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For J, S, and F—
the men in my life
CONTENTS
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
I’m in the passenger seat of a car, racing down the interstate. The smell of gasoline stings my nostrils. My lips are moving, and sound is coming out, but my words don’t make any sense.
And I know what’s going to happen, but there’s nothing I can do about it.
The woman with white hair and death eyes is behind the wheel. She won’t stop laughing. When I try to tell her to stop the car, that she’s going to kill us all, my words are all backward and inside out and she just laughs and laughs. She turns her face toward me, and there are worms and spiders wriggling out of her mouth. I’m so distracted that I almost forget—
We’re going to die.
There’s a grinding noise, and we both look out the windshield at the same time. The road curves to the left, but we go straight, flying off the road, the headlights illuminating stalks of corn.
The tree comes out of nowhere.
The screams make my ears throb, but I can’t cover them with my hands because they’re holding the plastic container of gasoline.
An explosion of light and heat.
And then we are no more.
My limbs go rigid as I find myself awake. My mouth is open, but I’m unsure whether the screams stayed in the dream or followed me into my darkened bedroom. When the door pushes open and my sister, Mattie, pads inside, I know that I must have awakened her. My father, a pediatric surgeon with a huge surgery slated for tomorrow, must have his earplugs in. At least I didn’t wake him.
Mattie lifts the covers, and I scoot over to make room for her. “Was it the dream again?” she whispers, and I turn to look at the ceiling. Mattie knows I dream of Zane’s death, but she doesn’t know that in the dream it’s me dying. That I was actually with him when his psychotic mother crashed the car, killing them both instantly. That I was . . . inside him.
There is no technical term for what I am, what I can do. At least not that I know of. The moment Zane died, I was in his mind the way I’ve slid into the minds of so many others when I’ve touched something they’ve left an emotional imprint on. That night, I was purposely trying to get into Zane’s head to locate my missing sister, so I tapped into him using one of his beloved Fitzgerald novels. People can leave bits of themselves on all sorts of things—jewelry, clothing, furniture, money. It all depends on what they’re touching when they feel a surge of emotion.