Laura Whitcomb - Under the Light

Copyright 2013 by Laura Whitcomb

All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

Houghton Mifflin is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

www.hmhbooks.com

Poem on reprinted by the permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Whitcomb, Laura.

Under the light: a novel / by Laura Whitcomb.

pages cm

Companion book to: A certain slant of light.

Summary: Helen needed a body to be with her beloved and Jenny needed to escape from hers before her spirit was broken. It was wicked, borrowing it, but love drives even the gentlest soul to desperate acts.Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-547-36754-5

[1. GhostsFiction. 2. Spirit possessionFiction. 3. LoveFiction.] I. Title.

PZ 7. W 5785 UN 2013

[Fic]dc23

2012033303

eISBN 978-0-544-03564-5
v1.0513

Thanks to my family, especially Cyn for Binny-sitting and Binny for being such a good sport; my essential and overlapping circles of friends (WSG, Chez, SRS, Revels, and my supernatural tea partyers); my fabulous agent, Ann Rittenberg; and my awesome partner in lit, editor Kate OSullivan.

For my son, Robinson David, my Binny. My spirit is made young, my heart full, my world new.
Oh, the cleverness of you.

Under the Light, yet under,
Under the Grass and the Dirt,
Under the Beetles Cellar
Under the Clovers Root,
Further than Arm could stretch
Were it Giant long,
Further than Sunshine could
Were the Day Year long,
Over the Light, yet over,
Over the Arc of the Bird
Over the Comets chimney
Over the Cubits Head,
Further than Guess can gallop
Further than Riddle ride
Oh for a Disc to the Distance
Between Ourselves and the Dead!

Emily Dickinson

CHAPTER 1

I USED TO PRACTICE LEAVING MY BODY . Closing my eyes in the shower, letting the spray beat on my forehead, forcing my pulse to drop. Id breathe in the steam as slowly as possible. Id pretend to drift out of my flesh and over the top of the shower curtain, slip out the open window.

The first day that it actually worked, it lasted only a few seconds. I was in bed, in the dark, too restless to sleep. I imagined I was a shooting star falling backwards away from earth, and the next moment I wasnt under the covers anymore. I opened my eyes to find myself cocooned between silver foil and cotton-candy-pink insulation, planted halfway in my bedroom wall. I could lean down and look out through the wallpaper. At first it felt normal. My body lay below like a crash dummy, pale and too stupid to save itself. Isthat what a dead body looks like? Then the idea of being dead made my spirit zip into my flesh again so fast, the mattress shook.

But the second time, when it really worked, I wasnt thinking about leaving my body at all. I didnt even realize what was happening until it was too late. Some part of me decided to escape without needing permission from my brain.

For the first fifteen years of my life, I had survived lots of bad days and never once ran away from home. Like the afternoon my parents discovered the photos Id taken of myselfI never saw that camera again. I should have stashed the pictures in a better place. I thought Id been more clever about hiding my diary. Still, on the day I left my body, I came home from school and found my father was holding it in his hands.

For such a small book it held an enormous weightthe most disturbing things my father could imagine, I guess: my true thoughts and feelings, things about me he had no control over.

My parents had been giving me a hard time that week because I didnt get straight-As on my midterms. They couldnt understand that I wasnt slacking offI was sick. I couldnt sleep for more than ten minutes at a time. Light bothered my eyes. Sudden sounds made me jump and want to cry.

According to my father, the problem was that I was failing to live up to my potential. He reminded me that the devil tempts us with idle distractions.

I was in trouble so often, Id gotten in the habit of pretending not to understand that my faults were sins, then acting grateful when my parents taught me the right way to behave. That worked for the little stuff: failing to excuse myself from a sex education lecture at school, talking to a strange man in the grocery store parking lot who wanted directions, walking to the park without asking permission. But this was serious, worse than the photos of myself that my father fed into the shredder.

Now, with my secret writing in his hands, my father looked victorious. I knew you were wicked, his eyes told me. And youve proven me right with your own words.

The Prayer Corner, at one end of our family room, was just three chairs used for family Bible study, prayer, and punishment. My mother and I sat down in our usual seats, but my father wouldnt sit.

Is this a true reflection of your soul? he asked me.

Why hadnt I kept it in my school locker?

You may answer, he said, as if I was waiting for permission to speak.

I dont know. In my mind I ran through what Id recorded on those pages. What was the worst thing?

Your mother and I live our lives before you as daily examples of walking with Christ, he said, but it seems weve been giving you too many freedoms.

He set the diary on his chair and slipped a shiny black square from his pocket. As he unfolded it, I saw that it was an extra-large garbage bag. I felt like a kitten about to be sacked and drowned.

He didnt command us to come, but when he walked out into the hall, my mother followed, so I did too. She glanced back at me, and I thought her face would be stiff and angry, but she looked afraid. Maybe I wasnt the only one who had a secret diary tucked away.

When we got to my bedroom, my father was already sliding around hangers in the closet, examining my clothes. He studied my skirts and sweaters, dresses front and back, leaving some items on their padded hangers and slipping others off, letting those drop into the sucking black hole of the garbage bag.

I knew why he took away my blue tank top and the cotton camisole; the necks were a little low, the straps narrow. But I could only imagine why other items were unacceptable. My black jersey jacket. Was the cut too rock-and-roll for him? And my brown knit skirt. It was expensive, from Nordstroms, one my mother picked out. She gasped as he unclipped it from the hanger, but when my father paused, not even looking at her, she put a finger to her lips and said nothing. Was it because that skirt came more than an inch above my knees?

He opened my dresser drawers and began to rifle through my underwear. I felt dizzy. Not because my father was touching my panties and bras, but because I was afraid that when he got to the lowest drawer hed discover the false bottom and the secret compartment below. I stepped back and sat on my bed, breathing slowly, in through my nose, out through my mouth, trying not to throw up. That bottom drawer might seem too shallow to him. He might rap on the bottom, knock the cardboard loose, and find those few black-and-white photographs that hed missed before. And the Polaroid camera I could use without getting the pictures developed at the store or downloading them on the computer. I felt my knees shaking and clamped my hands over them.