I took one last look at the foggy glass on the door to my aunt’s room, seeing the outline of her back facing me. She doesn’t belong here.

  The drive to Wes’s house was slow and silent. Neither of us knew what to say.

  * * *

  The second I stepped into the house, I was rushed by a short, blond woman with a big, round belly that pressed hard like a basketball against me as she wrapped me in a hug.

  “Oh, Rosemary! Hello!”

  Cindy was Wes’s wife. She’d been my babysitter when I was little.

  “Where’s dinner?” Wes yelled from the kitchen.

  Cindy let go of me, holding up a finger before shuffling in after him. “In the oven. I didn’t want it to get cold!” I watched her go. As soon as she was gone, I heard her whisper-arguing with Wes.

  Mom and Wes used to argue like that too. I wondered if Cindy and Wes would get a divorce. I didn’t want to go through another divorce, so I hoped that they wouldn’t.

  I ignored them as I walked into the living room, out of hearing range, and called Mom.

  She had agreed to get me my own phone when I turned eleven so that when we were separated, like now, when I was at my dad’s, we could still talk. She had called me ten times while I was at the hospital.

  “Hello?”

  “Rosey!” I pulled the phone away before Mom could bust my eardrum. “How are you? Where are you? Are you okay?”

  I walked in big circles around the room as we spoke.

  “So, I get this message from your dad, right? But he doesn’t call me back! And then you don’t call me back. And then, okay, my break ended, but then I called you both again, and no one calls me back!”

  “Mom?”

  “What?”

  “Jo’s… Jo’s really sick.” My throat closed halfway through, causing me to hiccup the last word with a sob.

  “Oh, bubala, tell me all about it.”

  I explained what had happened. The tears leaked from my eyes even though I tried to plug them back up. By the end I was just able to dry my cheeks and get my voice calm. She asked when I was coming home.

  “I don’t know,” I said, sighing.

  “Sorry, my love.”

  “It’s fine,” I said, resting my forehead on my hand. I jumped and pulled the phone from my ear when a loud cowbell rang out from the hallway.

  “So Cindy still uses the cowbell, huh?” I heard Mom ask.

  “Guess so,” I mumbled.

  Then I heard Cindy’s chipper voice. “Dinner is served!”

  Cindy always sounded happy—usually in the worst situations.

  Dinner was quiet. I felt uncomfortable eating at the long table. Mom and I usually ate in the living room while watching TV.

  After dinner I went to bed. The guest room was decorated in laces, doilies, and decorative plates with paintings of birds on them. I didn’t stay with my dad very often, but whenever I did, I was always relegated to the lace-and-doily room. I hated it—I always had the feeling it was haunted by some dusty, old ghost. The blankets smelled stale and felt cold. Even the air seemed like it had gone bad. It just… it didn’t feel like home.

  It’s weird when you feel invisible even when you’re with your own family. Maybe I’m the dusty, old ghost.

  Cindy popped her head through the doorway. “I know you never want anything special, but I left you some pajamas.”

  “Oh, wow.” I plastered on a smile. They would be too big like always, I knew it. “Thanks, Cindy.”

  Cindy’s face lit up and she hugged me again. “No problem, hon. Let me know if you need anything!” Then she hobbled down the hallway. My fake smile fell. Cindy wasn’t mean, but I never really liked her after Mom and Dad got divorced. I liked her before she was my stepmother.

  The room was small and dark and weird. I’m never going to be able to sleep here. I glanced at the white clock on the wall: 10:15 p.m.

  It was going to be a long night. With nothing else to do, I flopped on the short, springy bed.

  I looked again at the clock, watching the second hand tick.

  10:18 p.m.

  What had Jo meant? “You must fall asleep tonight between eleven and twelve.” Like I could make myself do that even if I wanted to.

  And that watch. Would she have really given it to me? I’d wanted to take it, but it felt wrong, like I was stealing an artifact from a museum.

  I groaned, rubbing my hands hard against my face. I wished I could take a bath and wash the day off, but I’d probably wake someone up. At the very least I had to get out of these dirty clothes.

  I turned to look at the giant, plaid pajamas hanging from the doorknob. The Walmart tag was still attached.

  I pulled my sweatshirt over my head and unzipped my jeans, moving fast, worried that someone might walk in. As I kicked them off, something small and cold flew out from one of the pockets. I jumped away, then looked down to see a gold chain. I bent over and pulled it out, the weight of the end heavy. Moments later it was dangling before me, gleaming in the light.

  The watch. It’s the watch! Jo must have slipped it in there when she grabbed me, and I didn’t even…

  Everything around me melted away. The watch was so glittery, and round, and perfect.

  I rubbed a thumb across the surface. Somehow it made no reflections. Maybe it was too shiny.

  In that instant I was so happy, and I’m not even sure why. Just that this beautiful thing was mine. And with that thought, the rest of reality came flooding back.

  Jo had given this to me, had even told me that there were rules.

  Instantly more awake than I had been, I threw on my pajamas, then practically hovered to the bed—never once looking away from my new treasure.

  I held it carefully, like it was a delicate egg, rubbing my fingers over its smooth surface. But up close, it looked different from how I remembered it… because one of the petals was missing. The one on the very top. Twelve. I tried to imagine what the picture on the petal had been, but I couldn’t quite recall. The strangeness of that fact didn’t worry me, however, because the watch was here. And it was mine.

  That’s when I faltered. It wasn’t really mine, though, was it? It was Jo’s. She was just sick and had decided to give it to me while she was tired and on too much medicine.

  I felt a burning in my chest as I realized that I should bring it back tomorrow. She’ll be better rested, I hoped. She would be happy to have it back.

  My fingers passed over the button on the top, and a tingling shock ran through me. Holding my breath, I pushed it. The petals fell open, just as they had for Jo. I couldn’t breathe as I brought it up to my face, drinking in the paintings on each remaining petal.

  They were truly amazing. The paintings were so detailed and bright that it was hard to believe they weren’t real and moving. But they couldn’t be of actual places, because in one there was the fiery mountain of Three O’Clock, and in another, Nine O’Clock, there was a woman standing in a blizzard and she was glowing bright white.

  I don’t know how long I sat staring at the pictures, rotating the watch slowly in my fingers so that I could see them all, before I heard something faint down the hall. It was a phone ringing. Wes’s phone. I checked the time, my eyes wide: 11:02. Who would call this late?

  I could hear Wes walk into the hall just outside my room, but he was whispering. I couldn’t make out the words, and I wasn’t brave enough to crack open the door and listen. A minute or two later I heard fast footsteps coming down the hall. I quickly threw the watch into a pocket of my pajama bottoms, shoving the chain in after it. I listened. Then the front door slammed.

  I raced to the window that faced the driveway, watching the shadowy shape of Wes, an overcoat tossed over his T-shirt and sweatpants, as he rushed into his car.

  I was breathing hard. I was afraid.

  What the heck is going on? Did Jo call? Or the hospital? Or…

  I tried to calm my nerves. It was probably something for work. But… it was so late.

  After about a half hour I saw the flicker of headlights reappear from the driveway below. I tiptoed to the side of the window and peeked out.

  I couldn’t see my dad’s face, but something about his walk as he headed back inside told me that he was far more tired than when he’d left, with his hunched shoulders and heavy steps. He slammed the front door again, then clomped up the stairs.

  I shut out my light, hid underneath the covers, and pretended to be asleep, just in case he’d check in on me, but he only passed by my room. I heard his bedroom door click shut.

  And everything was the same again. But I was tired now, the long day finally hitting me. The bed was comfortable, the sky was dark, and the watch I was now holding felt warm in my fist—like it was actually alive or something. The warmth calmed me, as if I were lying by the fireplace at Jo’s house. I clicked it open and watched the long hands spin. I imagined Jo’s hand scratching through my hair.

  I stared at the waves painted on one of the petals. A wild ocean that filled my mind with gray.

  Then I drifted off to sleep just as the minute hand reached 11:56.

  ELEVEN

  The bed rocked under me, and my skin prickled from the… cold?

  Then something hit my nose, like a tapping or a dripping. Yeah, that was it. A drip, drip, drip…

  The realization hit me: It’s rain. I opened my eyes. My head was so filled with fog that I couldn’t see clearly.

  I looked down and realized I wasn’t even in my bed. This wasn’t my room. It was a rock. I was sitting on a giant rock, floating in the ocean. This has to be a dream, I thought. Rocks don’t float.

  “Holy moly,” I muttered aloud.

  I crab-walked backward, away from the edge. But as I moved, so did the rock, teetering with me, and I had to scramble to the middle to avoid falling over the edge. I’d never learned to swim, even in my dreams.

  I glanced over the lip of the rock and saw the darkness of the water below.

  Fog collected above the water, drifting up in spiraling tendrils, creating a blanket of gray that made it impossible to see my hands.

  Then I noticed that every time a drop hit the surface of the ocean, it created a little hiss and a puff of steam.

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” I whispered to myself as I huddled in the middle of the rock. “Why would rain make steam?”

  And then I remembered.

  Wasn’t there supposed to be a sea in Eleven O’Clock that was so hot it would “burn the skin right off of you”? That had to be what was making the steam, because the rain was cool.

  It had been so many years since I’d dreamed about Jo’s stories. I tried slapping myself awake, but apparently, that only works in movies. I was trapped. Then I heard something.

  It was a sort of crackling that shook down to my bones and made my skin itch. It sounded like electricity, and heat, and danger. Wes would say, “You can’t hear danger,” but it’s the only way I can explain it.

  I turned to see what was making the noise, slowly, my blood crawling icy through my veins, sweat prickling through my skin.

  And there it was, a massive wall, planted in the middle of the water.

  I froze at the sight of it.

  It was so tall and was made of some kind of energy that shone many colors that swirled together. It crackled again.

  My rock was floating toward it, and I was scared. I was going to crash into it.

  As I got closer to the giant wall, I could see the energy swirling off it in clouds. It looked like glowing smoke, the wisps of which swirled around it. I breathed the swirling energy in. It burned my nose, and my throat, and my chest. My mind had gone fuzzy.

  I tried to move, but my arms and legs were shaking so much that it was almost impossible.

  I didn’t understand what the wall was doing to me, but it was too hard to think. I just lay there, belly down now in the middle of the floating rock. I felt like I was drowning in the smoke.

  Then I felt something heavy hit the ground beside me, rocking the island. I heard footsteps.

  And then everything went dark and quiet.

  * * *

  I breathed in deeply, only kind of aware that I was coughing. I saw a clear glimpse of the sky above, not the white ceiling at Dad’s house. I was still dreaming, then. I gasped as I rolled onto my side.

  “What… is going—”

  “So, you are alive.” Someone was standing above me, but I couldn’t see who it was beyond the brightness of the sun.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Way to be gracious. I helped you breathe. You got Smoke Sick.”

  I squinted up and finally saw her.

  She was tall—taller than me, at least. She looked older, too, by a few years. She wore pants that ballooned at the legs and buckled at her calves, a frilled shirt, and a velvet coat with a pointy collar. Her shoes were colorful. She wore a glittering mask over her eyes and a belt slung low on her hips, outfitted with a variety of strange tools: a nail, a knife, a piece of white tile.

  I looked away quickly, blushing. I had stared at her for too long.

  “What’s Smoke Sick?” I asked.

  “Huh, she told me that you wouldn’t know much, but I didn’t realize that you wouldn’t know anything. Geez, taking care of you is going to be like taking care of a baby.”

  I coughed again, ignoring her. Even in my dreams people are jerks.

  “And no ‘thanks’ for saving your life even? Sheesh!”

  “Thanks.” I guess.

  “That didn’t even sound sincere! I was in the middle of something, you know. And just because Jo told me that some kid was coming who could save us, I decided to help you. But swimming out to the Wall on an Islet, wearing strange clothes? Why did I bother?”

  My head swam, still filled with the smoke, I think. Jo? Wall? Islet? But my mouth formed words before I could stop it. “What do you mean my clothes are weird? Your clothes are weird.”

  I made the mistake of looking up at the girl again. I expected her to get mad, but she just laughed.

  “You are a strange one, aren’t you? You remind me of her.”

  I threw my arms up. Nothing she said made sense. I just wanted to get out of here. Wake up, I pleaded with myself. Please just wake up.

  “Good thing she told us that you’d probably appear on the Mire. That’s where she usually ended up. Without me waiting for you, you would have been a goner for sure.”

  I’d heard the word before: “mire.” We’d learned about it in science. Mires were made of mud. “This isn’t a mire,” I said. “It’s not made of mud.”

  Now she grinned, but it didn’t look kind. It was the sort of smile that said she knew more than me.

  “Technically correct, it isn’t mud, but you’re still wrong,” she said, pulling a coil of tattered rope from her belt. “I didn’t call it a mire, I called it the Mire. It’s a fire marsh—”

  “Fire marsh?” There’s no such thing, I thought. I must be dreaming about Jo’s clock world—Eleven O’Clock.

  “Right. It’s not mud or water,” she continued. Then she uncoiled the rope. It fell, bouncing once, before hitting the surface of the ocean—but it wasn’t an ocean at all. As the tip of the rope sank below the fog, it connected with the pool only to light on fire as soon as it did. The girl grimaced, dropping it. The rest of the rope sank, turning to black dust.

  I huddled in the middle of the rock again, where it felt safe. I didn’t know if you could die in a dream, but I didn’t want to test it.

  “If Jo really did send you, then you must be strong.” She leaned in closer to me, and I backed away. “But you don’t look strong.”

  I sighed to myself. This had gone on long enough. I wasn’t going to be insulted by a girl who wasn’t even real.

  “This is just a dream,” I mumbled to myself, crossing my arms.

  She glanced back at me with an eyebrow raised. “A… dream?”

  I nodded, waving my hands through the air. “All a dream.”

  She shook her head. “She said you might say strange things like that.”

  “And you’re just a frilly dream pirate.”

  Her face was still blank. I flinched as she suddenly crouched down by me. “I don’t know why you’re supposed to be so special, but no matter who you are, you ought to be more careful. You never know who you’re talking to.” She sounded so serious. It made me a bit scared, but I found I could neither speak nor look away.

  Then she flicked me in the nose.

  “Hey!”

  But instead of saying anything more, she stood up. I looked around, rubbing my nose, and realized that I could no longer hear the crackle of the Wall.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Heading back,” she said without looking at me. She stood on the edge of the Islet, leaning on it with her toes like it was a skateboard.

  “Back where?”

  “Home—or Eleven, as Jo calls it.”

  My head began to throb. Just like I thought.

  The throb in my head ran down my arms. I finally noticed the round thing clenched in my fist. The watch! It was still warm. I opened my hand to look at it and gasped.

  Instead of the gold pocket watch, it had become an orb of multicolored energy. It was still shaped like a clock, but it glowed and flashed, like electricity… Like the Wall, I realized. I held it to my ear and listened to it hum.

  “Where did you get that?”

  I looked up at the girl. She was staring at the ball of energy that was once my watch with a bold fascination, like the nurse had. I wouldn’t let her have it, not even in a dream.

  I closed the ball back in my fist, away from her gaze.

  “It’s mine” was all I could think to say.

  She strode to me, causing the Islet to slow down.

  “Let me see it again.”

  “No.” I shoved the ball of energy into my pocket.

  She stared at me, and I stared right back. I could tell she was debating something, the way her eyes flicked over my pocket, to my hand, to my face, but she resigned herself to step back. “Fine. Maybe I shouldn’t have come all the way out here to save you, after all.”