In Search of the Rose Notes Read Online Free PDF

my head and scooched to the end of the mat. I pulled the end of it up like it was one of those curly plastic sleds, and it took off, zipping me around the gymnasium and then, after a little while, into the air. Suddenly my gym mat was a magic carpet, and I was flying up and out of the gym, away from the school. Soon I was flying so high I couldn’t see the ground. I’m not sure where I was, but I knew I was probably pretty far from Waverly.
    “A flying dream!” Charlotte grabbed her book and flipped pages excitedly. “There’s a section in the book about those. I’ve never had one. Have you, Nora?”
    “No,” I answered. “Only falling.”
    “Here it is! Let’s see… hmm… well, it says they’re common in people who’re ‘forced to endure unhappy circumstances.’ People who want to get free.”
    Rose wrestled the book from Charlotte. “That’s bullshit.”
    Charlotte frowned. “You shouldn’t say that word.”
    “Sorry. I meant to say ‘That’s garbage.’ Okay?”
    “Okay,” Charlotte said reluctantly. Then, after a moment’s thought, she asked, “Did you crash through the ceiling of the gym?”
    The front kitchen door swung open just then, and Charlotte’s older brother, Paul, sauntered into the room, looking sweaty. He was home early from soccer practice.
    “Hey,” he said, sitting with us uninvited, grabbing a banana from the bowl on the table.
    “Hey,” Rose echoed.
    “Hi,” I said softly. Charlotte ignored him.
    “No,” Rose answered Charlotte. “All of a sudden I was above it. You know how sometimes stuff just magically happens like that in dreams?”
    “Yeah,” Charlotte said. She read over Rose’s words again. “So is that all you remember?”
    “It got fuzzy after that.”
    Charlotte nodded knowingly and took her book back.
    “What’re you guys doing?” Paul asked as he peeled his banana.
    “Dream analysis,” Charlotte answered, then turned to Rose again.
    “You should read this page,” she said, flipping back to a bookmarked section. “It tells you how to get better at remembering. You should jot down the dreams right after you wake up. Keep a pen and paper by your bed. And you shouldn’t try to make them sound like they make sense. Just write exactly what you remember.”
    Taking the book back again, Rose raised an eyebrow and glanced at Paul over Charlotte’s head. They smiled in mutual amusement at Charlotte’s tone. Rose and Paul were friends, sort of. Rose was dating Aaron, a guy from Paul’s soccer team. According to Charlotte, Aaron was really handsome. Charlotte was always trying to get Rose to talk about him—to tell us about kissing him.
    “I’ll take a look,” Rose said, glancing at our blank papers. “But you two ought to get to work.”
    I made my notebook-hole sun larger and stared at the blank lines of my paper, trying to block out the squishy sound of Paul chewing his banana. My most vivid dream in recent memory was something about Play-Doh spaghetti. Ribbons and rainbows of it noodling out of unexpected places, like electrical sockets and air-conditioner vents. Finding little worms of it in the corners of my bedroom and on my pillow, and not knowing if I should feel delighted or disgusted by it.
    My mother never let me have store-bought Play-Doh. She thought it was gross and hated its smell. Regardless, I was now too old to be thinking about it, and I therefore probably shouldn’t write about it in front of Rose and Charlotte—certainly not in front of Paul. I sighed and peered at Charlotte’s paper. She’d written “Dream Work Log” across the top in neat, dark letters, and the date below that. Her elbow and forearm hid whatever else she’d started to write.
    “Did you read this all the way to the end?” Rose asked Charlotte.
    “Yeah.”
    “ ‘In fact, some authorities believe true dream interpretation should only be pursued with the help of a trained professional.’ ” Rose scoffed, then continued. “ ‘The messages of