The Catcher's Dreams (FEATURED)

CHAPTER TWELVE - łilac

"Good evening."

They had barely sloshed through the first legion of puddles when a tall voice pointed at their chests. As they neared the figure under the streetlight, a rounded face smiled at them politely. If Drake squinted he could piece out the smart hat they all wore, teasing him from under the hood. He didn't look much older than Cassie. A dull orange glow separated from the streetlight, unfamiliar. This one was new here. The glow smelled of fresh cherries, and Drake looked away.

It was a security guard. An officer who patrolled all the time, everywhere. Of course, there was one on every street (and they were watching).

Drake hoped the security guard wouldn't ask them where they were going, because honestly, he had no idea.

"Good evening," they said.

Thankfully, the security guard didn't stop them, although his gaze followed them for a while. Two kids out in the dark, wearing too-big coats that were drenched in the early rain. The girl's coat seemed to be moving. It was strange, for sure, but the security guard was too tired to bother. Anyway, it wasn't dangerous strange, just curious strange. There'd be someone on the next street who could bother, if they wanted to.

But, as Drake would see, that was what they all thought. So he and his sister and their little lilac cat got all the way to the playground without any trouble.

#

The compound they lived in was split in a few sections. There were the townhouses on the north side of the lagoon, then the villas facing them from across, then the apartment buildings east of everything else except for the Clubhouse and the Pool. But there were playgrounds everywhere, small servants of the Clubhouse's almighty Indoor Playground Supreme.

Drake didn't like the playground near their street simply because it was territory of the Beijing International American School secondary schoolers of the compound. It was pretty unfair, for they never used the playground toys; they just sat on the swings and chatted. But the BIAS kids hated anyone from Drake's school, especially a quiet nine-year-old loner. Whenever he came near the wind would come alive with intimidating American accents and teenagers spreading out to make sure there was no room for him to play.

"Cassie," he whispered, tugging gently at her sleeve. "We can't go there. That's BIAS territory."

"Huh?"

"The big kids, from BIAS. You know, that school?"

"Huh?"

"Just don't." Drake could still smell traces of their glows, eroded by the rain.

"Fine," Cassie said. "Let's go the other way. It is getting late, and the rain has soaked through my coat. Just let me check on Grey first. I can't tell if that's shivering or purring."

She lifted the side of the coat, causing her glow to blossom in tendrils of solid lilac swirling with the interference of dark rain matter. "Grey? You okay in there?" One hand scooped out the kitten, tucking it into a ball and holding. "Oh, you're fine; you're purring."

Drake eyed the playground. "Come on, Cassie, let's go."

The rain changed its course as an obese gust of air slipped into the open. Some helpless twigs and leaves on the floor were swept up, getting juggled by the wind.

In Cassie's arms, Grey stiffened.

There was a pause and a fleeting raindrop.

Then Grey jumped away and started chasing a twig.

"Come back here!" Cassie shouted, running onto the sidewalk and into the playground. "Grey! Come back!"

The kitten was a streak of dusky lilac, batting at the twig with its paws, too caught up in the game of nine short lives to bother. Cassie darted past the slide set and the pitiful monkey bars, her glow a beacon in the rain. The twig taunted them both, flying up and skittering across the tiles to the back of the playground.

"Cassie! Wait!" Drake called, taking a few brave steps forward. The ground shook with wet and omnipresent BIAS spirit.

There was a crack under the black metal fence at the back of the playground. The wind chose to blow the twig through that crack. A kitten chose to follow. A girl chose to stumble, staining the furry sleeves of her coat, and peer through hopefully. "Grey!"

Even from the edge of the playground Drake could see her shoulders slump. The baby powder mixed with the scent of rain lessened somehow.

"Grey? Where are you?"

Her hood fell and the rain beat down on her tiny strands of hair like a drum.

"Grey, come back..."

They waited. The rain slowed to a drizzle. Streetlights flickered, orbs of orange.

"Grey."

Something curious was happening. The lilac around Cassandra had stopped shifting around, instead staying in place and developing a quiet, milky texture so solid-looking Drake felt an urge to go up to her and poke it. Then the first fissure appeared, cobweb-thin and running down the middle of her glow as calmly as an earthquake. It spread into two fissures, and soon her glow was separated into three uneven parts by a hairlike strand of nothingness.

"Cassie..." Drake muttered.

His sister was still on her knees, staring blankly into the crack. More fissures spread, and the baby powder scent became sour. Cassandra began to shake in fits of sobbing that were too submissive to be heard. The fissures worked their magic in a course of five minutes, leaving her enrobed in an outline of broken glass.

The lilac shifted in Drake's mind. Cassandra shifted too, becoming a few years younger. The setting was different. The lilac was watery ginger, still shattered. Then that image faded to five everyday people he'd seen in the crowd of his life, all with sunken faces and strangely shattered glows. Somehow, he'd thought, they looked worse than the glowless.

And then he blinked, and Cassandra returned.

"No," he muttered. "No, not this again. No."

The first time around, he'd taken her broken watery ginger, thinking she'd be better off without shattered hopes and with no dreams at all. Nothing to glow for, no way to get shattered. But she'd been left shoveling jewels, and he'd been left with her broken glow that night, a glow he couldn't escape into, with soured dreams.

"No," he said.

He wouldn't take it this time.

They walked home without replying to the security guards' "good evening"s. They walked home with her shattered and him trying not to breathe in the broken glass. That night no one had any dreams.