Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself. Do NOT continue to read unless you want to know who the bad guy/girl/mutant Justin is.
Tag Line: Now I lay me down to die...From the Back of the Book: Jan's real life is scarier than her worst nightmare. Jan is terrified to go to sleep. Every night in her dreams she relives the blaze that killed her parents. As her dreams grow more vivid, Jan begins to suspect that the fire wasn't an accident: Someone murdered her parents, and she thinks she knows who. Then Jan starts to walk in her sleep, finding herself mysteriously drawn to a series of midnight fires being set around town. At first the fires are small, but soon one of Jan's classmates - a girl who accused Jan of setting the fires - is horribly disfigured in the flames that destroy her home. Is Jan's nightmare coming true? Is she an arsonist - and a killer too?
Trigger Warning: this book contains discussion of a suicide attempt.
**There are some weird formatting issues with this post but I couldn't figure out how to fix them. I apologize for the weirdness.**
Chapter one begins with a nightmare
sequence which is just.....wonderful \\sarcasm font// Our
protagonist Jan is dreaming about being in a fire. When she
wakes up she realizes that a pile of cardboard boxes her aunt put out
on the curb for recycling pickup is burning. She thinks someone
probably threw a lit cigarette out the window of a passing car. She just goes back to
bed without doing anything about it.
She tells us that she's lived with her
aunt and uncle for six months because her house burned down and her parents
perished in the fire. She's been doing a lot of sleepwalking and
having a lot of nightmares. When the fire started she was in bed wearing a nightgown with ruffled sleeves. The ruffles caught fire as she tried to escape and now her arms are covered with
burn scars. She always wears long sleeves to hide them but never,
ever anything with ruffles. She'd also had to cut her hair short
because half of it was singed off.
Jan wakes up a little late the next
morning and goes down to breakfast. Her Aunt Leah and Uncle
Peter are already there. Leah is annoyed that Jan is running
late again and tells her that maybe she should spend less time on her
computer at night. The comment confuses Jan because she wasn't on
her computer last night. She just shrugs it off though and eats her
oatmeal. Her cousin Andrea is impatiently waiting for her so
they can get to school and she feels rushed and tired. On their jog
to get to school on time, Andrea also mentions hearing Jan typing
away on her computer in the middle of the night. Jan just thinks
Andrea is exaggerating because she knows she wasn't up that late.
Jan has her first class with her
boyfriend of two years, Mike. He frowns when he sees the dark
circles under her eyes and asks if she's having nightmares again.
He's the only one she's ever told about them. We go through Jan's
school day with her but nothing really happens. She tells us that
she used to be a very good student but since the fire she doesn't
really care about school anymore. She only cares about Mike and her
writing for the school newspaper.
That night she gets a really bad
headache before bed and Andrea gives her some ibuprofen. There's no
real medication laying around the house. Leah doesn't believe in
doctors or anything but herbal remedies and vitamins. Jan is so
tired and her head hurts so bad that she decides to go to bed without
doing her trig homework.
The next morning the headache is gone
but Jan feels heavy and tired. When she gets to school there is buzz
going around about a mansion that burned to the ground. It had been
empty so no one was hurt but the rumor is that it was arson.
Odds that Jan is setting fires in her
sleep: 55%
Jan goes home after school to an empty
house. She's glad to be alone and to have the chance to eat some
junk food. Leah doesn't approve of it and doesn't allow it in the
house. She's always trying to make Jan drink these awful herbal tea
concoctions.
Odds that Leah is drugging Jan with the
herbal teas: 73%
Later that evening, Jan has to go to
the library to get a book for an econ paper she needs to write. On
her way home she goes into a flashback about the night of the fire
and 'comes to' on the front steps of her aunt's house. She has no
idea how she's gotten home.
The next day is an exciting one at the
school. The paper – which Mike is the editor of and Jan reports
for – has been named best school paper in the area or something.
Jan is happy and proud of Mike. Then Daniel babbles about the econ
class for awhile and my eyes glaze over.
Suddenly we take a massive head hop
into the head of a character we've never met before. Her name is
Barb and she's taking pictures inside the mansion that was set
on fire a couple of days ago. She hears floorboards creaking in the
house and looks up to see Jan wandering inside. She speaks to Jan
but Jan doesn't respond to her at all.
Suddenly we're back in Jan's head. We
learn that she went to the mansion on purpose as some kind of
exposure therapy. Since the smell of fire and smoke triggers her so
much, she thinks exposing herself to it on purpose will help. This
kind of therapy is very successful WHEN DONE CORRECTLY but this is
not doing it correctly. She goes into another kind of trance and
only comes out when she hears Barb calling out to her. Barb tells
her that it looked like she was sleepwalking and Jan is alarmed that she might actually be sleepwalking while awake. Which.....isn't really sleepwalking at all, is it?
The next day Jan is called into a
meeting with the guidance counselor. She's doing so poorly in her
classes now that he recommends delaying college for a year and
retaking some of her high school classes so she can get a better
grade. Is this a thing? I mean, I know you can fail some required
classes and get held back a year and have to repeat them but can you
just take one or two classes to get a better grade on your
transcript? I've never heard of this before. Jan says she really
doesn't give a flying fuck about school and the GC pulls the 'what
would your parents think' card. Jan breaks down entirely and
confesses that she's having nightmares and sleepwalking and even
spacing out while awake. He advises counseling because she's been
through a super traumatic even and she yells that she's not crazy.
Sigh.
I know I don't have to tell my very
limited audience that you don't have to be “crazy” to go to a
therapist. They can be handy for all kinds of things like dealing
with stress or trauma or relationship issues. Most of the people
who go to therapy aren't “crazy” at all. Whatevs.
It's Friday night now and Jan and
Andrea have been invited to a slumber party at Julie's house.
Jan isn't sure she wants to go. She's a little freaked out at the
idea that she might sleepwalk while there and she's super tired.
Andrea makes a big fuss about it though so Jan decides to go. At
first she's having fun but then they watch a horror movie where the
bad guy intimidates the victim with a torch and Jan loses it. She
goes to the kitchen to calm herself down, trying not to ruin the
party. Julie is apologetic.
Eventually they all go to bed. The
next thing Jan knows, she's standing in front of a burning building.
It's some kind of store. Julie and Andrea are there as well. Andrea
says she saw Jan go sleepwalking about 30 minutes ago and when she
didn't come back, she woke up Julie. They hustle home so the cops
won't find them there and suspect them of arson.
Odds Jan is burning buildings in her
sleep: 40%
Odds that Andrea is our firebug: 60%
Everyone but Jan goes back to sleep.
Jan's worried that she's setting fires in her sleep because the fires
started at the same time as her sleepwalking. She tells us that she
feels fuzzy all the time like she's been taking decongestants but she
hasn't.
Odds that someone is drugging Jan: 88%
Mike comes over later that weekend to
take her for a drive. He starts nagging her about college again.
Before her parents died, the plan was for her and Mike to both go to
a local community college and he's being pretty stubborn about her
sticking to this plan. The issue is that she isn't even sure she's
going to college right away and even if she does, she wants to go to
a different one. The community college reminds her of her mom for
some reason that Daniel doesn't bother to tell us. Mike is pretty
pissed off at her deviance from the plan.
Later that night, Jan wakes up in front
of Andrea's room. Andrea is pissed that Jan has woken her up yet
again. Jan is distressed so she skips school on Monday to go to her
doctor. She asks him to prescribe something for the sleepwalking and
he gives her some kind of “depressant” that will make her drowsy
but should clear up the problem. He also suggests therapy which she
rejects because she's not “crazy”.
Some time passes. I'm not sure how
much. Mike arrives to pick Jan up for a date that she knows nothing
about. Andrea insists that she told Jan the day before and I can't
figure out why Andrea would be telling Jan about a date Jan has with
Mike in the first place. Oh.............I know why.
Odds that Andrea is our fucking Justin:
70%
Sigh.
But.......I can't just ignore the fact that Jan
feels drugged and Leah is the one who keeps giving her those fucking
awful herbal drinks.
Odds that Leah is the bad guy: 30%
Okay, after some careful thought, I'm just going to go out on a
limb here. I already told my manager this was my working theory so
I'm going to go on record here too.
Odds that Andrea and Leah are working
together to torment Jan: 95%
After taking the sleepwalking pills, Jan isn't waking up in any odd places
but she keeps finding mud on her slippers and her nightgown. At one
point she goes to work on a poem for her English class and finds that
it's been altered. She clearly wrote the first part but then it
turns into something sick and twisted and she's super alarmed.
Rumors begin to circulate around school
that Jan is somehow related to the fires. She isn't sure whether
Andrea or Julie started them but she's sure it was one of them. My
money is on Justin......I mean Andrea. She's even more tired than
usual and Leah starts giving her “blood builder” capsules.
Odds that Leah is drugging Jan: 99%
Days go by and Jan is doing worse and
worse at school. She would swear that she's not sleepwalking anymore
but she keeps finding her slippers wet and her stuff moved around and
doors open so she assumes she's been wandering around at night again.
Andrea keeps mentioning conversations that Jan is pretty sure she
never had.
Odds that Jan is being gaslighted: 99%
Mike is super concerned and finally
goes to the guidance counselor's office to get the name of a
therapist for Jan. She's already in trouble with Leah for going to
the doctor without permission so Jan knows there's no way she can go
to a therapist. Besides, it pisses her off that Mike thinks she's
“crazy” because, again, only “crazy” people need therapy.
They end up screaming at each other and then they don't talk for a
week or so. A few days later he finds a story Jan has been working
on while putting together the paper. It's like the poem – full of
violence and obscenities and fire. He's also alarmed.
One night Jan wakes up smelling the
faint smell of gasoline in her room. She goes to put on her slippers
and finds them still warm as if there had just been feet inside them
a second before. She's rattled and can't go back to sleep. The next
morning she's so exhausted that she tells her aunt she's too sick to
go to school. Andrea volunteers to hand in her assignments for her.
After everyone leaves for the day, Jan finds out that someone left
gasoline soaked rags outside of the library in an arson attempt.
Odds that Andrea is going to turn in
those assignments: 10%
(((Note from future me: this went nowhere. The assignments did not matter and I don't know why Daniel made such a point of this.)))
A day or so later Jan has some
outpatient surgery on the burn scars on her arm. She's groggy
afterwards from the pain meds. At one point she dreams Andrea is on
her computer in her room.
Odds that it was only a dream: 5%
Jan spends a few days in bed before she
goes back to school. It's pretty obvious that everyone's been
gossiping about her. Julie straight up tells her that she thinks
it's suspicious that no fires were set while Jan was laid up in bed
after her surgery. She tells Jan that if something else happens,
she's going to be forced to tell what she knows about the night of
the slumber party. Several people are around to overhear the
conversation.
Because her grades are tanking and
she's now failing three of her classes, Jan is kicked off the school
paper. She and Mike make an effort to repair their relationship but
it's strained now. She just feels weird around everyone.
We take a hop into the guidance
counselor's head now. He's working late one evening, thinking about
Jan and her refusal to seek any kind of professional help. As he's
leaving, he sees the door to the newspaper room open and smells
gasoline. A lit cigarette has been left on some papers next to some
gasoline-soaked rags. He knows it was a “fuse” to give the
arsonist some time to get away. He grabs the cigarette and puts it
out, taking off to see if he can find the culprit. Of course, he
finds himself locked in a room by the bad guy. The “fuse” is lit
again and eventually the guidance counselor passes out from the smoke
and heat of the fire. I have no idea if he's dead or not. Even
odds.
We find out in the next chapter that he
is, in fact, very dead. The entire school didn't burn down and they
don't even close it for the day which makes me call major Bullshit.
I mean, seriously, it's a health and safety issue at this point and
there's no way a school would be able to have sessions when part of
it burned down. Whatevs. Jan doesn't go to school and Mike later
tells her that everyone pretty much assumes she burned the school and
killed the guidance counselor.
Later that night, a policeman and an
arson investigator come to the house to talk to Jan. They ask her
about her argument with the guidance counselor after being kicked off
the paper, her sleepwalking, her memory lapses, her presence at that
store the night of the slumber party and even how she got out of her
own house the night of the fire that killed her parents. She answers
what she can but still can't remember how she escaped her own fire.
She asks them if they really think she would have lit her arm on fire
on purpose and they tell her that lots of “fire bugs”
accidentally catch themselves in their fires.
That night Jan wakes up outside the
house holding a box of matches in her hand. She throws them down,
sensing a presence nearby. She yells that she's not going to let
this mystery person do this to her and that she's not going to
believe that she's the one setting the fires.
Odds than Jan is the one setting the
fires: 1%
Odds that Andrea and Leah are some kind
of two-headed Justin: 99%
Hey, I'm sticking to this theory,
y'all. I might....😆😆😆go down in flames😆😆😆....but I'm sticking to it.
The next day, Jan skips school again.
She drives to a mall in a neighboring city and wanders around trying
not to think of fires or sleepwalking or guidance counselors. She
leaves the mall and goes to the capitol building and Abe Lincoln's
birthplace or something and then heads back to her town. Before
going home, she stops at the library and tries to find books about
sleepwalking. None of them are on the shelf despite the librarian
saying they aren't checked out to anyone. Someone clearly “borrowed”
them without checking them out.
Leah is pissed when Jan gets home
because she's been gone all day, didn't go to school and missed
dinner without calling. These are all legitimate things to be angry
about so I don't feel very sorry for Jan here.
That night Jan dreams that Andrea is
giving her pain meds to knock her out.
Odds that this is a dream: 5%
The dream continues. Andrea is typing
something on Jan's computer. She makes Jan get out of bed and touch
the computer keys and then she helps Jan lay back down. She gives
Jan pill after pill and urges her to take them so that she can die
and be with her mom and dad. Clearly none of this is a fucking
dream.
Sure enough, Jan wakes up in a
hospital. She's been unconscious for 36 hours after taking all her
sleepwalking medication, her pain pills from her surgery and even
some sedatives that had been prescribed to her uncle. ((What about the part where there are no medications in the house because Leah doesn't believe in doctors, Daniel? Where did the uncle's pills mysteriously come from just when Jan needed them to overdose?))) The doctor
says it's a miracle she survived. Her uncle found her because he got
up to go to the bathroom and noticed her computer was on. He stopped
to turn it off for her and saw the suicide note on the screen. They
barely made it to the hospital in time. If he hadn't gotten up to
pee, Jan would be dead.
Nocturnal urination saves lives, y'all. 💤💧
Jan's 'suicide note' basically says
that she wants to be with her parents and 'confesses' to setting all
the fires and killing the guidance counselor.
Over the next few days, Jan is watched
closely. Her doctor recommends counseling again when she's released.
Julie and Mike both come to visit but they don't know what to say to
her. Julie confirms Jan's fear that the entire school is talking
about how she's gone crazy and is definitely an arsonist and probably
a murderer. Andrea stops in a couple of times but ends up crying and
running out. Jan can't figure out why she's so upset.
Odds that Andrea is upset because she
tried to kill Jan at her mother's behest: 88%
Jan decides she's going to have to
actually kill herself. If she's setting fires and murdering people
in her sleep, she shouldn't be alive anymore. (((What about the part where Jan knew she wasn't setting the fires and someone was setting her up, Davis?))) She waits until the
Monday after her release from the hospital. Leah and Peter go to
work and Andrea goes to school. No one even suggests that Jan try to
go to school. As soon as they all leave, Jan starts sealing up the
garage so she can carbon monoxide herself. She ends up not going
through with it, however, and she goes upstairs to take a nap instead.
When Jan wakes up, she's convinced of
her innocence. Again. I guess. She knows she couldn't have done any of these
horrible things. She begins to suspect that someone has been trying
to drive her crazy.
FINALLY!
She tries to think about
who might have motive and opportunity. Her mind keeps landing on
Mike because he has a program that would change the time stamps on
saved documents so he could be using her computer and making it look
like she was using it in the middle of the night. He's also the only
one that had keys to the newspaper room where the fire was started.
She doesn't tell us why she thinks he might be doing these things but
she decides he must be the bad guy based on these two flimsy bits of
information.
Jan has a headache so Leah
makes her another one of her herbal teas and Jan goes to bed. She
dreams that someone is coaxing her out of bed. She confuses it with
the night of the fire that killed her parents and she can almost feel
the flames burning her skin. She comes to and she's standing in
front of Julie's house and it's on fire. She feels someone bash her
over the head and then hands push her toward the flames and a voice
hisses “Now die”.
Jan finds herself shoved
through the front door of Julie's house. She immediately runs back
out. She knows she has to do something to save Julie's family and
get the fire department headed to the house but she doesn't want to
get caught there. She throws a brick through a window (don't ask me
where she got the brick or how she knew what window to throw it
through) and that alerts Julie's parents to the fire. She also
throws a brick through a neighbors window so they'll call the fire
department. Then she heads toward Mike's house. She trusts him again because she knows that it
wasn't his hands she felt on her arms or his voice she heard telling
her to die.
She manages to wake Mike
up by tapping on his bedroom window and he comes outside to talk to
her. She tells him everything and he doesn't believe her at first
but she shows him the bump on the back of her head and that convinces
him. They discuss everything that happened and her belief that
someone is gaslighting her, framing her and trying to kill her. He's
understandably upset. He says they need to go somewhere and talk
about things. She says that she needs to go home first. She needs
to take a shower, get dressed and let her uncle see her so he knows
she was at home when the thing happened. Even though she wasn't and
this will prove nothing. Sigh.
She does the thing and
then her and Mike drive off together. He takes her to his house
because his mom is away for the weekend or something and then he goes
to school for a few hours to make sure he establishes some kind of
alibi..........for..... WHAT EXACTLY, DANIEL? The crime was committed when he was
fucking asleep. He doesn't need an alibi now. The only reason he'd
need one now is if Jan was going to start a fire now. THIS MAKES NO
SENSE!!!
Mike comes back a little
later. Rumors are going all around the school about Jan trying to
kill Julie because Julie told the cops about finding her outside of
the burning store. To make it worse, Barb (the photographer we spent
a couple of paragraphs rolling around in the head of) took some
pictures the night of the mansion fire and Jan is hiding in the
bushes in one of them. Mike managed to convince Barb not to go to
the police yet but he tells Jan that they don't have much time. They
need to find the real bad guy.
They spend the next
several pages reviewing the entire fucking book for us.
Mike comes to the
conclusion that Andrea is the bad guy which is both DUH
and not quite the whole story at the same time because I'm still
convinced that Andrea and Leah are a two headed Justin.
So it turns out that Jan's
dad owned some kind of company. Uncle Peter was a junior partner but
the company didn't go to him after Jan's dad died. It went to her.
The only way Peter can have the company is if Jan dies too. Which
seriously gives Leah and Peter more of a motive than Andrea but I
refuse to believe Peter is implicated. We can't have a THREE headed
Justin. That's just ridiculous.
Mike and Jan decide to go
back to her house and search it for evidence against Andrea. Mike
finds a book of poetry and recognizes the weird things that 'Jan' has
been writing on the computer. Jan's supposed suicide note is also in there –
copied from a suicide note of a person who suffered from
schizophrenia. He also finds the books about sleepwalking that were
taken from the library without being checked out.
They go back to Mike's
house, worried about being discovered by Leah. Mike doesn't want her
to go home that night but Jan says she has to. She wants to confront
Andrea and provoke her into trying to kill her again and then Mike
can come in at the last second and rescue her.
Mike doesn't like this
plan because he's not an idiot. But she insists so he agrees. When
she gets home, Leah gives her another herbal tea and Jan goes
upstairs to confront Andrea. The problem is, Andrea won't even open
her bedroom door. Frustrated, Jan goes back to her room. She starts
to feel really weird and realizes she's been drugged again. It
crosses her mind that Leah might be drugging those herbal drinks just as she passes out.
FUCKING DUH!!
Jan
eventually comes to in her aunt's studio. There's a fire already
spreading around the room and her cousin is in there trying to fan
the flames. She starts crying when Jan wakes up and says that she
wishes Jan had stayed asleep because she doesn't want to do this.
She picks up a board and swings it at Jan's head. Jan manages to
duck and then the door to the studio opens and Mike is there. He and
Andrea fight over Jan but he is stronger and he pulls Jan to safety.
He turns Jan over to the waiting arms of Leah and goes back for
Andrea. Leah is not the savior here, though. She yells “Why won't
you just die?” at Jan and shoves her back toward the burning
studio. They tussle until Mike appears with a burning Andrea. Leah
abandons Jan to check on her daughter.
As Mike is
doing the whole stop, drop and roll thing to put out the fire on his
back, Leah makes another attempt to kill Jan, She pounces on her and
starts trying to choke her to death. Mike is surprised but he comes
to the rescue yet again, pulling Leah off Jan as the fire department
and police arrive.
We go forward
in time several days. It turns out Leah set the original fire,
trying to kill Jan and her parents so that Peter would get the
company. Only Jan didn't die so the plan had to adapt. She went to
doctors all over the area getting prescriptions for sedatives and
pain killers so she could keep Jan drugged. Once Jan was all groggy and foggy, she set about
gaslighting and framing her. Leah eventually confessed to Andrea for
some reason and Andrea began to help her so Leah wouldn't go to jail.
Andrea is in
the burn unit but expected to survive – and spend at least some
time in jail. Leah is the one who killed Jan's parents and the
guidance counselor so it's expected she'll get more jail time than
Andrea who was merely an accessory or something (oh, and she set one
fire – the one that burned the store the night of the slumber party – but it was under her mom's direction). Peter is in the hospital
suffering from shock or something so Jan is staying with Barb. She's
currently detoxing off the prescription medication that she got
unknowingly addicted to through Leah's drugging.
The book ends
with Jan hoping that she and Peter can put their little family back
together and that maybe she can get her life back on track now that
she's not being drugged to oblivion.
I feel like this was a 50 page book stretched out into a 200 page book. Seriously, there were dozens of pages about econ class and you can tell how important that was to the overall development of the story.
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