The Cure for Dreaming(6)

Percy made his way to where we waited and stopped two feet from me. I could smell his divine, musky cologne.

“May I drive you home, Olivia?” he asked.

“Drive me home?” I looked to Frannie to ensure I’d heard him correctly.

She gaped, her jaw dangling open enough for me to see the little gap between her bottom front teeth.

A rotund gentleman with a heavy black beard fell against Percy, and the force of the blow knocked Percy’s chest against mine. He grabbed my arms to steady himself but carried on with his conversation as though we hadn’t just crashed together with our cheeks pressed close. “My father bought me my own buggy.” He let go of me and stepped back to a more respectable distance. “I’d love to give you a ride.”

I cleared my throat to find my voice. “Didn’t you come to the theater with your parents?”

“They brought their own carriage. I drove separately.”

“Frannie? Livie?” called Kate from the exit, bobbing up and down like a buoy. “Where in heaven’s name are you?”

“We’re coming, Kate,” said Frannie. She glanced my way with concern in her eyes. “You’re coming, too, Livie, right?”

My heart pounded. I felt I’d stumbled across a crucial fork in a road after a long journey, and choosing the wrong path might alter my entire life. Going home with my friends as planned would mean safety and comfort and normalcy. Yet driving away with Percy, unchaperoned—Percy who was gazing at me as if I were something rare and enchanting he’d just unearthed—well, that was an entirely new adventure.

I buttoned up my gray wool coat. “I’ll go with Percy.”


PERCY’S BUGGY WAS AN ELEGANT BLACK CONTRAPTION with fresh paint, a curved roof, and a seat, meant for two, upholstered in padded green leather. He stepped in beside me and rocked the vehicle until he got himself situated.

I tucked my gloved hands inside my coat pockets, for the night air was chilled and damp with the type of mist that stung my cheeks and nose. Fairy kisses, my mother had called that type of weather when I was small enough to believe in mystical creatures.

Percy fitted his silk top hat over his head. “Where do you live?”

“Twelfth Street, near Main.”

“That shouldn’t take long.” He gathered up the reins. “Are you ready?”

I nodded. “I am.”

“Let’s be off, then.” He made a clicking sound out of the side of his mouth, and his white ghost of a horse pranced away from the theater with the steady clip-clop of hooves. The carriage bumped and jostled over potholes in the dark, so I grabbed the crisscrossing bars running up to the roof to keep from bouncing out to the muddy street.

“You have a beautiful horse,” I said when we were two blocks west of the theater.

“Thank you. His name is Mandolin.”

“Oh, that’s pretty.”

“Thank you.”

I leaned back against the seat and wondered what I was doing with exquisite Percy Acklen and his gorgeous black buggy.

Silence ruled our drive across the city, even though I longed to ask him what books he liked to read outside of school and what he thought of hypnotism . . . and Halloween . . . and bicycling . . . and a dozen other subjects. Words failed me, however—as they were apt to do around attractive boys. All my imagined questions struck me as either dull or nosy.

I focused on the glow of the arc lamps dangling from overhead wires and the darkened stores, including my absolute favorite, McCorkan’s Bicycle Shop, which featured two pairs of ladies’ riding bloomers in the front window. We traveled past rows of houses—oversized gingerbread homes with rounded towers and sprawling porches topped with jack-o’-lanterns that reminded me of Henri Reverie leaping out of smoke. The carriage wheels squelched through soupy puddles and clattered across stony patches of road so poorly paved, the surface might as well have been dirt. The air carried the scent of Halloween bonfires and magic.

We turned left, and Percy urged Mandolin into a fast trot, perhaps to impress me. My backside bounced against the seat hard enough to rattle my teeth.

I clutched the buggy. “Is it safe to go this fast in the dark?”

“Are you scared?”

“A little.”

“It’s Halloween. You’re supposed to be frightened.”

“Frightened of the dead arising . . . not of imminent death.”

“Ha! I’ll slow down, then.” He adjusted the reins, and the horse eased back into a walk. The buggy swayed in a gentle rhythm, and I relaxed my stranglehold on the bars. “There, boy,” cooed Percy. “There’s a good horse.”

Our narrow, two-story house came into view to the south, its ugly red clapboards too dim to be seen with the clouds blocking the moon.

“My house is the third one on the right,” I said with a nod toward the place. “The skinny one with the big maple in front.”

“All right.”

We drove close enough for me to see a light flickering behind the lace curtains of one of the side windows in the back. Father’s study.

Percy called out another “Whoa,” and the buggy rocked to a stop in front of our curb. Mandolin whinnied. Rain pattered against the vehicle’s roof, which made me think of poor Frannie and Kate trudging through drizzle and hopping aboard streetcars to get home, and there I was, sitting in the height of luxury on padded green leather.