allie was in control, but the boy's body was still full of fear and heaving with sobs. she looked to her father who was holding the phone in one hand, and in his other hand ... in his other hand ...

... he had no other hand.

his left arm now ended just past the elbow. as allie tried to process this, she saw that his left hand was shifting the phone in his palm, preparing to dial with his thumb. he was poised over the 9 button.

calling 911 was definitely not part of allie's damage control.

"you're calling the police?" allie screeched, using the boy's wild state to her advantage. "i don't want the police! i don't i don't i don't!" she screamed as loudly as she could, and her father looked helpless.

"put down the phone, adam!" her mother ordered.

"all right, all right!" he dropped it on the desk like it was about to explode. "there, i've put it down."

allie stopped screaming, and took a minute to calm the boy's body down, allowing her mother to hold her. allie hugged her back, and took more comfort from it than her mother could possibly know. the convulsive sobs eased until they were nothing more than shallow sniffles. "can you tell us your name?" allie's father asked.

allie did know his name, because if there's one thing that little kids fill every thought with, it's their identity.

"danny," she said. "danny rozelli."

"well, danny," said allie's mom, "i think you did a little bit of sleepwalking last night."

"yeah," said allie, "sleepwalking, yeah." she was always impressed by her mother's ability to be logical against all reason.

"could you tell us where you live?" allie's father asked.

she knew where danny rozelli lived, but wasn't ready to share that information, so she shook her head, and said, "something street."

her parents sighed in unison.

allie looked at the stump of her father's arm. there were indentations in the skin that must have been from a prosthetic arm, but of course he hadn't had time to put it on before finding little danny rozelli screaming in their dead daughter's bed.

"how'd that happen?" allie asked, realizing that a seven-year-old's lack of tact was an asset now.

her father hesitated for a moment, then he said, "car accident."

"ouch."

"yeah. ouch."

her father also had a scar on his forehead and cheek. so the accident had taken his right arm, and left him with scars. none of it was pleasant, but it could have been a whole lot worse. then again, it was worse, because they had also lost a daughter.

allie longed to tell them that they hadn't lost her at all-- that she was right here in front of them, but she couldn't find a way to do that as the cat woman, and she couldn't as danny rozelli, either.

"do you know your phone number, at least?" her mother asked. "we really should let someone know you're here-- your parents must be worried sick."

allie didn't have much sympathy for parents who would eventually get their child back. she didn't know the number anyway, and that was fine. she was finally here with her own parents, and they were treating her with love and kindness. this was the closest thing she might ever have to true family time with them.

"i'm hungry," she said. "can i have something to eat?"

her parents glanced to each other, her mother threw her gaze to the phone, her father nodded and he left the room. it didn't take a genius to figure out that he was going to call the police from another room. allie thought of throwing another hissy fit, but realized she couldn't stall the inevitable much longer. she would make the best of the time she had.

"can i have apple jacks?" she asked. "apple jacks in strawberry milk?"

she could have sworn her mother turned a previously unknown shade of pale.

"never mind," said allie. "you probably don't have that."

"actually," said her mother, "we do."

her father rejoined them in the kitchen, giving a secret nod to his wife. he must have made the call. allie figured they had about five minutes before the police arrived.

allie savored every spoonful of her cereal while her parents sat with her at the kitchen table. she tried to trick herself into believing this was just a regular family breakfast.

"sorry if they're a little stale," her mother said.

"no," said allie, "they're fine."

"our daughter liked apple jacks," her father said. "she liked them with strawberry milk, too."

"a lot of kids do," allie told him--although she didn't know anyone else who ate them that way. she dipped the spoon into the pink milk and let the last applejack float in like a lone life preserver.

"more, please."

her mother poured a second bowl. allie pushed down the orange cereal circles with the back of her spoon, coating them with milk.

"i guess that was your daughter's room i was in, huh?"

her mother nodded, but didn't meet her eyes.

"something happened to her, didn't it?"

"yes, danny, something did," her father answered.

"you don't have to talk about it," allie said, realizing this was going too far.

"no, that's okay--it was a long time ago," he said.

not that long, allie wanted to say, but instead she said, "i'll bet she loved you very much."

she should have left it there, but she could see a police cruiser pulling up to the curb outside, and then a second one. if she was going to do this, she had to do it now.

"sometimes people go away," allie told them. "they don't mean to, but they can't help it. it's nobody's fault. i'll bet if she could, she'd want to tell you that it's okay--that she's okay. i mean, people die, but that doesn't always mean they're gone."

then her mother and father looked to each other, then back to danny rozelli with moist eyes, and her mother said, "allie's not dead."

allie grinned. it was so like her parents to see things that way. "of course she's not. as long as you remember her, i guess she'll never really be dead."

"no," her father said. "we mean that she's still alive."

allie slowly lowered her spoon into the bowl, staring at them. "excuse me?"

"she's just asleep, danny," her father said. "she's been asleep for a long, long time."

chapter 28 the sleep of the dead

comatose.

nonresponsive.

persistent vegetative state.

all complicated words used by medical specialists to label a patient who remains unconscious. you would think that the labels mean something--that doctors know exactly what's going on in the brain of a comatose patient. but the truth is, nobody really knows anything. a coma can actually mean a whole range of things, but at its heart, all it really means is that someone simply won't wake up.

allie johnson had suffered internal injuries and severe head trauma in a head-on collision. she flew through the windshield, into another boy who was on his way through his own windshield. nick was, of course, killed instantly, but allie was quite a fighter. her heart continued to beat. it was beating as they rushed her to an emergency room. it was beating as they hooked her to a dozen different life-support machines. it was beating as they worked on her on an operating table for five hours to repair her massive wounds, and it was still beating after all the operations were done. thanks to medical science, and a body that simply would not give up, allie did not die. although her wounds were severe, her damaged body eventually healed, and her brain still showed a hint of basic brainwave pattern, proving that she was not entirely brain-dead. brain-dead would have been easy. it would have given everyone a reason to just throw in the towel. but now allie's parents were both blessed, and cursed, with the smallest fraction of hope.

"i won't try to sugarcoat this for you," the doctor had told her parents several weeks into allie's coma. "she could wake up tomorrow, she could wake up next month, next year, or she might never wake up at all--and even if she does, there's a good chance she won't be the girl you remember. her brain might be too damaged for higher cognitive functions--right now we just don't know." then, in that compassionate yet heartless way that doctors have, he told allie's distraught parents this: "for your sake, i hope she either wakes up the same girl you knew, or dies very quickly."

but neither of those two things happened. and now in a hospital somewhere, in a room somewhere, in a bed somewhere, allie johnson lies asleep unable to wake up ...

... because her soul is in everlost. in her book, you don't know jack, allie the outcast gives this as her final word on skinjacking:

"there is a truth about skinjacking that i can't tell you, because it's not my place. i don't have the right. it's the reason why we can skinjack, why we don't forget things, and why we're different from every other afterlight in everlost. it's a truth that all skinjackers must learn for themselves-- and if you are a skinjacker, then you will learn it, because the more you skinjack, the more you are driven toward it, like a salmon fighting a current to the head of a stream. i can only hope that once you do know the truth, you find the courage to face it."

chapter 29 teed for two

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.