Sea of Dreams

  * * *

  The next day a new person came in. His name was Tomas. Boy, was he glad to see us. One of the people who were watching by the highway brought him in. He kept staring at everyone as if he thought they were going to vanish suddenly.

  Yes, I knew that feeling.

  Tomas was in his fifties and a carpenter. Gideon was gleefully rubbing his hands together at that. A few of the cabins had roof issues and Tomas was welcome as all get out. He fit right in, and I didn’t pay much attention to him until he said he’d seen Gideon’s sign near Redding.

  We were in the cafeteria because it was sprinkling outside. Gibby had made something with the chicken leftovers that was like creamed chicken over toast, but tasted a lot better than any creamed chicken over toast that my mother had made, and the bread was made from scratch. It was especially appreciated since I knew Gibby had used powdered milk to make the concoction. Power to Gibby. She was a culinary genius.

  Tomas, a short man with a handlebar mustache and a Texas twang, was talking about his wandering. It had gotten to be a ritual for people to tell their various where-they-were-when-it-happened stories, although I hadn’t shared. Neither had Zach for that matter, and I was very interested in that one.

  But Tomas had come from Sacramento where he had lived. His brother had lived in Redding, but both of them had been born in Austin, Texas. There hadn’t been any indication of his brother still being around. But there had been Gideon’s sign. Similar to the one I had burned down, it said “YOU ARE NOT ALONE!” That one had an additional line: Go to Highway 101, head north toward the Redwood National Park, mile marker 47, to account for the different location of the billboard.

  Abruptly, I shot to my feet and knocked my tray on the floor. The clatter echoed for what seemed like forever. My face was burning as everyone stared at me in sudden silence.

  “What’d I say?” Tomas asked curiously.

  “Just clumsy,” I said into the silence that followed. Conversation came back as Tomas continued his story about crossing over the Whiskeytown-Shasta-Trinity National Recreation Area. He’d walked because he didn’t like bicycles.

  “Gosh darn, they’ve got hills there,” Tomas complained good-naturedly. “Tuckered me plumb out. I don’t know how the rest of you ride on those bicycles. Gives my rump a headache thinking about those teeny tiny seats.”

  But that wasn’t what I was thinking about as I cleaned up after myself. Kara was sitting next to me and whispered, “What’s wrong, Sophie?”

  I shook my head at her. Was I the only one with a brain around there? I was beginning to think I was the only paranoid one. Finally, I finished picking up the remnants of my dinner, and I couldn’t help myself. I looked directly at Gideon, who was sitting two tables over. Elan was on one side of him, and a thirty-something woman named Elizabeth was on his other. Shocked, I saw that Gideon was looking directly at me.

  “We have to talk,” I said loudly to Gideon and he nodded.

  As the banter died away at my statement of fact, I congratulated myself on being a real conversational killer. Yee-haw! But that old saying was coursing through my head: Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.