She opened a navy nylon pouch. Inside were two pen-like vials, one filled with cloudy liquid, the other clear. “The insulin to replace what Simon’s body can’t produce. He injects himself with these three times a day.”
“What happens if he doesn’t?”
Dr. Davidoff took over. “We aren’t going to scare you and say that if Simon skips a single shot, he’ll die. He’s already missed his morning one, and I’m sure he only feels a bit out of sorts. But by tomorrow, he’ll be vomiting. In about three days, he’ll lapse into a diabetic coma.” He took the pouch from Tori’s mom and set it in front of me. “We need to get this to Simon. To do that, you need to tell us where he is.”
I agreed to try.
Two
IN A GOOD DRAMA, the protagonist never takes the straight line to the prize. She must set out, hit an obstacle, detour around it, hit another, take a longer detour, another obstacle, another detour…. Only when she has built up the strength of character to deserve the prize does she finally succeed.
My story was already fitting the time-honored pattern. Fitting, I guess, for a film student. Or, I should say, former film student. Chloe Saunders, fifteen-year-old Steven Spielberg wannabe, her dreams of writing and directing Hollywood blockbusters shattered on the day she got her first period and started living the kind of life she’d once imagined putting on the screen.
That’s when I started seeing ghosts. After freaking out at school, I was taken away by the men in the white jackets and shipped off to a group home for mentally disturbed teens. Problem is, I really did see ghosts. And I wasn’t the only kid at Lyle House with supernatural powers.
Simon could cast spells. Rae could burn people with her bare fingers. Derek had superhuman strength and senses and, apparently, soon would be able to change into a wolf. Tori…well, I didn’t know what Tori was—maybe just a screwed-up kid put in Lyle House because her mom helped run it.