Ronan didn’t know much about Kavinsky’s home life, other than the legend everyone knew: His father, rich and powerful and Bulgarian, lived in Jersey where he was possibly a mobster. His mother, tanned and fit and made of non-factory-standard parts, lived in the suburban mansion with Kavinsky. This was the story Kavinsky told. That was the legend. The rumor was his mother’s nasal septum had been eaten away by cocaine and his father’s patriarchal instinct had died when Kavinsky tried to kill him.
With Kavinsky, it had always been hard to say what was real. Now, looking at him holding a fraudulently perfect chrome firearm, it was even harder.
“Is it true you tried to kill your father?” Ronan asked. He looked right at Kavinsky when he said it. His unflinching gaze was his second finest weapon, after his silence.
Kavinsky didn’t look away. “I never try to do anything, man. I do what I mean to.”
“Rumor has it that’s why you’re here and not Jersey.”
“He tried to kill me,” Kavinsky replied. His eyes glittered. He had no irises. Just black and white. The line of his smile was ugly and lascivious. “And he doesn’t always do what he means to. And anyway, I’m harder to kill than that. You kill your old man?”
“No,” Ronan said. “This killed him.”
“Like father, like son,” Kavinsky noted. “You ready to go again?”
Ronan was.
Pills on tongue. Chase it with beer.
This time, he saw the ground coming. Like being spat from the air. He had time to hold his thought, hold his breath, curl his body. He rolled into the dream. Fast. Tossed from a moving vehicle.
Soundlessly, he rolled into the trees.
They watched each other. A strange bird screamed. Orphan Girl was nowhere to be seen.
Ronan ducked low. He was quiet as rain under a root. He thought:
bomb
And there it was, a Molotov cocktail, not very different from the one he’d thrown into the Mitsubishi. Three rocks jutted from the damp forest floor, only the tips visible, eroded teeth, mossy gums. The bottle was tipped between them.
Ronan crept forward. Closed his fingers around the dewcovered neck of the bottle.
Te vidimus, Greywaren, whispered one of the trees.
(We see you, Greywaren.)
He clenched his hand around the bomb. He felt the dream shifting, shifting —
He exploded awake.
Kavinsky was already back, doing a line of coke off the dash. The light outside was dull and dead, past twilight. His neck and chin were lit like a garden feature by the dash lights below. He wiped his nose. His already keen expression sharpened when he saw Ronan’s dream object.
Ronan was paralyzed as usual, but he could see perfectly well what he’d just produced: a Molotov cocktail identical to those at the substance party — a T-shirt twisted and stuffed into a beer bottle full of gasoline. It looked just as it had in the dream.
Only now it was burning.
The flame, beautiful and voracious, had chewed well down into the glass. The gasoline was slicked up the side, reaching for demolition.
With a wild laugh, Kavinsky hit the window button with his elbow and seized the bomb. He hurled it into the dusk. The bottle only made it two yards before it exploded, shivering glass against the side of the Mitsubishi and in through the open window. The smell was terrific, an aerial battle, and the sound sucked all of the hearing out of Ronan’s ears.
Hanging his arm out the window and looking profoundly unconcerned, Kavinsky shook glass shards off his skin and into the grass. Two seconds later, and he wouldn’t have had any arms to worry about. Ronan wouldn’t have had a face.
“Hey,” Ronan said. “Don’t touch my stuff.”
Kavinsky turned his heavy-lidded eyes to Ronan, eyebrows raised. “Check it.”
He lifted his dream thing: a framed diploma. Joseph Kavinsky, graduated from Aglionby Academy with honors. Ronan hadn’t seen one to know if the creamy paper was correct, or if the wording was accurate. But he recognized the spattered signature from Aglionby correspondence. President Bell’s artistic scrawl was unmistakable.
It was badly against Ronan’s code to be impressed, much less show it, but the accuracy and detail was striking.
“You’re too emotional, Lynch,” Kavinsky said. “It’s okay. I get it. If you had balls, it’d be different.” He tapped his temple. “This is a Walmart. Just go to electronics, swipe some TVs, get out of there. Don’t wallow around in there. This would help.”
He gestured to the powder still dusting the dash. Barely there. A fine memory of powder. Ronan shook his head. He could feel Gansey’s eyes on him.
“Suit yourself.” Kavinsky retrieved another six-pack from the backseat. “Ready to go?”
And they dreamt. They dreamt and dreamt, and the stars wheeled overhead and away and the moon hid in the trees and the sun moved around the car. The car filled with impossible gadgets and stinging plants, singing stones and lacy bras. As the noon boiled down, they climbed out and stripped their sweaty shirts and dreamt in the heat instead. Things too big to be contained in a car. Again and again Ronan punched into the forest in his fraying dreams, snuck between the trees, stole something. He was beginning to understand what Kavinsky meant. The dream was a byproduct in all of this; sleep was irrelevant. The trees were just obstacles, a sort of faulty alarm system. Once he short-circuited that, he could take things from his mind without worrying about the dream itself corrupting them.
The light stretched long and thin, nearly to breaking, and then there was night with its tantalizing reflections off one hundred white cars. Ronan didn’t know if it had been days or if this was the same night as before. How long ago had he wrecked the Pig? When was his last nightmare?
Then it was a morning. He didn’t know if they’d already done a morning, or if this was a brand-new one. The grass was wet and the Mitsubishis’ hoods were beaded sweatily, but it was hard to tell if it had rained or if it was merely dew.