A Certain Slant Of Light

by Whitcomb, Laura

• ISBN13: 9780618585328
• ISBN10: 061858532X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-09-21
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

In the class of the high school English teacher she has been haunting, Helen feels them: for the first time in 130 years, human eyes are looking at her. They belong to a boy, a boy who has not seemed remarkable until now. And Helen-terrified, but intrigued-is drawn to him. The fact that he is in a body and she is not presents this unlikely couple with their first challenge. But as the lovers struggle to find a way to be together, they begin to discover the secrets of their former lives and of the young people they come to possess.

Author Biography

Laura Whitcomb grew up in Pasadena, California where she lived in a mildly haunted house for 12 years. She has taught English in California and Hawaii. The winner of three Kay Snow Writing Awards, she was once runner up in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest for the best first sentence of the worst science fiction novel never written. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her dog Maximus.

Excerpts

Chapter One Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if youre dead. I was with my teacher, Mr. Brown. As usual, we were in our classroom, that safe and wooden-walled box the windows opening onto the grassy field to the west, the fading flag standing in the chalk dust corner, the television mounted above the bulletin board like a sleeping eye, and Mr. Browns princely table keeping watch over a regiment of student desks. At that moment I was scribbling invisible comments in the margins of a paper left in Mr. Browns tray, though my words were never read by the students. Sometimes Mr. Brown quoted me, all the same, while writing his own comments. Perhaps I couldnt tickle the inside of his ear, but I could reach the mysterious curves of his mind.Although I could not feel paper between my fingers, smell ink, or taste the tip of a pencil, I could see and hear the world with all the clarity of the Living. They, on the other hand, did not see me as a shadow or a floating vapor. To the Quick, I was empty air. Or so I thought. As an apathetic girl read aloud from Nicholas Nickleby, as Mr. Brown began to daydream about how he had kept his wife awake the night before, as my spectral pen hovered over a misspelled word, I felt someone watching me. Not even my beloved Mr. Brown could see me with his eyes. I had been dead so long, hovering at the side of my hosts, seeing and hearing the world but never being heard by anyone and never, in all these long years, never being seen by human eyes. I held stone still while the room folded in around me like a closing hand. When I looked up, it was not in fear but in wonder. My vision telescoped so that there was only a small hole in the darkness to see through. And thats where I found it, the face that was turned up to me. Like a child playing at hide-and-seek, I did not move, in case I had been mistaken about being spotted. And childishly I felt both the desire to stay hidden and a thrill of anticipation about being caught. For this face, turned squarely to me, had eyes set directly on mine. I was standing in front of the blackboard. That must be it, I thought. Hes reading something Mr. Brown wrote there the chapter hes to study at home that night or the date of the next quiz. The eyes belonged to an unremarkable young man, like most of the others at this school. Since this group of students was in the eleventh grade, he could be no more than seventeen. Id seen him before and thought nothing of him. He had always been vacant, pale, and dull. If anyone were to somehow manage to see me with his eyes, it would not be this sort of lad this mere ashes-on-the-inside kind. To really see me, someone would have to be extraordinary. I moved slowly, crossing behind Mr. Browns chair, to stand in the corner of the classroom beside the flag stand. The eyes did not follow me. The lids blinked slowly.But, the next moment, the eyes flicked to mine again, and a shock went through me. I gasped and the flag behind me stirred.

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Excerpted from A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb
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