Chapter 1

Seth and Sarah Marten were twins. While they were obviously fraternal, being brother and sister, they often seemed closer than identical twins. Even though their parents didn't try to make them partake in the same activities, they usually chose to participate in the same activities themselves. Their mannerisms were frighteningly similar, and they often seemed to have the eerie ability to complete one another's sentences. They shared a bedroom, by choice, until they were nine. When their parents decided that they were too old to continue sleeping in the same room, it took almost a year before they stopped slipping into each other's rooms at night.

The two of them were inseparable, and they often seemed to know mystically what the other was thinking. However, other than being extraordinarily close, they were normal children. Until they were sixteen, that is. At sixteen, Sarah started having when Sarah started having the "dreams".

One night the two of them were sitting in front of the television, watching a repeat of the previous evening's Daily Show.

"I've seen this before," Sarah said.

Seth glanced up and asked, "When? Did you stay up last night?"

"No," Sarah replied.

"But this was new last night, when could you have seen it?" Seth asked.

"In my dreams," Sarah answered.

"Right," said Seth with a grin. "It's probably just deja-vu. You just think you've seen it before because it's like something else you've seen."

"Oh yeah? Well the next piece is an interview with a gun nut," she declared. Sure enough, it was.

"Maybe you were sleepwalking last night," Seth suggested. "Or maybe Mom had the TV turned up loud and you heard it?"

"I don't think so," Sarah said. "I remember sitting right here on the couch, watching it. I even remember glancing over at the clock and seeing that it was a quarter past eleven."

"Maybe you walked down here in your sleep?" Seth mused.

"If I did, Mom probably would have told me," Sarah reasoned. "She was watching it. And..." her voice trailed off.

"What?" Seth prompted.

"You're going to think I'm crazy," Sarah complained.

"I already think you're crazy, Sar," he said with a grin. When she didn't grin back, Seth realized that she was very nervous.

"It was like I was Mom," Sarah said. "I can't explain it; it felt like I actually was her, sitting on this couch, watching TV. I could see my - I mean Mom's feet on the foot stool in front of me. I could feel what Mom was feeling until she turned off the TV and went up to sleep."

"What happened then?" Seth asked.

"I sort of woke up, and I was me again. Then I fell back asleep."

Someone else might have thought she was imagining things or making it up, but Seth knew his sister better than anyone, and he could tell when she was serious. Seth knew that Sarah was serious now, so he took her seriously.

"Has this ever happened before?" he inquired.

"A few times," Sarah replied.

"Was it always Mom?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Try and pay attention to everything next time, and keep a pad by your bed to write it all down. Record every detail that you can remember as soon as you wake up," Seth suggested.

"That's a good idea," Sarah observed. Then hesitantly, she continued, "Thanks for not thinking I'm crazy."

"I am still reserving judgment on that," Seth joked pompously, and Sarah whacked him with a pillow.

Early the next morning, Seth knocked on Sarah's door. When he walked in, she was sitting on her bed under the covers, her back pressed against the wall, her knees pulled up to her chest. He went over to sit next to her, noticing the pad next to her bed. He had started reaching for the pad when she lunged and grabbed it before he could take it.

"What happened?" Seth asked.

Sarah just looked at him with an even more embarrassed expression on her face than she'd previously had.

"It happened again, didn't it?" Seth asked.

Sarah nodded.

"Why are you so embarrassed?" Seth asked. "You know that no matter what happens, I won't make fun of you."

"It's not me," Sarah replied. "It's... It's. Oh, damn it!"

"Take your time," Seth said.

Sarah took a deep breath, then said, "OK, so it happened the same way. I was sitting downstairs watching TV, except I was Mom. I tried to move my head to look around, but I couldn't do it. It was like I was just riding along inside Mom's head. Since I had no control, I did like you said and started paying attention to what was around me.

"First I looked at what I could see with Mom's eyes, and I saw that she was watching TV again. It's a funny feeling, watching with someone else's eyes, because she was watching, but also glancing around the room every now and then. After a little bit, I started trying to separate out my own senses as distinct from hers."

She paused and took a breath, glancing over at her brother.

"Go on," he told her.

"You still don't think I'm going crazy?" she whined.

"No, I don't," he reassured her. "Just tell me what happened."

"OK. I realized that I could hear the TV, and see it, but only when Mom looked in that direction. I noticed that I could also feel. I felt my legs folded under my ass, the ceiling fan blowing on my hair. But it was completely weird, because it wasn't my hair; it felt different than it does when I'm sitting in that same place."

Another nervous glance at her brother, another deep breathe. Then Sarah pushed ahead. "Then I noticed something else. I started 'hearing' something besides the sounds in the room. I started hearing what seemed to be Mom's thoughts."

"What was she thinking?" Seth asked.

"Well, during the show, it was about what was happening on the show. When there was something funny, I felt her amusement. During the commercial, she started thinking about the shopping that she needed to do tomorrow. But it was a little confusing, because her thoughts kept flitting all over the place."

"That sort of makes sense," Seth mused. "When you are just sitting thinking, not concentrating on something, don't your thoughts wander too?"

Sarah nodded.

"I guess it's more confusing when you're not controlling the direction of the thought, right?"

Sarah nodded again. "It was confusing. Like I was walking somewhere, but without knowing when my body would turn."

"What was it like, hearing her thoughts? Was it like hearing something normally, or like a narrator in a movie?" Seth inquired.

"Neither, really. Or both. It's really more like the way that I experience my own thoughts, though I had no control over the direction the thoughts took. It was sort of like ideas just formed out of the blue. I guess it was more confusing even than that because sometimes it was only partial ideas. Sometimes, her thoughts seemed to refer to things that I didn't understand. Like something that she knew, but I didn't."

"Then what happened?" Seth prompted.

Sarah blushed, but continued. "When the show was over, Mom stretched and turned off the TV. She sat there for a minute thinking about the things she needed to do tomorrow. Today. Then she looked up towards the stairs, and she started thinking about something else."