“Usually, people go to get a drink, or they stand up and lie back down again. Sometimes they go to the bathroom. Because our brain’s still in a certain state of sleep, we don’t remember it or won’t realize we’ve done it unless we wake up fully as we do. The same goes for talking.”
From the looks on all their faces, I could see they’d all had this happen.
“Anyway, Sasha goes into a deep sleep, and instead of having a dream cycle based on what her mind comes up with, sometimes she goes into a movie or situation that she’s experienced recently or thought about.”
“Does it happen every night?” Elijah asked him, pulling the shade of Bronte’s buggy up higher to protect his daughter from the sun.
I answered this question for Ryan. “Nope, not every night. And she doesn’t act out movies each time it does. Some nights she’ll just be active, almost like she’s in a race. Some nights she’ll yell out random words like olives and rainbows.”
“We told the doctor that her most active nights involved movies where she’d quote them or just play the part of one of the characters, and he said that wasn’t unusual, especially for kids. They get so drawn into cartoons, movies, and books that they carry away the storyline and characters with them into their dreams. Almost like it’s a magical world in reality, type of thing.”
“That’s adorable,” Sadie murmured, looking down at Bronte like she couldn’t wait to experience that with my niece.
At the same time that Elijah asked, “Does she have an eidetic memory? How does she remember so many quotes?”
Bursting out laughing, I looked over my shoulder at where my heart was standing with her hands on her hips, lecturing the cat who was holding on with his claws, his helmeted head pointing down at her. He still had the glasses on, so I wasn’t sure if he was looking at her or watching something else. Then again, with his eyes, we weren’t ever sure where he was looking.
Turning back to face them, I watched Ryan shake his head.
“Sasha only remembers a line here and there and couldn’t even tell you the full plot of a movie without missing something huge. That’s what makes what she does at night funnier and weirder,” Ryan mumbled, frowning at what his daughter was doing now. “Excuse me, please.”
“Uh, you might want to try and stop her doing that,” Marcus hissed, his head jerking.
When I turned around, it was to see that she’d pulled over a bar stool and was standing on it to try and get to Milkshake. She started to tilt to the side, and I was running to get to her before I even realized what I was doing.
Almost like it was happening in slow motion, the chair fell, and I watched in horror as she went with it.
Fortunately, I got there in time to catch her, my hands clamping down either side of her waist, with her held up in the air above my head.
There was a round of applause and whistling from our audience, and when I turned my head to look at them incredulously, Benny yelled, “Well done! That’s definitely the one they do when she jumps off the stage and runs up to him.”
Looking up, I realized what we’d done. To get her balance, Sasha had her arms held out in the air on either side of her, making it look just like the lift out of Dirty Dancing.
“Jesus Christ,” I rumbled, lowering her down to the ground and pulling her into my chest. “You need to stop doing shit that’ll get you hurt. My heart can’t take it, Sasha.”
With her face buried in the material of my t-shirt, she nodded. “But at least we aced the lift.”
I blinked slowly while Milkshake made his way down from the tree and then climbed my leg and up my back. I had to grit my teeth as his claws dug their way through the materials into the skin below, but once he was settled on my shoulder, I threw my head and burst out laughing, ignoring the way he dug his nails deeper to keep his balance.
When I looked down, it was to see her eyes shining and almost dancing with laughter as she looked up at me.
“I love you more than Luminol loves the iron in blood.”
“I’m not sure I like that one,” she chuckled. “It makes me think about the kind of stains they showed in that program we watched at the motel where they went around hotel rooms with the stuff.”
Yeah, that hadn’t been a great one to watch while we were lying in a motel bed. They’d sprayed Luminol on the bedding, mattresses, walls, floor, bathrooms, and even the furniture on the ceiling, and the number of spots that reacted to the chemical agent was insane.