As I Wake

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Scott, Elizabeth, date.

p. cm.

Summary: Seventeen-year-old Ava awakens with amnesia and a feeling that something is wrong with her life, her mother, and her friends but when the mysterious Morgan appears, her flashbacks of life as a spy for a shady government agency begin to make sense.

ISBN : 978-1-101-55115-8

[1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Identity—Fiction. 3. Mothers and
daughters—Fiction. 4. Love—Fiction. 5. Memory—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S4195As 2011
[Fic]—dc22 2011005198

Published in the United States
by Dutton Books,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
www.penguin.com/teens

http://us.penguingroup.com

For Jess, because she always believed in this story, and helped me to keep believing too

WAKE UP.

I’m in bed. Sheets and blankets tucked around me, my legs sprawled out like I’ve fallen. No light in the room except faint yellow and a darker, colder gleam shining through the window, its curtains only partly closed.

Where am I?

I don’t know these sheets, this bed, this room.

I look down at myself, see soft fabric wrapping me from neck to knees. My feet are bare.

There are dark shapes all around.

People?

I slide up onto my elbows slowly, creeping back until my shoulders hit the wooden back of the bed. I sit quiet, watching. Waiting.

No movement. No breathing other than my own.

There are no people here, just things. Chair. Dresser. Desk. Lamp. I can see them as my eyes adjust to the dark. Familiar shapes, words easy on my tongue but still—

I don’t recognize these dark shapes, these things.

Where am I?

I get up.

The door to the room I’m in opens easily, unlocked, swinging free, and I step into a hall. It’s dark and there is carpet under my feet, thick and soft. It extends out past me, leads to two closed doors.

What hides behind them?

I don’t want to look.

Stairs. I see them now, a little to my left, and move toward them, grateful. I do not know where they lead, but it has to be away and that—that is better than those closed doors.

The stairs are carpeted too, soft under my feet, and down and down and down I walk into more darkness.

I can walk. I can talk, whisper “carpet” into the dark. I know words: hands, door, nightgown, bed, dark, light.

Where am I?

Bottom of the stairs, wood under my feet now, I’m standing on a floor, darkness all around edged only by the deeper darkness of more rooms, waiting shadows.

Door to my left, just a few steps away.

I move toward it carefully, my feet silently crossing the floor. I see my toes, but they do not feel like mine. I am dreaming maybe, one where everything is familiar but not, understood but not known.

I open the door.

Night, it is night, and a streetlight glows strong enough that it bleeds across the faint light of stars that strain above it.

Close my eyes.

I think about stars. Their light comes from years beyond years away. Constellations: Big Dipper, Orion. Venus sometimes shines brightly, low in the night sky, and is mistaken for a star.

I open my eyes.

I still don’t know here. Don’t know this place. Where am I?

There are more stairs, rugged for outside, for weather, and I walk down them. I walk away from the room, the hall, the stairs.

I turn around, see a tall shape, boxy dark in the night.

A house.

I don’t know it.

Where am I?

I back away, step onto grass. It’s cold and wet against my feet, sends a chill crawling through my toes and up my spine.

Walking, I am walking, almost running, off the grass and onto a road, the streetlight beaming at the end of it, glowing over a sign. Homeway Lane.

Where am I?

Street, alley, driveway, walk, road, I know.

I don’t know Homeway Lane.

Where am I?

Close my eyes, this is just a dream, a weird, bad dream, like—

I don’t know.

I don’t know any of my bad dreams. I don’t know—

I open my eyes.

It’s still dark, still night, my skin is cold and I have goose bumps, but this isn’t real, it’s just a dream, a bad dream, and I know that just like I know that I am—I am—I am—

I don’t know.

Close eyes, shaking now. End dream.

WAKE UP.

OhGodOhGodOhGodOhGod someone says, arms around me, holding tight.

I struggle, push.

I get some space, and then flinch away from the woman looking at me. I don’t know the wide, scared eyes, the shiny nose, the shaking mouth.

I don’t know her.

OhGodOhGodOhGod she says. Her voice matches her eyes, high-pitched and terrified.

“Ma’am, you need to let go of her. We have to look at her,” another voice says. Deeper voice, a guy whose face is broken up by the flashing lights of the ambulance behind him.

The streetlight is still on. Still shining on the sign. Homeway Lane.

“No,” I say, but nothing changes. I don’t wake up.

I don’t know where I am.

I don’t know who I am.

A light shines in my eyes and behind it I see the shadow of a face, dark eyes staring sadly, wearily into mine. (How do I see all this and not know where I am? How do I not know who I am?)

Close my eyes. Wake up, wake up, this is all a dream.

“Looks like she’s high,” the man with the weary eyes says, and then leans into me, forcing my eyes up, shining bright light into me so I can’t sleep. Can’t get away.

“What did you take?” he says into my ear, taking his time with each word, as if it has to fly to me from somewhere far away. “Your mother says you’ve been home all night but—”

Mother? The word makes my heart pound faster, ticktock shattering in my chest. “Mother?”

He blinks at the way I say the word, then gestures at the OhGod woman, who is huddled nearby, staring at me. Her eyes are full of want and pleading, and her hands are reaching for me.

“I don’t know her,” I say, moving away even though her fingers can’t quite touch me, and the woman’s mouth falls open.

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