You are neither ill nor suffering from head injuries, Ellie, the lady’s voice said, her tone still amused.

I couldn’t believe I was going to respond to this, but, hey, it seemed my life wasn’t weird enough already. Even if replying put me into the Potentially Insane category, I needed to know who this woman was and what she was doing in my head.

So I asked, in silence this time, Who are you?

I heard the twittery laughter again, but not one of my classmates had uttered a sound.

Why, I am Miss Austen, of course, the voice replied. But you may call me Jane.

As you can well imagine, Jane’s manifestation in my life created some complications for me at school.

Since I was reasonably sure I’d be sent off to a psych ward if I didn’t figure out what was going on, I ignored Mrs. Leverson’s structured reading assignments and inhaled the whole novel in two days, snatching moments to polish off a chapter or two between classes, at lunch or late into the night. I was a girl obsessed.

Jane’s voice in my head, instead of lessening, grew stronger with every page turned. While she insisted it was too early to explain why or how she’d chosen to inhabit my mind instead of, say, Sam’s, Tanya’s or Mrs. Leverson’s, she sure was right about that Mr. Wickham character. What a prick he turned out to be.

And — fine, call me crazy — I went along with it all. I asked her endless questions, of course, about her sudden appearance in my previously silent mental world. I responded skeptically, sure, to her reticent but ever-proper replies that there was “a good reason” for her being with me (one I was frustratingly unable to pry out of her ghostly lips). But I was an egocentric teenager. I expected to be Special. I expected the Universe to have a Grand Plan for me. And I supposed this Jane thing was part of it.

Or, maybe, I was just really lonely.