Last time, a hand dropped on her shoulder!!!!!!!!

I was so tightly wound that I shrieked in terror; I was so terrified that my shriek was only a breathless little squeal.
“Sorry!” Jared’s arm went around my shoulders, comforting. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

So it was a stupid fakeout! Fucking book. It was cheap when it was Goosebumps doing this, and Goosebumps was aimed a elementary schoolers.

Anyway, he wants to be with her as she suicides, because either he’s come to love her or he just feels bad about what she’s doing. She reinterates the whole suicide plan, because anyone dumb enough to have kept reading this long is obviously too dumb to be able to remember something like that.

What can I give you?”
“I can’t take anything with me, Jared.”
“Not even a memory, Wanda? What do you want?”
I brushed the tears away with my free hand, but others took their place too quickly for it to matter. No, I couldn’t take even a memory.
“What can I give you, Wanda?” he insisted.
I took a deep breath and tried to keep my voice steady.
“Give me a lie, Jared. Tell me you want me to stay.”

Which is a lie that involves sacrificing another person for her, as has always been the crux of the issue. So anyway he hugs her and kisses her forehead and of course he’s not really lying when he says “Stay here, Wanda. With us. With me. I don’t want you to go. Please. I can’t imagine having you gone. I can’tsee that. I don’t know how to… how to…” His voice broke. but she’s too dumb to know that. Also, god, this must be terrifying for Melanie, or would be if only Melanie was allowed to have real feelings and not just whatever the plot’s okayed at the moment.

And she goes on for a bit about how great it is, then says thanks but she’s got to go and she wants to be alone for it.

“I’ll send Doc to get you when it’s over.”

Huh. You know, it occurs to me that even if faildoc wants to hide the truth, they’ll know because apparently the tanks display if they’re open or full and it’s one per cannister. Plus, Melanie will tell as soon as she’s able, just in the hopes her brainslug overlord hasn’t died yet. And we know they react to absolutely everything by punching someone’s face in. There’s a decent chance one or both will kill him for this – they’re really not very nice people.

She heads off to see faildoc, who’s already crying uncontrollably. She feels no guilt about this either! She’s just going on about how awesome she is to be going through with this. We learn faildoc’s real name is Eustace, which is why he goes by Doc. Stop fucking stalling, book.

“Will you be… in pain?”
“No, Doc,” I lied. “I won’t feel anything.”

If it’s painful why not just ask him to kill you instead of leaving you to flop around until you eventually? Because you’re on an emo kick, I guess.

“You are the noblest, purest creature I’ve ever met. The universe will be a darker place without you,” he whispered.

Please god, let the remaining book just be everyone going on about how they loved Queen Sue of the Sparkleyeerks and not her coming back after making me sit through this.

I drifted into the black, and it got brighter and brighter. It wasn’t black at all–it was blue. Warm, vibrant, brilliant blue… I floated into it with no fear at all.

And then she starts having some weird memories where she’s thinking about her friend on the flower planet, and then she appears.

Footsteps behind me. Has Cloud Spinner followed me again? I don’t need a jacket. It’s warm here–finally!–and I want to feel the air on my skin. I won’t look at her. Maybe she’ll think I can’t hear and she’ll go home. She is so careful with me, but I’m almost grown now. She can’t mother me forever.
“Excuse me?” someone says, and I don’t know the voice.
I turn to look at her, and I don’t know the face, either. She’s pretty.
The face in the memory jerked me back to myself. That was my face! But I didn’t remember this.…
“Hi,” I say.
“Hello. My name is Melanie.” She smiles at me. “I’m new in town and… I think I’m lost.”
“Oh! Where are you trying to go? I’ll take you. Our car is just back –”
“No, it’s not far. I was going for a walk, but now I can’t find my way back to Becker Street.”
She’s a new neighbor–how nice. I love new friends.
“You’re very close,” I tell her. “It’s just around the second corner up that way, but you can cut right through this little alley here. It takes you straight there.”
“Could you show me? I’m sorry, what’s your name?”
“Of course! Come with me. I’m Petals Open to the Moon, but my family mostly calls me Pet.
…
“Wha –” I want to ask, but I can’t see them anymore. I can’t see anything.…
There was no more.
“Wanda? Can you hear me, Wanda?” a familiar voice asked.

God fucking dammit.

This was actually pretty nice – it seemed like it was some dying fantasy about a world where she and Melanie and everyone was together peacefully. Then it turns out that no, she’s remembering her new host’s memories.

The only thing halfway interesting is that it sounds like brainslug young have a long childhood, but it’s probably some stupid bullshit about her host being almost grown instead since that poor seeker was on her first life and acting as an adult without anyone caring about her age, while this brainslug clearly had at least one lifespan under her belt already.

Also christ they found her a body with the nickname of Pet. Because Petal isn’t any sort of name, it has to be Pet.

“Ian? Ian, where am I?” The sound of the voice coming out of my throat frightened me. So high and trilling. Familiar, but not mine. “Who am I?”
“You’re you,” Ian told me. “And you’re right where you belong.”

“We had a discussion and we realized that if you could not give a fuck about every other alien species, why couldn’t we just not give a fuck about a couple more humans?”

The skin on the face had the same silver undertone–silver like moonlight–as the hand did, with another handful of the golden freckles across the bridge of the nose. Wide gray eyes, the silver of the soul shimmering faintly behind the soft color, framed by tangled golden lashes. Pale pink lips, full and almost round, like a baby’s. Small, even white teeth behind them. A dimple in the chin. And everywhere, everywhere, golden, waving hair that stood away from my face in a bright halo and fell below where the mirror showed.
My face or her face?
It was the perfect face for a Night Flower. Like an exact translation from Flower to human.
“Where is she?” my high, reedy voice demanded. “Where is Pet?” Her absence frightened me.
I’d never seen a more defenseless creature than this half-child with her moonlight face and sunlight hair.

So I guess even the cop-out of “sun darkened” is still too dark for the author. Melanie and Jared can have it, but the actual protagonist and her winning love interest have to be milky pale.

Also good god just everything about this description.

“Doc!” I gasped in the tiny, fragile voice.

WHY

Just WHY. It’s not like she was assertive in Melanie’s body. She spent half the goddamn book whispering and cringing. But that wasn’t enough? She has to be even more pathetic?

Anyway, turns out that Jared literally held a knife to his throat to get him to do it. Wacky murder antics! Such a Joker.

While the brainslug’s trying to object, her former body wanders over to yell at her and we’re reminded that it wasn’t good enough for queen sparkleyeerk because it has icky black hair and almond eyes and isn’t some proper silver-eyed blonde sue.

Then Jamie shows up

I took his hand and squeezed it. My hands felt so feeble. Could he even feel the pressure?

I will give the book this – it’s managing to find a new low, so at least it’s not going out on a boring note.

She is not only the most weakest weakling to ever exist, but smaller than Jamie, because MEN ARE THE ONES IN CHARGE even if they’re little boys.

Oh, and then she lies about her age. She just turned seventeen but says she’s eighteen.

Ian was every bit as honorable as Jared, and I was not going to go through the frustration Melanie had.

Yeah, honorable. That’s totally why he wanted you stuffed into a girl who’s tiny next to a fourteen year old boy.

And indeed, the book then explicitly says This body looked much younger than her true age, hovering on the edge of seventeen. so yeah it’s some solid pedophilia here.

“We tried not to scare her,” Jamie said. “She’s so… kind of fragile-looking, you know? And nice, too. We picked her out together, but I got to decide! See, Mel said we had to get someone young–someone who had a bigger percentage of life as a soul or something. But not too young, because she knew you wouldn’t want to be a child. And then Jared liked this face, because he said no one could ever dis…distrust it. You don’t look dangerous at all. You look the opposite of dangerous. Jared said anyone who sees you would just naturally want to protect you, right, Jared? But then I got the final say, because I was looking for someone who looked like you. And I thought this looked like you. Because she sort of looks like an angel, and you’re good like that. And real pretty. I knew you would be pretty.” Jamie smiled hugely. “Ian didn’t come. He just sat here with you–he said he didn’t care what you looked like.

Let’s try this again:

“We’ve been kidnapping lots of people and trying to wake them up. This one didn’t wake up, so we stuck you in here. Sorry she’s so young.”

There! THAT’S ALL YOU HAD TO DO HOW COULD YOU FUCK THIS UP BOOK?

Anyway blah blah Ian wouldn’t let anybody touch her because he’s a possessive nutjob blah true love.

Anyway the body they picked for her hoping it’d be empty totally is empty yay! It’d have been pretty awkward if their carefully chosen body happened to wake up and have feelings of her own, wouldn’t it? It’s full of Pet’s memories because I guess the memory overwrite errors are going both ways.

“This body didn’t belong to Pet, but there’s nobody else to claim it. We waited to make sure, Wanda. We tried to wake her up almost as long as we tried with Jodi.”

How insanely convenient. Now she doesn’t even have to feel bad about getting to stay when poor Sunlight doesn’t. Of course, poor Petals might have said the same thing if she’d been allowed to talk like Sunlight, but who cares? Happy ending for everyone who got screentime and fuck everyone else!

“I got to stay,” she said, not quite smug but almost. “Just like you.” She glanced at Kyle’s face–which was more stoic than I was used to seeing it–and her voice turned sad. “I’m trying, though. I am looking for her. I will keep looking.”

That’s nice of you. It’s certainly more than the our noble heroine, the kindest bravest brainslug ever known in the universe, will possibly bother to do for her own host.

Ian coaxed my face up until I looked him in the eyes, my cheeks flushing darker.
“Then you will stay.”
He kissed me, right in front of everyone, but I forgot the audience quickly. This was easy and right, no division, no confusion, no objection, just Ian and me, the molten rock moving through this new body, melding it into the pact.
“I will stay,” I agreed.
And my tenth life began.

IT’S OVER!

Only not. There’s still the epilogue.

I’d inherited a lot of things from Petals Open to the Moon, and not all of them were pleasant.
I’d inherited a great deal of grief for Cloud Spinner. I missed the mother I’d never known and mourned for her suffering now. Perhaps there could be no joy on this planet without an equal weight of pain to balance it out on some unknown scale.

You could kidnap Cloud Spinner and send her off to the same planet if you were capable of a spec of empathy. But I’m sorry, you were whining about how hard it is getting exactly what you wanted…?

I’d inherited unexpected limitations. I was used to a body that was strong and fast and tall–a body that could run for miles, go without food and water, lift heavy weights, and reach high shelves. This body was weak–and not just physically. This body seized up with crippling shyness every time I was unsure of myself, which seemed to be often these days.
…
People carried things for me now and let me pass first into a room. They gave me the easiest chores and then, half the time, took the work right out of my hands anyway. Worse than that, I needed the help. My muscles were soft and not used to labor. I tired easily, and my attempts to hide that fooled no one.

I hate this book so much.

The worst part is this shouldn’t be cutesy, this should be terrifying. She’s been put in a sickly body. Why don’t they just give her consumption and be done with it?

People touched my cheeks often, or put their fingers under my chin, holding my face up to see it better. I was frequently patted on my head (which was in easy reach, since I was shorter than everyone but the children), and my hair was stroked so regularly that I stopped noticing when it happened.

It continues on like this for some time.

This even goes to her EVIL BITCH RELATIVES, where even they can’t give her death glares any longer, although they still avoid her because they’re evil bitches who are evil.

Anyway, so, everyone’s happy and paired up and stuff. Even evil bitch Sharon decides to hook up with faildoc. There’s a bit where we rewind things so she’s inexplicably nervous about her relationship with Ian again because the author says she is, and then it turns out he was only being quiet to give her time to work things out but she was only doing it to give him time to work things FOR FUCK’S SAKE END ALREADY YOU STUPID BOOK

Because she’s such a delicate not-flower, no one wants to let their precious dolly go on raids.

Sunny had absolutely no intention of setting one foot outside. The very word raid had her cowering in terror. Kyle would not go out with us; Sunny had gone hysterical the one time he’d mentioned it.

But the other dolly is female and therefore crazy and weak, so they have no other options. Shame they don’t have a male brainslug to do all this important men’s work.

They head out and run into a bunch of armed people who explain that no, they’re human too! Apparently there’s a couple groups around and their own group was just doing such a great job of hiding that these strangers only just stumbled over them.

“There are three other cells separate from ours that we know of. Eleven with Gail, seven with Russell, and eighteen with Max. We keep in touch. Even trade now and then.” Again, the belly laugh. “Gail’s little Ellen decided she wanted to keep company with my Evan here, and Carlos took up with Russell’s Cindy.

Here as in other occasional apocalypses, we take a short tangent to fantasize about a world where parents control their children’s dating lives completely. Billions of people may have died, but at least Ellen, Evan, Carlos and Cindy no longer have any choice but to date that nice boy/girl next survivalist cell.

And, of course, everyone needs Burns now and then –” He stopped talking abruptly, glancing uneasily around him, as if he’d said something he shouldn’t have. His eyes rested briefly on the tall redhead in the back, who was still staring at me.
“Might as well get that out of the way,” the small dark man at Nate’s elbow said.

Then they start rambling about how there’s no need to get upset or panicky or murderous or anything.

“This here is Burns. Now, he’s with us, so don’t go crazy. He’s my best friend–saved my life a hundred times. He’s one of our family, and we don’t take kindly to it when people try to kill him.”

Honestly, this section isn’t too bad. I think it’s that it’s not about the main characters. These people have to earn their screentime, so they do. It makes me think that a different book, one not wedded to the single first person viewpoint, would have made for a better story – we could have seen how things went with this brainslug as well, and with human groups that didn’t have any direct contact with one, and so on.

Anyway, since they’ve already got two brainslugs of their own it’s no big deal.

“Burns Living Flowers,” he introduced himself.
My eyes widened at his name. Fire World–how unexpected.

There have actually been an awful lot of souls from the fire world – the healer she went to to steal the medicine from was Knits Fire, for example, and that’s not getting into how many of the other souls might have gone to fire world for a life without changing their name there, so they’d still have their flower/bear/bat name and wouldn’t be so easily identifiable, or the ones using human names.

And honestly, it is expected. Fire world is the only planet of theirs suffering high turnover, and she says that’s the only reason it’s not closed to colonists, suggesting they’ve had it for quite some time now. And furthermore, I suspect that souls from that planet wouldn’t want to go live on the flower planet for their very next life after killing other flowers there, so even if there were immigrants from all planets equally, the fire planet souls would still be somewhat more common on every other planet to make up for their utter lack on the otherwise popular flower planet.

No, the unexpected thing is his name. The souls on the fire planet did that, but he’s chosen to make it his introduction – and we know that getting rid of that “living” part was so far the most they could do to make things more humane, so he must have arrived on their planet from before then – likely, before they had any idea of what they were doing to the flowers. When did he get his name? It’s unlikely it was his first name there, since it’s nothing noteworthy before they knew the flowers were sapient and the practice itself was stopped after they learned that. So he took the name either after realizing what he’d done there or perhaps upon taking a new body here. Maybe that’s why he went turncoat so fast on this planet – he didn’t want to find himself making such a horrible mistake again.

“Well, maybe there’s some hope for this planet, after all.”
“It’s a strange world,” I murmured, more to myself than to the other native soul.
“The strangest,” he agreed.

Really, this is a pretty nice chapter. I think the book itself might not be so bad if you cut out all of the cave bit and just stuck this on as the end – the bottom half, cut out the bit about how delicate she is too. That’s most of the book, yeah, but it’d be an okay short story.