And Your Girl Can Sing

Chapter 3: Today's Breakfast Menu: Eggs, Toast, and a Sense of Reality

Blimey, what a dream!

My eyes still closed, I buried my face in my pillow and tried to taste the last drops of my dream before it slipped away. A leather jacket, the roof of my house, a mention of the Vaterland—?

I gave a start as my pillow moved, but stubbornness won out and I stubbornly tried to catch a few drops of sleep on my rare Saturday, with no mum to wake me and demand I get out of bed at a normal time. Slowly, though, my mind closed around the conclusion that a breathing pillow was problematic and I reluctantly opened my eyes. The large black mass in front of me unblurred until it took the shape of my dream form.

That wasn't a dream.

"Lennon, you'd better not be real, or am I in so, so much hot water," I mumbled to no one in particular, finally opening my eyes. I sat up amongst the morning sunlight flooding through my window. The clock read 11:34, my room looked ridiculously patchy, and a Beatle was snoozing next to me, his arm around my waist, his socked feet in my bed. At least he remembered to take his shoes off.

I think we both had fallen asleep. Six in the morning was early for both me and a John Lennon who probably went to sleep at six in the morning every day. I reached over and took his arm off my waist, feeling the thick leather with the pads of my fingertips, but he stubbornly replaced it, nestling it in the curve of my waist in his sleep.

I prodded him and said, "Wake up, sunshine. My mum'll have my head when she realizes..." and then I realized that she was gone. Gone for four days. "What a bloody coincidence," I mumbled.

"Our bird's got a filthy mouth," John suddenly mumbled into his side, his eyes still shut and I jumped on him. "Probably picked it up from you. C'mon, sunshine, the sky is blue, it's ready for you."

"Regular Edgar Allan Poe, aren't we?"

"Regular William Brown, then, aren't we?" I shot back. A spark of amusement shone in his eye with the familiarity. "You know William Brown?"

"Who doesn't?" I laughed. "William, Henry, Ginger—"

"Douglas," John finished. "The band of outlaws. Used to read those when I was a boy."

"You're still a boy," I pointed out, grinning.

"The bird's got it right. And I won't pretend I don't read them now and again." With a sudden movement he was by my bookshelf and examining it. "Harry Potter, Fangirl, The Hunger Games, what is all this futuristic shite? Ahh, this is it." His fingers closed around my one Richmal Crompton book, Just William, and opened it, sounding out the voices in a posh British accent. "She started and stared up at him with big blue eyes. 'Oh William! Is it—is it your—lungs? I've got an aunt that's got lungs and she coughs and coughs. Oh William, I do hope you haven't got lungs.'" John looked up, with a grin I gestured at him to keep going. "William considered a minute. 'I suppose I have got lungs, but I don't make a fuss about 'em.' He coughed again. 'What does the doctor say about it?' William considered a minute. 'He says it's lungs all right,' he said at last. He says I got to be jolly careful—" John's boyish peal of laughter stopped the narrative. "I've got lungs, Cora, really I do—"

"All right, lungs," I told him. "Get outside. I've got to get dressed." I shoved him out, and after a moment's hesitation, tossed the book out with him. "Read that to entertain yourself," I told him through the crack. As I shut the door, I heard mournfully, "Leaving a man who has lungs all by himself, that's not proper like, it isn't."

***

John had found other ways to amuse himself, apparently. After I had pulled on a pair of denim shorts and a brown sweater and tied my hair back, I opened the door to find nothing but the book on the ground. Sighing, I replaced it on the shelf and took a look at my room. Patchy as usual. I ought to ask June to bring round a poster of Harry Styles to cover up the large gap over my dresser where the Sgt. Pepper poster usually hung.