Description: 1 I remember dying. After I got injured my heart stopped and I flatlined. I was done and gone. But I wasn''t alone. There was something waiting for me when I died. Something dark and cold tried to take my soul away. When they brought me back to life I escaped from it. Left it behind. But what if it came back with me, followed me home like a hungry stray? 2 Don''t think about it. I keep telling myself that. Today I find out what they''re going to do with me. I''m counting down the hours till my doctor''s appointment. My best friend, Lexi, is doing her best to distract me. So on this stormy afternoon she drags me out in my backyard to try a new trick shot with her camera. "We''re going to stop the rain." That would be a real magic trick out here on the Rain Coast, in the town of Edgewood. Never heard of the place? I''m shocked. We''re famous for our wet weather. Lexi gets me to stand under the tree in back. It doesn''t give me any shelter, with all the dripping branches. "What do I do?" I ask as she sets up her tripod on the grass. "Just stay still, Jane. Facing me. I need to get the focus perfect." Most days are gray around here, where the sky is always crowded with clouds and the rainy season never seems to end. Makes you feel color-blind sometimes, starving your eyes. Only the bloodred of Lexi''s lipstick saves the world from fading to black-and-white right now. "Ready?" she says. "Okay, the camera''s set for superquick shots. Don''t move for a minute. And close your eyes. This flash is really intense." I shut them, and Lexi starts shooting as the wind shakes cold raindrops from the branches above. Through my lids I can make out the flashes, like rapid-fire lightning. When it feels like a minute''s gone by, I open my eyes and catch the last blinding flares. "Done," she says. We run to the back porch and check out the results. As I blink away the afterimage fireworks, my vision clears and I see Lexi beside me. Always in black, she looks like the Grim Reaper''s hot little sister. Right now she''s wearing a hooded slicker over her miniskirt and tight sweater. Raven-dark hair frames her pale face. "Got it." She shows me the image on her camera. "Took a hundred shots to get it, but we tricked the rain." There I am. Brown eyes wide, frizzy blond hair blown wild by the wind so it seems like I got zapped by lightning. Makes me look witchy. But the magic is in how the raindrops are stopped in midair. They show up as streaks around me, but where the focus is tightest right in front of my face a few are frozen. Caught in the split-second flash, they seem solid, as if you could pluck one out of the air and hold it. Crystal clear pearls. "You stopped the rain," I say. Lexi shrugs it off. "A minor miracle." "I could use a miracle right about now." "The rain falls too fast to really stop it. But the drips from the branches are slowed down enough to catch." She hands me the camera. "Now you try." We experiment some more, capturing the dribbles off the porch roof, suspended before gravity splashes them to the ground. Cool special effects. But Lexi''s best trick is to take my mind off everything. And it works wonders. Playing with the camera lets me breathe for a while. Before everything unfreezes, the drops start falling again, and the clock counts down. 3 That''s me. The Xray on the wall shows the ghost image of my skull. Me skeletonized. No eyes, no skin, no hair. It''s like seeing my reflection in Death''s own mirror. Spooky. The neurologist is talking to Mom and Dad, but I only catch fragments of what he''s saying. "No intracranial swelling...no bleeding...no infection...no change." Skeletons are so anonymous. Hard to tell a guy from a girl, old from young. Stripped down to my bare bones, the only way I can really tell this is me is by that little white sliver buried inside the skull. I''m so fascinated by my naked bones that it takes a few seconds before I realize Mom''s talking to me. "Jane?" "Huh?" "Do you have any questions?" I glance at their faces, all grim and worried. "Just one," I say, pointing to the Xray. "Does this make me look fat?" The neurologist frowns, Dad sighs, Mom looks pissed. "What?" I shrug, like I can''t help it. Nobody ever gets me. I mean, if I don''t joke about this a little I''ll curl up in a ball in my room and never come out. "Okay, seriously then. Are you gonna cut the thing out, or will I be setting off metal detectors for the rest of my life?" The doc glances down at my chart. "Eventually it will have to come out, but right now, the situation is stable. You''re doing remarkably well. It might be more dangerous to go in and remove it. We''ll have to run some additional tests." Great. More tests. They start going over all the pills I''m taking. As the doc writes some new prescriptions, Mom grills him on side effects and complications. I turn back to my Xray. Lexi always said I was wrong in the head, and here''s the proof. But really, I can''t lay all my weirdness on that little white sliver there. I was twisted long before that showed up. The nail in my brain. On the drive home everybody''s all silent and gloomy. "Call off the funeral!" I say to break the tension. "I''m still breathing." Mom grunts and shakes her head. Dad frowns at me in the rearview mirror. "You age me, Boo," he says. That''s his pet name for me, Boo, because my big, wide-open brown eyes make me look permanently startled. "I got my first gray hair the day you were born. If I hadn''t been there to see you come into the world with my own eyes, I''d swear the devil switched babies with us and gave us a little screaming demon." He glances over at Mom with a weak smile, but she''s not playing along. So we go back to gloom and doom. Dad was just getting off work when he picked us up for the doctor''s appointment, so he''s still in his police uniform. He''s a constable here in Edgewood. The Edge is a small town on Canada''s west coast. The Rain Coast. From autumn to spring we get about eight months of wet weather. And even when the sun does break through all we see is liquid sunshine. Right now the downpour is drumming on the roof of the car. During the rainy season you tune out the constant drip-drip-dripping--that never-ending background of white noise--the way you forget the sound of your own breathing. The windows in back are all steamed up. I wipe a patch clear as we pull off the coast highway onto the road that runs along the ridge above town. 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. 4 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 Tshirt 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 bulletproof." So now 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 spe

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