Dreams Underfoot: A Newford Collection Read Online Free PDF Page A

have to be a horror,” she said fiercely. “It can be something good, too.” She thought of the gnome that lived under the pier in Christy’s story and her own Balloon Men. “I want to be able to see them again.”
    Their gazes locked. Reece saw a darkness behind Ellen’s clear grey eyes, some wildness that reminded him of his booger in its intensity.
    “I’d tell you if I knew,” he said finally.
    Ellen continued to study him, then slowly turned to look back across the waves. “Will it come to you tonight?” she asked.
    “I don’t kn—” Reece began, but Ellen turned to him again. At the look in her eyes, he nodded.
    “Yeah,” he said then. “I guess it will.”
    “I want to be there when it does,” she said.
    Because if it was real, then it could all be real. If she could see the booger, if she could understand what animated it, if she could learn to really see and, as Christy’s wizard had taught Jilly Coppercorn, know what she was looking for herself, then she could bring her own touch of wonder into the world.
    Her own magic.
    She gripped Reece’s arm. “Promise me you won’t take off until I’ve had a chance to see it.”

    She had to be weirded-out, Reece thought. She didn’t have the same kind of screws loose that his parents did, but she was gone all the same. Only, that book she’d had him read ... it made a weird kind of sense. If you were going to accept that kind of shit as being possible, it might just work the way that book said it did. Weird, yeah. But when he thought of the booger itself ...
    “Promise me,” she repeated.
    He disengaged her fingers from his arm. “Sure,” he said. “I got nowhere to go anyway.”
    5
    They ate at The Green Pepper that night, a Mexican restaurant on Main Street. Reece studied his companion across the table, re-evaluating his earlier impressions of her. Her hair was up in a loose bun now and she wore a silky cream-colored blouse above a slim dark skirt. Mentally she was definitely a bit weird, but not a burnout like his parents. She looked like the kind of customer who shopped in the trendy galleries and boutiques on Melrose Avenue where his old lady worked, back home in West Hollywood.
    Half the people in the restaurant were probably wondering what the hell she was doing sitting here with a scuzz like him.
    Ellen looked up and caught his gaze. A smile touched her lips. “The cook must be in a good mood,”
    she said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, I’ve heard that the worse mood he’s in, the hotter he makes his sauces.”
    Reece tried to give her back a smile, but his heart wasn’t in it. He wanted a beer, but they wouldn’t serve him here because he was underage. He found himself wishing Ellen wasn’t so much older than him, that he didn’t look like such a freak sitting here with her. For the first time since he’d done his hair, he was embarrassed about the way he looked. He wanted to enjoy just sitting here with her instead of knowing that everyone was looking at him like he was some kind of geek.
    “You okay?” Ellen asked.
    “Yeah. Sure. Great food.”
    He pushed the remainder of his rice around on the plate with his fork. Yeah, he had no problems.
    Just no place to go, no place to fit in. Body aching from last night’s beating. Woman sitting there across from him, looking tasty, but she was too old for him and there was something in her eyes that scared him a little. Not to mention a nightmare booger dogging his footsteps. Sure. Things were just rocking, mama.
    He stole another glance at her, but she was looking away, out to the darkening street, wine glass raised to her mouth.
    “That book your friend wrote,” he said.
    Her gaze shifted to his face and she put her glass down.
    “It doesn’t have anything like my booger in it,” Reece con-tinued. “I mean it’s got some ugly stuff, but nothing just like the booger.”
    “No,” Ellen replied. “But it’s got to work the same way. We can see it because we believe