The City of Dreams -- Part 25

[I was going to make this a bigger section, post it tomorrow, but this thought is done so I might as well put it up. Tomorrow, Perry starts the climb out of the hole.]

I woke up tired.

There's something wrong with that, I decided. There should be a fund that hands out five dollars and a coupon for a free nap every time a person spends all night sleeping and wakes up needing more.

It was Saturday, it was nine o'clock, and I had absolutely no reason to get out of bed. None. Brie didn't want to hang out with me. I didn't want to do homework. I didn't want to watch TV. I didn't want to run into my parents or my sisters. What little enthusiasm Mr. Punctilious had inspired in me for trying something different had expired the moment I opened my eyelids. I didn't want to do anything.

I did, however, need to go to the bathroom. The spirit is unwilling but the flesh is week. I rolled out of bed and staggered down the hall.

"Good to see you're up," said Dad, coming the other way. "Time for breakfast."

I mumbled something that sounded like 'muffin squirrels,' ducked into the bathroom, and shut the door behind me. Unfortunately, I ran out of pee in well under a minute, and I had to walk back out the door again--after washing my hands, of course. I wasn't THAT tired.

I made it to my doorway and looked in. There it was: my bed. It was a decent bed. The mattress was newish, but I'd had the headboard since I was twelve. It had the rockets I'd painted on--very badly--during my classic sci-fi stage. Everything was rockets in those books, and so everything had become rockets for me.

My desk was the same desk I'd had since I was thirteen. There were still maps taped on the side that I'd drawn during my swords-and-sorcery stage. The places all had names like 'The Glower-Rot Forrest' and 'Mountains of Despair,' even though at the time I had no idea what ‘glower’ meant. Also, every city name had at least one apostrophe in it. I'd never bothered to take them down.

That was most of my room, actually. Stuff I'd never bothered to do. The clothes piled in my closet? I'd never bothered to hang them up. Books on my shelf? Never bothered to organize them. Mounds of something under my bed? Never bothered to dig it all out, and then I hadn't dared to, afraid of what I might find. This room was four years of leftovers from my life, like dead skin. It wasn't all bad--some of the maps were pretty cool--but it was like Mr. Punctilious had said: it was the same thing, over and over and over. I never tried anything new. Even with TV, my favorite stuff to watch was reruns.

As tired as I was, I couldn't bear to walk back into my room. I turned and slumped down the stairs.

"Glad you could make it," said Dad, dropping pancakes onto a plate in front of me as I sat down. Except for the syrup, butter, and a pitcher of juice, the rest of the table was empty.

"Where is everyone?" I asked.

"Mom took them shopping."

"So you made these pancakes just for me?"

"Don't be silly. I'm eating some, too."

"Did everyone else eat earlier?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you?"

"I wanted to talk to you."

"Seems like that's all I'm doing recently."

"What?" asked Dad. "Talking?"

"Pretty much," I said.

"You're kidding, right?"

I leaned my face in my hands. "Not really."

"Tell me who these people are that you're talking to," said Dad. "I want to meet them and shake their hands."

I looked at him. "I'm detecting sarcasm."

"Sorry," said Dad, holding up his hands in surrender. "It's just that I have a hard time getting complete sentences out of you on a good day. I wanted to meet the people who actually got you to TALK."

I blinked. "I guess it's...mostly in my dreams."

"I do crazy things in my dreams, too," he said. "Now eat your pancakes while they're hot."

I nodded and started piling them up, pancake then butter then pancake then butter, until I had a stack of refined flour and fat about three inches tall. Then I poured syrup on it all.

"How in the world do you not look like me?" asked Dad, patting his stomach as he sat down across from me with a plate of his own.

"Mom says it'll catch up with me when I'm thirty."

"Your mother speaks from experience."

"But she's not fat," I said.

"And I am?" asked Dad. "Thanks."

"That's not what I meant."

"Don't worry about it. I meant that she was married to me when I hit thirty. Actually, now that I think about it, I think my mother told me the same thing when I was a teenager. It's like a family curse."

"And it falls to me to break the curse," I said. "I'll start exercising any day now."

"You will?"

I shrugged and cut off an oversized chunk of pancake. I knew from practice that it would barely fit in my mouth, but it would fit. "Besides, how do you have any gut at all? You bike to work every day."

"True," said Dad, "but my diet is terrible. It's the late-night ice cream."

I stopped chewing. "Seriously?" I asked through my mouthful of pancake.

"It's true," he said. "When I'm under stress, I stay up late and eat ice cream."

"Why did I never know this?"

Dad bobbed his eyebrows at me. "I'm secretly a ninja."

"At least you use your powers for something worthwhile," I said.

Dad piled up two pancakes and put on much less syrup than I had. For a few minutes we chewed and nothing else. Then Dad put his fork down and looked at me.

"I said I wanted to talk," he said. "So I'm going to do it. Mom told you I've been seeing a counselor?"

I nodded.

"Seems that I'm prone to severe depression. Apparently it can run in families, and watching you reminded me too much of myself. I've dealt with it better and worse, but the one thing I didn't know how to do was talk with you about it. Honestly, I don't know that I'd be that good at it, even now. Don't get me wrong," he said, sitting up straighter, "I will talk with you about it if you want to. I'll talk with you about it even if you don't want to. But I think you should come see this counselor I've been meeting with."

"Okay," I said.

Dad blinked at me, then sagged back into his chair. He looked as surprised as I felt.

"I had a lot more prepared," he said. "Stuff about your getting worse and needing help and change and things like that."

I shrugged and looked out the window. I wasn’t sure where the spark had come from, but apparently it hadn’t died when I woke up. I wanted something different. I wanted to walk out into the darkness and find my own barn on wheels. "I know I need help,” I said. “I'm just messed up."

"Yeah," said Dad. "Messed up I can understand. I know it's soon, but I made an appointment for this afternoon. You up for it?"

"She works on Saturdays?"

"For a couple hours. Also, you'll like her. She's hot."

I looked at him. "She is not."

"True, but she told me to tell you that if I was having a hard time convincing you."

I shook my head and took another immense bite of pancake.