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Back The Nightmare Thief
Chapters (38)
  1. Front Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-One
  26. Twenty-Two
  27. Twenty-Three
  28. Twenty-Four
  29. Twenty-Five
  30. Twenty-Six
  31. Twenty-Seven
  32. Twenty-Eight
  33. Twenty-Nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-One
  36. Acknowledgments
  37. About the Author
  38. Back Cover

A heavy old pickup truck appeared from nowhere. The air exploded and the car shot sideways and spun. Wheels screamed on pavement. Fragments of glass floated toward Maren, sparkling in the afternoon sun. Red flecks mixed with the glittering glass. Someone screamed, but Maren didn’t know who. It might have been her. A black hole opened up in the place where Hallie sat. Maren couldn’t see her. Couldn’t look at that place. Couldn’t look. Couldn’t.

* * *

Her eyes flew open. Sweat drenched her sheets, and her pulse thundered in her aching head. Outside, rain drummed on the roof and gurgled down the gutters. She switched on her light to chase away the last traces of the nightmare, then buried her face in her hands.

Hallie, Hallie, Hallie.

Her beautiful, funny, absurdly smart sister. The one who’d taught her how to tie her shoes, how to read, how to sneak cookies from the kitchen without anyone noticing. Who had a black belt in tae kwon do and got the lead in all the plays. Who, even when they were arguing and hating each other, would battle to the death for Maren. Who walked all the way to Curtis Mayhew’s house once just to tell him he was a lying, pus-filled pimple that deserved to be popped.

Maren hadn’t reminded Hallie to wait at that traffic light, and now her sister was a doll in a bed. Maren didn’t know if she was even in her body anymore—all the doctors’ fancy words about brain function and prognoses didn’t explain where Hallie really was, if the real her was ever coming back. But Maren couldn’t let herself dwell on that; she just had to keep trying. She hoped with all her heart that Hallie was still in there, that she’d flown in her dreams today. And that the flying would start to heal her.

The little brown moth was back, hurling itself over and over at Maren’s light fixture, wanting something from the bulb that it couldn’t give. Maren understood how the poor thing felt. She opened a wooden box filled with tiny dream sachets and took out a pure white one. It smelled like spearmint and cotton wool. An eraser dream. Nothing but clear white and softness. Eraser dreams left Maren feeling oddly empty the next day, but it was better than looping through the accident dream all night until she threw up. With a pang of guilt for erasing a dream of her sister, no matter how bad it was, Maren tucked the sachet under her tongue.

Seven

“RENIFLEUSE DE CHAUSSETTES SALES.”

Ignoring Henri, Maren stepped around an antique butter churn and joined her grandmother at the counter. Lishta stirred something in a wooden bowl while Henri added small black objects, one at a time, with his beak.