Ronan continued, “There are stains that spread faster than you drive. If you drive, it’ll take fourteen years to get there. Seventeen. Forty. One hundred. We’ll be driving to your funeral by the end.”
The Lynch brothers were on the first road trip they’d been on since their parents died. They’d made it fifteen minutes from Declan’s home before Declan had received a call he refused to take in the car. Now they continued to be delayed by negotiations for the driver’s seat. Ronan had driven this far; opinions were divided on whether he should get the privilege again. In the Goodwill lot, the brothers presented the facts: It was Declan’s car, Ronan’s trip, Matthew’s vacation. Declan had a letter from the insurance company offering him better rates for his exceptional driving record. Ronan had a letter from the state advising him to change his driving habits lest he lose his license. Matthew had no interest in driving; he said if he didn’t have enough friends to drive him anywhere he wanted to go, he was living his life wrong. In any case, he’d failed his driver’s test three times.
“Ultimately the decision is mine,” Declan said, “as it’s my car.”
He didn’t add and also because I’m the oldest, although it hung in the air. Epic battles had been waged between the brothers over this understood sentiment. It represented considerable progress in their relationship that it remained unspoken this time.
“Thank Jesus,” Ronan said. “No one else wants it.”
“It’s very safe,” Declan murmured, eyes on his phone. Time burned as he replied to a text or email in the peculiar way he always did, typing with his left thumb and his right index finger.
Ronan kicked one of the Volvo’s tires. He wanted to be on the road. He needed to be on the road.
“We’ll swap every two hours,” Declan finally said in his bland way. “That’s fair, right? You’re happy. I’m happy. Everyone’s happy.”
That was untrue. Only Matthew was perfectly happy, because Matthew was always perfectly happy. He looked pleased as a pig in slop as he slid into the backseat with his headphones. He said cheerily, “I’m gonna need snacks before this rig gets to where it’s goin’.”
Declan put the keys in Ronan’s hands. “If you get pulled over, you’re never driving my car again.”
Then they were off, properly off, Washington, DC, in the rearview mirror.
Ronan couldn’t quite believe that Declan had agreed to the premise of the road trip. This excursion, designed for Ronan to tour three rental properties in an entirely different state, seemed to fall solidly under activities Declan would’ve frowned upon in the past. Ronan, with his dangerous dreams, sleeping some-place other than the Barns or Declan’s town house? Dubious. Moving someplace other than the Barns or Declan’s town house? Never.
Ronan didn’t know why Declan was entertaining it. What he did know was that they were an eight-hour drive from finding out if Ronan got to start a whole new life. Aside from a miserable period just after their father, Niall, had died, he’d never lived anywhere but the Barns, the family farm. He loved the Barns, he was bored of the Barns, he wanted to leave, he wanted to stay. At the Barns, Ronan was two seconds from his childhood memories and two hours’ drive from his brothers. He knew he could dream safely there, surrounded by nothing but other dreams. He knew who he was there.
Who would Ronan Lynch be in Cambridge?
He had no idea.
In Maryland, they swapped and obtained gas station snacks for Matthew. He ate them in the backseat, noisily, with audible enjoyment. As Declan pulled back onto the interstate, he ordered Matthew to close his mouth while eating; a fruitless exhortation, as people had been saying this to Matthew for seventeen years.
“Just get him soft food,” Ronan advised. “That’s the solution. No one hears gummy snacks go down the hatch.”
Matthew laughed again. The only thing he enjoyed more than jokes about Declan were jokes about himself.
After they had been on the road for several minutes, Declan asked Ronan in a low voice, “How long has it been since you dreamt?”
Matthew wasn’t listening, lost in the pleasures of his headphones and the game on his phone, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Ronan’s dreaming wasn’t a secret to Matthew. Declan just liked everything better if it was a secret.
“Recently.”
“Recently enough?”
“I don’t know, let me check my dreamer schedule. It’ll tell me precisely how recently is recently enough.” Ronan emptied a bag of chocolate-covered peanuts into his mouth in the hopes that it would end the conversation. He didn’t want to talk about it, but he didn’t want to sound like he didn’t want to talk about it. He choked a little bit on the peanuts but otherwise managed to look diffident. Unconcerned. It would be fine, his peanut-eating added. Let’s talk about something else, his peanut-eating suggested. You’re being unreasonable to even ask, the peanut-eating concluded.
Declan held a protein bar against the steering wheel but didn’t open it. “Don’t act like I’m being unreasonable to ask.”
There were two major reasons why overnight traveling was fraught for a dreamer. The first, and most obvious, was that Ronan could never be one hundred percent certain that he wasn’t going to accidentally manifest one of his dreams when he woke up. Sometimes the dreams were harmless—a feather, perhaps, or a dead aquarium fish, or a potted plant. But sometimes they were formless songs that made the listener feel physically sick, or lizards with insatiable appetites, or two thousand Oxford shoes, all lefts, all size 9. When these things appeared in waking life at the Lynch family’s remote Barns, they were annoyances, sometimes a little more (lizard bites could be very painful). But when they appeared in waking life at Declan’s town house or in a hotel room or next to the car Ronan slept in at a rest area—well.
“Can I open your unhappy yuppie candy bar for you?” Ronan asked.
“Don’t deflect,” Declan chided. But after a moment, he handed over the protein bar.
Ronan peeled the wrapper open and took an experimental bite before handing it back. It felt precisely like he’d fallen face-first into wet, dirty sand.
“Classy, Ronan.” Declan blew lightly on the bitten end of the bar as if his breath would lift the Ronan-germs from it. “I just don’t know if you’re taking this seriously.”
The second reason why traveling as a dreamer was fraught was the nightwash: a sexy word Ronan had invented for an unsexy phenomenon. It was a fairly new consequence for him, and all he knew was that if he waited too long between manifesting dreams or spent too long away from the western Virginia foothills where he was born, black ooze began to run from his nose. Then his eyes. Then his ears. If it went unchecked, he could feel it filling his chest, his brain, his body. Killing him. Maybe there was a way to stop it, but Ronan didn’t know any other living dreamers to ask. He’d only known two in his life—his father and a now-dead student at his high school—and they’d never talked about it. How well would he tolerate staying in Cambridge, Massachusetts, instead of at the Barns for any length of time? He wouldn’t know until he tried.
“It’s my turn to pick the music,” Matthew said.