Dreamland Read Online Free

didn’t. But Cass had a hard year, last year. Things weren’t always as easy as she made them seem, Caitlin. It’s important that you know that.”
    I watched her pull a few more flowers, adding them to the bunch in her hand, before she came over and squeezed my shoulder. “What a crappy birthday, huh?” she said.
    I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t have done anything anyway.”
    â€œWhat about Rina?” she said.
    â€œShe’s off with her new stepdad,” I told her, and she shook her head. “Bermuda this time.” My best friend Rina Swain’s mom had just gotten remarried again: This was number four. She only married rich, and never for love, which led to Rina living in nicer and nicer houses, going to endless exotic places, and piling up huge therapy bills. Rina had what Boo called Issues, but the guys at school had another name for it.
    â€œWell, come inside,” Boo said, pulling the door open and stepping back to let me in first. “Let me make you breakfast and we’ll not talk about any of this at all.”
    I sat down at the table next to Stewart, who had finished his peach and was now sketching on the back of the power bill envelope, while Boo filled a mason jar with water and arranged the dandelions in it. Stewart’s canvases, both finished and unfinished, covered the walls and were stacked against any solid surface in the house. Stewart did portraits of strangers: All his work was based on the theory that art was about the unfamiliar.
    Stewart might have been unconventional, but his art classes were insanely popular at the university. This was mostly because he didn’t believe in grades or criticism, and was a strong proponent of coed massage as a way of getting in touch with your artistic spirit. My father had been quoted about Stewart’s teaching practices more than once, and always used words like unique, free spirit, and artistic choice. Privately, he wished Stewart would wear a tie now and then and stop leading meditation workshops in the quad on big football weekends.
    Stewart looked over and smiled at me. “How’s it feel to be sixteen?”
    â€œNo big difference,” I said. With all the confusion, my father had forgotten about taking me to get my driver’s license, but everyone had been so crazy I hadn’t wanted to ask.
    â€œOh, now,” he said, pushing the envelope away and putting down his pen. “That’s the great thing about aging. It just gets better every year.”
    â€œHere you go,” Boo said, plunking a plate down in front of me: scrambled tofu, Fakin’ Bacon, and some pomegranates.
    â€œI remember when I was sixteen,” Stewart said, sitting back in his chair. His feet were bare, too, and sprinkled with green paint. “I hitched a ride to San Francisco and had a burrito for the first time. It was incredible.”
    â€œReally,” I said, picking up the envelope he’d been doodling on. It was just half a face, sketchily drawn. I turned it over and was startled to see something in Cass’s writing: her name, doodled in blue, signed with a flourish, as if she’d been sitting in this same chair some other morning, eating scrambled tofu, just like me.
    â€œJust being free, out on the road, the world wide open...” He leaned closer to me, but I was still looking at Cass’s name, suddenly so sad I felt like I couldn’t breathe. It seemed impossible that Cass had been planning to change her life completely while none of us even noticed; even when she doodled on that envelope, it could have been on her mind.
    â€œ... anything possible,” Stewart was saying. “Anything at all.”
    I blinked, and swallowed over the lump in my throat. I wanted to keep that envelope and hold it close to me, like it was suddenly all I had left of her, some sort of living part pulsing in my hand.
    â€œCaitlin?” Boo said, coming over