The Girl Who Looked Beyond the Stars

by L B Anne

  THE GIRL

  WHO LOOKED BEYOND

  THE STARS

  The Sheena Meyer Series

  Book One

  JOA PRESS

  FLORIDA

  Books by L. B. Anne

  LOLO AND WINKLE SERIES

  Book One: Go Viral

  Book Two: Zombie Apocalypse Club

  Book Three: Frenemies

  Book Four: Break London

  Book Five (Coming Soon): Middle School Misfit

  THE SHEENA MEYER SERIES

  Book One: The Girl Who Looked Beyond the Stars

  Book Two: The Girl Who Spoke to the Wind

  Copyright © 2019 L. B. ANNE

  All Rights Reserved.

  L. B. Anne is Auri Blest’s pen name for Middle Grade Fiction.

  Cover Illustration by BRoseDesignz

  Pen and ink drawings by DM Baker

  Edited by Michaela Bush

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, places, events, and incidents in this book are purely fictional and any resemblance to actual person, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Unless otherwise indicated, scripture quotations are from the New King James Version ® Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  The Sheena Meyer Series:

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  1

  I never wanted to be special. Most kids find me, uh, different. I guess that’s the best way to put it. It’s a compliment, if you ask me. Who wants to be just like everybody else? I don’t. That would make me predictable, and that would be bad. Nope, I have to keep people on their toes, wondering what I’m going to do next.

  Anyway, it turns out I am special. What’s special about me, you ask? It’s nothing you can tell by looking at me. That’s for sure.

  A few months ago, I found out I’m a—Well, let me tell you a little about me first.

  My name is Sheena. I’m thirteen years old, and five-foot-two for now. I’m hoping to grow about seven more inches. I hang upside down by my feet on my dad’s inversion table, willing it will stretch me. It could happen. My dad is six-foot-two. That means it’s in my genetic makeup to be tall, I hope.

  I have curly dark brown hair. Online they call it a 3A curl pattern. My mom won’t let me flat-iron it. But I’m a teenager now, right? Shouldn’t I be allowed to try new things?

  Not in my house.

  My dad is all, “You’re not walking around looking like some hoochie.”

  “Straight hair doesn’t make me a hoochie, Dad. I just want to switch things up now and then. That’s what girls do,” I say.

  And then my mom chimes in, “You’re not a follower—”

  “Mom, I didn’t say anything about following anybody!”

  “—And your hair is fine,” she continues. “I’m not going to let you start damaging it with heat.”

  Ha! I snuck and flat-ironed it anyway. I learned how on YouTube. My mom was—well, she doesn’t like me using this word, but it begins with a P and rhymes with hissed. Let’s just say my mom was peeved. She threw water on my hair, ruining it.

  Can you believe she sent me to school with a half curled-half straightened head of hair? I had to walk around like that all day. That did wonders for my reputation. Sheesh, it’s my hair, but I have no say in how it’s styled until I’m fifteen.

  I don’t know why I just went off on that hair trip. At least it shows you what I deal with around here. My house is not a democracy, and my parents are a united front.

  Other than the occasional arguments with my parents, my life is pretty mundane. It revolves around school, where I’m not afraid to speak up and will protest anything I have question with, and after-school activities that I often pout through—at first—because my parents force me to participate in them. I think they try to keep me busy because I’m an only child and tend to drive them crazy. There’s no way they could handle two of me.

  I sound pretty normal, right? Well keep reading, and whether you believe me or not, this is really happening.

  I used to stare out the window at the weeping willow in our backyard for hours when I was little. When the wind blew the branches, it reminded me of a woman’s hair blowing from her face. I even drew a face on the bark and called her Lani. No one believed me when I told them I saw something glowing among the fluttering silver-backed leaves of the tree.

  My mom says I described it as stars or something. They told me I dreamed it. Now I don’t even remember what I saw.

  Funny how I just thought of that. It’s been nine years. I was four then. The willow’s branches no longer resemble hair. They blow in waves as if they dance to music, like the murmuration of starlings.

  Now, as I watch my willow, a shiver runs through me.

  Hands reach around and grab my arms.

  She didn’t say boo or anything but shook me in an attempt to scare me.

  “Nice try, Mom.”

  She rubbed my arms up and down while looking past me. “The wind is really picking up out there. There’s a lot of rain heading this way over the next few days. We need it, though.”

  “Mom, wouldn’t it be cool if fairies lived in our willow?”

  “Huh, fairies?”

  “Mom, don’t laugh. Really, what would you do if you saw one?”

  “Sheena, please spare me the crazy right now,” she said with a laugh as she leaned forward, flipping her head over and re-wrapping the towel around her wet hair.

  “Mom,” I sang in that way that pleaded with her to answer the question. “Just humor me. I’m an only child. I have no one else to ask these things.”

  She pursed her lips, giving me her I’m-not-falling-for-that expression. “Okay. I guess I would run.”

  I giggled. “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “Yes, I would. They may not look like the cute little things you’ve seen in fairytales.”

  “Running would be the wrong thing to do. You would miss a great opportunity.”

  My mom walked through the family room and toward the kitchen. “Come and help me with dinner. What opportunity?”

  I followed her to the center island, where vegetables rested on a chopping board. “An opportunity to ask questions, and maybe make a new friend. What about a vampire?”

  “Sheena…”

  “Just answer for fun.”

  “I would run.”

  I shook my head. “Mom, you’re not even thinking. You can’t outrun a vampire. That would be another missed opportunity.”

  “An opportunity to get killed,” my mom stated as she put on oven mitts and removed a glass pan of bubbling lasagna from the oven and placed it on the stovetop.

  “No, for knowledge.”

  “How did I raise a child that sc

  olds me about how I address vampires?”

  “You can’t be afraid of everything,” I replied as I sliced the cucumber for our salad.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw movement.

  “Mom?”

  "Yes?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like?”

>   “Mom, stop dancing.”

  “Oh, I’m going to dance, and you’re going to watch. Do you know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ve put that vampire stuff in my head, and now I’ll be thinking about it for the rest of the night. If I have to think about vampires, you have to think about me dancing.”

  “No, not the Running Man! My eyes, my eyes!” I screamed while squeezing my eyes shut.

  “Okay, okay,” she said with a hand on top of her head. She’d been trying to hold the towel still as she danced. “Whew, thirty seconds of that tired me out. I could do that dance all day when I was younger.”

  “Much younger.”

  She threw a piece of carrot at me that I dodged and picked up from the floor. “Look, why don’t you focus on chopping that last bit of cucumber before you cut yourself, then go and get ready for the purity ceremony tonight. Wear the white dress. I’m serious.”

  “Okaaaay, what time do I take my vow of virginity?” I asked and bowed with my palms together as if I were praying.

  “Vow of purity,” she corrected. “Seven-thirty, and don’t make fun. You need to take this seriously.”

  “I am, just don’t tell the boys at school that I am to remain a virgin until marriage. Do you think I’d have a better chance of a vampire wanting my blood because I’m pure?”

  “Oh my gosh, forget the cucumber. Get out of my kitchen,” she replied as she turned on the cold water and used the sink spray nozzle to shoot it at me.

  I screamed and ran. I always took things that extra mile just to make my mom laugh. Little did I know, it would be a long time before she laughed like that again.

  2

  “M

  rs. Meyer, you can go in now.”

  I rose from my seat, but my mom didn’t move. She sat staring straight ahead at the closed blinds of the window across from us. Dried streaks of mascara covered her cheeks from crying. Hugging her was the only thing I could think of to console her, so I hugged her again. This time, she hugged me back and stood.

  I’d cried too, all the way to the hospital. I kept picturing myself as my dad, driving down the highway at night. But I could also see the car approaching from the other direction and the young driver looking away from the road to tap on his GPS. I could see my dad swerve away to avoid the impact. But the road was wet, and the other car kept spinning...

  I was so angry at first at the thought of my dad being taken away from me. The tears started, but I stopped crying because I had to believe my dad was okay. And if I believed, that meant no more tears. So I blew my nose, wiped my eyes, and covered my ears with my headphones, blocking out my mom’s sobs.

  “This way,” said the nurse.

  I tried to read the nurse’s expression to get some idea of how my dad was, but there was none. She had to be a gambler, because she had the best poker face ever. Her expression was blank and empty like she’d never had an emotion. She didn’t look us in the eye or even at face level. Instead, she glanced in our direction and over our heads as she held the door.

  I ran back and got my mom’s purse she’d left on the chair. She’d been forgetting everything since the accident, thirty-six hours ago.

  We followed the nurse through double doors, down a hallway, around two corners, and down an even longer hallway. I hoped my mom would remember the way out, because I felt like we were in a maze.

  The nurse approached a door on her left. I let go of my mom’s arm and walked in behind them.

  My breath caught in my throat and lumped there.

  Did I really want to see my dad yet? What if he was all cut up and bloody from the windshield? I closed my eyes, bracing myself, and listened. My mom’s reaction would tell me how bad it was.

  The room was full of noises, as if it were alive. A machine bleeped every few seconds as if it were a heartbeat. A constant hum came from another machine, and a gurgle from a machine to my right, which was like the breathing of the live room.

  My mom spoke to someone. I opened my eyes and watched her shaking hands with a man in a white coat, one of the doctors.

  “He’s still unconscious, but he’s breathing on his own and…”

  That’s the last thing I heard the doctor say.

  That lump moved deeper into my throat. My eyes drifted from the white sheet that covered my dad, to one of his legs lifted, and in a cast, up to his bandaged head, and the tubing in his nose.

  I gasped, seeing the cuts and scrapes on his face, and the swelling. He didn’t look like himself. I wasn’t even certain that was really him.

  A tear dropped from my eye and rolled down my cheek. My mom must have noticed, because I felt her hands on my shoulders.

  “He’s going to be okay,” she whispered.

  Okay? What I saw was not okay.

  My eyes were still on his face, memorizing it, and comparing it to the once handsome features I could no longer see.

  A flash of light broke my focus. I looked from my dad’s face, up above him, to the ceiling. My knees buckled, and I stumbled to the side and back a couple steps into the chair by the door.

  My mom caught me. “Breathe, Sheena, breathe. Maybe I should take her out.”

  The doctor asked me something, but I couldn’t nod or speak. I wanted to, but that lump in my throat grew and cut off my air supply.

  I wanted to point and yell, “Look!”

  My mom looked back at my dad, but she didn’t have the reaction I had. Why not? Why wasn’t she ready to run as she always claimed she would if she saw something unusual—a creature?

  Over my dad stood a being. I didn’t know what else to call it. It was white, but not like the color white—kind of translucent with a glow like a blue current ran through it.

  I watched as it waved a huge hand over my dad’s head, passing right through it. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  My dad blinked.

  “Look,” I finally yelled, shocked I’d actually spoken that time.

  My dad’s eyes slowly opened.

  “Jonas, I’m here,” my mom said as she ran to his bedside and held his hand. “Jonas, can you hear me?”

  My dad tried to nod.

  Why is she ignoring the thing behind him looking down at them?

  The being backed away—like backing through the wall, and as he did so, he began to disappear.

  “Wait!”

  “Wait for what? What’s wrong?” asked my mom, hearing the alarm in my voice. Tears streamed down her face again, but she wasn’t sad anymore. These were happy tears.

  “I need some air. Out there.” I pointed behind me. My voice shook. “Can I go out in the hall for a minute?” I didn’t wait for a reply.

  I looked both ways in the hall. The thing backed out, which would have taken it to the left if it were going to the next room or down the hall. I turned the corner, as there were no other rooms behind my dad’s.

  I argued with myself the whole time. What am I doing? Why am I looking for this thing? It could just disappear. It doesn’t need to go down a hall like a human walking. Still, I searched.

  My mom, the doctor, and the nurse saw nothing. That meant I could have imagined it. But I didn’t. I needed to see it again to prove to myself it was real.

  At the end of the hall, near tan double doors, I saw a zip of light and followed it.

  “Wait!” I yelled as I turned the corner.

  The light hovered near the ceiling as if waiting. Instead of the appearance of a bright electric current, it morphed into a formless glob of light.

  I glanced behind me. Except for me, and this thing, the hall was empty.

  My heart raced. I readied myself to bolt in the other direction if it headed for me. Yeah, I know. I’d told my mom she should never run.

  My hand flew up, shielding my eyes from the flash of light that blinded me for a moment as the being began to form itself again, only this time it was less transparent and filled with more light. It had to be, like, nine feet tall.

  I slowly stepped t
oward it, having an overwhelming feeling I didn’t need to be afraid.

  Although the being didn’t necessarily have an expression or facial features, so to speak, it angled its head down and looked at me.

  “Hi,” I said nervously.

  I got the feeling it couldn’t believe I could see it or that I was talking to it. When I was just a few feet away, and could really see the magnitude of it, I reached down into my pocket and slowly pulled out my phone. As I held it up to snap a photo, it disappeared.

  What was I thinking? “No, wait. Look, I put it away. I saw what you did. Come back!” My voice dropped. “I just wanted to...meet you and…say thank you.”

  I looked around at the ceiling and waited.

  Nothing.

  I must have stood there for ten minutes. It was just gone.

  “That was so stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I yelled while popping myself on the side of the head. “A once in a lifetime manifestation or something, and you try to take a picture? What, so you can post it online, or on some underground alien sighting website? Really? Ugh! How stupid are you?” I yelled while turning in a half-circle, stomping my feet and swinging at the air.

  “Hello,” came from behind me.

  3

  I froze in place, hearing the man’s voice. Had he heard me talking to myself? Or was it him—the being?

  Oh my gosh-oh my gosh-oh my gosh, I thought as I took a deep breath and slowly turned, frightened and excited at the same time. I was actually about to talk to this—whatever it was—an apparition, or something.

  He leaned on a cart with some type of equipment and a computer monitor on it. He had caramel skin like mine, short curly hair, and wore grey scrubs.

  “I’m Javan. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Hello,” I replied to the nurse while looking around him.

  He smiled in a way that made me feel he wanted to burst with laughter, having heard what I’d been saying. If he mentioned it, I was going to drop dead right then and there.