Excerpt: CONFESSIONS OF A LOST KID, Neighborlee, Ohio, Book 1

 

Then the nightmares started.

I never woke up screaming, never talked in my sleep. However, after the third time I jumped out of bed and ran around the room I shared with three other girls, checking to make sure the door and windows were securely shut and locked, people noticed. All I could tell anybody when they complained about me waking them up was that I heard someone trying to get into our cottage.

The girls in my room were nice and didn't tell anybody but Miss Abby. The other girls in our cottage weren't so nice when I got out of our bedroom and checked all the windows and doors. They complained, and word got around. About a week before Christmas, Kurt overheard the complaints and the teasing, and he confronted me.

"Do you feel like a kind of itching in your feet?" he said, when we were tucked up safe in our talking place behind the stage in the social hall. He sighed, more like a groan, and slumped back against the wall. "You know, like when I can feel our superpowers working."

"You can feel them. I can't," I reminded him.

"Yeah, but I'm getting weird dreams too. Is someone trying to get through the walls, scratching at them all the time?"

"It's not people," I told him, my voice dropping to a whisper.

Kurt looked at me very solemnly, looking much older than his nearly-nine years.

We talked about everything we could remember of our dreams, which wasn't much, just the impression of someone trying to get into wherever we were. Kurt was frustrated with me that I didn't get an itching feeling. Then he forgot about that in the surprising discovery revealed by further talking. The itching was always on the same side of the room, when he woke up from his dreams of the intruder. Meaning if he lay on his back, the itching was on his right side, but if he lay on his stomach, the itching was on his left side, and if he was curled up on his side facing the wall, his face itched. The itching was always closest to the outer wall of his room.