Little Danny Rozelli was having a bad day. It began with waking up in a strange house, and now many hours later, things weren’t getting any better. He was talking to himself, twisting and turning in bed—everything short of spinning his head around and vomiting pea soup. In the olden days, people would have said the boy was possessed, but modern science knew better. Danny was just sick. Very, very sick.

“Get out of me!”

—I can’t!—

“Get out of me!”

—Just calm down!—

“Mom! Make her get out of me!”

—Will you stop saying things like that out loud! They already think you’ve gone crazy!—

Danny Rozelli was a willful little kid, who was still too teed off to be reasonable. He had already discovered the trick of thinking out loud. It gave him more power over his own body—it helped him to stay in control. Unfortunately, when you think out loud, people can hear you.

“Danny, honey, it’s all right—everything’s going to be all right.” But clearly Danny’s mother didn’t believe this, because she turned to her husband and cried, “What do we do? What do we do?”

Allie fought against the boy, and regained control of his body long enough to say, “Nothing’s wrong with me. Everything’s fine,” but Danny fought back, his body went into convulsions, and he wailed, “Make her LEAVE!”

It was all Allie’s fault. If she hadn’t fallen asleep in his body, and skinjacked him for seven whole hours, none of this would have happened.

She should have tried to peel out of him the second she woke up that morning in her parents’ house, but no, instead she asked her parents to feed her, and over a bowl of Apple Jacks they told her that she was still alive.

Alive!

The news was such a sudden shock that it not only echoed in her own mind, it also woke Danny up, and he began fighting his way to the surface. She tried to run, but when she opened the front door, she ran right into the policeman standing there. In a second even more police cruisers were showing up—one of them bearing a distraught couple, who had woken up two blocks away to find their son missing. When Allie’s father had called 911, the police had apparently put two and two together, and raced Danny’s parents over for a family reunion.

At the time, Allie was still reeling from her own revelation. She was alive. Did that mean she could live again? Could she—dare she even think it—could she skinjack herself?