"I never had a dream like that," said Ceese.

"You didn't? I have them sometimes when I'm not even asleep."

"That's just crazy. You can't have a dream when you're not asleep."

"It comes in front of my eyes and I just stop and watch and when it's done I'm shivering so hard I can't even stand up."

"You crazy, Mack Street."

Ceese must have told Miz Smitcher because the next day she took him to a doctor at the hospital who stuck things all over his head and then a bunch of metal rods made squiggly lines on a moving paper and the doctor just smiled and smiled at him but he looked all serious when he talked to Miz Smitcher and then they glanced at him and closed the door and kept talking where he couldn't hear.

But the cold dreams scared him. They were so intense. And strange. His regular dreams, even his nightmares, they were about things in his life. His friends. Miz Smitcher. Ceese. Grocery bags and ants. But the cold dreams would be about grownups most of the time, and more than once it happened that he'd see a grownup for the first time in his life, and it would be somebody from a cold dream.

"Miz Smitcher," said Mack, "I know that man."

"You never met him before in your life."

"He all the time sees this woman naked."

She was furious. "Don't you say such things! He's a deacon at church and he does not see women naked and how would you know, any way?"

"It just came into my head," said Mack, which was true.

"You're too young to understand what you're saying, which is why I don't beat you till your butt turns into hamburger."

"Better than my butt turning into a chocolate milkshake."

"How about beating your butt into french fries?"

"That doesn't even make sense," said Mack.

"Don't go talking about men seeing women naked," said Miz Smitcher.

"I was just saying that I know that man."

"You don't know him. I know him and he's a good man."

But then came a day when Miz Smitcher sent him out of the room when Ceese's mama came over and the two of them talked all serious and after Ceese's mama left Miz Smitcher came in to Mack's room and sat down on the floor and looked him in the eye.

"You tell me, Mack Street, how you happened to know about Deacon Landry and Juanettia Post."

"Who are they?"

"You met Deacon Landry and you told me you saw him looking at a naked woman."

From the look in her eye, Mack knew that this was something really bad, and he wasn't about to admit to anything. "I don't remember," he said.

"I don't know, Miz Smitcher," said Mack. "I don't know nothing about naked women. That's nasty stuff."

She searched his eyes but whatever she was looking for, she didn't find it. "Never mind," said Miz Smitcher. "You shouldn't be thinking about naked women anyway, I'm sorry I brought it up."

But she paused in the door of his room and looked at him like he was something strange, and he decided right then that he'd never tell anybody about those cold dreams, not ever again.

And he probably would have kept that promise if it wasn't for Tamika Brown.

Tamika was older than him and he only knew her because of her little brother Quon who was Mack's age, and they played together all the time cause the Browns only lived a few doors down.

Mack even went into their house sometimes because Quon's mama wasn't one of those women who wouldn't have a grocery-bag baby in their house. But he didn't see Tamika except when she was just going out the door or running around getting ready to go out the door. And she was always wearing a bright red swimming suit because that's what Tamika did—she was a swimmer.

Quon said she was in competitions all the time, and she outswam and outdived girls two years older than her and people said she was a mermaid or a fish, she was so natural and quick in the water. "She just lives to swim."

And one time Miz Brown told a story about when Tamika was a baby. "My husband Curtis and I had her in the pool, with those bubble things on her arms, and she wasn't even two years old yet, so we were both holding on to her. But she was kicking so strong, like a frog, that I thought, I'm just holding her back, and Curtis must have thought the same thing at that very moment because we both just let go, and she takes off like a motorboat through the water and we knew right then that she was born to swim. Didn't have to teach her none of the strokes, she just knew them. Curtis says there's a scientist who thinks humans evolved from sea apes, and the way Tamika took to the water, I could believe it, she was born to swim."

So when Tamika showed up in one of Mack's dreams, he would have thought it was just a regular dream about people he knew. Except that he woke up shivering so bad he could hardly climb out of bed and go to the toilet without falling over from the shaking.

In the dream she was Tamika, but she was also a fish, and she swam through the water faster than any of the other fish. They swam around her when she was holding still, but then she'd give a flick with her back and just like that, they'd be far behind her. She swam to the surface and flipped herself out and flew through the air and then dived back in and the water felt delicious to her, and she didn't ever, ever have to come up because she was a fish, not a girl. She didn't have legs, she had big flippers, and in the water there was nothing to slow her down or hold her back.

"Why would a girl want to be a fish?" Mack asked Ceese one day.

"I know a lot of girls like to eat a fish," said Ceese. "Maybe some want to meet a fish. And if they cooking they got to heat a fish."

"Playing cards they might want to cheat a fish," said Ceese.

But Mack was done with the game. "I'm not joking."

"Whazz wet?—that's how you greet a fish."

"Tamika Brown, she really wants to be a fish."

"She likes to swim," said Ceese. "That doesn't mean she's crazy."

"She wants to get down in the water and never have to come up."

"Or maybe you crazy," said Ceese. "Give it gummy worms, that's how you treat a fish."

"I dreamed about her," said Mack "No arms and legs, just fins and a tail, living in the water."

"You way too young to be having that kind of dream," said Ceese, and now he was laughing so hard he could hardly talk.

"I'm not joking."

"Yes you are, you just don't know you joking," said Ceese.

Mack wanted to tell Ceese about the cold dream he had about Deacon Landry and how it came true in the real world, with Juanettia Post, and nobody liked how it turned out. What if Tamika's dream came true, too? Quon wouldn't want no fish for a sister.

Ceese would just laugh even more, maybe die from laughing so hard, if Mack told him that he was worried about a girl turning into a fish.

That's because nobody but Mack ever seemed to have dreams like his. Nobody else knew how real they were, how strong, how they gripped him with desire.

You don't know, Ceese, how it feels to want something so bad you'd give up everything if only it could happen. But in a cold dream, that's how it feels the whole time, and then it leaves me shaking when I wake up out of the wish.

Curtis Brown woke up on that hot August night, covered with sweat and needing to pee.

Happened a lot, sleeping on a water bed. The motion of it sort of alerted his bladder. Either that or he was getting old—but he and Sondra were still young. Their oldest, Tamika, was only ten. Curtis was a long way from being somebody's grandpa who had to get up and go to the toilet three times a night.

It was Curtis's daddy who stalked through his house late at night, flipping lights on and off and cussing under his breath about how it didn't make no sense that he feels like he's got to pee but he can't get anything out. And when Curtis says to him, Daddy, that means you got to get your prostate checked, Daddy just looks at him and says, You think I'm going to let some doctor stick his finger up my anus and smear jelly all inside my rectum? You get your ass reamed out, you think it's so fun. You the crazy one, not me, sleeping on a water bed like a yuppie, you need your head examined, don't go telling me to have my ass examined, at least my head ain't up my ass like you. And then he laughed and kept saying to anybody who'd listen, Curtis gone to the proctologist to have his head examined, cause you got to go through his ass to get to his head.