Munmun(16)

“What I wonder is if you can surprise me,” I heard Prayer say, and that’s when I got out of there.

Obviously Glen didn’t know that it was my dreaming, not Prayer’s. He didn’t even know I was there. But someone else from law school did.

His name was Chess and he had stowawayed in another moonhammock, and as my moon drifted close to his, he caught me looking down and dreaming out some mountainsides.

“Aha, are you the one dreaming this magnificent view,” he said all low and frummy.

“Oh,” I said. “Uh, no. It’s my sis Prayer.”

“Oh,” he said. “You’re just tagging along.”

That was an infuriating thing to agree to so I said, “Well, look. We’re splitting the dream halfandhalf. Half me, half her.”

“Wow, you two must be quite close if you can dream in tandumb like that,” he said.

“Okay fine, it’s a hundredpercent me, zeropercent her,” I said, because lying in Dreamworld makes you heartsick. “But don’t tell Glen or anyone because, being totally honest with you, everyone at law school has been a peen to her until prettymuch this exact moment.”

“I won’t tell anyone, just keep giving me this view,” said Chess, swimming his fingers through it.

? ? ?

Everynight for weeks I dreamed up a new kind of floaty skyvehicle and Prayer took a date swooping up into the night to gaze down at the winking city, not just with Glen, also with Ken, Will, Berry, Fill, Harry. Because at night here’s what happens. Each guy opens up and gets less mean, tells her stories, asks her questions, gives her compliments, but the next day that stupid guy still doesn’t want to be seen in an embarrassing Lifeanddeathworld convo with tiny cantread homeless Prayer, so the next night she gets frustrated and tries a different guy, or goes back to a guy from a few nights ago, hoping he misses her, and surprise surprise, he does, but only at night, and in the day again he won’t.

I didn’t know whether Prayer and any of them got to the point of a full-on bangdream and no way did I ask.

Meanwhile this guy Chess kept hanging out with me.

“You’re a nice guy, not a jerk at all,” I said early on. “What do you think of my cute sis.”

“She is genuinely lovely, I mean that, but how do I put this, she’s just not my type,” he said.

It took me a while to figure that out and then my skin got prickly and I said, “Oh.”

I must have sounded awkward or worried because he looked at me and said in mockniceness, “Oh for shitsake, Warner, it’s fine. I like men, not boys. How old are you? Twelve?”

“Fourteen,” I said.

“Well, what I’m telling you is, don’t flatter yourself,” he said.

“Don’t worry, I’m not weird about that stuff,” I said, trying not to be weird. “I knew some gayboys growing up.”

“It is definitely time to change this subject,” said Chess.

But honestly, and I know this is wrong to think of gaymen but I can’t help it, I stayed a little suspicious of him. It was along the reasoning of, guys his age were going on dates with Prayer and she was only a yearandahalf older than me, so why wouldn’t a gayman want to date teenage me. Basically I just suspect all men of wanting to date teenagers, because, you see them trying to do it all the time.

So a night or two later I asked him why he kept chilling with me.

“Because I enjoy your dreams, ofcourse,” he said.

“Why,” I said.

“They’re just very rich,” he said. “Very different from anyone else’s.”

“Huh,” I said.

“Believe me, they’d have to be pretty remarkable to get me to spend this much time with a fourteenyearold boy,” he said.

“What does that mean,” I said.

“You’re not the most gifted or intresting conversational partner,” he said.

“Neither are you,” I said, hopefully hurtfully.

“I actually am,” he said.

Anyway I got better and faster at dreaming the skyview of Lossy Indica, and I added extra dreamstuff for me and Chess to enjoy. Nightfish, starbirds, moonbats. Fireworks blushing up at us from below. Clouds made spooky by lights inside, tiny wildfires and fireflies, bright wires like lightbulb linings. Faint faraway fields of moss and flowers as big as half of everything, out behind the stars.

I had to keep the extra dreamstuff away from Prayer’s part of the sky because she kept saying, hey, these extra crazy things are not helpfull to my date, in the sense of, they are super distracting and also I have to explain to a guy, here’s why I chose this specific moment to dream a string of golden murmuring butterflybats.

I got to enjoy Chess being there, my skin stopped prickling, it was nice to have a fan.

“The best yet,” he said everynight. “Wow. Delightfull. Amazing. Sumpchewus. You’re a prodedgy.”

“I’m okay,” I said. “I’m surprised at how no one is as good as me at dreaming stuff, because it’s not that hard.”

“Okay,” he said. “I know you wanted to sound humble with that, but that actually wasn’t humble at all.”

“I’m just being honest,” I said.

Onenight though Chess snuck in a couple super frummy friends.