Interlude
Spencer finally spotted the baseball, which his father had tossed gently and precisely, and which he had missed, as usual. The ball had rolled deep into a thicket at the edge of the field. He got down on all fours, crawled into the dry shrubbery, and reached out his arm. He nudged the ball away with his clumsy fingertips, sighed, crawled in a bit deeper, reached out again, and finally, carefully, grasped and extricated the ball. He tried to turn around but the twigs and leaves were too thick, so he backed out, rump first – very aware of how ridiculous he looked. The adults would think he was adorable of course; he was eight, with messy hair, and too-big glasses, and missing teeth, and an over-abundance of precocity: adults always thought he was adorable. But the kids? If they saw him now it would be the perfect excuse for a literal ass-kicking. The sun was too hot, there was a rock in his shoe, and the bush was making him itch. Oh, how much he would rather be inside with a book.
But his mother had agreed to go out, and that was important. She'd been cooped up inside for days. Eleven days, nine hours, and twenty-three minutes, to be exact. Eighty-six percent of that time had been spent in bed, refusing to even open the blinds. Nine point seven nine days in bed. She needed exercise and sunlight, and to remember that the world was more than the terrifying jumble inside her head. She needed to remember what life was. What healthy, normal people did. A picnic at the park with family was healthy and normal; and it appeared to be working. Watching her husband and son playing catch, like a normal father and son, seemed to be grounding her. She'd even smiled.
Spencer would crawl backwards on his hands and knees through every itchy bush in the park, every day of his life if it kept her smiling.
He stood and brushed his over-long hair from his sticky face, dug a rock from his shoe, hitched his mismatched socks, and trotted back across the field towards his father.
A tall man jogged up and around to stand in his path. Spencer sheilded his eyes from the blinding sunlight to try to make out the man's face.
"Hey kiddo!" said the man. "You're gonna get a sunburn."
Reid awoke with a start – at least, his eyes started open, the rest of him remained frozen, paralyzed. After a moment he caught a breath. Then he noticed he was sweating. Why was he sweating? What had he been dreaming? Was it a dream? Or was it a memory? Was it a dream of a memory? He tried to grasp it, but could only seem to nudge it away.
"Hey Reid, you up?" asked Morgan from the doorway, and the last bits of the dream fell from Reid's consciousness as he shook himself the rest of the way awake.
He mumbled a noncommital, "Uh huh."
It may have been a dream of a memory, but even for someone whose memory is eidetic, the memory of a dream is easily lost.