Chapter 10
Watching You
I wake to the sound of someone saying my name.
But I'm too tired. I want to to sleep just a little bit longer before getting up for school. I pull the sheet over my head and slide back toward sleep.
"Celeste, we're going to be late. We slept in. Wake up."
I rise out of sleep long enough to wonder who's trying to wake me up for school.
I pull the sheet from my face and open my eyes.
Lying in the bed across the room, holding her covers tightly around her shoulder, is Shanna. It's really her. Right there. Staring right at me.
"Oh my god," I stammer. "How..." My heart bursts. I'm torn between elation that Shanna is alive and somehow lying in her bed at home and fear that it's all so implausible that it must not be real. I leap from my bed, rush to her side, and wrap my arms around my sister.
"What are you doing?" Shanna sleepily winces as I hold her tight. "We're seriously going to be late."
"I don't understand." I'm crying now. "How are you here?"
"What are you talking about? What's up with you this morning?" Shanna pulls her covers aside and sits up. She's wearing a strange nightgown, and she's thinner than I've ever seen her.
Her eyes go wide as she looks me up and down. "Oh my God. Celeste. Your face! Did someone hit you? What happened? Is that blood on your shirt? That's blood like all over your shirt!"
I look down. She's right. Horrifyingly, my top is saturated with blackened, dried blood. Not only this, but the skin on my knuckles is completely scraped off. I supress a scream. As bafflingly frightening as this is, though, none of it compares to the shock of my sister's inexplicable presence in our bedroom.
"But how are you here? I don't understand. Where have you been?"
Shanna looks at me like I'm crazy. "What are you talking about? What do you mean where have I been?"
