Chapters (53)
- Front Cover
- Letter from the Author
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- • One •
- • Two •
- • Three •
- • Four •
- • Five •
- • Six •
- • Seven •
- • Eight •
- • Nine •
- • Ten •
- • Eleven •
- • Twelve •
- • Thirteen •
- • Fourteen •
- • Fifteen •
- • Sixteen •
- • Seventeen •
- • Eighteen •
- • Nineteen •
- • Twenty •
- • Twenty-One •
- • Twenty-Two •
- • Twenty-Three •
- • Twenty-Four •
- • Twenty-Five •
- • Twenty-Six •
- • Twenty-Seven •
- • Twenty-Eight •
- • Twenty-Nine •
- • Thirty •
- • Thirty-One •
- • Thirty-Two •
- • Thirty-Three •
- • Thirty-Four •
- • Thirty-Five •
- • Thirty-Six •
- • Thirty-Seven •
- • Thirty-Eight •
- • ∞ •
- • Thirty-Nine •
- • Forty •
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Excerpt from Be Dazzled
- One
- Two
- About the Author
- Back Cover
Kane’s usual gloom closed back over the fleeting brightness he’d just felt. Dread rose up within him like bile. Perhaps the only thing worse than returning to school was spending even more time trapped here. It creeped him out the way the house changed in the late summer’s heat, with doors clicking open and rooms taking big breaths when the breezes hit. Plus, his mother wouldn’t go into her job, maybe fearing he might hurt himself. Kane imagined himself as a rare bird: well loved, but still caged.
“No, I’ll go back. Just…not yet. Okay?”
His mother considered him, then flipped out of psych mode.
“Perhaps going back to school will be the perfect thing for your…”
“What? Another pun?”
“I can’t. I’m your mother.”
Kane crossed his arms. “Say it.”
“Melan-collie.”
“You’re sadistic.”
She laughed, and, because he was not entirely heartless, Kane laughed, too. Then she booted him from her office with a cheery “Dinner is at six, bitch.”
Kane wandered through the house. The urge to read The Witches came over him, but it’d been lost to whatever had chased him down the night he met Ursula. He considered going back to Sophia’s room, but she’d closed her door. Doing some writing in his journal about his fear of school was always an option, but he didn’t think that’s what Dr. Poesy was interested in. Really, he should be searching for clues and do what he’d been avoiding since he’d gotten home from the hospital.
He should explore his own room.
Kane pressed his forehead against the door, hand hovering over the knob. He’d only entered his room for a few minutes each day, to grab clothes or a book, but then the sheer discomfort of being surrounded by all that stuff drove him out. Most of his things he recognized, but some things were entirely foreign. He hadn’t told his parents this yet, or even Sophia, but it proved that much more than the summer was missing from his memory. Whatever happened to him, not all of him had made it back. Maybe not even most of him. So who did that make him, the boy against the door? The boy afraid to enter, trapped outside his own life, afraid to discover just how much he had lost.
Kane reminded himself, again and again, that he was not an egg. Whoever he was, he needed to figure out his own story. Perhaps that was the key to finally coming home.
The door creaked as he entered.