Today's Special Guest is Author Kat Stiles!
High school
is hard enough, Em knows. Her freshman year introduced her to all the cliques,
annoying teachers, and tough homework assignments. But discovering you have
super powers and not knowing how to control them is a whole new level of
complicated.
Thankfully,
Em isn’t alone. Her best friend Roz starts having unusual dreams that come
true, and Tommy, Em’s secret crush, can hear the softest whispers in class.
A romance
blossoms with Tommy. But just as things are looking up, people start dropping
like flies. A telepathic serial killer is on the loose and only Em and her
friends have a hope of stopping him.
Or do they?
If they don’t figure out the killer’s identity soon, one of them could be next.
Excerpt:
Somehow
I thought I would know when my life was in mortal danger. I’m not talking
spidey sense or anything, just some kind of clue something bad is about to
happen. I guess I got the idea from the movies. Real life, I found, is very
different.
Here’s
the thing: my hometown of Cannondale is as far from interesting as it comes.
The picture of central Texas suburbia, it’s a quiet little city, where nothing
happens, apart from an occasional trampling at the outlet mall when the Coach
store has a clearance sale. The kind of place that feels safe to walk around at
night, especially in the cookie cutter middle-class subdivision that was my
neighborhood. My walk went undisturbed until I heard the sound of a thump,
thump, thump, followed by a long buzz… It took me a second to figure out the
noise was rap music, trying to escape out a car window. Another joyride, I thought.
Then
the tires screeched. I whipped my head around out of instinct, but all I could
see were two headlights headed straight for me. Frozen to the spot, my eyes
snapped shut. As if that would in some way stop it. And in the three seconds
before the car rammed into me, my only thought was whether or not it would hit
me hard enough to get me out of school tomorrow.
A sick, crunching noise sounded when my
feet left the ground, and I caught some air before falling back down with a
thud. The strange thing was the
absence of any pain. What did register
was the pounding of my heart, more from surprise than the impact of the car. As
I lay on the ground, motionless, I heard a car door slam, followed by
footsteps.
“I
think you killed
her. Dude, you are so screwed…”
I couldn’t get my eyes to open. God, am I really hurt?
“She’s fine, she’s not even bleeding,” a
different voice said, right when the other guy heaved. The smell of beer mixed
with half-digested food filled my nose.
A barely discernible whisper repeated
over and over, “Oh God, what am I going to do?”
“Who is she?”
The voices grew closer.
With all my might, I tried to lift my
arm. Nothing. Why can’t I feel anything?
My heart began to race.
“I don’t know her.” A shaking hand pushed
the hair away from my face, but still my eyes refused to open.
“I thought you knew all the girls at
school.”
“Wasn’t she a freshman last year? Amy…Em…uh,
Emily.”
“Good. Now you know who you killed.”
“Don’t be stupid. She can’t be dead.” The
voice was louder now—one of them had come closer. “Look, her chest, I saw it.
She’s breathing.”
“Are you delusional? She’s not moving.”
It was then the pain set in. My thighs
burned, a fire consuming my legs. I tried to scream, but my lips wouldn’t
budge. Am I paralyzed?
“Wait a minute… Something’s wrong.”
“No shit, Sherlock. You killed a
pedestrian.”
“No, I mean with me. I…I can’t feel―”
“You’re right, she is breathing.” One of them shook my shoulders. “Hello? You okay?”
And then it got really weird.
A wave of heat flashed through me like a
current, awakening every little nerve ending. My body convulsed while it passed
through, but it didn’t hurt—it was sorta like the prickly feeling of a foot
falling asleep, before the tingling turns to pain. Then a glimmer of the
richest purple I’d ever seen appeared, spiraling beneath my closed eyelids.
“If she’s breathing, she’s fine.
Someone’ll find her.”
“We can’t leave her… What if she’s
paralyzed? Or brain dead?” Footsteps paced back and forth in front of me.
The tingling concentrated in my legs,
amplifying the warmth. What’s happening
to me? Am I…dying?
“Uh…uh, 911. Let’s call 911.”
“And tell them what? You know we’re both
screwed if the cops catch us. I’m not going to juvie for you. I’m outta here.”
What
do I do now? I still
couldn’t move or speak. My legs grew hotter while at the same time the pain
started to subside. Is this what it feels
like to die? No, it can’t be… I’m not ready. A lump formed in my throat as
I waited for that ominous white light all those near-death survivors talk
about. But it never came.
A car door opened, just as a dog barked
in the distance. Then the engine fired to life: a throaty, guttural outburst.
The dog barked even louder, as if to answer it.
“Someone’s coming. Dude, get in!”
The heat surged through my body a final
time, and my temperature returned to normal. At first, only a couple of fingers
moved, and then my control returned back all at once. My eyes slowly flickered
open.
“I’m sorry,” whispered the boy who I
assumed was the driver. It was all so hazy, his face was nothing but two black
holes against a white mask.
Even after rubbing my eyes, everything
still appeared blurry. Was that a red car? Definitely something sporty from the
sound of the engine.
They peeled out, leaving behind the smell
of burnt rubber and a horrible screeching sound ringing in my ears again. My
eyes finally adjusted, and I saw an older woman approaching. Her beagle trotted
up and licked my hand.
“Sweetie, are you all right? Did you fall
down?”
“I’m fine,” I answered without thinking.
But when I made it to my feet and brushed myself off, I discovered it wasn’t a
lie.
The pain was completely gone.
Kat Stiles is a super hero geek at heart. She grew
up watching Spiderman, X-men and Superfriends cartoons, and she loved the idea
of having super powers. The superhero
movies that came out delighted her; even the bad ones were still so much
fun. And she remembers wishing the series, “Heroes” would go on forever.
With Connected, she tried to keep the abilities as organic as
possible – something just a little beyond what a normal
human can do. She’s met some pretty incredible people in her life, and her
experiences greatly influenced the writing of Connected.
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