My Backward Life (Sample Only)

FALLING SKY

Mum drove with both hands on the wheel, checking the wing mirror before she signaled, turning the wheel neatly, one slim hand folding over the other. I studied her to see what I was missing. Hair cut short like a boy, streaked silver and gray so she looked older than fifty-three. Shirt ironed. Bruises tucked beneath her eyes from lack of sleep. Nothing out of the ordinary.

The silence was freaking me out.

"I'm sorry about last night," I said.

"You didn't even wake me when you came in. I was worried about you."

"Sorry." I had no idea where I could have gone late on a Wednesday night. And why didn't I remember?

"This has been a terrible week, Louise. For both of us. But I'm concerned. You seemed to take it so well, and then you started acting..." Her brows squinted together and she winced.

Mum wasn't exactly the most observant person. I must have been acting a whole lot of crazy to attract her attention. But when I thought of the last six days, there was nothing. Not the slightest vague notion of anything since walking home from the gig.

I closed my eyes. Pictures barreled towards me. For a fraction of a second, I saw a woman roll down a window of a car and ask what was wrong. Then a boy, crouched beside a body in a halo of car headlights, told her to call an ambulance. I jerked, gripped my seat belt, and stared forward. Mum's gaze zeroed in on me. I took deep breaths.

When she stopped staring, I grabbed my phone from my bag, selected the Chrome search icon, and loosened up my hands so they weren't trembling so much. I had to stay in control, not flip out, and to do that I needed to detach myself from the situation.

Every event had a logical explanation. My brother Josh had taught me that. He made a living swanning around posh parties and getting people to sign twenty-pound notes before he pulled them out of uncut pineapples. He was twelve years older than me, and for the six years we'd lived under the same roof, his mission had been to make me believe in the impossible. Santa, the Tooth Fairy, children who lived underwater... He even went as far as painting fairy-dust footprints on my wall and convincing me my best friend when I was five, had teleported to our neighbor's kitchen. But they were all just sleights of hand, variations of the Magic Hanky and the Disappearing Coin.

I rubbed a new crack in the top-left corner of my phone that I couldn't explain and scrolled through the last six days of BBC news. There were reports about Hurricane Lucy, Climate Change meetings, and protests in Iraq. I was searching for clues. If Dynamo could teleport to the other side of a glass shop window in front of dozens of people, then maybe Josh could teleport me six days into the future. Though not really six days into the future, just an illusion.

We turned into St John's Gardens. A bell was ringing. Girls in blue uniforms and purple shirts pushed through the wrought-iron gates of the main Edwardian building. The coats, rucksacks, hats, and satchels moved in quick, staccato bursts. It was like watching stop-motion photography.

I peered through the windscreen at the sky, remembering a line from a story my dad used to read about a chicken being gobbled up by a fox. 'The sky is falling. I'm off to tell the king.' But the sky wasn't falling. It was just an ordinary, wintry day with heavy cloud cover.

Mum sighed. "I want you to come straight home after school. I'll close the shop early. I'm going to get you an appointment at the doctor's."

Blood drained from my head. "Which doctor's?"

"Doctor Fleisher."

"No way." I'd sworn I would never go back to that creepy therapist. The one time Mum took me, it had felt like Fleisher was trying to peel off my skin and suck out my brain.

Mum's knuckles grew white as her grip tightened on the steering wheel. "Louise, there's nothing wrong with getting help. You don't have to talk to me, but you need to talk to someone."

Talk to someone about what? Did she know I was having a memory glitch or was this about Dad? He hadn't been at home this morning. Yesterday, I'd found my parents in the kitchen with smashed glass on the floor. Mum had immediately walked out. Dad then asked me to meet him for lunch on Saturday with my sister Carol, and Josh.

Except none of that happened yesterday. It was last week.

"I don't need to talk to anyone. I'm fine."

"This isn't a request, Louise. I'm taking you to the doctor's."

The panic mounted, fuzzing my vision. I saw myself sitting in a flowery armchair, my back to Fleisher, face to face with a horrible painting of a woman screaming.

"I'm not going. It's out of the question." My feet hit the curb. I slammed the passenger door behind me.

Mum rolled down the window. "Louise!" she called. I took a couple of steps towards the school gates. "Louise!"

Girls flowed around me, rushing to get to registration. On the road, a car horn blasted. I glanced back. Forced to clear out the way, Mum's Renault lurched forward. I dipped my nose into the high collar of my older sister's hand-me-down duffel coat and turned away.

So this is what I remembered: