Before going to bed the night before, Aunt Molly told him that school was closed because of Rene and Lara Pearce and Lump Hawthorne. That was okay. Mason didn’t want to go to school anyhow. He was so tired he didn’t think he could get out of bed if he wanted to. Instead he spent most of the morning sliding in and out of dreams. When a bad dream woke him up, he stared at the ceiling until his eyes grew heavy again. Before drifting off to sleep, he tried to picture something nice, tried to feed his dreams with sunshine and picnics and clean, beautiful places, but he didn’t have the strength to hold on to such good pictures; they turned scary and grim behind his eyes. His last dream on that long morning began with Mason sitting in Rene’s hospital room. She was awake and smiling, and her face wasn’t hurt anymore. This was the mind picture he gave himself. He wanted it to follow him into sleep, to last. Rene looked nice and happy, and she told him all about the hospital and said she was going home soon.
