Dreamers Often Lie Read Free Page A

“You can’t just—”
    I writhed upright. My ribs dug through my chest like spears. A tube in my elbow snapped free. The white walls. The machines. The beeping. “I need to get out of here.”
    “Jaye, just let me get the nurse. It’s going to be—”
    “No,” I said, in my most forceful voice, even though it made my throat sting. I lurched sideways, managing to swing one leg out of the bed. Sadie tried to push me back. An alarm began to blare. “I’m getting out of here.”
    The door flew open. A nurse in blue scrubs strode toward the bed.
    Our mother hurried after her.
    Something had happened to her face. Mom usually looks a decade younger than she is—she always has that yoga glow, and her face and voice are like raw silk, smooth and soft, with a little natural waver in the fiber. But now she looked twenty years older. I could tell she hadn’t been eating. She hadn’t washed her hair in days, either. Tight lines curved around her mouth, like wires cutting into the skin.
    I’d seen her this way once before.
    She had to get out of here too.
    “Mom—” The nurse pushed me back onto the bed,repeating my name. I tried to shove her hands away. “Mom, I’m fine. I just need to get out.” I fought back the desperation. “Make them let me out.”
    Mom grabbed Sadie’s arm. “What happened?” I heard her whisper.
    “She was asking how long she’d been here, and when I told her—”
    “No. Mom, I’m all right. I swear.” The walls. The smell. The beeping and wheezing machines clustered around Dad’s narrow white bed. My head was going to explode. “Let’s get out of here.
Please.
”
    “Jaye . . .” The nurse adjusted something in my arm. “Hang on, Jaye. Just stay with me . . .”
    The room smeared. Shadows climbed the walls like fast-growing vines.
    “Jaye, can you hear me?”
    In the row of vinyl chairs beneath the window, William Shakespeare sat, staring back at me.
    His eyes were deep blue. A slip of yellow light glittered on his hoop earring. Keeping his eyes on me, he placed one finger against his lips.
    And then the room turned inside out.



CHAPTER 2

    I was early to auditions for
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
.
    I’m usually late for everything. Family dinners. Classes. Detentions for being late to those classes. But I was not going to be late for this.
    After the final bell on audition day, I stayed at school until the 5:00 start time, wandering the halls and mumbling to myself like a crazy person. Preparing a monologue from Shakespeare had seemed kind of like wearing the T-shirt of the band you’re about to see, so I picked Roxanne’s speech from
Cyrano de Bergerac
instead
—
the one where she tricks the friar into marrying her to the man she actually loves. I’d memorized it weeks ahead of time, etching the words onto my brain until they were almost like breathing. I’d practiced in the mirror. In the shower. In our echoing, cobwebby basement. Now I practiced a few last times as I paced around the nearly empty school halls.
    At a quarter to five, I pushed through the scarred door that leads to the backstage hallway. No one had turned the stage lights on yet, so the air around me was dark andthick. I took a deep breath. The hallway always smells like house paint, sawdust, cold cream, and ancient clothes. It should be an ugly smell, but it’s my favorite smell in the world. If there was a perfume that smelled like the backstage, I’d wear it. A burst of energy shot up through my legs, straightened my spine, zinged into my lungs. Mr. Hall calls it electrification. The feeling of being ready to step onstage and shine.
    I strode through the dimness and threw open the greenroom door, letting out a blast of light. Then I almost jumped backward.
    Pierce Caplan stood in the middle of the greenroom.
    My first thought was that he must have gotten lost on the way to the gym. Or that maybe he was here as part of some team prank, stealing stage makeup or old prom dresses for a