Jack and Will must have given us a head start, because it took them three whole minutes to catch up.
Jack went in front of me and turned around, jogging backward.
“Show-off,” I said, panting.
He grinned. “The view’s much better this way.”
My cheeks got hot, and not just because of the exercise. But Jack was always saying things like that. He said the same things to Jules too.
I’m not special. I had to remind myself of this over and over, especially lately, because my hopeless crush—the one my mom told me I would grow out of, the one that haunted my dreams—wasn’t going away. It felt as if I were running toward a cliff and I could see the edge; but I couldn’t stop running, even though I knew that if I jumped off, it would end badly.
“If you’re not going to try,” I said, and made a push to pass him. The sudden competition sparked him into action, and he turned around and did his turbo thing.
When he was out of sight, I eased up. “Go ahead, Jules,” I said. She was a long-distance track runner, so I knew she was just going slow for my benefit. She also couldn’t pass up a good race.
“You sure you’re okay?” she said.
“Yeah. I’ll have more fun if I don’t think I’m holding anyone back.”
“Okay. I’ll see you up there.”
“Please beat at least one of the boys,” I said.
She waved over her shoulder and took off.
Around the next bend, a small stream intersected the trail. I didn’t want to get my feet wet when there was still so much of the hike left, so I leaped to one of the stones in the middle. Only it was covered in moss, and my foot slipped.
I heard a pop as my ankle turned, and I fell into the stream, butt first. Tears sprang to my eyes. I reached down to my ankle. It felt as if someone had just shoved a billiard ball inside of it. I didn’t care about the couple of inches of water I was sitting in. I was too focused on the pain.
“Crap,” I said through clenched teeth. I scooted crab-leg style, holding my bad ankle up in the air until I was out of the stream and sitting on a log. The ankle started to swell.
I looked ahead up the trail. “Jules!” I called.
There was no answer.
“Jules!” I screamed louder.
Nothing.
I waited for a few minutes, then stood and tried to put weight on the bad ankle. Pain shot through my leg all the way up to my knee.
Okay, so I obviously wasn’t going to get down on my own. I pulled out my phone. No signal.
I did some mental calculations. Maybe forty-five minutes for the three of them to reach the top and then a half hour for them to get back down. But they’d wait for me for a while before they gave up and figured out something was wrong.
It’ll be okay, I thought, even though I knew my ankle would be twice as swollen by the time they reached me. But there was nothing I could do.…
At that moment Jack rounded the corner, almost at a flat-out sprint, interrupting my internal dialogue.
“Becks! Are you okay?”
It took me a second to get over my surprise. “I’m fine. I just twisted my stupid, stupid ankle.”
“Well, don’t blame the ankle.” He crouched in front of me and examined it, pushing up the leg of my jeans to get a closer look. It gave me chills, and I tried to pull it down a bit.
“How did you know to turn back?” I said.
With his head still down, he said, “I waited for you.”
“But it’s a race. Why did you wait for me?”
He lifted his head so that his eyes met mine. “I always wait for you.” He took a deep breath, my ankle still in his hands. “I’m always waiting for you.”
In an embarrassingly breathless voice that didn’t sound like my own, I said, “Because I’m so slow?”
He smiled. “Yes. But not in the way that you think.”
My heartbeat started racing. It ran right out of my chest and up into the sky, where it exploded in fireworks. At least that’s how it felt.
He was waiting for me. Right now. Waiting for me to say something. Wasn’t he?
Maybe he was messing with me. And if he was serious, would I be dumped in two weeks? Suddenly that cliff was closer than it had ever been. He’d left the decision open. I could jump off if I wanted to. Or we could pretend the cliff wasn’t even there. I could choose to believe that Jack was talking about how I was slow at running.
I turned my face away, trying to hide all the emotions Jack always brought out.
He lowered his head and pulled my hem back down around my ankle. “I think you’ll survive.”
My heart was beating so fast that I thought my survival was not necessarily a foregone conclusion. Or maybe he was talking about my ankle.
The silence at that point felt heavy. He sat back on his heels and watched me. He was waiting for me again.
“Um.” My voice sounded weird. “So how are we going to get down?”
He gave me a wry smile and helped me up. “You’re going to walk.”
It took us forty-five minutes to cover a distance that had taken me fifteen minutes to climb. But we made it.
He got my leg elevated on the cooler and put a bag of ice on it. Then he built a fire with the practiced hands of a Boy Scout, and we roasted marshmallows while we waited for Will and Jules to finish.
The sun started to set, earlier than we had anticipated. But it was fall. At one point I caught Jack staring at me, the shadows from the flames dancing across his face.
I put a hand to my hair. “Do I look that bad?”
He smiled. “You never care much about your appearance—”
“Hey!” I said, mock offended.
“That’s not what I mean.” He seemed flustered. Very un-Jack-like. “I just mean … What do I mean?”
“Are you asking me?”
He nodded, now completely at a loss.
I tilted my head, thrilled to see that even Jack could get flustered. “Maybe you mean, ‘Hey Becks, you have such natural beauty, even without effort you shine like the stars.’”
He stared at me and nodded slowly. Which was not the reaction I’d been expecting. For the first time since I’d known Jack, he looked … vulnerable. And I was the person who could hurt him. What was going on?
He looked at me with an intense expression, as if each word out of his mouth was paid for with a hundred push-ups. And finally he was too tired to go on. “You’re my best friend.”
“That was your point? Well, Jack,” I said, leaning toward him. “You sure took the long way to get there.”
“Am I your best friend?”
“Of course,” I said without hesitation.
“Good,” he said. His face finally relaxed a little.
“But you know what?” I said, leaning toward him.
His face tightened up. “What?”
“Your marshmallow is on fire.”
He looked down at the end of his wire hanger to where his marshmallow had become a flaming ball of black goo. With a smile, he brought it close to his lips and blew it out.
Just like that, his characteristic smirk was back. “Perfect. Exactly how I like them.” He gingerly pulled the charred remains off the end of the stick.
“That looks disgusting,” I said.
His smile became deranged, and he brought the black ashes to his mouth and took a giant bite. Flakes of marshmallow ash dusted his mouth and cheeks.
He closed his eyes. “Mmmmmm.”
I snorted.
The fire had died down, the sun had long ago set, and Jack and I were in a little circle of light. I wanted everything inside that circle to be the only things that existed. Just for a little while.
I hope you’re still waiting for me, Jack.
NOW
The Everneath. The Ring of Wind.
I looked down at my feet. My tether was back. It was strong and tangible.
“It worked!” I said to Cole. But he didn’t answer. I looked back to where
he should’ve been, but he wasn’t there. He was gone.
Frantic, I turned in circles, searching for any sign of him. “Cole!” I shouted his name over and over, but all I could hear was the wind.
We’d been together the whole time, hadn’t we? Was he playing some sort of sick joke?
“Cole, this isn’t funny,” I said, my voice shaking. “Please. Don’t do this to me.”
There was no reply. If anything, the wind got louder.
What if he was in trouble? I tried to replay the last few minutes in my head, but the memory was shaky. Flashes of images passed through my mind. We were walking together; I was telling my story. Had I lost my balance? Did I fall into the wall again? The moment I asked myself those questions, I was flooded with images of me falling into the wall and being taken up by the wind and blown into the sky.
But were they real? Or were they created by my mind?
I had to get moving. Sitting here, trying to sort out what had happened, would make me crazy.
Retracing my steps might’ve helped, but by this point I was so turned around that I couldn’t remember which way I’d come from. My tether was pointing straight ahead, so I decided to go the exact opposite way. Maybe that would take me back.
I ran. If something had purposely separated us, it couldn’t be good. Using my tether as a guide, but in the opposite direction, I sprinted around corners, through hidden archways in the maze that took me from one corridor to the next, frantic.
What if I couldn’t find him? What if I was trapped here forever in one of those endless loops Cole had told me about?
I leaped through one more archway and froze. There was somebody there, standing with his back to me. It wasn’t one of us, and he looked as if he had too much meat on his bones to be a Wanderer. He had shaggy brown hair. And broad shoulders.
He turned around, and his big brown eyes went wide. “Becks?”
TWENTY-FOUR
NOW
The Everneath. The Ring of Wind.
Tears sprang up in my eyes, and I tried to catch my breath. “Jack?”
The edges of my vision started to blur. The blood drained from my face, and my head filled with air. Jack raced toward me and caught me just as I started to pass out.
“Stay with me, Becks.”
I fought to keep my eyes open. “You said those exact words. When you left me.”
“I know,” he said. His strong arms were around me, keeping me upright, and he brushed the hair from my eyes. “I remember everything. Like it was yesterday.”
I brought a hand up to his face and ran it over his cheeks, his forehead, his neck. He was so real. His face was rounder than I’d last seen it in my dreams.
I ran my fingers down his arms, tracing the ropey muscles there. He was beautiful. “Jack.” His name coming off of my lips was the sound of a wish fulfilled, a longing satisfied. “How are you here? Did you escape?”
He smiled. “I’ve been waiting for you. For so long.”
He dropped his head and kissed me, and I felt that kiss everywhere. My knees went weak. In fact, my entire body went weak, and a strange darkness began to creep in behind my eyes. His lips were hard against mine. They allowed for no space, and too soon my lungs were screaming for air.
It felt as if I were kissing a black hole.
I pulled away. “Wait,” I said. “I have to catch my breath.”
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s been way too long.”
He leaned in to kiss me again, and I turned my head. He placed his hands on either side of my face and turned it back. “Wait—”
But his lips on my lips cut off any other words. I pushed against his chest as hard as I could, and he released me as I fell to the ground.
“I’m so sorry, Becks!” he said, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just done. “My mind … it’s not right here.”
I pushed myself off the ground and brushed my jeans, and that’s when I noticed my tether. It was pointing behind me. But I was facing Jack.
I jerked my head up and stared at his face. There was something in his eyes, something that made them blacker than they were before. His pupils looked too big. They took over his entire irises.
Jack … my Jack … was supposed to be in the Tunnels.
This wasn’t Jack.
He held out his hand. “C’mon, Becks. I figured a way out of here.” At my hesitation, he raised his hands. “I promise no more kissing until after we get back home.”
This wasn’t Jack.
But it looked like him. Every inch of his skin, every expression on his face, every callus on his hand. The way his eyes twinkled when he smiled. His devious dimples. The little divot in his forehead. It could’ve been him. I could make myself believe it was him. I didn’t even have to try. My brain was telling me to go with him, even though my instincts were fighting it.
I stayed where I was. “You go first,” I said. “I’ll follow you.”
His eyes narrowed the slightest bit, but he turned around. “Stay close, Becks.”
He took a step forward. For just one moment a voice in my head said, You had him in your hands, and you threw him away. Did that mean the boy in front of me now? Or the one I couldn’t hold on to when the Tunnels came for me?
This is a trap, I thought. This isn’t Jack. I turned and ran. Through the archway shortcut, around corners. I took every turn that was available, sometimes backtracking in the direction from which I’d come.
All the time, I could hear faux-Jack’s screams. Calling out my name. Begging me not to abandon him again. Even though I knew it wasn’t him, his frantic voice grabbed at my heart as if it had fingers. I couldn’t help feeling as if I was failing him again.
I ran for a long time, and finally around one corner I smacked right into someone. It was Max.
“Nikki!” he said, looking the happiest he ever had to see me. He didn’t embrace me or anything, but he let out a huge sigh of relief.
“Where’s Cole? And Ashe?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I just saw the weirdest thing.… It wasn’t real.”
“Did you see Jack?” I asked.
He gave me a confused look. “No. It was my baby sister. But she’s …” His face crumpled, and he looked as if he was about to cry. “She wanted me to follow her.”
“They weren’t real,” I said.
“I felt her hand in mine!”
False images of people we loved. Enticing us to go with them. “They’re like Sirens,” I said.
“Sirens?” Max said.
I nodded. “Like from The Odyssey. Only in the story, they’d used music to lure sailors and trap them. But there’s no music allowed here, so they used something else to entice us.”
“Who did you see?”
“Jack,” I said. “And if you saw your sister, that means the images are specific to each person.” My pulse quickened. “We have to find the others. Let’s split up.”
“What?! No, that’s an awful idea,” Max said.
“Cole and Ashe are probably trapped right now. We have to get to them before they leave with their Sirens. We have the best chance of finding at least one of them if we split up. Now!” I turned him in the direction of my tether. “You go this way, I’ll go backward. Try to cover as much ground as you can.”
I shoved him forward, and he was gone.
Then I turned around and ran as fast as my legs would allow, trying not to think about my encounter with the Siren. It had felt so real. His skin, his big hands, his lips.
Actually, it was his lips that had given him away. They didn’t feel right. In fact, they felt as if they were sucking life out of me, taking away my reasoning capabilities. But if the Siren hadn’t kissed me, how long would it have taken me to figure out that it wasn’t Jack?
I was talking myself in circles. Cole was out there, with a Siren that looked like who knew what, and what if he followed it? Ashe was missing too, but at this moment the only person I wanted to find was Cole.
I foll
owed my tether. Maybe I had backtracked enough from my original position that the tether would take me past the last place I’d seen Cole.
If I didn’t find him, hopefully Max would.
I rounded a corner and found a dead end. But standing right in front of the barrier was Cole. He wasn’t alone.
There was someone in his arms, but because his back was to me, I could only catch a glimpse of dark hair. Who was it?
I opened my mouth to call to him, but then I heard him speak.
“It’s okay. You’re okay now.” He stroked the girl’s hair. “I found you, Nik. You’re safe.”
Nik? The girl pulled away from him to smile, and I saw my face. My face!
“Cole!” I screamed his name, and it sounded like a screech. They both turned toward the sound.
The girl’s face crumpled. “There she is again!” she said. “She’s following me.”
“Cole, that’s not me,” I said.
The Siren grabbed on to Cole even tighter. “She even sounds like me!”
“Don’t worry,” Cole said. “She can’t hurt you.”
Oh brother. I took a step forward, and they both flinched. I held out my hands, palms down. “The girl in your arms isn’t me,” I said.
Cole frowned. “I’ve been with her the entire time. Whereas you just showed up.”
“You haven’t been with her the whole time. Think back over the last hour. I was telling you the story about Jack and the marshmallow—”
“The one where I twisted my ankle?” the Siren said, her tone accusatory. “That was my story.”
Cole held her even tighter, and he narrowed his eyes at me.
“Please, Cole,” I said. “They make us see what we want to see. I just saw Jack.”
“Jack’s in the Tunnels!” the Siren screamed. Then she turned to Cole. “We have to get out of here. All you have to do is know right here in your heart”—she put her finger on Cole’s chest—“that I’m me.”
Crap. That was something I would totally do. Cole seemed mesmerized, and he stared at her as if I wasn’t even there. He put his fingers on her chin and brought her face closer. “I know you’re you, Nik.”
She leaned her body even closer to his, and it occurred to me that he would want this version of me more. This Nik clung to him and told him that she needed him. This Nik trusted him. This Nik acted as if all she needed was Cole by her side. Her tether pointed to him, and only him.
Everbound: An Everneath Novel Page 17