Grand & Humble Read online

  Bruce and Harlan’s mother both turned to look, full-bore, at Harlan.

  “Mom—” he started to say.

  “Not here, Harlan,” she said. That was the rule: absolutely no dissension in public. But apparently it only counted as dissension when he disagreed with his mother, not when she disagreed with him.

  Bruce smiled at him; whenever he smiled, he reminded Harlan of a child molester. “Just an hour, Sport. That okay?”

  Harlan shrugged. “I guess.” Then he turned to go.

  “Where are you going?” his mom asked.

  “Outside for a smoke.”

  “Harlan! Not where people can see!”

  “Smoking?” Bruce said to Harlan’s mom, concerned. “Since when did he start smoking?”

  “It’s a joke,” Harlan said. “I don’t really smoke.”

  “Thank God,” Bruce said. Then he added, with another pathetic smile, “That stuff’ll kill you, Sport.”

  “Harlan, you know better than to make jokes like that,” his mother said, already turning away. “Someone might overhear.”

  The fog was thick in the streets outside the convention center. If it hadn’t been for the sidewalks, he’d probably have been wandering in circles.

  Harlan wasn’t an idiot. He knew what Beth Farrell had been insinuating back in the convention hall. So is that what you really want to do? She’d been saying he was just doing what his parents wanted him to do. Well, no duh! Harlan knew he didn’t have control over his life. He never had. Oh, sure, he had control at school—almost complete control, even over the teachers, which was kind of ironic when you thought about it. But that was all small stuff. The big stuff, the story line of his life, he was powerless to change. It was a little like the premonitions themselves, really: he could watch his life, like on a viewscreen, but he couldn’t direct it.

  It was so much easier this way. Beth Farrell had no idea of the kinds of forces his parents could bring to bear on a person in order to get their way. His mom ran their family life like she ran his dad’s reelection campaigns—namely, to win. That meant she had no problem playing hardball when she had to. Once, when he was in the seventh grade, Harlan had been acting slightly rebellious at home. Then his Boy Scout troop, which had been about to hold its annual fund-raiser, found that the restaurant that was donating the food suddenly had “problems” with the Health Department inspectors. Word quickly leaked that it was all Harlan’s fault; everyone—from the other scouts, to the troop leaders, to the owners of the restaurant—had been furious with him. Needless to say, Harlan had quickly fallen back in line with his parents, just as he had done so many times since then.

  The fog surrounded Harlan now, so thick he could barely make anything out. It was like being in an alien world, some planet without substance, a place of steam and gas. Or maybe it was a passageway between worlds, a shifting corridor through the swirling mists of time. The fog smelled musty, like frayed furniture in a long-abandoned house.

  Is that what you really want to do? That’s what Beth Farrell had asked. But Harlan wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life. He was seventeen years old—how could he know? And until he figured that out, he might as well do what his parents said. Someday, he’d figure out what he wanted. Then he’d stand up to his parents.

  Someday. Just not now. Now he had to get back to the convention hall before his mom called out the FBI.

  But which was the way back? He turned himself around, looking for a sign or landmark. Suddenly Harlan realized he was lost in the fog. It flowed around him like paint being swirled in a can, pressing in on him, confusing him. It made him dizzy. The fog even seemed to muffle sound.

  But he wasn’t lost, not really. He took a deep breath of the stale air, trying to clear his head. He knew this city. Besides, he couldn’t have walked more than six or seven blocks. He just needed to keep walking until he came to a building or landmark that he recognized.

  A pair of street signs materialized out of the fog. He had reached an intersection. The corner of Grand and Humble.

  Everything was okay. Harlan knew this intersection. He hadn’t gone more than three blocks from the convention center. Maybe he’d been walking around in circles after all.

  He stepped off the curb, into the crosswalk.

  And right into the path of an oncoming bus.

  MANNY

  Manny braced himself for the blow, but it didn’t come.

  He looked around. He was standing on a wide, sandy beach in the middle of a scorcher of a day. But was it a beach? When he looked for the ocean, he didn’t see it. The sand sloped downward like a beach, and he definitely smelled the ocean, but there didn’t seem to be any water. How had he come to be in this place anyway? It was like he had just appeared here, as if in a dream.

  And why was he bracing himself? Why had he been so certain there was a blow coming?

  There were people near him, a man and woman in their late twenties. They definitely weren’t dressed for the beach. He was wearing a tuxedo, and she was wearing an elegant black dress. They were hurrying away from Manny, up the sand, and he couldn’t see their faces. But they looked familiar somehow.

  “Manny?” a voice said from behind.

  It was his dad. He was dressed as a lifeguard—in red shorts and a white T-shirt that read “Lifeguard,” even with a whistle around his neck.

  “Dad?” Manny said. “Why are you dressed like that?” His dad wasn’t a lifeguard; he worked as a paralegal.

  “It doesn’t matter,” his dad said. “Come on, let’s eat.” He gestured toward a table in the sand. It had been set with a crisp white tablecloth, crystal goblets, and silver serving dishes. It looked nothing like a table his dad would set. It looked like a table that the man in the tuxedo and the woman in the dress would eat at. Why had his dad taken their table?

  “This doesn’t look right,” Manny said. “I don’t think we should be here.”

  “Why not?” his dad said, smiling. “Sit. Eat.” He guided Manny toward the table and set him down—firmly—into one of the two chairs. “Now eat.”

  “But, Dad—”

  The plate in front of Manny was covered with a lustrous silver lid. His dad lifted it. But it wasn’t food on the plate underneath; it was a pair of broken wire-rim glasses. The frames were bent and twisted, the lenses shattered.

  “Dad?” Manny said, confused. “What is this?”

  “What?” his dad said innocently. “Eat.” He poured something from a decanter into Manny’s crystal goblet; it looked and smelled like gasoline. “And drink.”

  “But I can’t eat or drink that!” Manny said.

  His dad didn’t answer. He wasn’t listening. He was staring over at the area where the ocean should have been, a blank expression on his face.

  “Dad?” Manny said. “What is it?”

  His dad turned to him and smiled again, but this time it was an unfamiliar grin—dark, unsettling. The instant Manny registered that smile, a shadow fell over them both, like something had blotted out the sun. Manny felt a rumble, heard a roar that grew louder by the second.

  He glanced up. It wasn’t just the sun that had been blotted out. It was the entire sky.

  Blotted out the sky? What could blot out the sky?

  Then he knew. “Tidal wave!” he shouted. That’s why there hadn’t been any ocean—it had all been sucked out into the massive wave! “We need to get out of here! We need to run!”

  He glanced up at his dad again, but now his father’s face was all in shadows. Even so, and even over the roar of the wave, Manny could tell that his dad was laughing.

  And then the wave crashed down on top of them.

  At the instant of impact, Manny woke up. He sat up in bed. He was soaking wet, but not from any wave. From sweat.

  Manny shuffled into the kitchen feeling like the Mummy—the shambling, lethargic mummy from the original movies in the 1930s, not the agile, computer-animated one from the crappy remakes.

  “Well,” his dad said
, seated at the table, looking up from his newspaper. “You look like hell.”

  “Uh-huh,” Manny said, pouring a cup of tea from a pot on the counter. It had been a good four hours since he’d woken up from the nightmare—of course he hadn’t been able to get back to sleep—but it still felt weird to be with his dad. The strangest thing about the dream was how out of character his dad had acted. Now it felt like one of those movie scenes when the character thinks he’s awake, but is really still in the nightmare. Manny almost expected his dad to leap up from the table brandishing the knife from Psycho.

  “Another nightmare, huh?” his dad said.

  Manny nodded, searching for a clean plate.

  “And to think you could be dreaming about sex like most teenage boys.”

  “Dad,” Manny said. “Do you mind?”

  “What? You don’t wanna talk about sex with your dad? Why in the world not?”

  “Dad!” But Manny couldn’t keep from smiling. The truth was, his dad was the opposite of nightmarish. He was best described as boyish—clean-shaven and bouncy, often impetuous, more like an older brother than a dad. Of course, that didn’t mean he couldn’t also be strict, like the time he wouldn’t let Manny and Elsa go to that Xena: Warrior Princess convention in Pasadena, California. But at least he always let Manny make his case. Manny’s dad was pretty much the perfect authority figure—someone who had actually earned, and deserved, respect.

  “I had a dream too,” his dad was saying. “I was the Head Munchkin, and I had to deny membership in the Lollipop Guild to the Keebler Elves.”

  Okay, so maybe the Munchkin dream didn’t make Manny’s dad sound like some awesome authority figure. But the fact that he was willing to say things like that was exactly what made Manny’s dad so great. He also loved to cook, kept houseplants, even hugged his son. Manny had always wondered what it meant that he had such an emotionally accessible dad; was that what had made him one of the arty-fruity types at school? He also wondered how his dad had ended up such a nontraditional guy. Was it because he’d had to be both father and mother to Manny? Manny’s mom had died when Manny was two months old. Skin cancer, his dad had said once. It was one of the things Manny and his dad didn’t talk about—one of the very few things.

  “So,” his dad said, suddenly all ears. “Tell me about your dream.”

  Manny glanced at the clock on the stove. “Shouldn’t you be on your way to work?”

  His dad sipped his tea. “I can be a little late. Come on. Talk.”

  Manny dished up two fried eggs from the pan on the stove. “I got creamed by a tidal wave.”

  “I think I’m detecting a pattern. What was it last night? A herd of elephants? And before that, it was a locomotive. Didn’t you actually get hit by a falling safe once? Or maybe it was an anvil.”

  “There was one thing different,” Manny said.

  “Really? Do tell.”

  “You were in it.”

  “Me? What’d I do?”

  Manny considered lying, but he didn’t seem to be able to do that to his dad. “Well, it’s not real flattering.”

  “For you or for me?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Me, huh? Hmmmm. Well, what’d I do?”

  Manny took a seat at the table across from him. “You laughed at me.”

  Manny’s dad just listened.

  So Manny told him the dream—the well-dressed couple hurrying away; the plate of broken eyeglasses; the way his dad, dressed as a lifeguard, had laughed when the wave was crashing down on top of them. Maybe his dad could tell him what all this meant; he had a pretty good instinct about these things.

  “So?” Manny said when he was done. “What do you think?”

  His dad didn’t answer right away. He was staring out the window. It was hard to tell what he was thinking. He wasn’t even drinking his tea. Manny couldn’t help but be reminded of the part of the nightmare when his dad had stopped and stared blankly out at the approaching tidal wave. At first he thought his dad was now trying to be funny—except then Manny remembered that he hadn’t told his dad that part of the dream.

  “Dad?”

  Suddenly his dad stood up from the table. “Oh, God, I just remembered! I gotta drop off some dry cleaning.” Was it Manny’s imagination, or was his dad flustered? But he didn’t get flustered—not by beautiful women, not by patronizing car mechanics, not by anything.

  “Dad?” Manny said. “Are you okay? I didn’t offend you or anything, did I?”

  “Huh? You mean about the dream? Please.”

  “But—”

  “Manny, I really gotta go. ’Bye!”

  And then his dad was gone. Manny sat at the kitchen table, alone, the fried eggs on his plate looking up at him like a pair of broken spectacles.

  Manny squatted down on his haunches, staring at the bushy gray cat ten feet or so ahead of him on the sidewalk. He stretched out his hand and twiddled his fingers. The trick, he knew, was to let the animal come to you. Cats didn’t like their space invaded. Manny could relate.

  He glanced at Elsa, who was waiting impatiently off to one side. I can’t believe you! she signed. We can’t go anywhere without you stopping to pet the cats.

  I can’t help it, Manny signed. I like cats. I think it’s rude to walk by and not say hi.

  No kidding!

  He gave his fingers another wiggle, but the cat looked warily at Elsa. So that was the problem. The cat sensed Elsa was not a fan.

  Just one more second, Manny said to Elsa. Making contact with this particular cat called for extreme measures. Slowly, he started inching forward.

  The cat turned and loped into the bushes.

  Manny gave up, and they started walking again. It was easier to talk to Elsa somewhere inside, face-to-face, so they could read each other’s signs. But Manny couldn’t bear being inside right now.

  Elsa tapped him on the arm. He turned to look at her. You had another nightmare, didn’t you? she signed.

  How did you know? he asked.

  I can just tell. Wanna talk about it?

  Actually, he signed, it’s not the nightmare that’s bugging me this time.

  Then what?

  It’s this morning, when I told my dad about the dream. At first, he said he wanted to hear it. But when I told him, he acted really weird.

  Elsa frowned. Weird how?

  I don’t know, Manny said. Nervous. Not like his usual self. Suddenly he couldn’t get away from me fast enough.

  Maybe he’s having a bad day.

  Yeah. Well, no. I mean, he was his usual self until I told him about the nightmare. That’s when he got weird.

  Maybe you scared him, Elsa said. Something in the dream.

  That’s what I think too. Because he was in this one. He told Elsa about the nightmare.

  Her eyes went wide. That was your dream?

  Yeah. Why?

  Is that the way you feel about your dad? That he doesn’t listen to you? Or that he’s supposed to be protecting you from something, but isn’t?

  No! Manny said. Not at all! My dad’s great. You know that.

  That’s not the way the dream makes it sound.

  Well, yeah. But it’s just a dream.

  Even so, Elsa said. Maybe you offended him.

  Manny considered this. Nah. My dad’s not like that. Besides, he knows how I feel about him. He thought back on their interaction in the kitchen. The worst part was, when I told him about the dream, it was like a little bit of it came true. He turned into this person I didn’t know at all. He stared out the window with this blank expression on his face, just like in the dream.

  Maybe he feels guilty, Elsa signed.

  About what?

  She exaggerated a shrug—one of the many ways she added emphasis to her hand gestures. Who knows with parents? But it sounds like your dream hit a nerve. So what’s he done to you to feel guilty about? You two have any big arguments lately?

  What Elsa was saying made sense, given his dad’s weird reacti
on. But his dad hadn’t done anything to feel guilty about—lately or ever. Manny shook his head again. I don’t think so.

  Maybe it’s something you don’t know about, Elsa said. Something he’s hiding. You should talk to him.

  Manny smiled. Oh, come on! You know my dad. He couldn’t hide anything. Or could he? Manny wondered.

  Oh, no! Elsa said, spotting something ahead of them. Here we go again!

  It was another cat—a sleek black one this time—sitting on the sidewalk right in front of them.

  Go ahead, Elsa said, rolling her eyes. Say hi!

  But now Manny wasn’t in any mood to pet a cat. Still, he knew it was expected. So he bent down again and held out his fingers.

  This time the cat didn’t even consider investigating his hand. No, it took one look at Manny—and only Manny, not Elsa—and turned to run under the steps of a nearby house. Once there, it crouched in the shadows, glaring out at Manny with the wide eyes and arched back of outright fear.

  HARLAN

  Harlan stared at the dog. It was Derrick Anderson’s golden retriever, a Seeing Eye dog sitting obediently by his master’s locker just down the hallway. Harlan loved dogs. He loved their strength and confidence, and their sense of loyalty to their owners. (That loyalty was probably why his mom had never let him have one; she didn’t want anyone in the house who hadn’t sworn fealty to her.)

  But Harlan wasn’t thinking about dogs just then. He was thinking about his near miss with that bus the previous Saturday night. It was just luck that he’d seen the bus and been able to pull himself back in time. If he hadn’t, it would have slammed right into him, and he’d be dead for sure. It was easily the closest he’d ever come to dying.

  And he’d seen it all in advance. He’d had that premonition in the swimming pool, the one of the swerving “van,” and it had come true. In other words, the strange mental pictures flashing through his brain weren’t just random images—they really were actual glimpses into the future!

  They also hadn’t stopped. He was still experiencing the premonitions, each one a vision of his own death, each one different than before: Harlan trapped at the bottom of a slick-walled pit, Harlan plunging down a flight of massive stairs. None of these others had come true—yet!—but maybe that was only because he was back to avoiding any locations that were anything like ones he saw in his premonitions.