Chapter 5

Keith's dream started outside his old house. The light was flat and oddly pale, and Keith was walking towards his old porch, slowly. Ahead of him, on the sidewalk leading to the porch, were girls playing skip-rope.

how many doctors

did it take?

1 — 2 — 3 — 4 — 5 — 6 — 7 — 8!

Keith (dream-Keith) felt an odd sense of dread as he moved forward. One of the girls was his sister Melanie, regressed to about age six through the magic of dreaming.

Keith swallowed nervously, and (although dream-Keith didn't know it) real Keith tossed in his sleep and moaned out loud. There was nothing untoward about the scene he was seeing in front of him, but it made him greatly nervous. Something bad is coming, he thought wildly.

He moved forward, past the girls, towards the porch.

With very little surprise, he saw his Grampy on the porch.

Keith looked back, alarmed at the change in the chant. The girls weren't on the sidewalk anymore.

He turned back to look at his Grampy. "Holes in the world, Keith," said Grampy. "Mind you don't rip 'em o'er much."

"But where are they, Grampy? Where did they go?" Keith asked plaintively. "I hear them but I can't see them. I want to go too."

"When you're older, Keith. That's for when you're older." The old man paused, and looked tenderly at Keith. "Remember, God tends his own loom."

Keith awoke to sunlight streaming into his room, a brief bit of the panic from that odd dream following him into wakefulness. He breathed a sigh of relief as he looked around, confirming that he was safe and sound and in his room, on his bed. "At least I know that was just a dream," he muttered. "Weird."

During summer vacation, waking up on Saturday morning was pretty much like waking up any other day. During the school year, weekday mornings were a frantic rush of showers, teeth-brushing, and shaving (this last a recent development for Keith, who was quite proud of the fact that he now needed to shave.) All of these tasks were complicated by having to share the bathroom with his sister, who required approximately eleven hours every morning to get hair and makeup done just right before school. Sundays weren't quite as bad, but with the whole family hustling to get to church, it was still less than peaceful. Saturdays were a welcome break from that frenetic routine.

Since his dad was laid off, he'd been at home most mornings, an uncomfortable reminder that he was out of work. The arrival of the real Saturday made his being at home seem normal, and although no one spoke of it, Keith thought the whole family was relieved at the feeling of normality.

He propped himself up on his pillow and stared at the ceiling. He had just spent three days in ... some completely different world ... and he felt so...

Ordinary.

It was weird. He thought that he should feel different, be different, somehow. And yet here he was, waking up on Saturday morning to the smell of bacon and coffee from the kitchen wafting upstairs, just like everything was the same.

He got out of bed and stared at his closet for a moment, then surrendered to temptation and spent a moment opening his treasure box and looking at the mysterious green gemstone. In daylight, it was even more striking: slightly larger than a golf ball, a clear, dark green, with six dark twisty lines inside it. As he moved the stone, an optical illusion made the dark lines within seem to move of their own accord, as though they were live smoke inside the stone, twirling in a radial pattern.

He stumbled downstairs just as the phone started ringing, and he answered it on the first ring.

"Mr. Porte?"

"No, you want my dad," Keith replied. He covered the phone and yelled, "Dad!"

"He's in the shower," came his mom's voice from the kitchen. "Take a message."

"I'm sorry, but he can't come to the phone," Keith said. "Can I take a message?"

"Yes, son. Tell your dad that Saul Cohen called from Cohen & Sons Jewelry."

"And your number?" Keith scrambled for a pen and jotted it down, finishing the call and the task just as his mom put breakfast on the table. He dug into a heaping pile of scrambled eggs and bacon with gusto.

Kim and her mother had been very generous with what they had, but Keith had seen how little food they had and eaten as sparingly as he could manage, and with food in front of him he yielded to his ravenous stomach and gobbled everything in sight down. His mother looked at him oddly but said nothing, and Melanie was chattering on about who had broken up with whom and who was going to try out for cheer team co-captain's positions and whether it would be possible to buy her some new clothes for camp. His mom winced at that request, and after a moment said gently that Melanie should remember that money was still tight.

"But Daddy said I could!" Melanie whined. "Where is Daddy, anyway?"

"He was up late last night, and he's still getting ready. And your father and I still have to discuss things," she replied tartly, "So don't go spending money you don't have. Oh, and Keith," she went on, turning her attention to her other child, "Ben called this morning to talk to you. I told him you'd call him back when you woke up."

"Thanks, Mom."

"It's probably about Dorks and Dragons," said Melanie helpfully.

"Melanie, don't tease your brother."

""No, it's about which cheerleaders are the most skanky. Want me to put in a good word for you?" riposted Keith.

"Keith, don't call your sister names."

Sibling rivalry being thus satisfied, the two sides retired from the battle, each confident in their victory. Melanie even cleared the dishes without the obligatory whine about whose turn it was, and Keith plopped down in the living room and picked up the phone to call Ben.