Everneath

by Ashton, Brodi

  “Jack? What’s wrong?”

  He placed his hands on my shoulders and led me over to the bed. I sat.

  “Becks. I found her. Meredith. Will and I have been searching for her. Asking around. We—”

  “Wait,” I interrupted. “You and Will?”

  Jack smiled. “Yeah. Remember that day at the Kona? I guess Will was listening more than we thought.”

  “And he believed it?”

  “Not at first. Not until we found Meredith in Blackfoot.”

  “Idaho?”

  “We asked everyone at the shelter until this lady there said Meredith used to talk about a family cabin in Idaho and how she was going to hitch a ride there. Will has an army buddy who’s doing security work on the side, and he got the address.” He finally paused to catch his breath. “Will’s driving to Idaho to pick her up right now. I would’ve gone too, but I had to see you.”

  See you. Those words tasted like melted chocolate to me. He hadn’t abandoned me after all. He’d spent the past three days searching out our only lead. Without thinking, I leaned over and kissed his cheek. His entire body tensed. Oops. “Thank you,” I whispered.

  He looked at me, his mouth slightly open. Unmoving.

  “No matter what it means, even if it comes to nothing, thank you, Jack.”

  He still didn’t move. He seemed at a loss for what to say or do. Maybe I’d really crossed a line.

  “I’m sorry, Jack. I didn’t mean to—”

  “No,” he interrupted, his mouth finally moving. “It’s just… I didn’t expect … you…”

  His words faded off, and we both fell silent for a few moments. I looked down.

  “So, when did you get back?” I finally asked.

  He seemed relieved at the easy question. “Just now.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing?”

  He looked down. “I was … hurt you weren’t honest with me. About your mark. Mad about the wasted time. I wasn’t about to give up, but I needed to do it on my own. For a little while.” His eyes drifted to my arm. “Can I see it? The mark, I mean.”

  I held my arm out, and he pushed the sleeve of my jacket up just past my elbow. The dark gray fingers of the mark had reached past my inner elbow and looked like veins snaking their way downward.

  “It’s really a Shade? An actual Shade inside you?”

  I nodded.

  “Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

  “I wanted to. Actually, that’s not true. I didn’t want to. I never wanted to have to. I was hoping I’d find a way out, and if I didn’t…”

  “I’d just wake up one day, and you’d be gone again.”

  I nodded, looking down at the hand that still held my arm, the rough calluses there from years of holding a football.

  “Where will you go? These… Tunnels that are coming for you. Where do they take you?”

  “After the Feed, the Forfeits are used to power the Everneath. They supply the whole place with energy. Cole calls it a battery. One little cog in a giant generator.” Saying it out loud sent a shiver down my spine.

  Jack’s voice grew even softer. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I know you won’t believe it, but I thought it would be best for you. You were doing so well until I came back. I thought you could go back to how it was. You still can.”

  “Don’t say that, Becks. We’re going to figure something out.”

  “I know. Even so, I understand that it would’ve been easier for you if I’d never come back. Maybe you and Jules…”

  His grip on my arm tightened, and when he spoke, his voice wavered. “Becks. I crashed when you left. Jules held together the pieces, and I will love her forever for that. But if I was with her, it wouldn’t be right.” He grimaced. “She told me so herself, right before I left with Will. She knew.” Jack pushed my hair out of my eyes and off my forehead.

  “Um, she knew what?” I could barely hear my own voice.

  “It’s always been you, Becks. Nothing will change that, no matter how much time has passed.” He glanced down. “No matter if you feel the same way or not. You know that, right?”

  I shook my head slowly, wanting desperately to believe him, but not sure if I could.

  “How can you not see that? Everyone sees it.” He slid his hand down my arm and grabbed my fingers, holding them in his lap, tracing them. Staring at them. “Remember freshman year? How Bozeman asked you to the Spring Fling?”

  Bozeman. He was two years older than me. Played offensive lineman. His first name was Zachary, but nobody had called him that since the third grade. I’d been surprised he even knew my name, let alone asked me to the dance.

  “Of course I remember. You came with me to answer him.” We doorbell-ditched Bozeman’s house, leaving a two-liter bottle of Coke and a note that said I’d pop to go to the dance with you, or something like that. Bozeman had a reputation for fast hands, but he didn’t try anything with me. In fact, he barely touched me at all, even at the fling. And he never asked me out again. Or even talked to me, really. It was weird.

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t tell you, but Bozeman actually asked for my permission.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was obvious to everyone, except you, how I felt about you. And then that night with the Coke on the porch … after I dropped you off at home, I paid Bozeman a visit.” His cheeks went pink and he lowered his eyes.

  “And?”

  “Let’s just say I rescinded my permission. I didn’t realize how much it would bother me.” His eyes met mine.

  I could only imagine what was said between Jack and the lineman, who was twice his size.

  “Don’t be mad,” Jack said. Like I’d be angry after everything we’d been through. “I… I’m telling you this because you have to know that it’s always been you. And it will always be you.”

  I knew then the difference between what I had with Jack and the twisted thing I had with Cole. Jack was real. Cole was a drug, artificial and simulated. My involuntary response to him was manufactured in the Everneath by a power that shouldn’t even exist.

  Jack was real. Tangible.

  “Do you get it now, Becks?” Jack wrapped a finger around a long strand of my hair, and we were quiet as it slipped through his grip.

  “You haven’t moved on?”

  He chuckled. “I have a lifetime of memories made up of chestnut wars and poker games and midnight excursions and Christmas Dances… It’s all you. It’s only ever been you. I love you.” The last part seemed to escape his lips unintentionally, and afterward he closed his eyes and put his head in his hands, as if he had a sudden headache. “I’ve gotta not say that out loud.”

  The sight of how messed up he was made me want to wrap my arms around him and fold him into me and cushion him from everything that lay ahead.

  Instead, I reached for his hand. Brought it to my lips. Kissed it.

  He raised his head and winced. “You shouldn’t do that,” he said, even though he didn’t pull his hand away.

  “Why?”

  “Because … it’ll make everything worse… If you don’t feel—”

  His voice cut off as I kissed his hand again, pausing with his fingers at my lips. He let out a shaky sigh and his hair flopped forward. Then he looked at my lips for a long moment. “What if…?”

  I bit my lower lip. “What?”

  “What if we could be like this again?” He leaned in closer with a smile, and as he did, he said, “Are you going to steal my soul?”

  “Um … it’s not technically your soul that…”

  I couldn’t finish my sentence. His lips brushed mine, and I felt the whoosh of transferring emotions, but it wasn’t as strong as the last time. The space inside me was practically full again. The Shades were right. Six months was just long enough to recover.

  He kept his lips touching mine when he asked, “Is it okay?”

  Okay in that I wasn’t going to suck him dry anymore. Not okay in that my own emot
ions were in hyperdrive. Only our lips touched. Thankfully there was space between us everywhere else.

  He took my silence to mean it was safe. We held our lips together, tentative and still.

  But he didn’t let it stay that casual for long. He pressed his lips closer, parting his mouth against mine. I shivered, and he put his arms around me and pulled me closer so that our bodies were touching in so many places.

  He pulled back a little. His breath was on my lips.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I dreamed of you every night.” He briefly touched his lips to mine again. “It felt so real. And when I’d wake up the next morning, it was like your disappearance was fresh. Like you’d left me all over again.”

  I lowered my chin and tucked my head into his chest. “I’m sorry.”

  He sighed and tightened his grip around me. “It never got easier. But the dreams themselves.” I felt him shake his head. “It’s like I had a physical connection to you. They were so real. Every night, you were in my room with me. It was so real.”

  I tilted my head back so I could face him again, realizing for the first time how difficult it must’ve been for Jack. I kissed his chin, his cheek, and then his lips. “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  He shook his head. “It’s not your fault I dreamed of you, Becks. I just want to know if it was as real as it felt.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. But I told him about the book I’d read on Orpheus and Eurydice, and my theory that it was her connection to Orpheus that saved her. When I finished, I asked him what he thought.

  “It would make sense, I guess.” He got a faraway look on his face. “I dreamed you were somewhere dark and you couldn’t see.”

  I thought of the Cavern, and the alcove, and the Shades that bound us and shut out any light. “I don’t know. So much of what happened has been wiped away.” But not enough. The truth was, I couldn’t see. My encounter with the Everneath had left scars on my brain, and hearing Jack talk about the darkness made them burn a little.

  Jack touched his forehead to my forehead, his nose to my nose, and gave me a sad smile that was so sweet I almost forgot the spark of memory that had just been dredged up. Almost.

  LAST YEAR

  The Feed… the forgetting.

  Once I’d decided to go with Cole, things happened quickly. I stayed holed up in his room for a few days, and each time I started to consider changing my mind, Cole would Feed off that top layer of energy, taking away my doubt, my pain, my foreboding, and my hesitation disappeared.

  Soon, the Everlivings from the band had all gone under with their Forfeits, and Cole and I were the only ones left. Cole said this was because he needed time to prepare for the trip, and since he hadn’t planned on taking me, we would be a couple of days behind. I never asked what kind of prep work he was talking about.

  At the time, though, I waved aside any explanations. I was in this room of forgetting, and if the Everneath was anything like this, I never wanted to leave. He helped me out of my jacket, exposing the black tank top beneath, grabbed my hand, and I think he said, “Ready?”

  I don’t know if I responded, but he took my hand and pulled me under.

  Like a cocoon.

  The beginning of my century in the Everneath is a blur. The middle is gone entirely.

  At first, I remember seeing a giant space, like an underground cave. In the rock walls were hundreds, maybe thousands, of tiny holes carved out. They reached upward, farther than my eyes could see in the dark.

  I breathed in, expecting a stale, musty odor, like the Timpanogos caves near Park City, but instead there was no identifying smell at all.

  The sheer size of the place overwhelmed me, and I remembered wondering why I felt claustrophobic in a place so large. It was like the darkness itself was a physical entity, and just as that thought formed in my head, I saw the shadows on the walls begin to ripple and sway, as if a candle were flickering nearby. But there was no candle. In fact, there was no light source I could see. I moved closer and squinted, and that’s when the shadows peeled away from the walls. They came over to me, snaked around my back, and guided me until I was standing in front of Cole.

  Dark splotches of fluid ran down the wall where the shadows had been, as if little bubbles of oil had burst there. I reached out to touch it. Whatever it was, it didn’t feel cool like liquid. It felt like air.

  I turned to Cole to ask him what it was, but I didn’t get a chance. The shadows surrounded us, pushing us closer together. “Just relax,” Cole whispered.

  The shadows began to move in circles around us, swirling, accelerating to the point where they looked like blurs of black, transforming into shrouds against my skin. They cocooned us, and the tighter they wrapped, the tighter my chest felt. But I guess I didn’t need to breathe, because I didn’t feel myself fighting for air.

  Cole’s face was at my ear. “They’re Shades, Nik. They control the energy. They bind us together and they protect your energy from spilling out and wasting any.”

  “I don’t care.” And I didn’t. Whatever this netting was that surrounded me, it lifted me up off the ground and held me suspended in the air, in a place where sorrow couldn’t reach me. I was protected from everything that ever had, or ever would, hurt me, and I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to leave. I was safe.

  The Shades constricted against us, so Cole and I were as close as possible, our limbs pressed together, our arms around each other.

  Looking back, I’m pretty sure we ended up inside one of the alcoves in the wall. Me, Cole, and our cocoon of shadows.

  At first, my memories of the Surface began to change as I started forgetting the most recent events of my past. My mom wasn’t dead anymore. She was there in our kitchen, making coffee and pancakes on a Sunday morning. And my dad wasn’t forgiving the drunk driver who killed her. He was with her in the kitchen, his arms around her waist as she turned the eggs over with the spatula. And Jack wasn’t with someone else. He was waiting for me beneath the trampoline, a deck of cards in his hands.

  Eventually, though, my mom was in the kitchen alone, and I couldn’t remember what she was doing. And Jack wasn’t waiting under the trampoline. He was floating in a sea of nothing—no setting, no home.

  And then there was no Mom, no kitchen. Jack’s face was there, but there was no name to go with it. Everyone stopped existing. Everyone except for Jack, and even the memory of him was something I had to reach out and touch every so often, so as not to lose it.

  Cole would ask me what I remembered of my former life. My answer was always the same.

  “Nothing.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  NOW

  My bedroom. One week left.

  Kissing Jack was like forgetting.

  Forgetting the mark on my arm. Forgetting the Tunnels coming for me. Forgetting Cole. I realized it was probably the same for him, because he was kissing me like his lips couldn’t remember how to do anything else. I was sure there would never be a reason for us to stop.

  He kissed away the Tunnels, and he kissed away my doubts.

  Our hands were all over each other, as if we were committing to memory every texture, every curve of the other. Jack pushed my jacket off my shoulders and down my arms and tossed it aside, revealing my tank top and my bare arms. Instinctively I tried to cover the mark on my left arm with my hand, but he wouldn’t let me.

  “Let me see it,” he said.

  I closed my eyes and rolled onto my back, but I let him hold my arm. He traced his fingers from my collarbone down my arm to where the mark stopped. He kissed my shoulder, where my mark was darkest, and then he lay down on his side next to me, facing me, his hand propping his head up.

  “I’m going to kill him.”

  I sighed and mirrored his position. “You can’t kill him. He’s sort of immortal.”

  “Who says?”

  I shrugged. “He’s been around since the time of ancient myths.”

  “But when he’s here, he’s mad
e of flesh and blood. Whatever form he takes, he is flesh. And blood.”

  “Even so, I don’t think it’s as simple as that.”

  His shoulders sagged a bit. “I know.” He glanced down at my arm. “Do you know how much time you have?”

  “No. Not exactly. A little over a week, maybe.”

  “What about Meredith? Wouldn’t she have the same amount of time?”

  I thought back to the few days I’d spent in Cole’s apartment, just before he took me underground. By the time we left, none of the other band members were on the Surface. They’d all been ready with their Forfeits. “She left before me. That means she probably Returned before me.”

  “And the Tunnels will come for her first.” Jack gave a grunt of frustration.

  Something hit me right then, and a split second later I made sure the burst of intuition didn’t show on my face. Even if Will returned with Mary, and even if she did know how to kill Cole, I had no idea if my debt would be destroyed as well. What if the Tunnels were coming for me no matter what?

  Jack looked like he was about to ask me what was wrong, so I brought his face to mine again.

  For the first time in a hundred years, Jack’s lips were against mine in a real kiss. He was mine again, and in that moment, I made a decision.

  I had to find a way to stay. And I wouldn’t stop searching for a loophole to my fate, until the moment the Tunnels dragged me away.

  The next morning, Jack called and said Will was having trouble coaxing Meredith away from the cabin. He wanted to pick me up and take me to her.

  “I can’t leave right now,” I said, cradling the phone.

  “Why?”

  “The election’s tomorrow. I can’t leave my family. I can’t risk these last moments. I promised myself I would prepare them.”

  He was quiet.

  “I don’t mean tell them I’m leaving. But last time I disappeared in the middle of a fight with my dad. I can’t leave him like that again.”

  “It’s okay, Becks. I’ll go, and I will bring her back, even if I have to force her.”