Prophecy Girl (Lacuna Valley #1)

Chapter Fifteen

 Susan dropped them off at school and picked them up every afternoon. This left Violet feeling safe and content. She'd quickly fallen in love with Mary's whole family and Mary seemed to adore having a little sister around. When alone with Sam, however, Violet kept mentioning that she wished there was a way everyone could just get along. Every time she started a sentence with "I just wish" Sam would cringe, worried about what her powerful little sister might do if Sam didn't figure something out that would bring some closure and permanence to their lives soon.

On the first Saturday morning at Mary's house Sam woke up and reached for her dream journal. She'd pasted in the random notes she kept before Susan had given her the little notebook with the dreamcatcher painted on the front.

She turned to the first blank page and took down notes on her friends, who'd become zombies chasing after Violet and herself in her dream. Everyone she'd met in Lacuna Valley, Nick included, seemed to be in the crowd coming after them. It wasn't hard to see how the dream could be her sleeping brain working out her own fears, but that didn't mean it wasn't prophetic as well.

So far her dreamcatcher diary was filled with tales of running, her mother screaming, Violet hiding—countered by one where her mother was going after a monkey in a tree with a knife in her hand and Violet tripped her with a rope. From the absurd to the mundane, from epic tales of confusion to the fragmented memories she spent hours trying to pull out of her mind, Sam wrote them all down. For what purpose, she was no longer sure. The problem, she decided, was that even when she could come up with some guess at meaning from the dreams, there was no telling which were going to happen, and even if she did, what she was going to do about it.

While watching everyone smiling and laughing over breakfast the next morning, and remembering their hateful and crazed faces in her dream the night before, Sam decided the time for thinking was over, the time for action was now. After offering to do the dishes, and being shooed out of the kitchen, Sam grabbed the house phone and snuck into the shed out back. She closed her eyes and reminded herself that there were more important things at hand than her own silly heart and dialed the number. It took her a minute to build up the courage to push send.

"Good morning." The voice on the other end was gruff, like he'd just woken up.

Sam sighed in relief. "Hi. It's Sam."

"Samantha! It's Tommy." He sounded more awake already. "Don't worry, he's not here, and neither is the other one. It's just me. I'm glad you called."

"Yeah? Is there something you wanted to say?" She was mildly curious, mostly she was relieved at the prospect of putting off what she had to say.

"Why don't you go first, you called me, after all."

"Right. Well, I guess there's a couple of things to talk about. I've been staying at a friend's house. My mother... well, we're not moving any time soon. I think it's because she knows the orb is here, and I think I know how..." Sam cleared her throat and tried to remind herself, again, that there were more important issues at stake. "That night we got home from your mother's house she knew about Nick. With the whole destined marriage situation in the diary, I think she is using Nick as a base for finding the orb. I'm not sure if we can trick her into thinking it's someone else or get her focus off of him at this point. She's very determined." There was silence on the other end of the line. It killed her to not know what he was thinking. Was she ridiculous to trust him?

"I think you're right," he finally said. "Sadly, I think the time for tricking her is long past. She seems to be zeroing in pretty clearly. She showed up at my work earlier this week and asked me some questions. She said our children are dating and she wanted to know what I knew about how serious you guys are. Playing the concerned parent. I've made some calls. She is really making the rounds. Asking all sorts of questions of all sorts of people. I think we have to assume she's getting closer to finding it, and figure out what to do if she does. I'm working on that, don't worry."