The Big Dream by Rebecca Rosenblum Page A

make sweet love to me when I drop a pencil, I don’t know you are gay. Simple.”
    â€œI am glad,” said the man, stepping fully into the room and putting a hand on Martin’s chest, “that you do not try to make love to strangers when they drop pencils.”
    Martin jumped about a mile when the guy touched him, but he somehow managed not to fall off the couch. The guy didn’t sound like a wrestler. He had an English accent and sounded like he should’ve been on TV explaining how an amoeba works.
    â€œThey aren’t strangers, Lee,” Martin said, struggling to sit up without falling onto Wayne. “These guys are from Dream.”
    â€œWe’re all best friends,” said Danvir, who had sat back down in his chair again. His voice was supposed to sound like he was
trying not to laugh, I guess, but it didn’t really sound like he found much funny at all.
    Wayne twisted back around and looked into space, only it was the space where I was sitting.
    Martin stood up finally, next to Lee, also facing me but not really looking.
    â€œSo these are the people you work with,” said Lee very quietly.
    â€œYep, work with. Really not friends at all.”
    There was more silence then, all of us just looking and thinking and breathing in pizza air. All those eyes on me, everyone so angry, and yet the day before, playing Hackey-Sack in the kitchen with that balled-up invoice, making fun of Patty Jacobson for calling Levis designer jeans , even just an hour ago talking about how the Iranian pizza place was ok and the Halal pepperoni was awesome. And then I realized it was over.
    â€œNo, we don’t work together anymore,” I said. “That’s all done with now.”

BURSTING INTO TEARS EVERY TWENTY MINUTES
    ON TUESDAY MORNING, Sarah kept her face under the itchy afghan long after the alarm had gone off, watching sunlight filter through the loops of pink and orange wool. She was drenched in sweat. Only when the phone rang and her mother shrieked, “ Sarah!” did she pull her head out. The air in the room felt cool in her wet hair.
    â€œPhone, Sarah! I mean it.”
    The beige cordless on the nightstand was smudged with grey. “You up?”
    â€œI’m up, yeah. What?” The bedside clock said eight-eleven, too late for a shower.
    â€œI’m making sure you’re up, Sar. If you’re late again, Kief’s gonna fuckin’ make you into gravy.”
    â€œI won’t be late. I’m up.” Sarah scissor-kicked the blankets onto the floor, covering the clean laundry, the lamp, her grade 11 biology text.
    â€œHow are our fertile friends?”
    â€œI don’t know. She’s still here, that’s it.” She swung her legs over and sat up. Her head felt hot and heavy, filled with melted candlewax.
    â€œOk, one problem at a time. Get moving. You should be on the bus already.” There was a click, a moan of dial tone.
    Sarah was tempted to put her uniform on over her T-shirt and shorts, to avoid being naked, but people – at least Kate – would
notice the lumps under her chef’s jacket and white-and-black checked pants. She stripped down to her panties and bra, then dressed, shivering.
    Everyone was at the kitchen table for some reason, drinking tea and eating whole-wheat bread out of the silver Wonder sack. Jeremy was reading job ads aloud in a voice like Jerry Seinfeld’s, only not funny, and Margaret was retching quietly into an HMV bag. Sarah’s mom sat blinking at the wall, drinking her tea. Her mother had to be at work at nine, too. “Who was on the phone?”
    â€œ. . . to transit freight to and from stations and hub facilities, as well as pickup and delivery of skidded freight . . . What, skidded, like, slipped?”
    â€œIt means on skids, those wooden flats that hold freight, Jeremy,” their mother said, then took a sip of tea. “Sarah, you gonna eat?”
    Jeremy muttered