In Your Dreams by Amy Martin - FREEBIE!

In Your Dreams by Amy Martin
FREE

Book 1 of the In Your Dreams series.

Sixteen-year-old Zara “Zip” McKee lives for three things: basketball, books, and bailing out of tiny Titusville, Illinois, where the junior high and high school are in the same building and everyone’s known everyone else since birth. But when Kieran Lanier moves to town and passes out on her desk on his first day at school, Zip’s life gets complicated in a way she never dreamed.

Kieran has narcolepsy, and although he sometimes struggles to stay awake, he has no trouble capturing Zip’s heart and trusting her with his most guarded secret—he sees bits and pieces of the future in his dreams. And while he didn’t know who she was at the time, Kieran had seen Zip in his dreams over five months before he moved to Titusville from North Carolina.

But just when Zip thinks that maybe she can handle having a boyfriend who sees things before they happen, her budding relationship with Kieran gets a jolt. She and Kieran learn that his sleeping disorder and the future flashes were likely caused by a drug invented by his birth father, Morgan Levert, a convicted felon who plays a starring role in Kieran’s nightmares. And when Zip begins to have unsettling dreams after chance encounters with Morgan's former partner-in-crime, she must decide if she can live with the possibility of seeing the future when she doesn’t always like what she sees.

*Recommended for Young Adult readers 13 and up (mild cursing, some adult situations)

Check out the other books in the In Your Dreams series:

As You Wake (In Your Dreams 2)
Before You Sleep (In Your Dreams 3)

Excerpt:

I put the Camaro in gear and steer us out of the parking lot, the school’s nightlights all that illuminate Main Street on this end of town. “So how much trouble are you in?” I ask.
“Oh, I’m dead, basically.”
“I’ll drive slow, then.”
We ride together in silence for about two minutes in an almost exactly replay of our trip home after the Sumner game, but when my grandparents’ house comes into view up ahead of us, Kieran surprises me by saying “You know what? I don’t want to go home yet.”
“You sure?”
“Well, I’m in trouble no matter what, right? So who cares? Can we go hang out somewhere?”
“Like, with other people?”
“Alone, preferably.”
Allowing myself a quick glance at him, I notice he’s all hunched up in his coat, as if trying to hide his face. “I mean, like, alone alone, if possible” he continues. “I…I’ve got something I need to tell you.”
Okay—I’m totally panicking. Today’s Valentine’s Day. I think of the cherry heart lollipops I bought from the Student Council before first period and slipped into his locker at lunch, the lollipops he enthusiastically thanked me for during another Crumpled Paper Note Passing session in history class. Those suckers probably rank as the World’s Worst Valentine’s Day Gifts in comparison to the rose drawing he gave me the other night, which I hung above the desk in my room.
And now he’s got something he needs to tell me. On Valentine’s Day.
Should I take him to the lot at the abandoned Buckley Refrigeration plant out by the interstate, where half the school’s probably headed to make out right now? Or I could drive us to the boat launch that’s down a gravel path off the road we live on, about four more miles outside town. The boat launch isn’t a place people usually go to hook up, mostly because no one knows about it unless they like to fish. And while I definitely don’t like fishing, Gramps does, and so I’ve been there with him several times over the years to keep him company.
“Okay,” I tell him. “I know somewhere we can go.”
On the outside, I’m calm enough to keep control of the car. Inside, however, I’m about to come out of my skin. I’ve never hooked up with anyone before—assuming that’s what’s going to happen—and I’ve had only one French kiss, which was a total train wreck. Back in eighth grade, Cassie had a party in her basement when her parents went to the Bahamas and her grandmother came to babysit. Grandma Newbaum fell dead asleep upstairs, allowing Cassie to sneak people in. After he asked, I started slow dancing with Billy McCaffery, the grandson of my former next-door neighbors, mostly because he was the only other person without a partner. Billy and I had been rocking back and forth along with five other couples for about a minute when I asked him some question and he used the opportunity to shove his tongue in my open mouth. I was so shocked I couldn’t do anything for a few seconds other than concentrate on the icky sensation of an eel-like mass poking my cheeks in search of my tongue, which at the moment was trying to work its way down my throat, evidently willing to risk choking me to death in order to save me. Finally, I came to my senses and pushed him away, but not far enough that I couldn’t knee him in the crotch. He yelled so loud Cassie’s grandma woke up, and we all had barely escaped the basement through the sliding glass door by the time she came downstairs to listen to Cassie’s lie that she was singing along with a song on the CD player.
So, yeah—I’m way, way inexperienced. Kieran and I have never talked about hooking up—with each other or with anyone else—so for all I know, he messed around with every girl in Asheville, North Carolina, before he moved here, assuming he was able to stay awake long enough to do so. Heart thudding with anticipation, I slow the car to make the turn. From the corner of my eye, I see he’s sound asleep, but not for long, as our rumbling down the gravel wakes him up.
“Where are we?” he asks. “I remember we passed my house…”
“There’s a boat launch down here,” I tell him as we bounce down the hill on a tree-lined road barely wide enough for my car. Not too far from the river’s edge, the path opens up into a larger gravel-covered area that could hold maybe five or six cars. Just in case someone else decides to come down here tonight, I pull over to the far right side near the trees and ease the car forward until we’re a few feet from the water. Before I turn off the engine, I make sure to put on the emergency brake so this evening doesn’t end with the two of us rolling into the river.
Kieran takes a minute to look around. “So when I said ‘alone,’ you took me seriously.”
“You were joking?”
“No, but I had no idea places were this secluded out here. I mean, in North Carolina, you can go out in the woods or up in the mountains and get lost for days.” He pauses again and I join him in taking in the scene outside the windshield, the river’s surface lit an eerie white by a half-moon, the trees and the opposite bank splotchy shadows against the black-blue sky. “I guess I didn’t expect this here. And I’m really hoping tonight’s not the night I find out you’re a serial killer.”
I open my eyes wide like a crazy person, take on a blank expression, and dart my face toward his to scare him. He lets out a yelp, and we both have a good laugh.
“So I hope I didn’t freak you out before when I said I wanted to tell you something,” he says, sobering up.
“Not at all,” I lie.
He takes off his seat belt and swivels around toward me. I do the same so we’re facing each other, both of us leaning our heads against our seats.
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” he continues. “Anyone I know I can trust with things, I mean. Sometimes it’s hard when all you have is your family to talk with about stuff. You feel so bottled up you think you’re going to explode.”
I wish I could relate, and maybe I kind of do. Other than what my mom’s been able to sort of figure out, I haven’t told anyone how I think I might feel about Kieran, even though everyone at school assumes we’re practically engaged. I don’t want whatever I have with him—even if I’m the only one of us who thinks we have it—to be dragged down to the level of cafeteria gossip and study hall whispers. But sometimes, I wish I had someone to talk to, because I’m so unused to dealing with boys as anything other than buddies and pick-up game opponents and I’m totally lost.
“I don’t even know where to start exactly,” Kieran says. “No one knows about this outside my family, and it’s so out there I’m afraid you might not believe me.”
My nerves get the better of me, so I try some humor. “You’re an alien, right?” I ask, narrowing my eyes. “I knew it.”
Kieran grins, willing to play along. “Nope. Guess again.”
“Okay. You’re a vampire. You’re really a hundred years old.”
He shakes his head against the seat and says, “Not even close.”
“So you’re not an alien and you’re not a vampire. What’s your deal, then, Kieran Lanier?”
“My deal,” he begins, his eyelids drooping a little, “is…well…I have these vivid dreams sometimes. Like I’m almost awake.”
Kieran snuggles into the seat, and I worry he’ll fall asleep before he tells me whatever he’s going to tell me and I’ll have to wake him up to get the reveal. The boy’s basically a human cliffhanger.
“Have you ever had a dream with people you don’t recognize or you’re someplace you’ve never been, and later you meet those people or go to that place in real life and you kind of know everything’s familiar?”
“You mean like a premonition or something?”
“Sort of.”
I shrug my shoulders. “I mean, I’ve heard about that happening to people, but I don’t think it happens to me.”
“Well, it kind of happens to me.” Kieran sits up again and I sit up also, the two of us mirror images of each other in the moonlight.
“What are you saying, exactly?” I ask.
He looks away. “I’m saying I dream things—vivid dreams about stuff that hasn’t happened yet.” He swallows hard, letting his eyes travel to mine again. “And then that stuff happens.”