When Lightning Strikes

She flopped back on the bed, staring up at the midnight blue ceiling dappled with Day-Glo stars. The brilliant golden spots soothed her now, as they always did. She reached across her bed and switched off her lamp, letting the pretend galaxy become her world.

Fleetingly she remembered how ridiculous she had felt when she first decorated her bedroom. It wasn't a grownup's room; it was a child's haven, an escape from the adult world. She'd painted the walls a deep midnight blue that mirrored the night sky. On the ceiling, she'd pressed a thousand glow-in-the-dark stars and painted a fluorescent full moon.

At the time she hadn't known why she'd done it, but when she'd gone to bed that first night, she'd understood. She'd felt like Max in Where the Wild Things Are, a child in the middle of a vast, but somehow friendly, unknown. This room lulled her, protected her,

10

bathed her in starlight. Here, even when she couldn't sleep, she was safe.

Outside, the rain raged, pounded against the windows and roof, but gradually Lainie stopped listening to it. After a while, she stopped hearing it altogether. She focused all her thoughts on the monotonous cadence of her breathing, all her sights on the glittering starbursts of her own universe.

She felt the tingling presence of the booze and the pills in her bloodstream, and tried her best to relax, to sink into the softness of the bed and disappear.

It didn't work.

With a disgusted sigh, she jackknifed to a sitting position and yanked her knees to her chest. There would be no sleep for her tonight.

She reached for the crushed pack of Marlboros by her bedside and lit up her last cigarette. Inhaling deeply, she leaned back against the polished mahogany of her headboard and exhaled slowly.

She didn't want to sleep anyway, not really, not the way her sleep was. It was other people's slumber that she craved?quiet, restful, filled with peace. For her, sleeping wasn't like that, never had been. For her, falling asleep was like falling into the bowels of hell itself.

No wonder she was an insomniac. She had been for years upon years. The pills and booze rarely worked, rarely brought the peaceful oblivion she sought. More often than not, she was awake for days, until her body literally gave out. Then she'd fall into a coma-deep sleep that ended only when the horrifying nightmares began.

"Don't think about it," she whispered aloud. She needed to get her mind on something else, something besides her loneliness and fear. The book.

II

The thought came to her like a gift from God. She could switch on her computer and slide into the quiet, comfortable world of her own imagination.

She stumbled into her office and sat down at the computer without bothering to turn on the light. She pushed two buttons and flopped back in her chair. The machine came to life with the familiar thwop?buzz and settled into readiness; the droning sound of its mechanical breathing filled the quiet, shadowy room.

The green cursor blinked at her, appearing and disappearing against the blackness of the empty screen.

The large window behind her desk shook with the force of the rain hammering against it. The wooden dividers rattled against the aged glass, made a sound like the chattering of an old man's teeth. Lainie felt a chill of apprehension and hugged herself, trying not to look outside.

But the storm drew her eye, lured her into the writhing, half-lit, tempestuous world. Nature had transformed her ordinarily placid backyard into a pulsing vortex of sound and movement. The swing set, long ago forgotten by Kelly, tossed its empty swings in the wind. Lainie could almost hear the rusty squeak of the old chains. Rain marched across her shake roof and splashed over the leaf-filled gutters, drizzling down the window in sheets of silver.

Lainie swallowed hard and brought her shaking hands to the keyboard, manipulating the keys with the speed of a professional typist, zipping through the menus until she came to the file for her new book, When Lightning Strikes.

She smiled at the irony of the title and pulled up chapter sixteen, quickly skimming where she'd left off yesterday.

12

"You don't have to run anymore, Jessica. Can't you see that? You can stay here, with me. Always ..."

Jessie looked up at him, her eyes drowning in hot tears. "I can't. I wish to God I could."

Joe felt the weight of her fear like a cold hand against his heart. "They'll stop looking for you soon. They'll forget. The West is a place for forgetting, Jess. Hell, most of us don't even use our real names."

Lainie closed her eyes and let out a tired sigh, bowing her head. No wonder she liked the plot of this book so well. There were so many things in her life she wanted to forget, ached to forget. Tiny, niggling memories that besieged her when the sky was dark and the thunder rolled.

The West is a place for forgetting.

If only there were somewhere like that. Someplace where Lainie could start over, could be the parent she wanted to be, the woman she wanted to be. Someplace where she made the rules.

Suddenly a huge, hammering gust of wind ricocheted off her window. Rain clawed at the sweaty pane, thunder roared across the night. Lightning ripped the cloudy sky apart and landed in a white-hot streak in her backyard. A huge madrone tree split down the center in a cloud of blue light and shooting sparks. The eerie light pulsed through the window and smashed into the computer.

Sensations exploded through Lainie. The computer keys heated up, scalded the sensitive flesh of her fingertips. She tried to jerk her hands back, but she couldn't move. Her hands tingled. The acrid odor of burning flesh choked her throat and nose.