allowed to let your friends in here.”

  His eyes shifted from one corner to the next, like a Kit-Cat clock.

  “Too late to think of an excuse,” I said. “You’re already busted. You can just pick up some refills on your next walk and we’ll call it even.”

  Henry nodded and ripped out of there, the back of his neck as red as I’d ever seen it.

  I made a mental note to kill my little brother and lay back down on my cozy comforter. I gazed at the glow-in-the-dark star stickers on the ceiling and soon my eyelids were heavy as soup cans.

  Everyone at the party had on the coolest costumes. Which might explain why my dance partner wasn’t Andy—or even a guy for that matter. It was a gray kangaroo, with a margarita in one paw and my oven-mitted hand in the other (I was dressed up as Julia Child). Mr. Kangaroo dipped me with the finesse nobody dressed like a minor league baseball mascot has any right to possess.

  When I woke up the next morning I felt so groggy I kept looking over at my clock and then drifting off for another two minutes. Or forty-five minutes. Two dreams in one night was almost too much to handle. Eventually, I got out of bed and opened the window shade. I tried to get my French homework out of the way, but I was too hyped up about my upcoming visit to Becca to think, let alone conjugate savoir in the subjunctive. It was Saturday morning, anyway, so I ended up killing time reading about Cat People on the Internet (random trivia: the reason the panther was hardly ever visible was the movie’s tiny budget) and painting Nailgrowth Miracle solution on my stubby fingernails.

  When it was finally time to get ready for my rendezvous with Becca, I was feeling tired to the point of dizzy. Drawing from some perk-up advice I’d read in a fashion magazine, I massaged minty toothpaste over my neck in the shower. Then I remembered another supposedly helpful tidbit, so I dressed as brightly as possible, putting on a yellow turtleneck under a blue smock-style dress from Kiki’s closet. I bundled myself up in the living room, said good-bye to my parents, and off I went.

  By the time I pulled up outside Becca’s town house, I was a little more awake—and a lot more annoyed. The pole I usually lock my bike to was taken by a tangerine Vespa. I sighed and started to roll my bike down the block.

  “And I haven’t even told you the scary stuff yet!” I looked up to see Becca was screaming at me from her bedroom window. “What’s the deal? Are you leaving already?”

  Fat chance.

  I pointed at my bike and she waved her hand in the air, then disappeared. She must have shot down the stairs like a cheetah, because within seconds she was standing in the doorway. Looked like I wasn’t the only one with sleep issues: there were dark circles under her eyes and she had on a long white flannel nightgown.

  She looked like she belonged in one of the horror movies she’s obsessed with. But the spooky effect was completely ruined when she smiled ear-to-ear.

  “Bring the bike in,” she instructed. “Nobody will slash your tires.”

  “You sure it’s okay?” I checked. She’d never made this offer before.

  Becca nodded crisply and shut the door behind me. I followed her up the marble stairs and into a room on the second floor that was crammed with state-of-the-art exercise equipment, a massage chair, and an industrial-looking margarita machine. “This is where we park all the toys that Mommy buys and never uses,” Becca explained. Her statement made me grimace; the only things my mom ever buys and doesn’t use are the items she decides are too expensive and returns the next day. “You can put it wherever you want,” Becca said.

  I was looking around when a plastic bin caught my attention. It was spilling over with gorgeous aprons, dish towels, and oven mitts, and I immediately thought of the dream I’d had where I’d been wearing an oven mitt.

  Could it be …?

  “Mom went through a cooking phase,” Becca explained, picking up on my interest. “She signed up for some intensive six-week pastry program and made a cake in the shape of Dolly Parton’s head. None of us had the heart to tell her it tasted like soap.”

  I took one last look at the bin and decided there was probably no more to it than that. My curiosity sated, I rested my bike against a mirrored wall and followed my friend to her bedroom. As far as I could tell, we were the only people in the house, which was sort of eerie. I wasn’t used to it being this empty.

  “Sorry to be such a zombie,” she groaned. “I just haven’t slept at all.”

  “And why’s that?”

  Becca opened her mouth, then paused. “Lemme just go to the bathroom first.”

  I sat down in the super-soft brown leather chair by the window and glanced around. I hadn’t been in Becca’s room in at least a month. It was enormous, with high ceilings and dark orange walls that somehow seemed more elegant than Halloweeny Next to her computer, the new Teen Vogue was open to the “My Crib” spread we’d been laughing at the day before.

  “I am so not into sleep deprivation,” Becca said when she came back. She fell onto the bed, propping her neck up against a huge corduroy teddy bear.

  “Not sleeping is the worst,” I said, trying to swat away my own dream-hangover fatigue. “But I’m not going to clear out so you can nap. You need to tell me what’s up.”

  “Like I can ever sleep in the day.” She shook her head. “You know my brain’s wired funny.”

  Make that two of us.

  She gave me a pleading look. “And we’ve barely hung out. I’ve missed you.”

  “You’ve barely even tried to see me,” I challenged.

  “And you think that was my choice?” Becca sucked in her cheeks and picked at what remained of her temporary skeleton tattoo.

  “But who’s trying to keep us apart?” I asked, genuinely perplexed.

  Just then, it occurred to me th
at Andy might be behind this trial separation.

  “Does Blue Moon mean anything to you?” Becca said.

  “What’s that? Like, a brand of cheese?”

  “Catch.” Becca tossed a sharp object at me. “Oops, sorry.”

  I crouched down to pick it up. It was a key chain—a blue and white oval charm with an old Christopher Columbus–style ship printed on it. A chill went down my spine. It was the same boat I’d seen in my dream—the nautical one that I’d thought had been leading me to the shoplifter girl. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck come to attention.

  I looked up at her. “What is it?”

  There was a beat of hesitation. “The Blue Moon,” she said. “It’s actually Dutch, so it’s called the Blauwe Maan. The Blue Moons are this … little society of girls whose ancestors supposedly came over to these shores together.”

  “And you’re in this secret society?” I could feel my eyes bugging out.

  “Do you have to call it that? I’m telling you about it, aren’t I?”

  She had me there.

  “Sorry. This not-entirely secret society,” I said. “Is that what you’ve been doing all this time, when you said you were hanging out with the Brookfield girls?”

  She smiled guiltily. “It wasn’t a lie—most of the other members go to Brookfield.” She stretched out her arms and cracked her knuckles. “All the girls’ moms were members. I know you’re thinking it’s really stupid, but my mom was in the Moons, and so was my grandmother, and so on.” She looked at me with widened eyes. “I couldn’t really say no.”

  “I understand.” I fingered my cameo under my turtleneck. I knew a thing or two about family traditions

  “Anyway, I’m sorry I’ve been so weird. When I was tapped I didn’t think it was a big deal, but the whole initiation turned out to be an elaborate process. The worst part of it was the rule that says you’re not allowed to tell anyone except your family until you get your boat.”

  “You mean this thing?” I dangled the key chain in the air.

  She nodded slowly. “Isn’t it pretty? I got it last night. Or I guess it was officially this morning.”

  Hmm … anything that took place in the middle of the night was by nature intriguing. “And you’re allowed to tell your friends now?”

  “I’m allowed to tell you. I got… special clearance.”

  “Sounds fancy. What do the other rules say?”

  “Just that you have to dress in all white and drink blood once a week.” Becca watched me with mounting amusement, then laughed. “No, I’m kidding. It’s all very innocent. Innocent to the point of being dorky.”

  “Sorry, B, but I met the other girls. Say what you will, but they are not dorky.”

  She looked up at the ceiling. “Okay, but the things we do are.” Her voice rose defensively. “The whole point is doing little favors for the city, like planting community gardens or repainting the youth wing at hospitals.”

  “How ladylike,” I muttered. “And do you throw balls too?” I felt caught between jealousy and curiosity.

  She pshawed. “The group is way too obsessed with privacy to throw parties. The clubhouse is in a secret location and you’re not allowed to do anything that will get you mentioned in the press.”

  Kiki once told me that the number-one rule of old school New York society was: “A lady only agrees to be written about on the occasion of her birth, marriage, or death.” I was kind of stunned—it seemed unfathomable that anybody would actually take that kind of thing to heart.

  “So,” I said, breaking the silence. “Who was the guy I saw you with yesterday in the bathroom? Is he a member of the not-secret society?”

  “Russell?” Becca laughed. “No, he works for the Parks Department. I was picking up the movie they showed.”

  She was losing me. “Come again? Your club was secretly behind the event?”

  She bit down on a fingernail. “I was. The Moons weren’t. The movie night is a Parks Department project. My dad heard through a contact that the print of Cat People they were planning on showing got lost and since we—my family, that is—have a copy … it made sense to call the city and offer to lend it.”

  “I see,” I said, repressing the temptation to remark on how she’d said “call the city” in the offhand manner most people use to talk about ordering Chinese delivery. “And why didn’t you want the picture of you and that guy getting out? Because you’re in a club that’s publicity shy?”

  “Yeah, kinda.” Becca’s eyes were fluttering closed. “God, how am I going to survive tonight if I’m this tired?”

  “What’s tonight got to do with this?”

  “Nothing,” she said evasively. “Anyway, back to the picture and why it can’t get out. It’s more about … my family.”

  My heart bumped against my chest. And not in a good way. Only a few months ago somebody had been plotting to kill her family. What could it be now?

  “What about your family?” I asked.

  “It’s nothing that bad.” She was looking at me through half-open eyes. “It’s just business. The company has to shut down the ketchup plant in Queens because of some new zoning codes and now they’re starting to build a new factory in the Bronx.” She shifted onto her side. “I need to be careful. I can’t let pictures get out that make it look like I’m all buddy-buddy with the people who run the city. People will go crazy and say there’s corruption at work and we’re buying favors or whatever and they could try to prevent the new factory from being built.”

  My mind was about to explode. This was all so much more complicated than any of the five-alarm political issues that came up in Washington View Village, like whether to invite the cranky University Provost to building parties. I picked up a rubber spider from Becca’s dressing table and pulled its gummy legs up over its head.

  “I’m not just protecting my family,” Becca went on. “It was really stupid of me to meet him in public like that. There are thousands of New Yorkers with jobs on the line. I should have had a messenger bring it back the next day, but it was all very last minute.”

  “Well, were you supposed to know there’d be some psychopath with a camera following you around?”

  “Actually, yes.” Her words came out slowly and she tilted her head. Only now did I realize how little of the situation she’d bothered to fill me in on. I put the spider back down on the table.

  “What do you mean?” I said it gently, but I was feeling as tense as a tightly wound spring.

  “I’ll show you.” Becca got up and I followed her over to her computer. She typed in an address she seemed familiar with. Moonwatcher.net’s home page had a line drawing of a girl with a telescope pointed at the night sky, and at the top were the words: “Your number-one source for Blue Moon sightings.”

  “Your community service club has a full-time stalker?” I asked in disbelief.

  “It’s not exactly the most cutting-edge site,” Becca said as she flipped around from page to page. “But yeah, all eyes are on us. Some people have remarkably little to do with their time.” She looked up at me and caught my horrified expression. “It’s just a stupid prank that’s been dragging on forever. Not that they’ve gotten any better about it. We moved clubhouses but I don’t think they know—sometimes we walk in and out of the old building to keep them confused.”

  My jaw dropped: a square inch in New York City real estate is worth its size in gold.

  “You kept the old building?” I asked.

  “No, but it’s easy to get into. A bunch of psychiatrists use it for their offices. The people behind this site wait outside and take pictures of all the high-school-aged girls going in and out.”

  Feeling creeped out, I looked back at the screen. There was very little text, and as for the few pictures of the Moons, they weren’t particularly revealing. And yet, they were still there.

  “They’re wrong about who’s a member at least half the time,” Becca said. “But it’s the other half of the time that worries me.
”

  My head clouded over as I studied the Moons’ faces, as well as pictures of a few unfamiliar girls. “I’ll show you who they’re right about,” Becca said, flipping through the pictures to point out herself, the girls I’d met the other night, a chubby-cheeked girl named Poppy, and, most surprisingly, Annika Gitter, tiger skin collector/animal rights activist extraordinaire.

  “Teen Vogue girl is one of your sorority sisters?”

  “She was,” Becca said shortly, not bothering to take offense at my calling the society a “sorority.” “She was de-Mooned for violating the club’s number-one rule.”

  “The one about having no public profile?” I asked.

  She nodded and smiled. “We had to bounce her out last night. Look, there’s something else you should see.”

  Becca leaned over the computer and started clicking around faster then before. Then she stood back up and crossed her arms. “Look familiar?”

  My heart skipped a beat. It sure did. Whitewashed and hyper-magnified as the picture was, there was no mistaking those different-colored eyes and that scrunched-up nose.

  “No way,” I murmured.

  But the real mystery wasn’t how I’d ended up on the screen—it was how I’d ever got it in my head that I looked remotely like Brigitte Bardot that afternoon.

  Before I could say anything, somebody rapped on the door and flung it open.

  “Beck, have you seen my Spanish textb—” Andy stopped suddenly and stared at the computer screen. “Whoa. That’s pretty brutal.”

  I gulped and took another look at the picture. Its horribleness was growing by the second. My pores looked big enough to crawl into and, even lovelier, the fuzz on my cheeks recalled a freshly hatched chick.

  Andy came closer to me for a quick comparison. He was a couple of inches away from me and staring straight at my face as if everything were normal and he and I weren’t the same people who’d had that terrible conversation in the cab about how he needed his space.