The truth is I was never good at being normal. Sometimes that can be a good thing. But too often while growing up I was left feeling like an outsider, uncomfortable in my own skin. In fifth grade, I learned to transcend the trappings of my existentially riddled mind by opening a book and escaping into the world of fiction. Suddenly I was trouncing through worlds unknown with heroes and anti-heroes, privy to their every thought and emotion as they journeyed toward self-discovery. By ninth grade, I was fervently tearing through books, writing short stories of my own, and dreaming of my future life as an accomplished author. At last, I would be understood! Then during summer vacation after my junior year of high school I was in a car accident and clunked my head. After two weeks in the hospital, they let me go home. Physically, other than a scrape on the back of my head, I was no worse for the wear. I rejoined my friends and went back to high school in the fall. Thank god, but not really. I looked like the same old Brady. But I was different. Really different!

Fifteen-year-old Courtney Hoffman is determined not to go insane like her crazy grandfather did—right before he tried to drown her when she was seven. But something is happening to her. She’s being visited in her bedroom at night by aliens who claim to have shared an alliance with her now-dead grandfather. And Courtney knows that aliens aren’t real, which means she must be going crazy. And her mother and her new boyfriend have zero tolerance for craziness. Then Courtney meets Agatha Kirlich, a mysterious older girl with sleuthing skills and alien-obsession issues of her own, and together—armed with ancient stories of a human-alien bloodline, a few photographs, and the creepy tattoo left on Courtney’s rib cage by her grandfather before he disappeared—the girls embark on a mission to uncover the truth about Courtney’s alien visitors. Ultimately, Courtney must put her fears aside, defy her mother, embrace her true identity, and risk everything in order to save herself—and the world.