Read Online Remember Me by Christopher Pike - Free Book Online Page B

beneath its surface for ages to come.

    I remember time passing.

    Then things went bad.

    I felt a sensation. It was not one of being pushed; it was, rather, a feeling of rising up.
    Then of spinning, of being disoriented. I saw the edge of the condominium roof, the stars. There were only a few of the latter, and they weren't very bright. Not compared to the lamppost standing beside the cement walkway, which suddenly began to rush toward me at incredible speed. It was only in the last instant that I realized I had gone over the edge of the balcony.

    That I was falling headfirst toward the ground.

    I didn't feel the blow of the impact. But I do remember rolling over and looking up. Now there were millions of stars in the sky. Orange ones and green ones and blue ones. There were also red ones. Big fat red ones, whose number rapidly grew as I watched, blotting out all the others in the heavens, until soon they were all that remained, part of a colossal wave of smothering hot wax.

    I blacked out. I died.

    CHAPTER

    V

    WHEN I CAME TO, I was home in bed, lying on top of the sheets in the dark. At first I didn't question what I was doing there. Many times throughout my life I would wake up in bed and not know what die hell was going on. I was a deep sleeper; in fact, it was normal for me to take several minutes after sleeping to figure out what planet I was on.

    On die other hand, I did feel strange. I was mildly surprised when I sat up that I wasn't dizzy. For some reason I expected to be dizzy. Yet when I paused to ask myself why, I had no answer. I remembered being at the party, but I didn't remember the end of the party. Certainly, I had no recollection of falling to my death.

    I climbed to my feet and walked to the open door and peeked out. As I have already mentioned, my bedroom was off a hall that overlooked a large portion of the downstairs.

    Because most of the downstairs lights were off, it was natural that I wasn't able to see well. Except I couldn't see for what appeared to be the wrong reasons. It was less dark than it should have been; the walls and furniture were not glowing or anything, but they weren't exactly not glowing, either. They were brighter than they should have been with nothing shining on diem.

    Then there was the stuff in the air. It was the stuff, I decided, that was blurring my vision.
    It was everywhere, translucent, vaguely gaseous, and flowing, very slightly, around the entire room, up the curtains and over the bookcase. In fact, the vapors actually seemed to be flowing through the walls. I blinked my eyes, but it did not go away.

    And yet I had to wonder if I was really seeing it at all. It was very fine, almost invisible.

    I walked down the hall to Jimmy's room and stuck my head through his partially opened door. He was asleep, lying on his back, his sheets thrown off, his right arm resting behind his head. If I hadn't known that he had to get up early, I would have tried to wake him up. The feeling of dislocation refused to leave me, and I wanted to talk to him about it. But I left him alone. His computer was still on, of course.

    I went downstairs. My parents were in the kitchen; I heard them talking before I actually saw them, and even before I went inside and joined them at the table, I thought they sounded different. My mother had one of those high-society voices that could be the embodiment of charm when she was in a good mood and nothing sort of bitchy when she wasn't.

    My dad had a deep, authoritative voice that never changed no matter what his state of mind. It certainly never sounded muffled, as it did now. Their words seemed to be coming to me through a layer of invisible insulation. Yet I mustn't overemphasize the effect. I could understand what they were saying. They were talking about money.

    "Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad," I said as I stepped into the kitchen and grabbed ahold of one of the chairs to pull out so I could sit down. But it was weird—it felt stuck to the floor. I