«I'm sorry.» Kyle joined her on the ground, apologizing as if he had any control over the words that had come out of his dad's mouth.
Isabel could understand why his father might think something was up. By all appearances, they were the only pair not currently attached to anyone in their incestuous group. She had never really been interested in more than friendship with Kyle, but that's not to say she hadn't on occasion contemplated the possibility. At times, she kind of felt sorry for him, considering his bad luck with women. First Max had taken Liz from him, and later Max kind of took Tess as well. Then again, maybe it's not bad luck, she thought. Maybe it's just my brother.
At any rate, nothing was going on between them, and she figured nothing ever would. She had managed to find someone outside of the group and was having a good time dating Jesse Ramirez, thinking that it could turn into something more serious and hoping it would.
Once she confirmed that the door to Valenti's room had been firmly shut, Isabel returned to the crisis at hand. «Why haven't you told your father about the dreams?» she whispered, putting her cards back in the box.
«I don't want to worry him.» Kyle kept his voice low as well.
«Kyle, he's your dad. It's his job to worry about you.»
«I know.» He handed Isabel the cards he collected so she could put them away with the others.
Isabel could hear the inaudible «but» hanging in the air. «Go on.»
«I'm not the only one he worries about," Kyle reluctantly admitted. «Look at what happened when he walked in the door. The first thing he thought was that something was wrong with you or Max, and he was ready to spring into action. He spends so much time worrying about all of us surviving real threats that I don't need to bother him just because I've had a few sleepless nights.»
«What you're going through is more than a touch of insomnia," she reminded him. «But, I understand.» And she did. In a way, Valenti had become a surrogate father to the entire group since he was the only adult they had let in on the secret. As such, his concerns for his son had to be split with those for Max, Michael, Liz, Maria, and herself. Great, she thought. Not only did we introduce Kyle to all this craziness, but we stole his father from him as well.
She tried to push that last thought out of her mind so that her guilt didn't taint any decisions that she suspected she was about to make. The more she thought over Kyle's situation, the more motivated she felt to do something about it.
Crawling back onto the couch, Kyle let out a gaping yawn as his whole body seemed to drag. Isabel suspected that he must have been exhausted since he'd hardly gotten any sleep at all in the past week. She hoped that tonight would break the cycle, and that rest would come soon.
«Do you think you're ready for bed?»
«No," he answered honestly. «I'm not ready, but I'm going to have to try. Besides, I'm not going to make you stay up all night.»
«I can stay here until you're out," she offered.
«That's okay," he replied, yawning. «I think I'll be fine.»
Isabel stood, and Kyle started to rise as well. «No, don't get up.» She noticed that he looked like he was about to fall asleep right there, and didn't want him to move. «Just curl up on the couch.»
«Okay.» He did exactly as she said.
As Isabel made her way to the door, she paused to look back at Kyle. His eyes were drooping, but every time the lids made contact, they kept popping back open. He was so tired, however, that he didn't even notice she was still in the room, which allowed her to stay a few minutes longer to watch. Gradually, his eyes would stay closed for longer increments of time until they finally appeared to shut for good.
Opening the door and letting in a bit of the uncharacteristically cold summer night air, Isabel started to leave
when she heard Kyle mumble, «You want me to come along?»
For a moment, she thought he was talking to her, but his eyes were most definitely closed, and his breathing beginning to get shallow. Isabel knew enough from past science classes that it usually took people a while to start dreaming once they fell asleep. She recalled learning that the dreams usually came somewhere around ninety minutes into the sleep cycle. The statistic had stuck in her mind because she had heard it about the same time she had developed a keen interest in learning about anything that was related to sleep, because of her ability to dreamwalk. From that point, she'd tried to learn as much as she could about dreaming and dreamers so that she could be better skilled at the exercise. The fact that Kyle was able to fall into his dreams the moment his eyes closed concerned her a great deal.
As she stared at her sleeping friend, Isabel noticed that Kyle was not only mumbling, but the fingers of his right hand were tapping on the pillow in the same repetitive pattern she had seen before. He was clearly locked into another loop of his nightmare images. She felt horribly for him, but there was nothing she could do about it. Her powers just didn't work that way. It was too dangerous.
Closing the door to the Valenti home, Isabel made her way back to her own house through the chilly night air with those last few thoughts running through her head. They eventually were joined by a renewed sense of guilt over the fact that she and her brother unintentionally had stolen part of Kyle's father from him. Realizing that Kyle's dad was the only parent he really had, it made her feel
even worse. Then she thought about all the times that knowing their secret had put Kyle's life in danger, and all the normal things he and his father had given up for them, including the sheriff's job.
And, finally, she thought about Alex.
It didn't take long for Isabel to get home. By the time she had reached the front walk, she knew exactly what she had to do. She tried not to wake her parents as she silently made her way into the house, since she knew they would be getting up in only two hours so they could start their early morning trek to Santa Fe.
Her mother had left the living room light on for her, as she always did, so that Isabel would not have to stumble around in the dark. Turning off the light, she carefully continued through the dimly lit hallway into her bedroom.
With the door gently closed behind her, she turned on her small desk lamp instead of her brighter lamps so there wouldn't be too much light in the room to distract her. Grabbing her yearbook from the shelf, she paused a moment, looking for another book as well. Tucked in between a collection of Shakespeare's sonnets and a largely unused dictionary, she found a book on dream analysis she had bought a while back.
The book had been purchased during the time when she was researching as much as she could about dream images after she'd realized she could visit other people in their nighttime imaginings. For a short time she'd even made a hobby out of analyzing the dreams of some of her friends at school, which often proved to be an entertaining pastime, to say the least. Of course, that was before she'd
realized how dangerous it could have been to abuse her powers on recreational activities.
She placed the dream analysis book down on her desk so that she could consult it later, and sat down on her bed with the most recent copy of the West Roswell High School Yearbook. Flipping to the photos of the previous year's junior class, she turned to the Vs and found Kyle's photo. On the page, he looked so happy with his frozen smile. The photo had been taken much earlier in the school year- months before Alex's death and Tess's departure.
I'm only going to look around, she thought, justifying her own actions to her conscience. I just want to get an idea of what's going on in his head, so I can figure out what to do. There's nothing dangerous in that. I do it all the time.