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behind me and squeezing my shoulders.
    “I saw.”
    I’d stayed up the whole night before, pretty much every night since I’d been back, flipping to different twenty-four-hour news channels to try to catch stories about me. They always said something about my return being a “miracle,” and every time I heard that word or saw it spelled out on the little scroll at the bottom of the screen, I had to close my eyes and breathe in deeply. I was back, yeah. And itwas ridiculous and impossible all in one. I just wasn’t all that ready to call it a miracle.
    “School’s gonna be pretty weird,” I said.
    “There are lots of things that’ll make it pretty weird for a while,” Dad said. “But you’ll manage. I know you will.”
    “Has anyone called for me?”
    “Your grandmother. She wants to see you as soon as possible. Your aunt Cindy may drive her down next week.”
    “Great. Anyone else?”
    “You’ll have to give them some more time, Travis.”
    “Time. More time,” I said, a bit frustrated.
    “They’ll show up. Wait and see.”
    I couldn’t believe I’d been awake for nearly three weeks and hadn’t heard a single thing out of Cate or Kyle. Mom and Dad kept telling me to try to understand what it must be like for them, to just try to be patient. And that only got me thinking that maybe my parents were just faking their way through all of this, that they were actually freaking out inside, their brains quietly exploding. Maybe they’d been carefully coached by Dr. Saranson and his staff. Maybe they were told to be as calm and collected as possible, at all times, for fear that too much excitement could throw me over the edge.
    But I had to talk to someone. Maybe it would have to be Lawrence Ramsey. He’d be the one person on earth who could relate to what I was feeling. We were two people unstuck in time, and as much as I wanted to forget what happened to me, I knew I’d need some help.It’s pretty sad when you feel like a complete stranger is the only person you can turn to.
    Sure, I was trying to be hopeful and not waste this opportunity like the nurse said or didn’t say that night at the hospital. But wasn’t I always going to be Travis, who died to these people? No matter what I did, wouldn’t they always remember the way they had to let me go? I guess it turns out you don’t have to be all that dead to be a dead guy.

CHAPTER FOUR
A DEAD GUY
    Before we had left Denver, Dr. Saranson had given me his card and told me to call him any time I needed anything. He had said this while firmly shaking my hand and looking me right in the eyes.
    “Travis,” he said, picking up the phone. “I’m so glad you called.”
    “Thanks.”
    “How are things going? You adjusting okay? Everything back to normal for you yet?”
    Was he kidding me with this? Did he really think anything would ever be even close to normal for me?
    “Things are okay, I guess.”
    “That bad, huh?” he asked, his tone changing from a higher-pitched fake professional to a “Let’s cut the shit” serious.
    “It’s just weird, you know. Everything’s prettydifferent.”
    “And every one ’s different too, right?”
    “Right.”
    “Did you ever hear from your friends?” he asked.
    “Not a word. It’s really hard to understand.”
    “I know it is, Travis. But if you can, try putting yourself in their shoes. They lost someone very close to them, and it took a long time to move past it, I’m sure. For you, it’s been a few weeks, but for them, it’s been a lifetime since seeing you, since hearing your voice.”
    “I guess I thought they’d be excited I was back,” I said.
    “You know they are, Travis. They have to be. They’re just scared, I bet. We have this way of putting certain ideas out of our minds . . . we do that. Humans, I mean. We have to bury things, hopes and dreams, so deep sometimes that it takes a little while to access those things once we need them again.”
    “So you think they just need more