Over Your Dead Body by Dan Wells Page B

because Brooke knows that. I didn’t have anyone there to help me, so she came inside and … then I wasn’t me anymore. I was just watching. It took her a while to get control, but I was lost right then. Right at the beginning. That was the worst part, really—being in there for days and hearing her talk to you, and I screamed to try to warn you, but nothing worked, and you never knew, and then she decided she wanted Brooke instead, and there was nothing I could do to stop her from killing us.” She paused. “They’re all in there, you know, just like that. Some of them can hear us, some of them can’t. Maybe Brooke is listening—”
    “Just stop!” I shouted. “Please just stop. I didn’t want to hurt you, and I didn’t want you to die, and I’m sorry I didn’t see it coming sooner but please just…” I didn’t know what to say. Marci was everything I’d ever wanted, but she was gone, and her absence defined my life. Having her back again like this, in my best friend’s stolen body, was as wrenching a change as losing her had ever been.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, walking toward me, reaching out to hold me. I backed away, crying harder, swatting weakly at her hands—but when I touched her I thought of Marci’s hands, and the peace I used to feel when I was holding them, and I closed my eyes and broke down in sobs. Brooke’s body caught me and held me, soothing me like I’d soothed her last night.
    Boy Dog whined at the stars, and I cried until my tears ran dry.
    “You’ve changed,” said Marci, stepping back to look at me but still holding my shoulders. I looked into Brooke’s eyes and wondered how many girls were looking back out, trying to talk to me, screaming in the darkness. And how many were just lost, buried like Marci had been, waiting to wake up and look around and wonder where they’d been?
    When would she wake up as a thousand-year-old girl I couldn’t even talk to, and I’d lose both Brooke and Marci forever?
    “You never used to cry,” said Marci.
    “You did that,” I said. “Or my mom did, I guess. You died, and I broke, and now I feel things differently but I … am not really good at it.”
    “I’m sorry about your mom.”
    “She’s not—” And then another wave of emotion gripped me. “She’s not in there too, is she?”
    “No,” said Marci, shaking Brooke’s head. “Nobody took your mom after she left Brooke—whatever new thoughts she had in those few seconds, and whatever she gained from your mom, was all lost in the fire.” She put Brooke’s hand on my face. “I’m sorry.”
    I pulled away, slower than before but still deliberate. I couldn’t process this yet: Marci, back again. It had always been a possibility, of course, but I had never dared to think of it because I had never dared to think of Marci. I hadn’t made a healthy personal connection in years, maybe in my whole life, but I had with her, and then I’d lost it, and now to have it back in the worst possible way.…
    “Do we have a place to stay?” asked Marci. She looked around at the darkened town; we could see streetlights in the distance, closer to the center, but here on the edge it was lifeless and empty.
    “How much do you know?” I asked. “A lot of the memories seem to blend together for Brooke; one personality dominates for a while, but they all seem to share certain—” And then I had to stop because I knew she was only going to leave me again. “How long will you be here?”
    “As long as I can be,” she said.
    “How long is that?”
    She spoke softly. “I don’t know.” She looked away again. “I think it’s like you say: I have some of her memories, but nothing concrete. Impressions, mostly. The last thing I remember clearly was the suicide, when Nobody slit my wrists. But it’s not like I jumped straight from that moment to this one, you know? I’m aware, somehow, that time has passed, and that I’m in another body, and that there are other girls in