Everneath

by Ashton, Brodi

  He took a deep breath and finally looked at my face, and his expression softened. “Jules and I agreed to come here together. Months ago.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “I think you two are a great couple.”

  He shook his head. “We’re not together, Becks. We…” His voice trailed off, and he didn’t finish the sentence.

  Even if they weren’t together, there was obviously a strong connection between them. “Whatever it is, I’m glad you have each other.”

  He leaned his forehead down, so it was almost touching my own. “What am I going to do about you, Becks? You’ve got me all twisted inside.” He glanced down at my hand resting on his shoulder, and he seemed to get sidetracked. “We were here last year.”

  “I remember,” I said.

  He leaned closer and whispered, “Where will we be next year?”

  I couldn’t answer. I knew exactly where I’d be.

  Right then something changed in the room. Cole’s song had transformed from a soft lullaby to a harder, louder song. The change was infinitesimal, but I was so familiar with Cole’s music that I could pinpoint the fulcrum note upon which the two melodies balanced, just before the softer one gave way to the louder one.

  Raised voices from right next to us made me turn. Claire White and Matt Despain, who had been dancing nearby, were having a heated discussion. They were still in each other’s arms, but their angry voices carried over the music.

  The mood on the dance floor had changed, and somehow, I knew Cole had something to do with it.

  I turned back toward Jack, and his face was different. His lips pressed together in a tight line, and his back was ramrod straight. Whatever Cole was doing to the air, it was affecting Jack. “If you’re gonna leave, I wish you’d just leave.”

  I flinched. “What?”

  “Why do you keep coming back if you’re not going to stay?” The hand that held mine tightened its grip, and my fingers turned white. “Because even when you’re gone, you’re never really gone.”

  I could feel his hot breath on my face.

  “Whatever it is that’s got a pull on you—and taking you away—it’s strong. Stronger than any of us here. I can tell. And I won’t get over it if you keep coming back.”

  I couldn’t believe what he was saying. “Jack, I—”

  “No. Losing you once was hard enough. And now you’re here again and everything’s coming back. I’m going to get screwed. And I can’t do it again. And the people around me can’t watch me do it again.”

  My eyes were burning, and I started blinking rapidly, so what happened next was a blur. A few feet away from us, Noah White, Claire’s brother, struck Matt Despain, sending him flying into Jack and throwing all three of us to the ground.

  Jack shoved Matt aside and helped me up, and that’s when I noticed we weren’t the only ones having a heated exchange.

  Noah stood over Matt. “You’re not getting near my sister again.” He kicked Matt before he walked away. I’d never known Noah to be violent.

  I wondered where the adult chaperones were, or any spectators for that matter, but the entire farmhouse was in an uproar. Couples yelling at each other. Girls stomping off the dance floor. The punch bowl crashed to the floor and red juice splashed everywhere, running along the grains in the hardwood.

  And above all the racket, Cole’s song continued, the strings of his guitar screeching.

  I whipped to face him. Cole’s face had drained of color, and his eyes were closed. He staggered for a moment before he sank to one knee, as if he were about to faint.

  By then half the people had filed out of the farmhouse, some still yelling insults at each other. The others were gathering their things to go. Joy O’Leary walked by me, stunned, one sleeve of her dress torn and hanging off her shoulder.

  I turned around. Jack was ushering Jules off the dance floor and out the door. I was alone in the middle of it all.

  In a matter of minutes, the farmhouse was almost cleared out. A few of the chaperones were left, wandering the room and muttering questions about the strange turn of events. The dance floor, which had looked magical only minutes before, now looked trashed and broken.

  Cole sat on the stage, his legs dangling over the side, his head in his hands. I stomped over to him, and in a loud whisper I said, “What the hell was that?”

  He acted like he didn’t hear me. His back was trembling.

  I lowered my voice. “Answer me, Cole.”

  Nothing.

  “Answer me!” I shoved his shoulder, and he toppled over onto his side, his head cracking down on the wooden stage floor. His eyes fluttered. He didn’t look good.

  “Cole!” I felt his forehead and cheek. I was expecting a fever, but instead his cheek felt cold. I slapped his cheek softly a few times, trying to rouse him.

  “I’m sorry, Nik,” he mumbled, his words slurring together as if he’d been drinking.

  “What happened? What’s wrong with you?”

  He tried to turn his head away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I forced his head toward me. “You don’t get off that easily. Somehow, I’m pretty sure you were at the center of that big brawl. Tell me what happened.”

  “Sometimes…” He paused and squeezed his eyes shut. “Sometimes our hearts … crack a little.”

  He went quiet again. A couple of sophomore girls had wandered back into the farmhouse and were hovering behind me. One of them had Cole’s CD in her hands.

  “Can we get an autograph?” the one with the CD asked me tentatively, as if I were Cole’s handler. Cole moaned softly, closing his eyes again. Were these girls blind?

  I shifted so I was blocking their view of Cole. “Now’s obviously not a good time.”

  “But—” The same girl started forward.

  “You can go,” I said more forcefully.

  The girl frowned. “Fine,” she said. She and her friend left in a huff.

  I looked at Cole. “Your fans are idiots.”

  A weak smile played on his lips and quickly disappeared. I spotted a tub of bottled water, and I grabbed one for Cole and brought it to his mouth.

  “Here. Drink.”

  He took a few sips, and it seemed to help. He opened his eyes, and some color came back to his face.

  “Talk,” I said.

  He sniffed and rolled onto his back, staring at the lights above the stage. “It’s not a big deal…” He paused and took a breath. “Sometimes, when something hurts us, our hearts break a little—in a slightly more … literal way than for humans. Our pain sort of spills out and onto anyone around us. We call it a cracked heart.”

  I sat next to him and used the sleeve of my dress to wipe away some of the sweat on his forehead. He was making it hard not to pity him. “Why did it happen to you?”

  He looked at me. “Because you were dancing with Jack. And I know how that’s going to end.”

  “How do you think it will end?” I said quietly.

  He frowned. “You know how. Anyone can see this. When it comes to you and Jack, there is no happy ending. To expect otherwise is delusional.”

  He closed his eyes again, and I thought about leaving him here, but one of the chaperones came over to see if Cole needed medical attention.

  “No, I’m pretty sure he’s fine,” I said.

  Cole nodded in agreement.

  The chaperone, one of the gym teachers, whose name I didn’t know, asked, “You’ll make sure he gets home okay?”

  I took a deep breath and looked at Cole. He was the cause of all my pain. But maybe that wasn’t exactly true.

  Despite all the other factors that had contributed to my fate, in the end it was my decision that destroyed my life. And all the hurt I was enduring now was my doing.

  The blame rested solely with me.

  “Yes, I’ll make sure.”

  When I dropped him off at his condo, I reminded him of the deal we’d made—that he would never come to my house again.

  He sa
id he’d keep his word.

  As I drove home, I thought about what had happened, and came up with two conclusions. First, Cole was clearly trying to convince me he had feelings for me. Whether or not it was true, I didn’t know. But it was vital to him that I believe it.

  Second, even in total exhaustion, Cole was telling me to stay away from Jack. He’d caused the disaster at the dance just because I was dancing with Jack. But why?

  Why was Cole so freaked out about me being close to Jack? Did he really think Jack could ever fall for me again? And so what if he did? That wouldn’t change my fate. I’d still be stuck in the Tunnels. It would just make it harder for me. Not Cole. If it were anyone else, I’d say he was jealous. But that would mean Cole had real feelings for me, and that was impossible.

  I didn’t know how to find out the truth to conclusion number one, but I had a plan for the second, and that was to do the one thing Cole feared the most.

  I parked the car in my driveway, went inside, said a quick good night to my dad so he wouldn’t be worried, and then sneaked out through my bedroom window.

  I’d go to Jack. Maybe I wouldn’t tell him everything, but I’d tell him enough for him to understand what was going on. It would be a gamble, and it might drive Jack further away, but I had to take the chance so I could incite a reaction out of Cole by doing the one thing he’d never expect.

  EIGHTEEN

  NOW

  Walking. Two months, one week left.

  The freezing-cold air didn’t make a dent in my resolve—my anxiety over what I was about to do was enough to keep me warm through and through. Jack’s house was only a few blocks away. The white picket fence at the Boltons’ house marked the exact middle point between our houses. We knew because we’d measured the distance one time when I was about eleven years old. We both left our houses at the same time, and walked until we met up.

  I ran my fingertips along the fence as I passed the halfway point. Jack always said it wasn’t perfectly halfway. He claimed he walked faster, and so it was a longer distance from the Bolton home to the Caputos’.

  But when I reached Jack’s house, it felt like no time had passed at all. Jack’s house, like most of the homes in our development, had a similar floor plan to mine—three bedrooms and two bathrooms on the main floor. Jack had the room on the corner, facing the street. I hoped he hadn’t changed it since I’d left.

  I tiptoed through the bushes and put my hand up to the glass as I peeked in. I caught just a glimpse before my breath fogged the view, but that was all I needed. Jack’s backpack was hanging on the doorknob of the closet.

  He was in bed, asleep. For a moment, I thought about turning back, but I didn’t.

  I held my breath as I tugged on the window. It gave. Jack had one of those older windows that opened outward like a door. The latch had been broken for years.

  I slipped through. Jack shifted in his bed in the corner of the room, but he didn’t wake. I watched him sleeping for a minute. I focused on his breathing. The air leaving his body. The soft fluttering of his eyelids as he dreamed. His legs jerked a couple of times.

  Running. I was pretty sure he was dreaming of running. Escaping something. The panic rolled off his skin in waves. I could taste it.

  Maybe I was just imagining his fear. Maybe I needed it to give me the okay to wake him. I stayed as far away from his bed as his small room allowed. If he didn’t move when I said his name once, I’d leave.

  “Jack,” I whispered.

  He stirred and then rolled over, shaking off the sleep.

  “Jack.” This time he shot into a sitting position, his hands flying to the nightstand where he kept his glasses. He didn’t turn the light on.

  “Becks?” he said. “That you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m dreaming.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “No.”

  For a person who’d just discovered an intruder, Jack didn’t seem as surprised as he should have been.

  He tilted his head. “I used to dream of you like this. After you disappeared, it was like you came to my room every night…” His voice faded as he lowered his head and ran a hand through his hair. “Stupid,” he muttered, so quietly I couldn’t be sure he’d said it. Then he reached over to his nightstand again and turned the clock to get a glance. “Two thirty,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  We were quiet for a few moments after that. He didn’t ask what I was doing there. He didn’t look upset. He just waited.

  If I was going to tell him anything, it would be in this room. But now that I was here, I had no idea where to start. How to begin.

  I glanced around the room I used to know so well. I recognized his clutter. The picture on top of his dresser of Jack as a ten-year-old, standing next to his grandpa. Behind them, a ranch house. His grandpa had been one of the last of the old-West cowboys, a relic of the history of our town.

  Next to the picture was a painted rock from a grade-school art project. Jack had a real problem with throwing things away. Next to the rock sat a folded picture that looked like it had been crumpled up and refolded several times.

  I pointed at it. “Is that—”

  “Your picture,” he finished for me. “I showed it around when I used to look for you.”

  “Oh.”

  Above the desktop, on a shelf, were several books, most of which had Zen in the title. The one that didn’t was called What the Buddha Taught. I’d never seen any of them before.

  Jack answered my unasked question. “They helped. When things got really bad.”

  “Oh.”

  He rubbed his eyes under his glasses, and then he opened the drawer in the nightstand and took something out, but I couldn’t tell what.

  “You deal,” he said. He tossed me the deck of cards. They landed in my lap. “Then when you’re ready to talk, talk.”

  Jack slid out of his bed and walked over to the closet to get a sweatshirt. His black T-shirt clung to his body and he was wearing cotton pants with the San Francisco Giants logo. His favorite team. Once he’d put the sweatshirt on, he sat on the floor across from me.

  I’d been watching him, holding my breath, so I hadn’t even taken the cards out of the box.

  “Do I need to review how to shuffle?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer. I shook the cards out of their box, cut the deck, and then shuffled them back together. He cut the deck again and I dealt.

  I couldn’t count all the times we’d done this before, from the time we were kids and my dad caught me in my backyard playing poker with Jack and Will under my trampoline.

  Jack had told him the losers would volunteer at the home for the elderly. He knew my dad would go for that. Jack and I lost that day, and we kept our word. It was the one game I remember him losing.

  Jack pulled a tin box full of old poker chips out from under his bed and gave us each a handful. The same poker chips we’d always played with. Red and black ones, from a casino in Wendover.

  He put a toothpick in his mouth to chew. So Jack.

  “Do you remember—” I started to say.

  He watched me. Didn’t say anything. I wondered why he didn’t press, then I realized he was waiting for me. Everything out of my mouth tonight would be offered on my own.

  I fanned my cards out in my hand and put them in front of my face, grateful for the barrier to Jack’s searching eyes. I could do this. I could do this. “I’ve been gone a long time,” I said. “Longer than anyone knows.”

  I didn’t know if it was the draft that made me shudder, or the sudden release of a burden of secrecy, even though Jack couldn’t possibly guess the full meaning behind my admission.

  He studied his cards, arranging their order. “How long?” he asked.

  My answer came out in a sigh. “Years and years. I know how it sounds.”

  But he didn’t question me on the time discrepancy. Instead he asked, “Were you hurt?”

&n
bsp; The sheer innocence of the question made me sad. “A little.”

  “Have you told anyone else?”

  “No. I … don’t know how … really.” My voice started to waver, and I buried my face in my hands. I shivered again, and he reached behind him to pull the top quilt off his bed. The quilt his mother had made for him when he turned twelve. He sat beside me and put the quilt over me.

  “Shh. It’s okay. You’re okay now. You don’t have to talk anymore. Just close your eyes.” I curled up on the floor, and he lay down next to me, staying on top of the quilt while I was under it. He rubbed the back of my hand. “I’m here, Becks. Whatever it is you’re scared of, I’m here.”

  I lost the ability to dream long ago. Dreams can’t exist where so much energy has been taken away.

  I had dreamed during my first few years—or maybe decades—in the Everneath. But as my own supply of energy dwindled, the dreams became shorter and shorter, until they disappeared completely. Along with all of my memories.

  But that night with Jack, I dreamed.

  Senseless dreams at first, as if my brain had been kick-started after a long winter in the garage. No defined shapes, no awareness of location.

  But then my dreams held meaning. I dreamed I was thrown into a shallow grave, with layer upon layer of dirt piled on top of me, crushing my chest until my heart exploded.

  But I couldn’t dream. It was supposed to be impossible.

  I jerked awake.

  My face was so close to Jack’s. Almost touching.

  Still asleep, Jack tilted his head toward me, and his lips brushed against mine. At that moment, I felt something rush through me, like a surge of power. Jack’s eyes opened wide. I leaped back and we both froze.

  “Whoa,” he said. “Were we…?”

  “About to,” I answered. Then I thought about how I was dreaming, even though I wasn’t supposed to be able to, and it hit me.

  I’d stolen energy from him.