The Dream Where the Losers Go Read Online Free PDF Page A

had done what she had done?
    For a long moment they both sat staring straight ahead, watching the emptiness of the park, the bare stripped trees. Then Jigger’s arm went around Skey, and a hand cupped her face. She had one brief glimpse of his blue eyes before he began kissing her mouth gently, again and again. Small cries of loneliness came out of her the way they always did. Setting the Burger King bag on the floor, he pulled her in close, kissing and touching. This was the way she had dreamed it would happen, lying awake nights in the lockup, rolling in her bed, moving slowly against the mattress. Imagining, imagining.
    Jigger didn’t say much, just the sounds he made sometimes in his throat, and her name, the way he whispered it to her. Finally, he pressed his face into her hair, and they let their breathing slow. In that moment she remembered every bit of his skin, the way it used to move against hers, the way it had been hers. Pulling back his face, Jigger looked at her. First her mouth—for a long time, he looked at her mouth. Then her nose. His eyes moved up to her forehead, over her hair. Then he let their eyes meet, let her look at him.
    He was taller, his shoulders a little broader, but otherwise the same—blond, tanned, mouth wide and full, the familiar grin lines to one side. Everything exactly as she had dreamed it—his face, his smile, his voice. Reaching out, Skey traced his lips. Real, he was not a dream. Waves of relief flooded her. Jigger wanted her, he wanted her. Finally, she had found that lost part of herself, here with him.
    Reaching for her wrist, Jigger slid up her sleeve and ran a finger over one of the scars. Still a deep red, the scar tissue was puckered in a broad angry mark. Briefly, under his touch, Skey saw the scar open into the original wound, releasing a surge of blood down her arm. Then the blood disappeared and she was back in the present tense.
    “It was a long summer,” Jigger said.
    “Yeah,” she said. “It was.”
    Gently, Jigger pulled her sleeve back down. Then he touched and touched her face, claiming her, taking them back to the couple they were before everything bad happened. It’s like it never was , she thought in a wash of incredible joy. It never happened and now it’s over.
    “Hungry?” Jigger asked softly. “Let’s eat.”

C HAPTER T HREE
    T HAT NIGHT SHE WAS trapped in the tunnel of light. Just as in the tunnel of dark, she had to feel her way along these walls by touch, listening for any change in sound that might mean a meeting place and stopping every now and then to trace designs carved into the wall. In the tunnel of light, it was also impossible to see, but it was much worse than the tunnel of dark. Here, she had to feel her way forward with her eyes closed against an intensity of light so extreme that every detail was lost in the glare. Even with her eyes closed, the inside of her body felt completely lit up, her brain a circle of grinding light. Her whole body cried out for relief, some darkness to balance the light.
    She had never heard another person in this system of tunnels. It had always been a place of aloneness, and it remained so. Though she had gone to sleep with the rock in her hand, it didn’t bring the boy into this dream. Tonight the carvings all seemed to be slashes in the tunnel wall, knife wounds that burned under her touch. She moved onward, alone and alone.
    She woke with the headache that always followed the dream of light, the whites of her eyes a faint pink. Terry was working the morning shift and gave Skey’s eyeballs a few suspicious glances. So did some of the girls.
    “I thought you said we’d share,” Ann grumbled at the breakfast table.
    “I’m not on anything,” said Skey.
    “Yeah, sure,” snorted Ann.
    “Skey, can I talk to you?” Terry called from the office.
    Skey dragged her feet. She had already received a lecture for missing yesterday’s noon hour meeting in the Counseling office. But she had made it