Everwild (The Skinjacker Trilogy)

by Neal Shusterman

  Then came the blessed sound of a phone ringing.

  "I should get that," Allie's mother said, a little coolly. "Leave the glass, I'll take care of it."

  She crossed the room to pick up the phone, while Allie buried her face in her hands.

  Stay out of this! she silently told the cat woman. You'll get your stupid body back!

  --Who are you? What do you want from me?--

  It's not your business! Allie bore down and pushed her deep again.

  Her mother was on the phone now. Allie now sat on her shaking hands, and forced a fake smile as her mother turned back to her.

  "Yes ... I see ..." her mother said into the phone. "Is that so? ... Don't worry, I'll take care of it... . I said don't worry ... I know ... me, too."

  She hung up, and came back toward Allie, but she didn't sit down. "That was my husband," she said. "He just got off the phone with Sarah Wintuck, who's still teaching fourth grade in Cape May, New Jersey."

  The slippery ice beneath Allie's feet became the edge of a glacier calving into the sea. She was in freefall now, and deep inside her the cat woman was screaming to be released.

  "I don't know who you are, but I want you to leave," her mother said coldly.

  "I ... I just ..." But what could she say? What could

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  she tell her that would make any sense? "I have a message from your daughter!"

  The hatred in her mother's eyes was so potent, Allie had to look away. "I want you out of my house!" she said. "Now!" And she didn't wait for her to leave. She grabbed Allie by her skinny cat woman arm, and pulled her toward the door. In a moment she was over the threshold again, outside the door, about to be hurled out of her parents' lives.

  "Please!" Allie said.

  "Help me!" shouted the cat woman.

  "You think I don't know about you people!" said her mother. "You prey on people's hopes, telling them what they want to hear, and then you rob them blind! Well, you picked the wrong family to scam!"

  Her mother's hand was on the door, ready to slam it, and Allie couldn't allow that. She had to say something to make her understand.

  "They were arguing about the radio!"

  And it stopped her mother cold. "What did you say?"

  "When the accident happened, they were arguing about the radio--he turned it down, and she turned it back up. But it wasn't his fault! She wants you both to know that the accident wasn't his fault!"

  Her mother's expression went from shock to horror to fury in the span of a single second, and then she said in a voice lethal with venom, "Whoever you are, I hope you rot in hell!" She slammed the door so hard it almost broke the jamb, and Allie could hear her bursting into tears on the other side.

  Allie ran from the house, tears filling her own eyes, her

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  whole body shaking, the cat woman fighting to get out, and there was a pain deep in her back, spreading down her arms.

  This wasn't the way it was supposed to happen. She was supposed to bring comfort to her parents, not anguish.

  --Let me go!-- screamed the cat woman, and Allie refused, taking out all her anger on her. If the woman had only stayed asleep--if she had only stayed quiet, Allie would have talked her way out of this. Things would have gone differently if she didn't have to fight the cat woman for control.

  This is your fault!Allie screamed in her thoughts as she ran. You couldn't just let me do this! You couldn't just let it be! They were on a busy street now--a commercial street full of shops restaurants and cars. Plenty of people to skinjack. Allie tried to peel out, disgusted with the cat woman and her body--but she couldn't do it. She tugged and twisted, but it was as if she was glued to the cat woman's frame. She had stayed inside her too long!

  --Get out of me!--

  I'm trying!

  The pain in her back was moving to her chest. It was intense, and it was hard to breathe. She shouldn't have run so fast. Not in this body. It suddenly dawned on her that the cat woman was having a heart attack--Allie had given her a heart attack, and now she was stuck with her in this feeble failing body!

  --what have you done to me?-- the cat woman wailed.

  It wasn't supposed to happen this way.

  She stumbled in the front door of a restaurant.

  --what have you done?--

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  Shut up! I'll get us out of this, Allie told her.

  The maître d' looked at her in alarm. "Help me!" she said. It was all she could do to get the words out. "Heart." Restaurants did have emergency kits, didn't they?

  The Maitre d' looked like a deer in headlights, then he glanced down at his reservation book as if the solution might be written there. He was useless.

  Allie, with pain getting worse by the second, and darkness closing in around her, spied an electrical outlet on the wall. They used electricity to restart a failing heart, right? She grabbed a knife from a table, crumbled to her knees, and shoved the tip of the knife into the socket.

  The electric shock sent Allie flying. She seemed to burst apart in all directions, and pull back together a dozen yards away. She fell to the ground and began to sink into the living world. She was herself again, and back in Everlost!

  She stood, and turned to the cat woman being helped up to a sitting position. She looked bad, but not as bad as Allie thought she would. A waiter took her pulse, and seemed satisfied. Silverware in a socket wasn't the best way to jumpstart a heart, but at least it had worked.

  "She stole me," the cat woman muttered. "She stole me... ."

  "Just relax," the waiter said. "You're going to be fine."

  Half the people in the restaurant had already dialed 911, and the wail of an approaching ambulance could already be heard. It was out of her hands now, so she soul-surfed out of the restaurant, into a passing car, then another, then another, and didn't stop until she was miles away.

  * * *

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  The joy of seeing her mother should have been enough to take away the sting of her reaction. After all, how could her mother react any other way? How could she trust a strange woman who had not only lied to her about her identity, but seemed to know secrets that no one but Allie could have known? Of course she would have been horrified!

  But that didn't make it hurt any less. The fact that she had nearly killed a woman barely even registered in Allie's mind. All that mattered to her was home. She still hadn't seen her father--but she knew this craving for home was even deeper than that, because, like skinjacking itself, a little taste of home was not enough. Against all reason, she hungered for it. She needed more than just closure, she needed connection. Coming here was a mistake, but now that she had opened this Pandora's box, it couldn't be closed. The only way to close the lid was to step inside and pull the lid down like the lid of a coffin.

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  CHAPTER 27 Skinjacker's Lullaby

  That night, Allie fell to what may have been the lowest point of her afterlife when she skinjacked a seven-year-old boy at one in the morning.

  It had to be someone lighter and more nimble than her, because the only way into her parents' new home was to climb in through an upstairs window. She didn't know what she would do once she got in, all she knew was that she had to get in, and keep getting in until she could make her parents understand that she was not gone, she was right here, and wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon.

  There was a tree in the front yard, and open windows upstairs. Her parents always kept the upstairs windows open on summer nights. The tree was a live oak--a knobby thing, with a double trunk full of random twisting limbs. It was a climbing tree--and although the limb leaning closest to the house was a slim one, Allie reasoned that a child who weighed less than fifty pounds wouldn't break the limb.

  She trespassed in neighborhood homes, and finally found the perfect specimen a few blocks away. She didn't have to put the boy to sleep, because he was already in the

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  deep kind of slumber that only young children can
reach. She easily seized control, slipped on a pair of velcro SpiderMan shoes, and went downstairs and out into the night.

  The moon was a scant sliver in the sky, a scimitar edge that seemed to slice the clouds that crossed its path. The streets were deserted, and no lights were on in Allie's parents' house. This boy was no stranger to climbing trees. Allie knew it the second she scuttled up the trunk. She relied on the boy's muscle memory to take her higher until she was on the branch that stretched toward the house and the open upstairs window. She climbed out toward the edge of the branch, and just as she reached toward the window the branch began to break.

  Allie gripped on to the window ledge for all she was worth, and the boy hit the side of the house with a thunk. Had she been in her own body, she would not have been able to cling to the ledge, but there's a reason why small children can climb to high places. His body was so light, she was able to pull herself up, then, holding on with one hand, she thrust the other through the window screen, and tore the screen loose. It tumbled down into the yard, and Allie hauled herself through the window, into a bedroom.

  By now a light had come on in the hallway--she could see it underneath the closed door--and she heard footsteps moving hurriedly toward the room, so she scrambled underneath the bed just as the door opened. From under the bed, she could see two bare feet entering the room. The feet of a man. Her father. He flicked on a light and the room around the bed became much too bright for comfort. Allie pulled herself as deep under the bed as she could get. Although

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  Allie was wildly out of breath, and spiked with adrenaline, she slowed her breathing to make it as quiet as possible, and she watched her father's feet as he moved around the bed to the window. Allie could feel the boy's heart beating as far up as her eyeballs now, making her vision blurred and veiny with each beat.

  "What was it?" said her mother, who was now standing at the threshold.

  "Nothing," her father said. "The tree knocked down a window screen, that's all."

  "I told you we should have had it trimmed." Then she added, "Are you sure that's all it was?"

  "Come look for yourself."

  Her mother crossed to the window. Allie heard the window being pulled closed. "I'm sorry," her mother said. "After that woman today, I'm a little spooked."

  "There are crazies everywhere. But if it'll make you feel better, I'll see about getting that alarm system."

  Her parents left the room, turning off the lights and closing the door. In a few moments Allie heard the complaint of springs as they climbed back into bed. Allie remained frozen for ten minutes, just in case they decided to come back in. Then finally she came out from under the bed and looked around. With nothing but a distant streetlight shining through the curtains, everything was cast in shades of gray. Even so, Allie recognized exactly what this room was.

  This was her bedroom.

  Or at least the Memphis version of it. It had been her bed she was hiding under, with her covers spread across it. There was the desk where she had once labored over

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  homework, and on the walls were posters of bands whose music she hadn't heard for three years. It was like a museum. A shrine to her memory. What on earth had possessed her parents to do this? It would be one thing to keep her room in the old house, but to recreate it here? She didn't know what to think.

  She reached out and took a teddy bear from a shelf. Allie secretly loved fluffy things, but being a nonfluffy girl, she never kept her stuffed animals the way nature intended; she always tweaked them somehow. This one was "Winnie the Punk," with Sharpie-drawn tattoos on his fur, and a safety pin through his eyebrow. The bear seemed larger than she remembered, but then she realized that it wasn't larger, she was just in a smaller body.

  Allie clutched the bear to her chest, and felt herself becoming emotional. She blamed it on the boy's physiology-- after all, little kids are quick to turn on the waterworks--but who was she kidding? These tears were all hers. She sat down, and let the tears flow gently and quietly.

  Why had she come back here? Did she really think she could just walk into her parents house in the body of this boy, and talk to them? And yet she was already angling on ways to return tomorrow--perhaps in the body of someone selling alarm systems. Would that be her life now? Returning each day in a different body, pretending to be someone else, just so she could be near her parents?

  She curled up on the bed clutching the bear--a remnant of a life that was lost. Then something happened that she wasn't expecting. She should have realized it could happen, because, after all, it was the middle of the night, and she was

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  in the body of a small, exhausted child. As she held tightly on to the bear, her thoughts began to swim together, and in an instant, without warning, Allie fell asleep.

  Allie awoke at 7:45 in the morning.

  Unfortunately the boy she was skinjacking had woken up at 7:41. It's amazing what can happen within the span of four minutes.

  "It's all right, don't worry--it will all be all right. We'll get you back home."

  It was her mother's voice. She was in her mother's arms. They were rocking back and forth. She was out of breath, her vision was blurry, her chest was heaving, and a God-awful wailing sound was coming out of her. Allie's whole body was shivering with the force of her own sobs. What was going on here? Where was she? Who was she?

  "I wanna go home," she heard a child's voice say. It was all nasal and stuffy so it came out "I wadda go hobe." Then she realized it was her own mouth speaking those words. All at once it came back to her--she was in the body of a boy she had skinjacked. She was in her parents' home, in her own room. Her mother was holding her, her father was standing nearby, phone in hand.

  "I wadda go hobe!" the boy wailed again--he had no idea how he had gotten here. Then Allie realized a moment too late that she wasn't hiding behind his consciousness-- she was out there in the open, right in the middle of his mind. Now that she was awake, the boy knew she was there, and he screamed in terror.

  "Who are you?" the boy wailed. "Go away! Go away!

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  Get out of here!" Allie's mother backed off, thinking he was talking to her. "I don't want you here! Get out of me!"

  This was a bad situation that was only getting worse. The best Allie could hope for now was damage control. She struggled to seize the boy's body, and send him back to dreamland, but now that he knew she was there, he didn't go easily. He went kicking and screaming all the way, until finally his thoughts fell in upon themselves and he was unconscious.

  Allie was in control, but the boy's body was still full of fear and heaving with sobs. She looked to her father who was holding the phone in one hand, and in his other hand ... in his other hand ...

  ... he had no other hand.

  His left arm now ended just past the elbow. As Allie tried to process this, she saw that his left hand was shifting the phone in his palm, preparing to dial with his thumb. He was poised over the 9 button.

  Calling 911 was definitely not part of Allie's damage control.

  "You're calling the police?" Allie screeched, using the boy's wild state to her advantage. "I don't want the police! I don't I don't I don't!" She screamed as loudly as she could, and her father looked helpless.

  "Put down the phone, Adam!" her mother ordered.

  "All right, all right!" He dropped it on the desk like it was about to explode. "There, I've put it down."

  Allie stopped screaming, and took a minute to calm the boy's body down, allowing her mother to hold her. Allie hugged her back, and took more comfort from it than her

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  mother could possibly know. The convulsive sobs eased until they were nothing more than shallow sniffles. "Can you tell us your name?" Allie's father asked.

  Allie did know his name, because if there's one thing that little kids fill every thought with, it's their identity.

  "Danny," she said. "Danny Rozelli."

  "Well, Danny," said Allie's m
om, "I think you did a little bit of sleepwalking last night."

  "Yeah," said Allie, "sleepwalking, yeah." She was always impressed by her mother's ability to be logical against all reason.

  "Could you tell us where you live?" Allie's father asked.

  She knew where Danny Rozelli lived, but wasn't ready to share that information, so she shook her head, and said, "Something street."

  Her parents sighed in unison.

  Allie looked at the stump of her father's arm. There were indentations in the skin that must have been from a prosthetic arm, but of course he hadn't had time to put it on before finding little Danny Rozelli screaming in their dead daughter's bed.

  "How'd that happen?" Allie asked, realizing that a seven-year-old's lack of tact was an asset now.

  Her father hesitated for a moment, then he said, "Car accident."

  "Ouch."

  "Yeah. Ouch."

  Her father also had a scar on his forehead and cheek. So the accident had taken his right arm, and left him with scars. None of it was pleasant, but it could have been a whole lot

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  worse. Then again, it was worse, because they had also lost a daughter.

  Allie longed to tell them that they hadn't lost her at all-- that she was right here in front of them, but she couldn't find a way to do that as the cat woman, and she couldn't as Danny Rozelli, either.

  "Do you know your phone number, at least?" her mother asked. "We really should let someone know you're here-- your parents must be worried sick."

  Allie didn't have much sympathy for parents who would eventually get their child back. She didn't know the number anyway, and that was fine. She was finally here with her own parents, and they were treating her with love and kindness. This was the closest thing she might ever have to true family time with them.