Anastasia Forever

by Joy Preble

  Or as Tess described it the other day when we were reminiscing about Crap That’s Gone On Since That Day We Saw Ethan at the Ballet: “I think there’s a clause in your magic contract that guarantees you stay a virgin. You could be the poster girl for our health-class abstinence-only policy.”

  Here, now, in the dark of my room, it’s different. Good, different. Nice. That butterfly herd starts doing dips and turns.

  “Ethan,” I whisper.

  “Hmm,” he says, clearly not asleep. “What?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “Do you need anything? I can get you another pillow or something.”

  “I’m good.”

  Wonderful conversation.

  We lie in the dark some more. The question I really want to ask sits on my tongue.

  “You knew,” I say, deciding that I might as well just throw it out there, because eventually I’m going to say it and we’re lying here in the dark with nothing better to do. Okay, there are lots of better things we could do, but I’m not quite ready to do them. “You knew that Tess and I had gone back in time, didn’t you?”

  He’s silent for long enough that I actually peek over the side of the bed to see if he’s been stricken mute or suddenly disappeared or something. Moonlight is filtering through the thin curtains at my window, the angle of light casting part of his face in shadow. He looks up at me. A muscle in his jaw tightens, just slightly.

  “I knew when you were gone, yes. I knew that you were being pulled away. And that I wasn’t there to stop it.”

  He sighs through his nose. So what does this mean? That he still feels responsible for everything that happens to me? That’s sweet. Romantic even. But misguided.

  He may have set things in motion that day we collided with one another at school and the spark of power sizzled through me. But I’m over blaming it on him. Way over. It’s my destiny. Not his. But now there’s this.

  “Like felt it?” I ask, and my stomach knots just the tiniest bit. “Or really knew? ’Cause I heard you in my head. Or at least I thought I did. You were telling me to—”

  “I told you to wait. That I needed to be with you.”

  As if we’re still on the same tightly connected wavelength, we both sit up—me in my bed, him on the floor. Somehow this makes me even more conscious of how close he is. That it’s after midnight and we’re in my room. Together.

  And both aware that we’ve been linked to each other since the beginning. Been in each other’s dreams. Felt each other’s emotions to some extent. But what’s happening to us this time is different. It’s more specific and more intense.

  Intense enough that I ask, “So, um, is this the first time that this has happened for you? I mean with me, I guess.”

  Ethan laughs. “As opposed to what? The hundred other girls chosen to save Anastasia from Baba Yaga?”

  I hang over the bed and invade his personal space. “It’s not funny,” I whisper. “Doesn’t this freak you out? Me reading your thoughts and you reading mine? And when will this occur? All the time? Or just in certain situations? Because let me just say that of all the superpowers I could ever wish for, knowing what someone else is thinking is totally not one of them. I think all sorts of crap that I don’t want anyone to know. Don’t you?”

  In my stomach, the tiny knot blossoms. Can he read my mind all the time? Or only when I’m in danger? And as I seem to be in danger most of the time, what does this mean? Plus, how long has he been sneaking peeks into my head? Only this time? Or has he been entering my brain at will? Like just now during the whole “Where are we going to sleep?” conversation—did he catch me wondering about what it would be like if we both shared my bed? All the stuff I tell Tess—has he been listening in?

  And what about Ben, who Ethan is fully aware I still talk to? Is Ethan somehow tuning in to that too? That stupid moment after coffee when I kissed Ben, a reflex kiss really, did Ethan see that in his head? Or worse, feel it? The creeper possibilities are endless.

  Annoyance and nerves do a jittery dance inside me, and because I don’t know how to make them go away, I kick off the covers and plop down on the floor next to Ethan. He startles a little—like he’s part surprised and part not.

  “Have you?” I say, continuing my runaway train of thought.

  “Have I what?”

  “Been spying on my brain this whole time?” Does this explain what I felt at Wrigley Field too—that weird sense that Ethan has powers different from what he had before?

  “No.” He sounds indignant that I’d even suggest it. “But it was distinct. I heard you. I sensed you. I didn’t see you, exactly. But it was almost like that. I just, well, knew.”

  He shifts toward me and cups his hands gently around my face. My nerve endings give a pleasant little shiver. “What about you?” he asks. “Have you been reading my thoughts?”

  The question throws me. Have I? I know it’s not something that’s come consciously. “No,” I tell him. “Not like this.”

  “Then like what?” Ethan eases closer, traces his fingers in light circles down the small of my back. It is a highly distracting move.

  I fumble for the right words. “Since that first day at school,” I say, “there’s always been something. We both know that. But since we came back from Baba Yaga’s forest this second time, it’s intensified. Not just feelings or images. This time I heard words. Whole sentences. It’s so much more specific.”

  Knowing what someone else—what Ethan—is feeling, thinking—it unsettles me. Like right now, does he sense that there’s a piece of my brain registering the presence of his hands on my back? They feel warm and solid, both sexy and comforting.

  “Don’t be scared,” Ethan says. His hands stop circling and rest low against my back—a nice pressure. “I’m here.”

  His words make my worry spill out. “But doesn’t it bother you? Me being able to look into your head? What if you have stuff you don’t want me to know about?”

  It’s just barely a breath, but I hear Ethan hesitate. “Everyone has secrets, Anne. I’ve been around a while. I suppose I’ve got more than my share.”

  “Secrets you want to tell me?” Ones I want to hear?

  He eases back to look at me. Raises one dark eyebrow, his face still half-shadowed in a slice of moonlight. “Then they wouldn’t be secrets, would they? But even then—I trust you.”

  Do I hear hesitation in his voice again? Maybe it’s just my imagination.

  “Come here.” He pulls me tight against him, kisses my mouth. I don’t have to be a mind reader to realize that he’s done talking. My own thoughts vanish—other than a fleeting idea that possibly he’s seducing me, and that I’m good with that. Or maybe he really does have secrets and figures if he distracts me enough, I’ll forget about mind-melding and just let him have his way with me.

  Which is totally working until just as I kiss him back and our tongues touch and every nerve ending in my body sets itself on fire, I do see into his mind. Or maybe he’s seeing into mine. At this particular second, it’s impossible to tell the difference.

  I just know that he’s in my head—that skinny little boy he used to be, with those huge blue eyes watching his father die.

  “Anne,” Ethan says. “Do you—”

  “Shh,” I tell him. “It’ll fade.” I mean the vision, not the kiss.

  Bad vision. Shoo. I want to be in the present, not the past. I scoot into Ethan’s lap and wrap my legs around him. He smells insanely good. Take that, you stupid vision.

  For a second it even works. My senses shift into overdrive—the smoothness of his skin, the firmness of his muscles, the thick, wavy texture of his hair. The blue of his eyes, wide open and watching me. He skims his hands up my back and his thumbs graze my sides. Oh crap, that feels good. He nuzzles my neck, presses tiny little kisses along my jaw. My body has never be
en so happy.

  Another image flashes, as bright and real as if it were in the room and not just in my head.

  “Shit.” Pressed against me still, Ethan freezes.

  I suck in a breath. Narrow my eyes. “You’re kissing me and thinking about someone else?”

  “No. I—”

  “Well, she’s not in my memory bank.” In our mutual heads, the girl with the long dark hair smiles. I scoot away from him. This particular peek into his brain is a definite buzz kill.

  Dark-haired girl is not alone. Ethan, dressed in dark wool pants that belt at the waist and a silky cream-colored shirt, is holding her hand. His hair is still thick and longish, but it’s slicked back somehow. He looks, well, smitten. Fabulous.

  In our heads, he kisses her.

  Seriously? Out. Out. Out.

  I squeeze my eyes closed. And when that doesn’t work, I dive back into my bed and pull the covers over my head.

  “Anne,” Ethan says. He sits down on the side of my bed. I shove him off and he hits the floor with a thud.

  “Don’t say a word,” I tell him from under the covers while the Ethan in my head strokes the girl’s hair. “Unless it’s a suggestion about how we get this to stop. Because I am completely grossed out right now.”

  “Tasha,” he says. And then I remember. Tasha. The girl he told me about. The one he’d loved. The Russian girl living in London who he left when she realized that he wasn’t aging. That month after month while she got older, he was staying the same.

  I peek out from under the comforter. The Ethan in my head kisses Tasha again. “I love you,” he tells her.

  Three words that neither of us has spoken to the other. Will we? Do we? Hard to say when I’m stuck in a brain loop watching him make out with someone else.

  “Am I causing this?” I ask him, trying to look just at him and not at the images in my head but failing miserably. “Is it us together? Something else?”

  Ethan’s forehead wrinkles. Maybe that’s why we’re together—both clueless. Things finally get romantic between us, and suddenly he’s sucking face with another girl in my head—and neither of us can figure out why.

  “I have a surprise,” Head Ethan tells Tasha. Her eyes widen and she smiles at him. “I’m taking you to the ballet. A friend of mine gave me the tickets.”

  “Friend?” She smiles again, but I see true curiosity in her eyes. “You’ve never introduced me to your friends. I’d love to meet them.”

  “Not them,” he tells her. “Just one. His name is Viktor.”

  “Is this Viktor as mysterious as you?” Dark-haired Tasha laughs. “Because you are still quite the mystery, my darling.”

  “Darling? She called you darling?” Comforter wrapped around me, I slide out of bed again. I step to face Ethan as if somehow closing the distance will stop the vision. It doesn’t. Even in the darkened room, I can see him blush, a hint of red that spreads up his neck to his jaw.

  “We were in love.”

  I nod like I get it, which basically I do. In my head, after all, it’s still the Jazz Age. It’s not like he was cheating on me with her.

  “You’ll have to judge for yourself,” Head Ethan tells Tasha. “At the ballet.”

  “I will indeed,” Tasha tells him. “But I’m certain I’ll adore him. He’s a chum of yours. I trust he’ll be quite wonderful.”

  Wow. She is so going to be disappointed.

  My Ethan places a hand on my arm. His eyes are distant, like he’s trying to remember something. “Is that how it was?”

  “I don’t know,” I snark. “You were there, not me.”

  The Ethan in my head smiles at Tasha. But I can see that he looks a little uncertain. So possibly he wasn’t totally in the dark about Viktor. Or maybe that Ethan wanted to keep the Tasha thing a secret. I look over at him to confirm any of these ideas, but he’s still lost in what we’re seeing.

  “It’s Giselle,” past Ethan says. “Not as good as the Bolshoi version, I suppose, but I think you will enjoy it.”

  Tasha laughs. “We’re in London, Ethan. Not Moscow. This is why we talk in English, no? To, what is the word? Adjust. We’ll have to manage. I like it here. The English are not Russians. They take their tea with milk, and their language—it doesn’t have quite the passion we are used to, yes? But I can play Rachmaninoff and Liszt and Chopin, and I can teach. It is not so good in Russia anymore. Not since the Revolution. You know it. I know it. And I would imagine your friend Viktor knows it too. He is Russian too, yes? You have not said. But he must be, if he wants to join us. Giselle is so delightfully tragic.”

  “Da. Yes. He is one of us. An acquaintance.” He kisses her on the forehead again, and it feels weird to watch them together like it’s real time even though it’s totally in the past. His lips press against her skin, and my own forehead tingles in response. Is that even possible? How can I feel what she’s feeling when she’s not exactly real?

  Tasha smiles at her version of Ethan. “This is what you always do, dearest, isn’t it? You distract me with kisses when I want to get serious. But you—you are always serious underneath, yes? Something sad, I think. Something you want to say but never do. So this Viktor—did you know him back home?”

  Tasha waits for her Ethan to answer the question while my Ethan and I stand eyeball to eyeball, linked to this memory or vision or whatever it is of the past. His past. Tasha’s past. A past that I’m suddenly feeling like it’s my own.

  Tasha’s Ethan nods and looks sort of miserable, which makes total sense since he’s explained to me that he never did tell her. He had this huge secret—about being immortal and having pledged to save Anastasia and being part of Viktor’s secret Brotherhood—that he didn’t ever share with her. How would I feel about that, I wonder? I think I know Ethan. But do I? Has he changed since then? If he had that moment to do over, would he react the same way? Or would he still keep his secrets?

  “A family friend,” Tasha’s Ethan says. “I’ve known him since I was a boy.”

  “Ah,” Tasha says. “Well, then. I know I will adore him. And he can tell me stories about you.” She laughs again and smiles broadly. Her teeth are straight and even. She looks stunning and perfect in a way that I’ve never been and probably never will be. “I would imagine that you were a lovely little boy. So serious and earnest.”

  She grins when Ethan in the past looks sort of embarrassed. “See? I am right, am I not? My earnest young man.”

  Both Ethans—the one in my room and the one in my head—look uncomfortable.

  “Is this how you remember it?” I ask my Ethan as I try to get the vision to go away. It’s like whispering to someone at the movies. The images and sounds keep playing in the background.

  Ethan shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know. It was a long time ago.”

  That’s not enough of an answer, and I think we both know it. Ethan in my head hooks his arm with Tasha’s, and like when he’d kissed her, my own arm feels the pressure of his muscles—a phantom arm pressed against mine.

  And as he moves with her, the shift happens. Not quick and dizzying like what happened when Tess and I were sucked into the Russian past. This time the change is more gradual.

  “Do you feel that,” I begin. “Ethan. Do you—”

  “Yes. Are you—”

  This is all we manage. Two half-completed sentences. Two half-completed thoughts.

  One final thought comes to me: if I’m going somewhere, I’m not going in my bare feet.

  “Shoes!” I say and shove my feet into the only thing available—a pair of rhinestone-studded flip-flops that Tess gave me for my birthday.

  Ethan stumbles into his sandals and grips me tightly. I link my arms around his neck.

  We’re pulled half in and half out of both worlds. For a few strange moments it’s like standing on the
Continental Divide—one foot in my room, the other in London in Ethan’s past. We waver there, and the room shimmers and bends. There’s an Ethan holding me and an Ethan in front of me, and I wonder for one brief hysterical second if maybe they’ll multiply and there’ll be thousands of Ethans in thousands of moments, like one of those fun-house sets of mirrors you see in scary movies.

  I try to stop it, and I think Ethan tries to stop it too, but it’s like trying to get the wind to stop blowing. I have powerful magic inside me, but still I’m dragged backward. And there’s a flash of understanding that maybe I have to do this. That whatever is about to happen in the past with Ethan and his friend Tasha is something I—we—need to witness.

  Like before, the world bends and contracts and folds. Nausea rises in my throat. Even this slower pull makes me dizzy, anxious. My room tilts. Or maybe it’s me and Ethan tilting.

  I blow out a steadying breath. And let what’s happening happen.

  London, 1926

  Tasha’s Music Studio, Evening Maybe Wednesday, Maybe Not

  Ethan

  My science education has been mostly self-taught. I have little knowledge of the time-space continuum. But I know magic when I see it. Even with that, I’m not prepared for how strange it feels to stand here—not in a dream, but in what can only be described as real time—watching myself with Tasha.

  Can they see us? They don’t seem to. I clear my throat loudly. Next to me, Anne startles. But Tasha and my past self don’t react.

  “Well, that’s good,” Anne whispers. “I mean, I guess so. It’s like with me and Tess. All those crazy Cossacks just rode right by us like we weren’t even—Wait. That’s not exactly right. The Cossacks didn’t see us. And your father didn’t see us. But for one second, you saw me. I know you did.”

  “Well, let’s hope that this version of me isn’t that observant,” I say.