Dreamland (Riley Bloom 3)

I remembered the way her face looked the day she told me it was time to stop haunting the earth plane, time to cross the bridge and move on to where our parents and Buttercup waited—her eyes unnaturally bright, her voice much too tight. She’d tried so hard to play it straight, to be mature, to be tough, to do the right thing—but it was easy to see she was just as broken as I was.

The memory blooming so large in my head, it began to feel real. Began to seem as though it was happening all over again.

And I was so caught up in the moment, so caught up in the grief of saying good-bye, that I nearly missed it when Balthazar cried, “Got it! Perfetto! Now hurry—vite-vite, Riley Bloom! Follow me!”

12

Like a gymnast rotating toward a mat—like a skydiver hurtling toward a welcoming patch of grass—the key to a successful dream jump is all about nailing t

he landing.

Or, as Balthazar put it: “After the imprint, the landing is everything. Without the perfect landing, the dreamer will wake, and all is kaput!”

According to Balthazar there were no second chances where dreams were concerned. You had to practice until you got it right. And if you couldn’t get it right, well, then you had to cut your losses, find your way out of Dreamland, go someplace quiet, and try your luck with a thoughtwave.

I was beginning to realize just what a privilege I’d been handed. Up until that moment, I had no idea that others had been forced to apprentice with the assistant directors for long, untold periods of time before Balthazar would even consider working with them.

“How long did it take Mort to learn?” I asked, not to be competitive, but because I needed something to go on, some kind of time frame for how long it should take me to learn what I needed to know.

But Balthazar just scowled, dismissed my question with an impatient wave of his hand. “Mort is not my concern. Nor is he yours. We have only a short time before closing time comes. If you want a successful dream jump, you must do the work.”

I nodded, just about to ask how he could possibly know it was almost closing time in a place where there was no time to speak of, when he looked at me and said, “Enough with your questions. Answers cannot help you when the work is intuitive. So, tell me, are you ready to make your first jump?”

I nodded, part of me excited and eager, the other part quaking with nerves. Unsure if I was up for the challenge when I’d never been all that great at jumping rope, or doing the high jump, or the long jump, or any other activity having to do with jumping—and surprised to find that it wasn’t really a jump at all. Balthazar was right, the work was intuitive—the jump was way more mental than physical.

Basically I had to observe a whole slew of dreams. Other people’s dreams—complete strangers’ dreams—not one of whom was even the least bit familiar to me. Balthazar and I sat side by side, watching a random assortment of images play out on the screen, and it was my job to find just the right moment to pop in and send a message. And, since it was only the first step in my training session, since I wasn’t actually jumping into the scene, I just shouted, “Jump!” whenever the time seemed just right.

It took me a while to get the hang of it. It was way, way harder than it might seem. And as soon as I’d graduated from that, Balthazar had me jumping for real.

We moved to a soundstage—one that was smaller than the one where Buttercup had made his debut—one that was used strictly for training—a place where, basically, I did all the same things I’d just done.

I’d watch a dream in progress, but instead of yelling, “Jump!” I’d just nod, and the next thing I knew I was somehow propelled from my seat and projected right into the scene. Dropped right in the middle of whatever it was that was happening, and then, without alerting the dreamer, without startling them, scaring them, or, worst of all, waking them, I had to find a way to blend in, to not stand out in any way.

It seemed like it should be a cinch. The kind of thing that should be impossible to fail. Easy-peasy in every sense of the word.

But, as it turned out, it was pretty much the opposite of the way it first seemed.

On my first three attempts, all of the dreamers woke up.

On the fourth, the dreamer marched right up to me and demanded to know who I was and just how I got there.

And on the fifth—well, that’s when I froze. I had no idea what to do.

“Cut!” Balthazar shouted, the sound of his voice yanking me out, propelling me back in my seat, where I cowered beside him. “What have you done? Why you just stand there like that? Like a … like a … like a snowman!”

I bit down on my lip, pretty sure he meant to say statue and not snowman, but I was so completely ashamed of myself, I was in no position to correct him.

“I’m so sorry.” I shook my head, looked away. “I guess … I guess I just froze. It felt like I was caught in a nightmare.”

He looked at me, brows slanting together as his eyes bulged beneath them. “Nightmare? Nightmare! You think I make nightmare? You think I allow that sort of dark dream?”

He was angry.

No, actually it was far worse than that. He’d gone from testy and red-faced to absolutely furious in just a handful of seconds. And I was so desperate for him to understand, so desperate for him to get what I meant, that I said, “No! I didn’t mean it was a nightmare for the dreamer—I meant that it was a nightmare for me!”

He stopped. Squinted. Yanked his notepad from his back pocket and flipped through the scribbled-up pages, studying them carefully before leveling his gaze back on me.

“That girl—the dreamer—she was at a school dance, right?”