“So what you’re saying…” Kane cleared his throat. His tongue buzzed with questions now, so many he thought they might race out of him in an unruly swarm. “Is that these reveries just happen? They just burst out of people, every few weeks, unannounced? And you guys just deal with it?”
“Who else?” Elliot shrugged.
“The police?” Kane offered. “The FBI? The Vatican?”
Ursula scoffed. “Nah, basically everyone except us becomes useless once they get caught in a reverie. We tried to get the police to help once but they just got brainwashed, too. When you’re in someone else’s reverie, you’re whoever they want you to be.”
Kane thought about the glazed expressions of all the barbarians, the football players, the pep band, the cheerleaders. For them, the reverie was the only reality they knew.
“I remember that reverie,” Elliot said. “Science fiction. Bouncy house space station. Super campy.”
Adeline tapped her chin. “It was high silliness, low logic. Weren’t there carnivorous bunnies?”
“Oh, that’s right!” Ursula said. “I forgot about those!”
Kane’s head spun with the way these three pinballed among details.
“Anyhow.” Adeline folded her hands. “It’s better if we handle reveries ourselves. Otherwise, things get weird.”
Get weird.
Get!
Seeing Kane’s face, Elliot said, “Not all of them are as intense as tonight. In fact, almost all of them are harmless at first, but it’s all about how you play your cards. If something goes wrong, even the sweet reveries turn deadly. That’s why it’s important to play along and help the reverie reach its resolution. Otherwise it twists.”
Adeline’s lashes flickered in poised bitterness. “Like tonight, for instance.”
She knows I messed it up. They know it was my fault for getting caught.
“Right,” Elliot nodded. “Tonight’s reverie came from Benny Cooper, who was supposed to save the damsels. Probably would have jumped into the arena at the last second and killed the sorcerer, avoiding the summoning. That monster looked improvised.” The Others nodded. “Lots of hero fantasies coming out of the sophomore boys these days.”
“But…” Kane was eager to move past his own mistakes, but he definitely didn’t want to discuss the lava lobster, which, now that he thought about it, did look a little silly. “But why barbarians? And why were the girls all dressed like secretaries?”
Elliot smiled like this observation made him proud. “Every reverie has a premise. An inspiration, right? Well, recently the football team had a party to kick off the season. The theme was ‘Barbarians & Librarians.’ Cooper must have gotten the idea then.”
“But what about the…Cymo-whatever?”
“Cymothoa exigua,” said Adeline. “A parasite that attaches itself to its host’s tongue, replacing it. It’s actually a thing. We covered them in bio while you were gone. And I know Cooper hates shellfish. He freaked out last year when we stayed at Claire’s beach house and her dad made crawfish, and someone hid one in Cooper’s cup. He only saw it after chugging the whole thing.”
“That explains the glowing lobsters in Mrs. Clark’s lab,” said Ursula.
“Isopods.”
“We know, Elliot,” snapped the girls in unison. Then Adeline raised her chin at Kane. “Anyways, Kane, do you have any other questions?”
“Yeah. How come no one, like, knows about all this?”
Elliot answered again. “You know today in the gym, when we were talking and everyone else vanished?”
“Yeah. It was like we were in another dimension for a second. Was that a reverie?”
“No, that was an invisibility trick. They couldn’t see us, and we couldn’t see them. Pretty cool, right?”
Kane thought it was mostly manipulative, but he didn’t say so.
“When the reveries started, each of us got powers,” Elliot said. “All of us are stronger and faster than we used to be, although Urs is considerably stronger and faster.”
Ursula blushed.
“And we each have specific abilities. For instance, I can bend perception. Manipulate what people see and create projections. I’m the master of obfuscation.”
“Illusions, Elliot,” Ursula teased. “Just say you can create illusions. It’s not that hard.”
“Fine. Illusions,” Elliot said, crestfallen. “I create illusions, and I hide the reveries as they’re happening.”
Kane pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, so you can hide the reveries, but what about the people who just experienced that? Aren’t they going to like, tweet about it?”
Adeline smirked. “Nah, we’re good. Elliot can manipulate the present, but I’ve got the past. I can mess with memories. Erase them, create them. Whatever it takes so that people don’t remember what they’ve been through. And if I don’t purge the memories, people get super confused, and sometimes it causes them to create their own reveries. I guess that’s what happens when you can’t figure out which of your lives is real.”
Earlier it had been explained to Kane that Adeline lingered in the stadium to deal with “cleanup,” which meant making sure no one ever knew the reverie happened. “The trick is to erase everything, but not fill in every gap,” she said. “If you leave just enough unknown, the mind lies to itself and fills it in organically. It’s easy.”
Adeline can manipulate memories, Kane thought. He went cold, connecting her gruesome power to his own messed-up mind.
“Adeline is the security,” Elliot said. “I’m the strategy. We each can fight, but Urs is the true soldier. She channels force, taking it in through her barriers and turning into pure strength. She’s our offense and defense. She’s a beast.”
Ursula smirked. “Thanks, Elliot.”
Kane grew colder still. Security, Strategy, Soldier. He directed his icy gaze at Ursula.
“So what’s my S word?”
The three of them froze while Kane waited, each second lasting a lifetime, for an explanation that wouldn’t come. Exasperated, he just decided to be frank.
“I overheard the entire conversation in the boiler room. I know I used to be part of this group. The Others, right? That’s what you call yourselves?”
Ursula shifted. “Yeah, we needed a name to refer to each other by in any reverie, no matter the plot. It’s a code name.”