Beyond (2 page)

Edgewood is spread out below us. Not much to see now after dark, unless you can read the constellations of streetlights. They map out the neighborhoods, with a bright cluster in what passes for downtown, scattered sparks farther out in the hills and a curving line marking the seawall. Past that I catch the bobbing glimmers of boats tied up at the docks.

I’m trying to spot where our house is in this galaxy, but right now the trees block my view as the woods swallow us up.

The Edge is surrounded by ancient forest, giant century-old evergreens. The town was carved out of their turf. And the way they tower over you, leaning in together to eat up the light, it’s like they’re plotting to take it back.

We pass a sign that says
BLIND CURVE AHEAD
, and I know exactly where we are. Through the windshield I see a familiar stretch of road.

And I get a little shiver. Like they say, as if someone’s stepping on my grave.

This is where they found me on a drizzly night last month, walking blindly down the centerline.

I started sleepwalking after my brain injury.

At first I just wandered around the house in the dark. Harmless.

Until I escaped one night and woke up standing outside, in the rainy dark. The cold hit me like a slap. I was soaking wet.

What is this? Where am I?

Looking down, I saw asphalt under my bare feet, and a painted white line.

I was in the middle of a road.

There was a light coming from behind me. And a voice calling.

“Jane?”

I spun around. Caught in the glare of headlights, I stumbled backward, holding my breath, bracing to get hit.

“Jane.” That voice again, familiar. “Calm down. It’s okay.”

Shielding my eyes, I made out who it was.

Constable Granger. Dad’s boss, standing beside his
squad car with the roof light flashing red and white. “What’re you doing out here? Are you hurt?”

I could only shake my head, shocked speechless and trembling.

Looking down at myself, I suddenly realized I was wearing next to nothing. Just what I went to bed in: a long, ratty old T-shirt that stuck to me now like a second skin. And you could see right through it to my underwear with the little red hearts.

I crossed my arms to cover up my chest, wanting to die right there. Total unsurvivable embarrassment. But before I lost it and started crying, I squeezed my eyes shut and tried the old trick Dad taught me.

Bulletproof heart
, he calls it. When I was little and the kids at school were bugging and bullying me, he showed me the Kevlar vest he wears on duty. “This is my armor,” he said. “Keeps me safe when I’m out there. You need to grow your own armor, on the inside. Make your heart bullet proof.”

So I forced myself to take a slow, deep breath.

Bulletproof. Then I opened my eyes and found my voice.

“Guess I got lost on my way to the bathroom.” Sounding crazy, I know, but in control.

He looked at me like I was speaking Martian, then took off his rain slicker.

“Here. Cover up. Come on now, I’ll drive you home.”

Granger didn’t ask any more questions on the way. The whole town knows my story.

Another time I escaped, Mom caught me while I was still in the driveway. She steered me safely back inside.

It’s freaky and frightening to totally lose control over what your sleeping brain is getting you into. Makes you paranoid to take a nap, in case you wake up staring into the headlights of an oncoming truck. Because that wasn’t the only time they tracked me down wandering along the same road out of town.

My late-night strolls were giving us all sleepless nights.

Everybody has a theory about why I’m doing it. Dad thinks it’s some kind of death wish. Mom worries I want to run away. The doctors think it’s a symptom of my injury.

I tried to cure my nightwalking by wedging a doorstop under my bedroom door. I even got Dad to put a lock on it so I could seal myself in. But my dozing brain just kicked the doorstop out of the way and opened the lock.

Dad finally came up with a solution. He gave me a ring. A plain silver band with a microchip embedded in it, a GPS locator chip.

It’s the same technology they use to keep tabs on crooks on probation or under house arrest who have to wear ankle monitors. They have these alert systems in nursing homes and maternity wards too, in case some old-timer wanders off or somebody tries to steal a baby.

Now I wear my magic ring to bed. And if I get ten feet from the house an alarm gets sent to Dad’s cell phone so
he can go capture me. It’s worked a few times already. I never make it to the end of the driveway before he catches up.

Now I don’t have to worry about where I’m going to wake up anymore.

My sleep is under house arrest.

My phone rings at midnight, so I know it’s Lexi. I told her to wait till later to call, to give me time if I needed to squeeze in a panic attack after my doctor’s appointment.

“What’s the verdict?” she says, no hello or anything. “You going under the knife?”

“Not yet. They want to wait.”

“Wait for what? Do they think you’re just going to sneeze that nail out one of these days? Or scoop it out with a Q-tip?”

I smile, lying back on my bed. Me and Lexi, we get each other. No heavy gloom-and-doom crap.

“They showed me on the X-ray. It’s in there pretty deep. Digging it out could be more dangerous than leaving it for now.”

I run my fingers over the shaved patch behind my left ear. I can feel the stubbly fuzz of new hair and the little dent in my skull where the nail entered. I was too far gone for the doctors to even try taking it out right away. Too risky, with me flatlining. So they stopped the bleeding,
got my heart beating again and put the surgery off till later.

“You should get a copy of that X-ray. We could put it online. You’d be famous. ‘Nailed Girl Cheats the Reaper.’ Or, how about ‘The Girl with Nine Lives’? We’d get you on the Discovery Channel or something.”

“No thanks.”

“How many lives have you got left, anyway?” she asks.

Getting nailed was just my latest close call.

“I must be on my last one now.”

“I read about this girl,” Lexi says, “who didn’t even know she had a sewing needle stuck in her brain till she went to the doctor, after six months of headaches. She worked in a sweatshop where the needle snapped out of the machine and went right through the edge of her eye socket. She felt the jab but didn’t realize it had penetrated. True story.”

“Great. Maybe me and her can start our own freak show.”

“So did the doctors clear you for school?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” I’ve been off for two months, recovering. “They say I’m good to go. No danger signs. No bleeding, fevers, swelling or anything.”

“So I’ll drive by tomorrow morning and pick you up?”

“Sure. How bad is it at school? Should I be worried?”

“Well, they were calling you Psycho Jane for a while. But that was getting kind of old, so they’ve been trying out some new material.”

“Like what?” I hate to ask.

“I heard Zombie Slut. You know, because you’re back
from the dead. That’s getting some play. And Reaper Creeper, which is pretty catchy. And what else …?”

“Enough,” I groan. “Don’t ruin the surprise.”

“I was thinking of something more like Lady Lazarus. If you go with that, we could start an online ministry and get donations. Maybe sell miracle springwater straight from your kitchen tap.”

I shake my head. If I don’t cut her off, she’ll go on like this till dawn. Lexi’s a major insomniac. She’s so naturally wired, it’s hard for her to sleep. She can’t get her mind to shut down or her thoughts to shut up.

But it’s been a long, long day and I’m ready to crash, so I give her a hint by yawning loudly.

“Okay,” she says. “I hear you. Just called for the update. Sweet dreams, then. And hey, no playing in traffic tonight.”

“I’ll try.”

After I hang up, I double-check the lock on my door. Dad’s thinking of putting an alarm on it, but that might be a major hassle when I get up to pee at night. I drag my desk chair over to block the way, figuring if I bump into it that might wake me.

The rain gusts up against my window, tapping on the glass like a cat wanting in.

Before I turn out the light, I look around at the guys on my walls. Posters and photos from movies and magazines, showing a lot of skin. My dream guys: actors, musicians and models. My room is wallpapered in male flesh. Lexi says it’s an overdose of lust.

But that’s nothing compared to what’s hidden away in
my closet. Okay, don’t laugh—I’m addicted to romance novels. They’re stacked floor to ceiling in there. I’m a sucker for doomed and dangerous love, reckless and crazy obsessions.

Lexi always makes fun of them. Mom looks at the covers and gets the giggles. Everybody laughs, so I hide my stash. My guilty pleasure. I’m a love junkie.

I kill the light, slip on my magic ring and get under the sheets.

Just when I’m dozing off, lying curled up on my side, I feel a little shiver down my spine. As if a draft has snuck into my room, or one of my dream guys has come in from the cold to spoon with me.

It started with my difficult birth. Mom nearly died having me. When they finally dragged me out into the world I was limp and lifeless, born without a pulse. They had to shock my tiny heart into beating.

Born dead. That set the mood for everything later.

So far I’ve survived poisoning, electrocution, a close encounter with a train and now this nail.

Don’t get me wrong. I was never trying to hurt myself. This stuff just happened.

Stuff like—

At eight years old I was digging around in the kitchen cupboards, looking for art supplies for a project. But instead of paintbrushes and glue I found a plastic bottle with a skull and crossbones on the label, just like the one on pirate flags.

Later, I told Mom I thought the skull and bones meant it was a drink for pirates. Such a liar—I knew what the warning meant.

But I couldn’t tell her the real reason why I drank the drain cleaner. Because I didn’t know why.

But as I knelt there on the floor in front of the open cupboard, looking at that bottle, something strange happened. A wave of dizziness hit me. And a horrible shudder ran through me that felt like bugs crawling all over me. I heard this buzzing inside my head, as if some angry bee was trapped in there.

Then I thought my eyes were playing tricks, because my shadow started moving without me.

I watched, perfectly still, as the shadow of my left hand reached toward the bottle. Like a puppet on a string, I felt a tug and my hand followed the shadow, grabbing the bottle and taking it out.

There was a hazy dream feel to everything, smothering my fear and confusion.

I was watching myself taking directions from my shadow hands, opening the bottle. The liquid cleaner had a sharp, chemical smell.

Looking at my shadow on the floor, I could almost sense it staring back at me, making me do this. I couldn’t help it. Lifting the bottle to my mouth, I started drinking.

It burned real bad and made my eyes tear up, but I managed to swallow half of the container and was starting to gag when Mom found me.