Sidnye (Queen of the Universe) Series

Sidnye Dupree was going on thirteen years old when she broke the Bishop's nose with a dodgeball and dreamed the dream of the shooting star. But even if she'd known then what was happening to her, it would have been far too late to stop it... * * * Life is complicated enough when you live full-time at boarding school because your parents are dead, and when the other students around you are mostly idiots, and when you're doomed to spend the rest of your existence in cafeteria detention because you just can't stop annoying the people in charge of your life. But that's when you discover the headaches you've been having aren't just a part of being thirteen and feeling the weight of the world hammering down on you. That's when you realize the dreams you've been having are more than dreams, and the people you thought you were closest to are less concerned with caring about you than with keeping you from knowing the things they don't want you to know... * * * EXCERPT Even as she closed her eyes to try to escape the screaming, Sidnye remembered the dream. Sidnye rarely remembered her dreams, which made them unique enough that she recognized this memory at once for what it was. The image split the fractured darkness of her sight, unfolding in her memory the way ice crystals spread across winter windows. In the dream, she was scared and she was moving. Darkness rose around her as she ran. Image fragments shuffled past her like the fast video cuts Emmet liked to use, no scene held onto long enough to figure out what it was. Then around her, a flare like dawn erupted from the shadows, brighter than anything she'd ever seen before. Pillars of light pulsed fast, heat and cold crashing in. Rising slowly above her, Sidnye saw a thing that couldn't possibly exist. This was the thing she'd been dreaming of when she woke, and which had frozen her voice in her throat. As it uncurled from shadow, its six legs gleamed like black steel. Its eyeless head jutted out from no neck, looming over her as she fell back, arms up as if she might protect herself that way. The thing's insect shape was steam and darkness, a haze clinging to it as it slammed toward her, too fast for her to escape...

The only thing being scared was good for was giving up. When Emmet said it, Sidnye hadn’t realized how right he was. She’d been afraid before. She was numb now. Numb was better. * * * It’s one thing to talk about your world falling apart, as you’re hit with headaches and dreams that let you see things happen before they happen. It’s another thing when your world falls apart for real, because your school is attacked by alien bugs and you have to escape in a starship after your dog that you thought was dead saves your life. It’s easy to feel the fear that comes from being dragged away from everything that used to be part of your life. It’s easy to feel angry when you’re told you’re not going back to that life, but no one will tell you why. It’s easy to feel the fear and the anger turn to something so much worse when you realize that everything you thought you understood about your life is a lie... * * * EXCERPT “I know who I am!” As Sidnye screamed, the shadow turned her voice to a pulse of thunder. McCune backed up to the wall, outlined in the glow from the bank of monitors behind him. “No, Sidnye. You don’t know.” The seriousness that edged his voice went way beyond anything Sidnye had ever heard before. She closed her eyes because she didn’t want to look at him, but when she did, the shadow flared in the darkness like lightning against grey sky. “You need to learn who you are,” McCune said. “That’s what everything that’s happened is about...” “Then tell me.” Behind the shadow that wrapped him, McCune’s eyes showed the fear again. It was the same as Sidnye had seen on the farm. The same as when she thought the name the robot had said to her. It ran deep behind the grey of those eyes, turning them black where the shadow touched them. Sidnye could see her reflection there, her face dark, hair hanging lank. Her mouth was twisted with the anger and the shadow that scoured her. “I can’t, Sidnye,” McCune said. “Please forgive me. Please try to understand...”