The Dreamway by Lisa Papademetriou

Author:Lisa Papademetriou
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

STELLA WASN’T AFRAID. SHE WAS curious and confused. It was difficult to know which way to go in the total dark.

She waited a moment until, with a sudden buzz and hum, lights came on around her. These seemed to be some sort of emergency lights, and they cast a warm campfire-like glow on the walls and pipes around her. “I guess the Inspectors reset the system,” she muttered to herself, and immediately regretted it, as her words echoed back to her in a way that suggested unseen things were whispering them to her on every side.

She crossed through a line of steel beams and found the tracks of what she guessed was the Memory Line. She looked in one direction and saw nothing but orange lights stretching on into darkness. In the other, they stretched on into light. Well, she thought, whatever is in that direction—at least I’ll be able to see it.

Stella started off in the direction of the light.

It took a while (How long? Who knew? In the Dreamway, time seemed to go about on its own schedule), but eventually the light grew brighter. Something gritty slid under her flip-flops, and when Stella bent to investigate, she realized that it was a layer of fine sand.

Soon, the silver rails began to gleam, and the light grew brighter.

A familiar smell wafted toward her. It took her only a moment to place it: french fries.

The sand grew deeper, and Stella stepped out from the arching tunnel and into the bright sunshine of a clear, summer day. The silver rails stretched out toward the shore and skimmed across the top of the water, disappearing into the distance.

When Stella turned back to face the way she came, she saw that she had walked out of a cave of sorts—a large triangle formed by dark boulders. Behind this and to her right was a boardwalk. She realized that this must be the source of the french fry smell. She was at a beach.

Before her was a red-and-yellow-striped beach umbrella. Underneath it was a woman in a black bathing suit and a large sunhat covering her pale complexion. A man with sable skin was building a sandcastle with a five-year-old boy with black curls. The man looked up at Stella and waved.

“Dad?” she whispered.

When the boy looked up, she saw that it was Cole. Five-year-old Cole in the navy-blue swim trunks with the whales on them. This was the summer they spent a week at the beach in New Jersey.

Stella tried to run to him, but it was hard to run in the sand, and her legs were small. When she looked down, she saw a pink bathing suit with a ruffle at the top. She hated this bathing suit. She outgrew it years ago. . . .

Is this a dream or a memory? Stella wondered. She could not feel herself walking or moving at all, but a moment later she was in the water. Cole was ahead of her, diving into the waves as they crashed toward him.

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