There were so many things this girl still didn’t understand, and it was heartbreaking to watch her struggle through them.

  “I wanted to show him a good time and add something bright to his life, but I could’ve never known he’d have deeper feelings for me. I didn’t know he’d be making that choice because I had to be there to see it happen! But how could anyone love me? I’m nothing to love since I don’t even exist!” I snapped bitterly, and my words seemed to strike Cammie.

  “But you are now,” she snarled, reminding me of the horrible place I was in. A fresh wave of tears flooded my eyes, and I put my hands over them and threw myself back, kicking in the hopes that I would somehow get out. But I would never get out.

  Cammie put her hands on me again, pulling me up and leading me toward her door. Everything felt so terrible in this rotting corpse I was carrying around. It was dark inside the house, and we bumped into things as she carried me to the stairs.

  “We’ll figure out what to do with you in the morning,” she whispered as we climbed. Her room was full of pink blankets and pillows. She started tossing them onto a spot on the floor, obviously where she intended for me to sleep.

  For all that was going on, I was inexplicably nervous about going to sleep. I’d never done it before, and I wondered if it would give me a chance to escape. Cammie slid into her bed and I set myself down on the pile on the floor. I thought she’d fallen asleep, but then she said one thing more to me.

  “You’ll see. Nathan would never choose to leave me,” she whimpered.

  I closed my eyes, but my mind kept spinning. I didn’t understand how falling asleep worked. I shut them as hard as I could, struggling to turn everything off until I finally blacked out.

  Chapter 8

  It was just after noon when I woke up. When I opened my eyes and saw I was in the same second-story room I’d fallen asleep in, I could feel my last ounce of hope vanish from my mind. This was my reality now, and what a pitiful and small one it was.

  Gradually rising, I started to look around Cammie’s room. Everything was quiet and I was alone. I looked into the mirror over the dresser at what I was. My blue eyes were bloodshot, my hair was a mess, and this skin was grimy and rough. I pinched my cheek and pulled, feeling the skin slide over my cheekbones. I’d created Apoxy for Nathan to be the girl of his dreams, and now I was trapped inside of her.

  Lost for anything else to do, I glanced over her big bookcase and perused the pictures on her shelf. There were some of Cammie and other girls at various ages. The pictures presented images of birthday parties, school events, or day trips. But I passed over all of them to grasp a framed image of Cammie and Nathan together at the state science championships last year. He had his arm around her, squeezing her in and looking as though he’d just won the huge trophy his ecstatic sister was holding. Taking the picture in both hands, I wondered what it would mean to her after he was gone.

  “I thought you’d sleep forever,” Cammie said at the door, startling me to death.

  I quickly set the picture down, feeling a flush of embarrassment at going through her belongings. Maybe I was more embarrassed because I’d been caught thinking about them. Cammie pushed her door the rest of the way open. A t-shirt and sweat pants covered her thin frame, and as usual she had her glasses on and hair back in a ponytail. A cute girl by anyone’s standards, it was curious she didn’t have boys of her own to deal with yet.

  “I called in sick today to deal with this. I haven’t missed a day of school in six years, but I’m sure they’ll manage to survive without me. Grandma knows you’ll be staying here for a bit too. You’ll meet her soon.”

  Cammie came over and sat on her bed. I stood by her mirror, having no idea how to react. It was hard for me to even remember what I’d said last night, let alone how she must’ve taken it. Fortunately, she wasn’t a girl who beat around the bush, and she quickly voiced her thoughts.

  “What you told me is just beyond anything I can comprehend, but the fact is you’re here and I’ve got to deal with you. The stuff you said about Nathan scared the heck out of me, but my experiment is proving you know what you’re talking about. So just tell me again one more time who you are and what you’re doing.”

  She crossed her arms, obviously annoyed. Nothing I could say would do anything to make her happy.

  “I’m not human, but I came here to help your brother. I don’t belong in this world, rather I have a place in the tiny interstices that connect all of them called infinity. Now I’m stuck here as you see me. If there’s one thing you can believe though, it’s that I’m sorry to be dumping this on you,” I explained, and Cammie gave me a harsh look.

  “And you don’t have any kind of I.D.?” she asked, and I shook my head. “What about a social security number, bank account, heck, even a library card?”

  “I have nothing other than what you see before you. I don’t even really know anyone else,” I said, and Cammie put her fist to her chin. She thought and thought, and the process seemed to be making her increasingly angry.

  “People don’t just appear out of thin air! You had to have come from somewhere, and that means there has to be a way to send you back,” she griped.

  She was getting frustrated and emotional, and I felt terrible that I was the cause. I would’ve loved nothing more than to just vanish right in front of her and leave her to her life, but that wouldn’t solve the problem that lurked in her future. But the way Cammie looked at me made me think she blamed me for this, and her wrath was unwavering.

  “I’m not lying to you, Cammie. I wanted to help, but now I can’t even help myself.”

  The girl chuckled condescendingly at me, rolling her eyes. It was enough to stoke my ire, and I had to address it. Still, she was much too smart to be tricked into saying it, so I had to ask her point blank.

  “Why do you hate me?”

  That got her attention, and from behind her glasses she focused her eyes on me. Ruffled, she shook off my comment and started staring off into space. She hesitated, wrestling with such a personal question.

  “I’ve hated all of the women my brother’s ever been involved with,” she confessed, not sounding terribly sorry about it. “But none of them have ever threatened to take him away from me the way you have. Usually I’ve had to try to save him from them, because they only liked him because of his looks or they were using him for something else or they were just terrible people, like Sasha.”

  As she spoke, she became more solemn about it. This might’ve been something she’d wanted to get off her chest for a very long time. I didn’t know what to say, so I just listened. Gradually she got up from her bed and adjusted the blinds by the window, going on but refusing to look at me.

  “Back when I was five, my family took a vacation in the country by a lake. It’s one of my earliest memories. My mother was on the beach talking to another woman, and I’m sure she would’ve noticed before it was too late, but I’d gone in much too deep and I was having trouble keeping my head above water. Like it was nothing, Nathan arrived and scooped me up and set me on the sand.

  “Ever since then, it’s been like we’ve been having this sick competition to see how many times we could save each other. He got stuck in a sewer when I was nine, and rather than call the fire department I built a pulley and got him out myself. The next year, I was choking on a piece of beef and he smacked it out of me. Right after he got his driver’s license, we were driving in the winter and he started to skid. I turned the wheel into the slide and told him to take his foot off the brake. He always used his muscle, and I always had to use my mind, and I’ve always been afraid that if I’m not smart enough I won’t be able to save him the next time.”

  When she stopped talking, she finally glanced at me, a little shame in her eyes for revealing her secrets.

  “I’m sorry, Cammie, but I don’t think any level of smarts is going to save him from this. This is something he will choose to do, and there’ll be no stopping him once he gets his head set on it,” I countered, my own troubles making my voice callous.

  “I’m not going to let this happen!” she shouted, steeling herself against me, trying to block out the unforgiving truth I had for her. She fought it, trying to think of a way out. “But he’ll never need to do that if I don’t need to be saved. There’s got to be a way we can make things better for ourselves so he doesn’t resort to that. If only we had more money. You said you can see the future, right?”

  “I used to be able to, but everything inside this head is so dark. It’s all gone if I wasn’t paying attention to it before,” I said.

  “Do you know who’s going to win the Super Bowl? We could make the money gambling!”

  “The Detroit Lions?” I guessed, and Cammie sulked.

  “No, I guess you can’t see the future.”

  She cast her eyes around, searching for another possibility. The desperation on her face revealed that she was out of solutions.

  “Isn’t there anything you can do?” she accused harshly, making me defensive.

  “No, there isn’t! There was nothing I could do before except determine the effects of his sacrifice, and there’s certainly nothing I can do now that I’m just as weak and defenseless as you are. You have no idea how terrible this is for me! I’m surprised the universe hasn’t fallen apart or time as you know it has stopped. Maybe I’ve just simply been replaced, and there’s some other spirit making the universe unfold.”

  I’d raised my voice before growing meek and ending in a sad little squeak. Cammie pursed her lips, appraising me and my depression.

  “Sorry,” she offered, quickly building steam. “But you’re wrong if you think Nathan is ever going to abandon me like that!”

  I didn’t have the strength to argue anymore and so I shielded my eyes away from her. I still felt horribly tired, not to mention hungry and dirty and sad. Despite her reservations, Cammie was a sweetheart and she took care of me. I told her that I knew what everything was, but using things was something else entirely. She showed me into the bathroom, and after I stared at the shower she turned on the water and left. The warm water beating against my bare skin felt so strange. Just being solid was so hard to get used to.

  Descending the stairs, I saw that Cammie had set out bowls of cereal for us to eat, but she winced when she saw me and immediately ran upstairs for a brush. She showed me how to brush my hair, which not only took an annoyingly long time but caused a fair amount of pain too. We ate, and I met Gladys, who seemed very pleased not to get into too many specifics about why I was there.

  Within the span of just a few hours, I’d felt the urge to cry several times, but I always managed to hold it back. What was the point of learning all of this stupid stuff and talking about things that couldn’t be helped? To say that it got to me sometimes was a gross understatement.

  Nathan got home from work around six o’clock, and when he saw I was there he appeared so stunned I thought he’d fall onto the floor. I’ll admit I was still so shaken by the whole thing I couldn’t even muster a smile. Gladys was reading upstairs, but Cammie was with me, and she had something fiendish contorting her innocent countenance.

  “What are you doing here?” he gasped, completely mystified. He threw his jacket on the floor and rushed over. I hadn’t even bothered to move from where I was sitting so any chance for a hug was cut off.

  “She says she’s stuck here and has no place else to go,” Cammie answered for me, but I hardly reacted to it. All of a sudden nothing seemed to matter to me. What was the point of caring?

  “Oh, no! What’s the problem? I mean, she’s welcome to stay here, but what happened to you?” he wondered, sitting down and leaning sideways on the side of the table to try to get in my line of sight.

  “What happened to her is that she says she’s not human but can’t leave her body because she has become too attached to it,” Cammie reported. Yeah, it was pretty obvious now she was just going to spill all of my secrets in whatever haphazard fashion they happened to come out. And why should I care? Everything she could tell him about who I was seemed so irrevocably detached at this point.

  “What?” Nathan asked, grinning as though this were some kind of a prank. He looked at both of us, and I broke down and gave a consenting nod. “Yeah, right!” He smiled, trying to get me to reveal the rouse with a smirk, but I didn’t have the energy to be anything other than straight-faced.

  “No, it’s true, Nathan!” Cammie implored, somewhat sarcastically. “And don’t you want to know how she ended up with a body in the first place? What it was all for?”

  “Sure,” Nathan agreed, at least able to enjoy the joke with his sister. He was chuckling, waiting to hear where this story went and its final punch line.

  “She’s some kind of spirit who started coming to Earth because you’re going to die in three months during an accident at your factory. She wanted to make your final year better before you willingly decided to throw your life away. Isn’t that hilarious?” Cammie jabbered, trying to out the ridiculousness of my story.

  At first Nathan cringed, and then all expression seemed to drain from his face. He still had his cruddy work overalls on, and the rough, patchy growth still covered his hairy face. His eyes glazed over and he went to somewhere very deep inside his mind.

  “So I’m going to die…in three months…at an accident at my factory?” he checked. Somehow he’d gotten it even though Cammie had tried her best to make a mockery of me.

  “Ta da! Great story, huh?” I gave an unenthusiastic cheer. It didn’t bother me if they didn’t believe me. It was still going to happen all the same. We all sat in silence for a moment as Nathan processed Cammie’s ridiculous information. She wore a furtive grin, waiting for him to trash the whole idea. Instead, Nathan’s eyes rolled around his head as the pieces started to come together for him.

  “An accident at the factory,” he mused, trailing off almost as soon as he’d started. His eyes kept coming back to me, scanning me for some sign about what he’d been told, but I gave him nothing to go on. “Now if I had to go, that would be the way to do it. Leave behind a cool million dollars, and all of a sudden all the stuff we’ve been struggling with would vanish.”

  “What? What are you talking about?” Cammie snapped, suddenly deathly serious.

  “Oh, yeah, back when I first got the job. I had to sign this form for “Fatal Accident Insurance Coverage.” Anyone who dies at work gets an unbelievably huge check. I put your name as the recipient, and it’d all go to you, Cammie.”

  This was news to Cammie, and she immediately shot me a look meaning she intended to cut my head off. I don’t think I would’ve stopped her if she’d tried.

  “Yeah, but that’s ridiculous, right Nathan?” she prodded, trying to resume some of the joke’s light-hearted tenor. Chuckling, Nathan anxiously agreed with her.

  “Yeah, that’s totally ridiculous,” he said, and Cammie sat back in her chair at the kitchen table. Nathan didn’t move though. He just kept chewing his lip, a funny gleam in his eyes. “But if it had to happen and I was right there, man that would make such a difference for you and grandma. You’d have everything you’d ever need, practically set for life.”

  “Nathan, stop! This isn’t funny anymore, and I never should’ve brought it up.” Terror flashed over Cammie’s eyes. Maybe now she was finally beginning to realize I’d been telling the truth. Nathan snorted, unable to get away from the subject.

  “I’m just saying, hypothetically, there are worse ways to go. What could you do with a million dollars? The mortgage…gone. College would be covered even if you wanted a dozen PhD’s. You would be taken care of for a very, very long time.”

  “I don’t want to hear another word about this, ok? Just drop it!” Cammie ordered, but the only thing that stopped was the playful manner of Nathan’s musings. He became more serious, reflective even. He brooded over the table, just staring at the reflection of the light on the wood.

  “I mean, really. What else have I got going for me? I could sweat and toil for a lifetime at this job and not even make close to a million dollars. And that’s if Huntington’s doesn’t strike me down. Who’s to say it wouldn’t be better just to get it over with in one fell swoop? It’d be nice to leave something good behind,” he considered in a low voice.

  “I told you,” I said to Cammie, my voice expressionless. She was beside herself, shaking and almost in tears. She shot to her feet, glaring down at him, her arms gesturing wildly.

  “For the love of God, Nathan, would you listen to what you’re saying? What about me, ok? What would I do without you?” Cammie’s lips were quivering, and her glasses were fogging up. Though all these terrible things were going to happen to Nathan, it was her soul that was tortured over it.

  “What would you do with me?” he shrugged, speaking out of cold, honest truth. “It’s not like brothers and sisters stay together forever. Yeah, it would suck at first, but by the time you got to college things wouldn’t be much different at all. And then you meet some guy and fall in love and get a house somewhere. By then you’ll probably have pretty much forgotten all about this. That’s the way people’s lives go.”

  “That doesn’t mean I want you to die!” she shouted, making Nathan glance up at the ceiling and the grandmother who might’ve possibly heard. When he looked back, Cammie had already turned her attention to me. She shoved me roughly, but I was still wrapped in my own disbelief. “And what about you? Shouldn’t you be trying to help me?”

  “Why bother? We’re just going to die someday too. Who’s to say it wouldn’t be smart to get out as soon as you can?” I moaned, and Cammie glowered at me. Nathan had his brown eyes my way too, taking me in. He wore some of that familiar fascination I’d used to enjoy, but now he had it for a very different reason.

  “And you know that this is going to happen to me in three months because you’re a spirit who can appear and disappear and who knows the future?” he asked me, and I begrudgingly returned his attention.