Blue Is for Nightmares Read Free Page A

Gold.
    "Cut it in half. There should be a plastic knife on the silver tray in there."
    "Should I be worried?" she asks.
    "Only if you don't hurry up."
    Drea slices the raw potato in half and hands it to me. I press the damp, white center against the flesh and hold it there for many moments to clot the bleeding, an old family remedy even my mother uses. I top the cut off with a few drops of lemon juice and then bandage it up with some tape from the first-aid kit.
    "Are you sure you're going to be all right?" she asks. "I'm fine. Are you all right?"
    'Actually I feel a little faint," she says. "Let me call the health center."
    "For you or for me?" I joke. "It's two in the morning. It'll be fine for a few hours." I climb into bed and drag the covers up from the floor. "You know what's weird, though?"
    "More weird than you and your potato?"
    "Ha ha.- I grab the half-burned candle with Drea's initials and stuff it into my night table drawer.
    "I cut my foot in my nightmare too."
    "Hmm," she says. "That is weird. But sometimes nightmares come true."
    I hesitate, wanting to say something, but don't. Even though I know I have to tell her soon. I have to tell someone.

Four
    It's 4:30 in the morning when the phone rings in our room. I'm up anyway, paging through back issues of Teen People for about the kagillionth time, trying to take my mind off those lilies in my nightmare.
    I thankfully pause from last December's horoscope, the Taurean blurb reminding me how unsuccessful my love life has been, and nab the phone. "Hello?"
    "Is Drea there?" An unfamiliar boy voice--lazy, muffled, distant.
    I glance over at her. "She's sleeping," I say.
    "Wake her."
    "Um... no. But I'll have her call you at some normal time. You know, when people aren't sleeping? Can I ask who's calling?"
    'A friend."
    "Can you be more specific?"

    But instead of answering, he hangs up. And so do I. "Who was that?" Drea grogs.
    "Some guy who wanted to talk to you," I say. "But he wouldn't give me his name."
    Drea smiles.
    "You know who it is?" I ask.
    "Maybe," she says.
    "Who?"
    "Just some guy I've been talking to."
    The phone rings again. I pick it up. "Hello?"
    This time it's quiet on the other end. "Hello?" I repeat. "Give it to me," Drea says.
    I hand it to her and she turns away, cuddling up into a ball and talking in a whisper, so I can't hear her.
    Maybe Chad's available after all.
    I look over at his jersey, tacked up over the broken window, and imagine him wearing it the sleeves scrunched up toward the elbow, a snug fit across the shoulders. I suddenly have the urge to go up, press my nose into the fabric, and lose myself in pheronaonal bliss. But I know Drea would get all pissy on me if I even ventured a toe within a three- foot radius of the relic.
    After several minutes of a whisper-filled conversation, Drea hangs up, and I'm still gawking at the jersey. "So who is this guy?" I ask.
    "Nobody," she giggles.
    "What do you mean, 'nobody'?"
    "I mean, I don't want to talk about it right now," she says.
    "Why? What's the big deal?"
    "Let's end it, okay? It's no big deal."
    "Fine," I say, paging past a string of shampoo ads in the magazine. I have no idea why she's getting all secretive on me.
    "Chad's jersey really came in handy" she says, changing the subject.
    "How come you still have it?"

    "I don't know." She twirls a strand of hair around her finger and brings it up to her lip, mustache-style. "It's comfy and it still smells like him--the cuddly cologne he wears, the way his skin smells after a shower."
    "Do you think you guys will get back together?" I ask. "Naturally. We're so the same about everything. It's just a matter of time."
    I squish down into my covers and try to conjure up his scent. The day we scarfed down mouthfuls of cherry pie at Hillcrest's homecoming pie-eating contest. The afternoon we spent searching for pinecones--an environmental science project--or cleaning up the campus for Earth Day. The time we almost kissed... and then did. But