Someplace Else (e-book) (used book) | Donna Montalbano | bookbook.eu

Description

When you leave your body, where do you go? Lejeune is sixteen; a rebel with way too many causes, and she's got a tee shirt for every one. Her parents are in the military, so she lives with her Aunt Doe at the edge of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. The next town over, Joe just turned eighteen, and his rich lawyer father gives him a flashy SUV for his birthday, despite his mother’s objections. "It'll be the death of him," she said. And it was. At the scene of his horrific car wreck, Joe lifts out of his damaged body and walks away. But it's lonely, being dead. Joe drops in on his parents and his friends, and haunts all his old hangouts. One day, he goes looking for his ex-girlfriend at her high school and gets a big shock--(she's kissing another guy but that's not it) he sees a scared little girl clinging to the ceiling of a classroom. She sees him, he sees her, so obviously they're both OOBIES (Out-of-Bodies). Suddenly Joe's not so lonely anymore, and Lejeune has found a new way to ditch class. He takes her to his new home, which looks a lot like the Jersey Pine Barrens if the Barrens were in a sci-fi high def, million pixel, thousand G, double-digit D universe. He decides to call it Someplace Else. Lejeune thinks Someplace Else is like a Disney movie. But Joe knows better. It is a clearinghouse of souls; where almost everybody is waiting to find out their fates. The Near-Dead wait for a life-or-death verdict. The Totally Dead wait for the Light to take them to their final destinations. And the Ungrateful Dead wait in the shadows for a ride back to Life, which they can only do by taking possession of the soul of a living person (like Lejeune). Joe suspects the Light will take him soon; and he doesn’t want to go. So he escapes into the Deep Dark, where the Light can’t penetrate. He hopes that someday it will be safe to come out. He doesn’t tell Lejeune, because he knows she would give up her human life to be with him. The Deep Dark is teeming with ravenous creatures that squirm and slither and attack with claws and teeth. Worst of all, it is the domain of the Jersey Devil, a chimera with the head and hooves of a goat, the body of a man, and the wings of some prehistoric bird. Joe’s in too deep. In the meantime, Lejeune is fighting for her soul’s survival. Will they ever find each other again? And if they do, who will they be?