Wake Unto Me

CHAPTER One

OCTOBER 15, OREGON

Caitlyn’s pencil moved over the paper in harsh, rapid dashes. A picture began to emerge: flames, smoke. A face in agony. A stake of wood.

Caitlyn’s breath came in short gasps as her pencil brought the image from last night’s eerie dream to life. She felt the heat of the flames against her own skin, the smoke choking her, her lungs searing as she gasped in great gulps of burning air. Panic flooded her body as she fought against the ropes that bound her to the stake. She was desperate for escape, desperate for someone in the jeering crowd beyond the flames to scream out against the wrong that was being done to her.

Hey, a panting male voice said, the sound impinging on the edges of Caitlyn’s awareness. She ignored it and kept drawing.

Caitlyn could feel the thoughts of the woman being burned at the stake. It was no use. She was not one of them. Always an outsider, she had suffered their fear and their hatred for her her whole life. And now they had finally found a way to be rid of her forever: Witch, they called her.

Whatcha drawing? the same male voice asked.

With that one word, they were free to destroy her. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. . .

Yo! A large pale hand appeared between her face and her art journal, waving back and forth. You in there?

The crackling flames of the medieval pyre faded into the squeaking of tennis shoes on the gym floor. Annoyed, Caitlyn Monahan looked up from the journal in her lap, blinking herself back to present reality. Pete Fipps, strands of his dark hair plastered to his temples with sweat, was breathing at her. What did he want? Probably to make fun of her, as usual.

You really like to draw, huh?

Yes. Caitlyn slipped her bookmark—a tarot card of the Wheel of Fortune—into the journal, closed the cover, and pulled it up against her chest. Without her noticing, practice had started for the boys’ varsity basketball team. Caitlyn’s perch at the end of the fifth row of the bleachers was no longer a quiet, private place to wait for her friends Sarah and Jacqui.

What were you drawing?

She felt the intrusion of his gaze and was vaguely threatened by his looming closeness. She wished he’d go away. Nothing.

Nothing, huh?

Caitlyn remained silent, entranced by a big zit on the side of his neck, the red spot brilliant against his pale skin.

"You must have been drawing something."

Caitlyn held the journal more tightly to her chest, her shoulders hunching. Just. . . someone I saw in a dream last night. What gave Pete the right to torment her? Since the start of school a month ago, he’d been sniggering with his friends whenever she walked by. She’d dealt with the jokes for years and didn’t understand why it was suddenly getting worse. Did entering tenth grade automatically up the jerk factor in people?

"Were you drawing a guy?" Pete asked, voice leering.

No, not a guy! she said, a little loudly. Why was he still talking to her? Some of his friends had stopped tossing balls around and were standing, watching them with grins on their faces, as if waiting for the payoff to a joke. I was drawing a wise woman, if you have to know.

That like a wise guy? Pete put on a bad New Jersey accent. "You lookin’ at me? You lookin’ at me?"

Caitlyn rolled her eyes. A wise woman was a healer, or midwife. But some people thought they were witches.

They burn ’em?

For a moment, Caitlyn felt herself thrown back into the dream. Ignorance, all around her, destroying that which it could not understand. She felt the searing smoke in her throat, squeezing off her air. Yes, she coughed.

He snorted. Guess they should have rethought their choice of careers. Witches! You gotta know the fire’s coming for you, one way or another.

Anger and loathing welled up inside her, hatred burning in her soul. It had been faces like Pete’s that had laughed from beyond the circle of flames; ignorant minds like his that had destroyed her.

Caitlyn blinked and shook off the thoughts. Where had that come from?

Fipps! Doug Hansen called from midcourt.

Pete turned just in time to catch a basketball thrown at his head.

Leave Moan-n-Groan alone and get your butt back on the court! Doug shouted, making his friends laugh.

Caitlyn winced at the nickname, a play on her last name, Monahan, the taunt a familiar stab to her heart. It’d begun in seventh grade, when she’d started wearing black goth-inspired clothes and had shown her misery on her face. She’d gotten better at hiding her feelings in the three years since then, and had moved on to more colorful vintage clothing from the thrift store, but the nickname had stuck. Only now, boys said it with a raunchy, knowing lilt to their voices.

She looked toward the girls’ locker room door, willing Sarah and Jacqui to appear and rescue her.

Pete gave his friend the finger.

Caitlyn slid the journal into her backpack and started to get up.

Pete grabbed her arm. Wait!

She jerked free. Why? she asked, cautious.

I’m having a party tomorrow night; my parents are going out of town. My brother is getting a keg. Wanna come?

She stared at him, too stunned to think. He was inviting her to a party? That’s why he’d been talking to her?

Pete’s face colored under her surprised gaze, and his hands flew in wild gestures as if to avert a misunderstanding. "With Sarah and Jacqui, I mean! If you guys want to. I’m inviting half the school. I wasn’t inviting you in particular."

The fragile butterfly of flattery that had begun to flutter in her chest was smashed beneath the rubber soles of his shoes. Of course you didn’t mean me, she said flatly, embarrassed to have misunderstood. She knew better than to let down her guard with guys like Pete; she knew better! All they ever wanted was to make fun of her. Why would you invite Moan-n-Groan anywhere? You wouldn’t be caught dead with me.

Pete’s pink cheeks turned scarlet, the red seeping up his forehead. Caitlyn, I—

Gotta go, Caitlyn said, grabbing her backpack and heading to the end of the bleacher row. I wouldn’t want to hang around and let people get the wrong impression! She jumped off the end of the bleachers just as Sarah and Jacqui came out of the locker room, and jogged over to meet them. Caitlyn looped her arm in Sarah’s and dragged her out of the gym, Jacqui trotting to keep up. Wolf whistles and laughter followed them.

What was that all about? Sarah asked as they came out into the autumn sunlight and the gym doors clunked shut behind them. Her brown hair fell in thick layers to her shoulders, as glossy and effortlessly stylish as if she’d just stepped out of a shampoo commercial. Her dark brown eyes were wide with questions.

Caitlyn rolled her own pale, sea-green eyes and told them what had happened.

When she finished, Jacqui grabbed her arm, squeezing a little too hard. Her round, freckled face was mottled with excitement. Pete totally likes you!

Embarrassed, Caitlyn shook her head. "He doesn’t. He made that clear."

Oh my gosh, of course he does! Sarah said, and shook her head. You are so dense.

Am I? she asked uncertainly, getting her first inkling that she might have just made an ass of herself.

Sarah lightly slapped her on the side of the head. He asked you to a party. How you managed to read an insult into that, I don’t know.

She’s too defensive, Jacqui said.

Caitlyn’s shoulders sagged. She felt like a fool. Maybe Pete had been trying to be nice to her, and she’d gone all wacko on him. Well, even if he does like me, so what? she asked, seeking some small measure of dignity. "I don’t like him."

Pete’s a nice guy, Jacqui said. You should give him a chance.

I don’t have to like a guy just because he likes me, Caitlyn said.

But why don’t you like him? Jacqui asked. His family’s rich. They own a chain of furniture stores.

Caitlyn turned a puzzled gaze on her friend. Furniture is supposed to make me like him?

Hey, I’d be happy to marry a guy who owned a chain of furniture stores, Jacqui said.

We’re in tenth grade! Who’s thinking about marriage? Caitlyn cried.

No one with any brains, Sarah said dryly. Sarah’s parents had separated early in the summer, sending shock waves through Sarah’s life.

Jacqui shrugged. "So forget marriage. But you want a boyfriend, don’t you, Caitlyn? Everyone normal does. Why not Pete?"

He’s not my type.

Jacqui laughed. "You don’t have a type. I can’t remember the last time you talked about someone you thought was cute. You don’t like any guys. You don’t think anyone’s good enough for you."

That’s not true, Caitlyn said. "I just don’t like any of the guys here."

Sarah blew out an exasperated breath. They’re all the same, wherever you go. You’re an idiot if you think otherwise.

They walked a bit in silence, and Caitlyn felt her own confusion about why Pete Fipps and guys like him were so lacking in her eyes. Why couldn’t she like him?

"It’s not that I think the guys in Spring Creek are bad, Caitlyn mused aloud. It’s just that I keep feeling that out there, somewhere, there’s someone better. Someone who will understand me. Someone who gets me."

You think you’re so special that no one here can understand you? Jacqui asked, one eyebrow raised.

Not special. ‘Freakish’ is more like it, Caitlyn said glumly.

You’re not a freak, Sarah insisted, but her words carried no conviction.

Yes, I am, Caitlyn mumbled. You two both know it.

Jacqui grinned and held up her thumb and forefinger, pinching a half inch of space. "Well, maybe you’re a leettle freaky. But we put up with you anyway."

Great. Thanks. Caitlyn subsided into silence. They weren’t going to understand.

She barely understood, herself. For as long as she could remember, she had felt certain that her future boyfriend was far from rural Oregon and her present life, thousands of miles away, living a life completely different from her humdrum one here. This unknown guy was her soul mate, and someday, when she least expected it, they’d find each other. It would be love at first sight, because they would have been seeking each other for all their lives.

Foolishly romantic, yeah, sure, maybe; but she’d rather have dreams of Prince Charming than the reality of Mr. Wrong.

The three of them walked home to their neighborhood, Caitlyn listening with half an ear as her two friends started gossiping about other members of the drill team. It was juicy stuff and should have been interesting: two members of the drill team had been caught smoking and were now in danger of being dropped from the team. Meetings were being held, the principal was involved, parents were in an uproar. Everyone was talking about it. Everyone cared.

Except Caitlyn. High school dating, drill team, school spirit—it all seemed silly to her. Why did it feel like high school was crushing her soul? She had nothing concrete she could point to. All she knew was that she didn’t belong here.

She preferred old, used clothes to new ones; her iPod was full of classical music; and photos of castles and reproductions of old European art covered her bedroom walls, including a Renaissance painting of a young girl in white, named Bia. It should have been pop singers on her wall, or movie stars.

She spent all her free time either drawing the strange things she saw in her dreams, or with her nose inside historical novels. The world held in the pages of history felt like the real world, and the present day an illusion she had to suffer through until she could escape back into the pages of a book.

Or escape into the rich dreams of sleep. She always woke with reluctance, feeling that she was being torn from a more vivid world. She rarely remembered more than snippets of her dreams, but when she did, the images and sensations were so lifelike that they were indistinguishable from reality, and sometimes she couldn’t remember whether she’d dreamed something, or lived it.

Other times, though, sleep brought her nightmares that carried her far beyond terror, waking her and the entire house with her screams. Those were the Screecher dreams. In the midst of sleep, she was sometimes attacked by howling, ghostlike apparitions. She didn’t know what they were or where they came from, whether they were real or figments of her imagination, spirits or delusions, and for lack of any better name she called the apparitions the Screechers.

Both the extremely vivid good dreams and the distressing Screecher nightmares had started at puberty. She didn’t know if it was a blessing or a curse, to have both types. Her father and stepmother, she knew, feared that the Screecher nightmares might hint at mental instability; that she might be a little crazy, like her long-dead mother, who had thought she could predict the future.

Overall, books and art were a safer escape from reality than sleep.

The weird dreams couldn’t entirely explain her sense of alienation from her classmates, though. It was something deeper than that, something that made her think that she didn’t belong there.

She needed to escape her life entirely. College had always been her light at the end of the long, dark adolescent tunnel. Lately, though, college felt a thousand years away. Three years might as well be three decades. Her inability to change her present life had left her teetering on the edge of a vast pit of despair. She needed something to change soon, or she’d fall in.

Right now, she had one small hope for how she might escape the pit.

In July, she’d received a random e-mail from the Fortune School, in France. She’d never heard of it, but assumed they’d gotten her e-mail address from a pen-pal service she’d signed up for the year before, through her French class (unhappily, her French pen pal had given up the effort of friendship after a single illiterate e-mail from Caitlyn; French, alas, did not come naturally to her).

The girls’ boarding school invited her to visit their Web site and apply for both admission and a scholarship. She’d snorted in disbelief at the scholarship part; these people obviously hadn’t seen her grades.

Still, it seemed harmless enough to look at the Web site.

The moment the school’s home page came up, and she saw the photo of the castle that housed the school, Château de la Fortune, she felt her soul being called to the Fortune School. She hadn’t known that what she yearned for was to go to a French girls’ boarding school, but the photo of Château de la Fortune, perched on a cliff overlooking the Dordogne River in southwestern France, convinced her that attending that school was the only thing that could possibly make her happy.

Of course, there was almost no chance she’d be admitted. There was even less chance that she’d get a scholarship, and it would be impossible for her father, a log truck driver, to pay the annual tuition listed on the Web site: it was twice what he earned in one year.

And yet . . . It was as if her very soul cried out that she at least had to try.

So she’d applied, in secret. Some hopes were better nurtured in private, where the words of others could not harm them, and where disappointment could be borne free of the pitying gaze of friends.

From the day she’d sent in her application, she’d been both dreading and eagerly anticipating an envelope in the mail, telling her whether or not they wanted her. It had been over two months now, making sorting through the mail every afternoon torture. No letter meant hope could live another day, but it also meant another night of dreading the inevitable disappointment to come.

You quiet because you’re thinking about Pete? Jacqui asked, jarring Caitlyn out of her thoughts.

Huh? They’d come to Caitlyn’s street. She hadn’t heard a word either of her friends had said for the past fifteen minutes.

Someone’s lost in romantic daydreams, Jacqui said.

Yeah, right.

Sarah and Jacqui laughed and waved good-bye. See ya, Sarah said.

Yeah. See you tomorrow. Caitlyn walked the last half mile alone, her thoughts all on the letter that might, or might not, be waiting for her at home.

Ruin, salvation, or limbo: they were the three possibilities that the U.S. Postal Service could deliver to the mailbox any day but Sunday.

Which would it be today?

Caitlyn let herself into her house, stepping over the perpetual pile of her younger brothers’ out-of-season coats, athletic gear, and shoes clogging the entryway. No one was home, but she knew the day’s mail would be piled at the end of the kitchen island, like it always was.

Several white business envelopes were stacked on top of a pile of catalogs. Caitlyn chewed her upper lip and picked them up, forcing herself to go through them.

Cable bill.

Something from the grade school her three young half brothers attended.

Electric bill.

Credit card offer.

And one last envelope. She turned it over, her heart racing.

Mortgage statement.

Her shoulders sank in relief. Her hopes had been saved from execution, for one more day at least. With light steps she went to her room to drop off her backpack.

Tyler, Wade, and Ethan, her half brothers, were at their various sport practices and scouting activities. Her dad and stepmom were driving them in separate vehicles, engaged in the complicated ballet of boy pickup and delivery, pausing only to toss fast-food burgers and chicken parts to the boys as if feeding hungry lions. She had the house to herself for the moment.

She opened her door and was about to toss her backpack onto her bed when she saw it: a white envelope, already opened, set upon the corner of her bed. Her heart sank.

Caitlyn set her backpack down on the bed and picked up the letter, her dreams collapsing around her. A yellow sticky note was attached to the envelope.

What’s all this about? We need to talk.—Mom

Great. Not only did she get rejected, but she got to look forward to the added pleasure of discussing with her stepmother, Joy, why she’d applied to a French boarding school. Joy probably took it personally, as if Caitlyn were fleeing from her in particular. She seemed to take every one of Caitlyn’s moods personally.

Caitlyn’s birth mother had been killed in a car crash when Caitlyn was only four. She had only the faintest memories of her, more imagined than real, and knew her face only from photos. She’d given Caitlyn her long dark hair, and—inexplicably—the tarot card of the Wheel of Fortune. She had tucked the tarot card under Caitlyn’s pillow on the day she died. There was a family rumor that she had foreseen her own death, and that the tarot card had been her way of saying good-bye. Caitlyn’s father refused to discuss it.

Joy had married Caitlyn’s father by the time Caitlyn was five, and had embraced Caitlyn as her own child; Caitlyn had grown up calling her Mom. Joy was a simple, kindhearted woman, but the loving woman who had understood a lonely little girl was at a loss when dealing with a confused teenager who couldn’t, even to herself, explain why she was so miserable. The less Caitlyn felt understood by Joy, the greater the gap between them grew.

Her dad, meanwhile, was grateful to have three uncomplicated, athletic young sons to deal with. Caitlyn became Joy’s problem, not his. The few times Caitlyn had tried to talk to him about anything personal, he told her to go talk to her mom.

Caitlyn sank onto the end of her bed with the envelope in her hand, hopeless tears of disappointment filling her eyes. She couldn’t face three more years of high school, she just couldn’t. Something else had to be possible: a GED through the community college? Homeschooling? School online? Something. Anything.

She slid the single sheet from the envelope and unfolded it, snuffling back tears.

Dear Caitlyn,

Thank you for your application. I am pleased to inform you that we can offer you both admission to the Fortune School in late January, and a full scholarship. Registration materials will follow under separate cover.

Yours sincerely,

Eugenia Snowe, PhD

Headmistress, The Fortune School

Caitlyn’s breath froze in her chest. The letter seemed to float before her, held in hands that belonged to someone else.

She’d been accepted?

Full scholarship? For her?

She read the letter again to be sure she’d not misunderstood. Oh. My. God, she said to the empty room. "Oh my God. Oh my God! Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod, I’m going to France! I’m going to France!"

She leaped up onto her bed and jumped up and down, her backpack sliding off the mattress to the floor, the bed frame squeaking. I’m going to France! France! France! she shouted. I’m going to live in a castle! Castle! Castle! What do you think of that, huh? she asked the portrait of Bia. "What do you think of that?"

Caitlyn dropped onto the mattress, rolled onto her back, and kicked her feet in the air like a manic puppy. She read the letter yet again, then lay it over her face and closed her eyes, savoring the moment of pure happiness.

She was leaving Spring Creek. Against all odds, she’d received her Get Out of Jail Free card. She sent an enormous thank-you out into the universe, to whatever force had guided the Fortune School to send her that initial e-mail.

Then a moment of fear hit her, and her eyes sprang open: What if her parents wouldn’t let her go?

She shook the thought off. No, they’d be relieved to have her gone. Life would be easier and happier for them. They could focus on the boys and their sports, which is all they wanted to do, anyway.

In the meantime, Caitlyn would go out into the world, where the people would be new, where there was culture and history and varied ways of thinking. Where she’d live in a castle on a cliff. And where maybe, just maybe, she would find people like herself.

And if she was really lucky, maybe she’d find that guy of her dreams: the one who wasn’t perfect, but who was, somehow, perfect for her.

The possibilities stretched before her, and she imagined in France a world full of sunlight and castles, art and laughter, and a boy who would see into her soul.

She was leaving Spring Creek, and life was never going to be the same.

CHAPTER Two

JANUARY 20

What was she forgetting? Caitlyn’s tired gaze skipped over the shambles of her bedroom, trying to decide what else to cram into her makeshift luggage. Weariness and tension made decision making almost impossible.

Stuffed animal?

No. She’d look childish.

Favorite books?

Too heavy.

Her eye fixed on her bulletin board, and her heart skipped a beat. How could she have almost forgotten that? She plucked the tarot card of the Wheel of Fortune from the lattice of ribbons on the board. It showed a wheel floating in the sky, covered in esoteric symbols. Fantastical creatures surrounded it: a sphinx, a snake, Anubis, and four winged creatures in the corners of the card. In ballpoint pen, her mother had written a few cryptic words along the edge of the card: the heart in darkness.

Caitlyn had always taken the words as a warning against bouts of melancholy. An uncle had once told her that her mother had been moody, given to dark thoughts and sometimes completely withdrawing into herself. Even though Caitlyn had been only four years old at the time, she wondered if her mother had seen hints of a similar personality in her, and had tried—however ineffectually—to warn Caitlyn to struggle against her nature.

Caitlyn had researched the card online, had even asked a fortune teller about it once, but she had never found an answer to why her mother had given it to her. The Wheel of Fortune’s main meanings were fate and change, which seemed about as ambiguous—or obvious—a message as you could leave a person on the day you died. Had her mother simply meant, This is my fate, and then written the words about the heart in darkness to ask Caitlyn not to grieve?

But what kind of