Free Remember Me by Christopher Pike Page B

for what happened when I reached the front door.

    In keeping with recent developments, Jimmy ignored the fact that I was behind him and opened and closed the door without giving me a chance to get outside.

    Naturally, I tried to open the door myself.

    But I couldn't.

    The doorknob wouldn't turn. I twisted it as hard as I could, clockwise and counterclockwise, but still it wouldn't budge. It seemed to be not only stuck but somehow different.

    As I shifted my hold to try again, the difference hit me like a bucket of ice water.

    The doorknob and my hand were not connecting. I was touching it, I knew, but it was as if an extremely fine barrier was preventing me from having any effect on it. Oh, was I confused.
    To touch something and not to have it respond to your touch. I stepped back and waited for my father to open the door for me.

    There seemed nothing else to do. He came by a few seconds later, leading my mother by the shoulder, and I managed to slip outside in front of them.

    Jimmy was already in his car. He sat hunched over the steering wheel, with the engine running, staring straight ahead. He didn't have a red Ferrari like me. He had a white Ford station wagon, and he was paying for it with the money he earned working for the telephone company.
    My father helped my mother into the front seat of the Ford, fastening her seat belt for her. She was holding a handkerchief to her face now, and I believe she was weeping quietly. I hopped in the backseat when my father opened the rear door on the passenger side. I wasn't about to wrestle with another door.

    It was amazing, I thought as I settled in the seat behind Jimmy, that I had not bumped my father as I squeezed past him.

    But I wasn't in the mood to be amazed. I was suffering from the worst kind of fear—fear of unknown origin. No one in the car was speaking, and I chose to remain silent. I sat by the window and stared up at the sky, at the stars. Never before had I found them so numerous, so bright and varied in color. But it was the red ones that drew my attention. There was something about them that filled me with dread. I kept expecting them to suddenly swell and drown out the others.

    They were dark red, like dripping candles seen through blood-smeared glass.

    I recognized the hospital—Newport Memorial. It was located on a low hill only a couple of blocks from the beach, a fifteen-story cube. I had taken Jo to the emergency ward there the summer before when she had slipped on the rocks on the Newport jetty and cut her knee open.
    The nurses and doctor had been nice. As Jimmy parked near the emergency entrance, I wondered who we could possibly be going to see.

    My grandfather—my mother's father—had a bad heart. My father's brother had also been having serious stomach ulcers.

    Climbing out of the car with the others, I prayed it wasn't family.

    We went inside, and I was surprised when my nose didn't react to the hospital's medicinal smell; ordinarily, the odor of alcohol and drugs made me cringe. But I smelled nothing, although I continued to see things I knew I shouldn't be seeing. The stuff in the air had not gone away, and now, walking with my family toward the front desk, I noticed threads of shadow weaving through the film, growing and fading in front of me, almost as though the shadows were alive and seeking me. I didn't want them to touch me; I was afraid they'd hurt me.

    My mother and father went to talk to the nurse on duty while Jimmy stopped at a drinking fountain in the hallway leading to the examination rooms. I went with him. He didn't appear to be thirsty. He just ran the water up high for a few seconds, without leaning over for a sip, and then thrust his hands in his pockets and stared at the floor.

    "Jimmy," I said. "Why won't you talk to me? Why won't you even look at me?"

    He ignored me, and in desperation I reached out to grab his arm, to scream his name so loudly that they would hear it on the top floors of the building. But I