Mister Impossible (Dreamer Trilogy #2)(68)

How stupid he’d been, he thought, his ears burning red. How stupid he’d always been about everything.

Even the idea that Matthew had been excited about finally acquiring enough money to get the shoes was ridiculous. The money was from a weekly allowance that came from doing chores, a system started by Aurora back at the Barns and continued by Declan, even after they moved to the town house. Matthew had never questioned the correctness of this. Yes, of course he received an allowance for cleaning his room, vacuuming, unloading the dishwasher, spraying pine cleaner on the town house’s front door to get the pollen off, cleaning the trash out of Declan’s Volvo after school.

God, he couldn’t bear thinking about it. He just couldn’t bear it. It had just been Declan’s money, just an older brother giving pocket money to a stupid little kid who stayed stupid even once he got big. All Matthew’s friends at school got jobs bussing tables and working cash registers and Matthew got bills in a mug on the kitchen counter. And now it was no different, he just collected the allowance from gallery owners who gave him odd jobs as a favor to Declan, because they thought Declan Lynch’s kid brother was cute and his love of ugly sneakers was funny.

Matthew kept walking, walking. Stomping. He walked right out of their neighborhood, past restaurants bustling with diners and comely brick row houses bright in the evening, by a little convenience store that reminded him of the one Declan had sometimes stopped at back at home when he forgot to get milk during the week. He thought about the times they’d just sat there for several long minutes with Declan staring off at nothing with the receipt for the milk pressed between his hand and the steering wheel. Aren’t we going home? Matthew would ask. Play your game, Declan would reply, and Matthew did, he just played whatever stupid game he had on his phone while his older brother sat there at a gas station five minutes from home for sometimes nearly an hour rather than going back to the town house, and Matthew had never once asked him why they were sitting there or what Declan was thinking about or if he hated everything about his life.

And now this thing about sweetmetals—this thing they were supposedly pursuing to keep Matthew safe while not talking to him about any of it?

Everyone still acted like he was just a pet.

Matthew’s feet kept on marching him along, farther from home. “Home.” With quotation marks, because home without quotation marks was either the Barns or the DC town house. “Home” was a Fenway apartment Matthew thought of as Old Man Eyebrows, because of how the detail work over the windows looked like fat, frowning eyebrows. It had seven rooms, which Matthew had mentally named. Twice. Once after the Seven Dwarves, and once after the seven vices. Happy Gluttony was the kitchen. Bashful Sloth, the living room. Grumpy Lust, Declan’s bedroom. So on. So forth. Declan liked the apartment. Matthew could tell Declan liked it. He liked everything about his life here, even though Matthew wasn’t exactly sure what his life here even entailed. He didn’t talk to Matthew about it. Declan didn’t say he was happier, but he clearly was happier. It made Matthew feel kind of bad inside.

Enormously bad inside.

He didn’t know why.

His feet had taken him to a part of the city that seemed to be nearer to the water and farther from people and businesses. Beside him was a raised bit of highway that just ended in midair with weeds beneath it, ready for an action scene.

Declan would have been extremely displeased to find him here.

Back when Matthew learned he was a dream, Declan had told him that he was just as much a Lynch brother as the other two, but Matthew knew now that wasn’t true. Because he wasn’t being sent to school. He wasn’t being prepared for a future. He was being tended and loved and managed. The thing about this life of Declan’s, Matthew thought, the thing about it, was that Matthew was just a thing in it. A dream object. A puppy to be walked and then returned to “home” with some of the energy burned off.

His eye was caught by an unoccupied crane, a spiffy one. It had one of those big boom things that looked like a ladder and at the top of it was a hook.

Matthew thought, without hesitation: I’m going to climb that.

He did. He clambered onto the body and then onto the boom, up and up and up. He thought how annoyed Declan would be. Good, he thought. Good, good. But I told you to stay in the house, Declan would say, confused. You’re supposed to stay exactly where I put you, like a toy.

He kind of wished he’d never found out he was a dream.

At the top of the crane boom, Matthew closed his eyes. He used to imagine that air was a hug that was always happening, but he couldn’t seem to conjure up that happy thought right then.

It had taken Matthew a long time to understand that he was a boat anchor in Declan’s life.

“Crumbs!”

Opening his eyes, he realized there was a tiny person looking up at him. A tiny Jordan. Well, a regular-sized Jordan, far below.

She shielded her eyes. “Yeah, I thought that was you!”

“You can’t make me come down,” Matthew told her.

“I sure as shit cannot,” she agreed, “but it is harder to talk this way, you up there, me down here.”

“Don’t talk to me like a kid. I can tell you’re talking to me like a kid and I don’t like it.”

Jordan crossed her arms, a posture readable even from up on a crane. “All right, here you go, then: Climbing up on a stick into the sky is a stupid way to process any kind of problem, but stupid’s your right, so if you want to stay up there, just lemme know how long it’ll be, so I can know if I have time to get a drink, or if I should just hang here.”