Hannah’s Touch

Orca Book Publishers - YA & Teens

Amazon Barnes and Noble Indigo

When sixteen-year-old Hannah gets stung by a bee, she has a near-death experience and, while out of her body, meets her dead boyfriend, Logan. Strange, yes, but even stranger is the fact that she now has the power to heal. Hannah can’t figure out why this is happening to her. Then she finds out Logan has a purpose in mind for her new gift. And it’s a purpose Hannah can’t bear to face.

What People Are Saying

Langston is quick to engage the reader.
– CM (Canadian Materials) Magazine

A quick glimpse into the world of miracles . . . most teens will enjoy.
– TeensReadToo.com

Excerpt

I was going to die in the parking lot of Bartell Drugs wearing that stupid red vest and with short hair. Mom would hate burying me without my long hair.

What a stupid waste, I thought, seeing my body on the pavement. My first bee sting and it’s fatal. It was almost as stupid as Logan getting in that car.

“It’s all part of the plan.”

I felt the words rather than heard them. They became part of me. With them, I grew bigger, fuller, softer.

More accepting.

At the same time, I felt someone. A warm presence.

Beside me, above me, everywhere. It filled me with a kind of hum. I wanted to look around, see who or what it was, but I didn’t want to miss the scene below.

I was out of my body. I knew that. I also knew this would probably be the last time I saw myself. It was odd viewing my body from the outside. Kind of like seeing a 3-D image that looks real but isn’t. The real me was up here. Strange but true. I wondered if they’d called my parents. My brother, Geoff.

It didn’t really matter. Nothing did.

M.C. cradled my head. Kitty dog was in the basket beside her. Lily was on her cell phone. Bentley knelt beside me and pulled something out of a package. An Epi-Pen.

So I was having an allergic reaction. I was dying. Which meant I was off the hook for that group project with Tom. And I could go find Logan and give him shit for dying.

The thought struck me funny. I began to laugh.

“You must go back.”

There was the voice again.

I didn’t want to go back. Being here, wherever here was, was the nicest thing that had happened to me since, I don’t know. Since before Nana died and I used to stay at her house in the country and she’d tuck me in at night and make me apple pancakes in the morning and put my hair in French braids and she would love me. This was like that love, only more.

I hadn’t felt it since I was ten-years-old. And I didn’t want to give it up.

“No,” I said.

“Your work is not finished.”

“Someone else can pick up my shift.” When I laughed a second time, I felt Logan draw near. I smelled him.

And I began to cry.

Tears ran from the eyes of the 3-D Hannah on the ground. I saw M.C. wipe them away with the sleeve of her caftan. But where I was, there were no tears, only an ache. A sweet, tender ache of a memory suddenly real. “Logan?”

He was beside me, bigger than I remembered, but invisible. The presence was still there too. I knew, somehow, that it had let Logan in. “You can’t stay,” Logan said.

“I want to.”

Something jolted the Hannah on the ground; Bentley’s Epi-Pen had found its mark. The fuller me began to shrink and empty.

“Hannah!” Bentley’s voice pulled at me. “You’re going to be fine. We’ve called an ambulance.” His hands rubbed the spot on my thigh where the Epi-Pen had hit.

My edges sharpened; the hum inside me started to fade. The presence was still around me. Logan too. But it was like they’d left the room.

“Go back and do it,” Logan said.

“Do what?” I asked.

He said something about Tom; I couldn’t hear. He was starting to fade; I couldn’t smell him anymore either.

“Tom’s a jerk and so are you. You shouldn’t have gotten into that car.”

His laugh was faint but real. “I love you too, Hannah banana.”

Before I could answer Logan, the voice said, “Be strong.”

That voice had always been there, I realized. Inside me. Grounding me, yet moving me forward at the same time.

It was logical, and yet not. As I struggled to make sense of a truth bigger than anything else I knew, I felt a whoosh. Like I was being sucked backwards.

And I slammed into my body.