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."Trust you, Sunshine, to have a nightmare likethis," Dee said.Jenny sighed, not nearly as amused."All right, everybody, let's go in.Isuppose we have to clean it up-there must be a door somewhere along one of thefar walls.""Hey, wait.I don't do the C-word," Michael protested, alarmed."Besides,dust is bad for my allergies.""In," said Audrey, taking him by the ear.They all squeezed in between the closet and the piles.The door slidnoiselessly shut behind them- and disappeared."Talk about claustrophobia," Michael gasped."Cette chambre est une vrai pagaille," Audrey said under her breath."What?" Jenny asked."I said this is one messy room.Summer, how can you stand it?"Summer's delft-blue eyes filled with tears."My real room isn't as bad asthis.This is my nightmare, dummy!""Well, why this kind of nightmare?" Audrey said, not softening."Because my mom never yells about my room, but once my nana came to visit,and she almost passed out.I still dream about what she said.""Don't make her feel bad," Jenny whispered to Audrey."Try to clear a patharound the edges," she said aloud, "and check every wall for the door."The piles of junk were amazingly varied.There were heaps of rumpled clothes,year-old magazines, disjointed Ray-Bans, spindled cassette tapes, unstrungstring bikinis, crushed frozen yogurt cups, bent photographs, mismatchedsandals, dry felt-tip pens, chewed pencils, twisted headphones, musty towels,endless mounds of underwear, and a zoo of bedraggled stuffed animals.Also adog-chewed Frisbee, a mashed Twister mat, and a futon that smelled likesomebody's bottom."It's spider city here," Dee said, gathering up one of the heaps."Haven'tyou ever heard of Raid?""I believe in live and let live," Summer said vaguely.It really was a nightmare of sorts, Jenny thought-a nightmare of tedium.ButDee worked with tireless energy and Audrey with fastidious precision, andslowly they forged a path through the debris.Michael was no good at all-hestopped to leaf through every magazine he picked up.They were getting to a different type of garbage-a type that made Audreywrinkle up her nose.Blackened avocado husks, mildewed newspapers, and plasticglasses with the dregs of unidentifiable liquids in them.Then Jenny lifted a box of odds and ends and saw something like a pressedflower on the hardwood floor underneath.But it wasn't a flower, it was thePage 76 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlwrong shape.At first she didn't recognize it, then she saw the little muzzleand the tiny curled-up feet.It was a flat and desiccated mouse.She couldn't help gasping.I can't touch that, I can't, I can't.Dee scraped it up with a 1991 calendar and threw it in the closet.Jenny felta whisper of terror inside her, unease that went beyond disgust at the mouse.The garbage got worse and worse-like what you'd find at a dump, nothing thatwould be in anybody's bedroom.Food in all stages of decomposition.Every kindof refuse, trash, and litter.No one was smiling anymore.Dee picked up a tattered Easter basket, paused.An awful smell wafted fromit.She stirred the cellophane grass with one long finger, and then her faceconvulsed.In the basket was a solid mass of white, writhing maggots."God!" In one fluid motion Dee threw the basket at the closet, where it hitthe door and scattered a shower of white.Michael bolted up from his magazinewith a yell.Audrey and Summer were shrieking.Jenny felt the quick, cold touch of real fear."Summer-just what did your grandmother say about your room?" she said."Oh-she said things were growing in it," Summer reported, her eyes large andworried."She said it would attract bugs.She said it looked like anearthquake hit it.She said someday I would get lost in it and never comeout."Dee, who had been staring at Summer, now cut a glance of startled revelationat Jenny.The tension in the room was palpable."Ana just what kind of nightmares do you have about it?" Jenny asked, tryingto discipline her voice."Oh." Summer shivered."Well-it's like I hear a scratchy noise, and then Ilook and it's these cockroaches-but they're big, big as.as sneakers.Andthen I see this thing on the floor.It's like fungus, sort of a column offungus, but it's got a kind of mouth on the top and it's howling.It's howlingfungus."Summer's lips were trembling by now."It may not sound scary, but it was.It was the scariest thing I've ever seenin my life."A primitive warning was going off in Jenny's brain.She, Audrey, Dee, andMichael all looked at one another."It sounds plenty scary to me," she said."I think maybe we'd better get moving."Michael's lips were puckered in a soundless whistle."I think maybe you'reright," he muttered.He bent to work without another word of complaint.The closet was full by now, and they were just transferring things frombefore them to behind them, like digging a tunnel.The garbage kept gettingPage 77 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlgrosser and grosser and scarier and scarier.Things Jenny didn't want to touchwith her hands.She wore crumpled T-shirts like oven mitts to move them.Then the bugs came.It started with a rustle, a pleasant sound like a taffeta prom dress.Jennystiffened, then turned slowly to look.A cockroach, flat and brown.But it was huge, far larger than Jenny's foot.It crawled languidly out of the floor vent, squirming through somehow, itsbarbed back legs catching on the metal louvers.Its feet made soft tickingsounds on the paper debris.Summer gave a reedy shriek and pointed at it.Then another one came out ofthe vent, and another.Summer's pointing finger became a shaky blur.Jenny reached for a water glass to revive her and snatched her hand back.Theglass was jam-packed with crickets, antennae twitching delicately.Summer saw it.She stopped pointing and went still.Smaller roaches emerged from a discarded candy box, the frilly paper cupscrinkling as the bugs crept out.Summer's face was so white there were blue patches under her eyes.Iridescent green beetles the size of footballs began to climb the walls.Theyflexed their chitinous outer wings, their membranous inner wings hanging outlike dragging petticoats.Summer stood like a statue of ice.Jenny looked up.A dozen brown moths as big as small kites were clinging flatto the ceiling, their dark-spotted wings outstretched."Come on, Summer, help us!" Audrey said in a fear-clotted voice as she rakedat the trash.Disturbed ants swarmed out of it, forming thick trails likeblack waterfalls over the debris
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