Chapter 5
Emily woke up suddenly
when she hit her bedroom floor. The dream had left her dripping with sweat,
twisted and tangled in her sheets, and had apparently also made her thrash and
fight until she tumbled from her bed with a thud.
Once she realized
where she was and that she was safe, the nightmare from which she’d just
escaped settled back in her brain like the fog she’d seen the morning before.
Along with that brainfog came the dread that the dream might be one of those kinds of dreams. The kind that
she’d had before she fell into the sinkhole and learned about the trolls and
gnomes. The kind that Lolfus had told her were some sort of psychic visions or
whatever.
It was the last
thing she wanted right now. No weird dream or prophetic vision was going to
make her already-bad summer even worse.
Emily unwrapped
the sheets from her legs and managed to climb back into bed. She was still
clammy from the nightmare, so she flipped her pillow to the cool, dry side and
left the covers off of her body until the feeling started to pass. She was
determined to sleep if it took until dawn to make that happen. She didn’t have
anywhere to be on Friday and she hoped to stay in bed as late as her mom would
let her. Maybe she could pretend to be sick? If she was lucky, being “sick”
might also help with the issue of spending Saturday with Vivi. It was a good
plan, one that she intended to stick to, and one that she wished would solve
her problem with her bossy Summer Bestie for months instead of just days.
She lay there in
her dark bedroom for what felt like hours while her brain swam and swirled with
all kinds of strange, random thoughts. Could she just tell Vivi that she didn’t
want to spend time with her? She knew she could,
but she also felt a little sorry for her and didn’t want to hurt her feelings
like that. Should she come up with some kind of project or plan that might keep
Vivi occupied or distracted so that all of her attention wasn’t spent on coming
up with ways she could spend time with Emily? That was a pretty good solution.
What about the
trolls? How were they all getting on now that Lolfus was in charge instead of
his cruel and selfish brother? Emily found it odd that she hadn’t wondered
about that sooner. It had been almost nine months since she’d last heard from
them. Maybe that was how it was supposed to be.
That thought made
her a little sad, so she tried to turn her focus to something else, something
boring enough that she’d fall asleep without even noticing. Her brain drifted
to Algebra, then to Earth Science, and finally to World History. Unfortunately,
World History reminded her of the trolls yet again and the story that Lolfus had
told her about the way they accompanied the German immigrants to North America. At some point she must have drifted off
because a tapping at her door stirred her and she saw daylight forcing its way
through the blinds at her windows.
“You awake in
there, Emily?” her dad called out. “It’s almost ten o’clock. Don’t you think
you’d better get moving and have some breakfast?”
“I’m up. I’ll be
down in a minute,” she mumbled.
She sat up in bed
and tried to tame her crazy hair enough to pass for acceptable. The dream from
the night before was still firmly cemented in her mind, but she had at least
managed to get enough sleep afterward that she didn’t completely feel like the walking dead—only mostly like it.
After dragging
herself to the bathroom to brush her teeth, she shambled downstairs to the
kitchen and poured herself a bowl of Tastee-O’s. She could hear her father
clicking away at his computer keyboard down the hall and remembered that it was
Friday. He worked from home on Friday every week and her mother volunteered at
the neighborhood library doing story time for little kids or crafts with the
older kids. During past summers, Friday was the day that Emily and Sarah would
camp out in the living room and watch DVDs with endless popcorn with her dad walking
through every now and then to make a silly joke or a goofy comment on the
movie.
Emily sighed and
wondered what Sarah was doing at her grandmother’s house at that moment. Was
she there wondering what Emily was doing here? Or was she milking cows or feeding
chickens or whatever you do with your grandma in the country and having a great
time without her?
With her mood
already soured because of the weird dream she’d had last night, the melancholy
of missing Sarah threatened to immobilize her completely. Emily decided that
she should probably spend some time outside in the sunshine before she turned
into a gloomy zombie that nobody wanted to be around.
She racked her
dirty breakfast dishes in the dishwasher and called down the hallway to her
father. “Dad, I’ll be in the back yard for a bit.”
“Okay, but don’t
go anywhere without checking with me first.” Going missing for a couple of days
really made parents hover. Hers were
getting a little better, but not much.
The heat of the
day had already taken hold and the humidity practically smacked into her as she
stepped out the back door. Squinting into the sunlight, Emily decided to grab a
lawn chair from the shed and relax in a shady spot.
The inside of the
shed smelled dry and hot like an attic. She was stepping between the lawnmower
and the family’s bikes to get to the folded chairs hanging on the back wall
when she noticed a folded piece of paper tied to her handlebars with old cotton
string. It had been at least a month since she’d been in here, so how long the
paper had been there and who left it were mysteries. She slid the paper from
under the string and opened it up to find it was surprisingly thick and heavy.
Scrawled across the page was elegant, old-fashioned cursive writing with little
drops and flicks of ink here and there. Though the writing looked fluid and
ornate, the words were very brief and businesslike:
Dearest Emily,
There is a problem that I fear we may need
your help in solving. We should talk in person. Please send a message via Gnome
to arrange a time and place.
Kindest regards,
Lolfus
Her stomach
knotted and, despite the heat, a chill crept over her and the hairs on her neck
stood at attention once again. She had no way of knowing how long this message
had been here, but her intuition told her that it had not been waiting for her
more than a day or two. Her intuition also gave her the uneasy feeling that
this “problem” had something to do with the mess around City Hall and probably
the dream she’d had the night before.
Instead of
lounging in the back yard and feigning sickness all day, she had to find a way
to convince her dad to let her out of his sight long enough to walk a couple of
blocks to the nearest cobblestone street or to the stone monument by the park
so she could follow the note’s instructions and try and talk to a Gnome. A
smile started to tug at the corner’s of Emily’s mouth. Maybe it wouldn’t be
such a dull summer after all.
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