Everwild (The Skinjacker Trilogy)

by Neal Shusterman

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  Dinah backed off, then turned her eyes to the other half of the team. "So if she's Allie the Outcast, who are you?"

  "My name's Mikey."

  Dinah laughed. "Not much of a name for a finder."

  "Fine," he said, clenching his fists by his side. "Then I'm the McGill."

  But that just made all the other kids laugh too, and Mikey, who had a low threshold when it came to being mocked, stormed away.

  Allie still held the ornament out to Dinah, but she didn't accept it. A small boy that had been hiding in Dinah's long trailing hair peered out.

  "Please, Dinah ... can't we keep it?" But Dinah shushed him.

  "Do other finders come this way?" Allie asked.

  Dinah paused purposefully before answering, perhaps to make it clear that she was in control of the conversation. "Sometimes."

  "Well, I'll give you this ornament," Allie said, "if you promise to save all your really good finds for me."

  "We promise, Allie," all the little kids said. "We promise." Dinah nodded, reluctantly giving in to the wishes of the others, and took the ornament from Allie.

  "You also have to promise one more thing."

  Dinah's face hardened. Allie could tell by that look on her face that although she appeared to be no older than ten, she was an old, old soul. "What do I have to promise?"

  "That if Mary the Sky Witch ever darkens the sky with her great balloon, you'll hide, and you won't let her take you away."

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  The kids all looked to Dinah for guidance. "Then who will protect us from the Chocolate Ogre?" Dinah asked. "Who will protect us from the McGill?"

  "It looks like you've done a pretty good job yourself," Allie told her. "And besides, there's no reason to fear the McGill or the Chocolate Ogre. Mary's the one you need to worry about."

  They all nodded but seemed unconvinced--after all she was the Outcast. No matter how starstruck they might be, Allie's advice was suspect.

  Dinah gave the ornament to one of the other children. "Hang it on the coatrack," she told him. "It's the closest thing we have to a Christmas tree." Then she turned back to Allie. "We'll keep our promise; we'll save the best finds for you."

  It was a satisfactory business deal. She had won the loyalty of many groups of Afterlights. No--not groups--vapors, she thought, with a bitter little shake of the head. In one of Mary's annoying little etiquette books, she had insisted that a gathering of Afterlights was properly referred to as "a vapor." A flock of birds, a gaggle of geese, and a vapor of Afterlights. It irritated Allie no end that Mary so effectively determined the language they all used. Allie wouldn't have been surprised if Mary herself had coined the name "Everlost."

  Allie found Mikey a street away, stomping on a huge lawn, watching the ripples it created in the living world. He seemed embarrassed to be caught doing something so childlike. Allie tried to hide her smile, because she knew it would embarrass him even more.

  "Are we done here?" Mikey asked.

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  "Yes. Where to next?" Allie made room for him on the horse--letting him ride in front of her, holding the reins. In so many other ways he had taken a backseat to her, the least she could do was allow him the dignity of deciding where their travels would take them.

  "I have an idea where we should go," Mikey said. "It's not too far from here."

  Allie had learned that being a finder was mostly about luck, and keen skills of observation. Some finders were hearse-chasers. That is to say, they lingered around the dying, hoping they might drop something in Everlost while crossing to the other side. But the best finds were always made quite by accident, and the best trades were made by being shrewd but honest. Even now the horse's makeshift saddlebag was full of crossed items--a crystal doorknob, an empty picture frame, a well-worn teddy bear. In Everlost all these things were treasures.

  But locating and trading crossed objects was only part of a finder's job. Their real mystique came from their stories-- because while most Afterlights stayed put, finders traveled. They saw more, heard more than others, and spread the tales wherever they went. This is exactly the reason why Allie had decided to become one. When Allie first arrived in Everlost, she had heard tales of monsters and miracles, terror and salvation--but now she had some measure of control over the tales being told. She could spread the word that Mary was the real monster of Everlost and try to set people straight about Nick.

  A chocolate ogre? Hah! Nick didn't have an ogreish bone in his body, so to speak. The problem was, Mary was

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  far better at spreading her misinformation. It was much easier for other Afterlights to believe that beauty and virtue went hand in hand.

  However, tales of Allie the Outcast were being spread far and wide too. Not all of them were true, of course, but she was developing quite a reputation as Everlost's loose cannon. That got her a certain amount of respect. She could grow used to that.

  In fact, she already had.

  Cape May: population 4034 in winter, and at least ten times that in the summer. It's the farthest south you can go in New Jersey. Everything after that is water.

  Allie stood in front of the town's quaint WELCOME sign, frozen by the sight of it.

  "You're sinking," said Mikey, who was still on the horse. Shiloh the horse, having grown accustomed to the strange texture of the living world, kept pulling its hooves out of the ground with a sucking sound, as if it were slowly prancing in place. Allie on the other hand, was already in the ground to her knees.

  She reached up, and Mikey helped her out of the ground. "That's it, isn't it?" Mikey asked. "Cape May? I remember you said you lived in Cape May."

  "Yes." With all their wanderings, Allie had lost her sense of direction. She had no idea they were this close to her home.

  "It's what you wanted, isn't it? To go home?"

  "Yes ... from the very beginning."

  Mikey hopped off the horse and stood beside her. "Back

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  on my ship, I used to watch you look out to shore. You had such a longing to go home. You don't know how close I came to taking you there, even then."

  Allie smirked. "And you called yourself a monster."

  Mikey was suitably insulted. "I was an excellent monster! The one true monster of Everlost!"

  "'Hear your name and tremble.' "

  Mikey looked away. "No one trembles anymore."

  Allie was mad at herself for mocking him. He didn't deserve that. She touched his face gently. To look at him now, you'd never guess that the fair skinned, blue-eyed boy was once the terrifying McGill, but every once in a while Allie could still see a bit of the beast in him. It was there in the shortness of his temper, and the clumsiness of his hands, as if they were still claws. It was there in the way he approached the world--as if it still owed him something. Yes, the monster still lingered there inside him, but his face was that of a boy, attractive by any standards, if somewhat doleful.

  "I like you much better this way."

  "Why should I care?" But he smiled, because he did care and they both knew it.

  "You must teach me to be human again," he had told her, when he first lost his monstrous form. Since then, she had done everything in her power to do so. It was in small moments like these that she caught glimpses of his successful steps back from being a monster. How long ago had that been? As is the way in Everlost, the days had blended until there was no telling. Weeks? Months? Years? Certainly not years!

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  "So," he asked, "does bringing you home make me more human?"

  "Yes, it does."

  Even his selflessness was wrapped in self-interest. It would have bothered her, but she knew that he would have done this for her anyway, even if it had no benefit for him. It made him different from his sister, for while Mary pretended to serve others, deep down she was serving no one but herself.

  "Just remember--I can't help you if you sink," Mikey said. "You know how it is when you go home--you'll be sinking too fast fo
r me to ever catch you."

  "I know." She was well aware of the dangers of going home--not just because of Mary's Everlost-for-idiots warnings, but because of Mikey's firsthand account.

  Home, he had told her, had a certain gravity to an Afterlight. The ground becomes more and more like quicksand the closer to home one gets. Mikey had told Allie how he and his sister had gone home more than a hundred years ago, shortly after they died. The moment he saw how life had gone on without them, Mikey sunk into the ground in a matter of seconds. Mary had been lucky--somehow she had avoided his fate. She never had to endure that long, slow journey down to the center of the earth.

  Mikey, however, had discovered a skill--perhaps the rarest of all Everlost skills. His will was so great that he could force change upon himself--his hands turned to claws, tugging at the earth around him. His memory of flesh was replaced by a full body scar, thick as leather and as pocked as the surface of the moon. He made himself a monster, and

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  as a monster he could rise, fighting the relentless pull of gravity year after year, until the day he broke surface.

  But that was all over now. He was Mikey again, and he was slowly growing used to his old self, just as Allie was growing accustomed to Everlost.

  Yet through all of their travels, in the back of her mind, Allie knew she had business left undone. Going home had been so important to her when she had first arrived here. But somewhere along the line, it became something best saved for tomorrow, and then the tomorrow after that--but unlike other Afterlights, she did not forget her life on Earth. She did not forget her family, she did not forget her name.

  She didn't know why she should be different from others. Not even Mary wrote about such things in her books of questionable information. But then, Allie had powers that other Afterlights didn't possess. Why she and no one else should have these powers was a mystery to her as well. Allie could skinjack. The living might call it "possession," but she much preferred the Everlost term--for she was not a demon taking control of a human being for evil purposes. She merely "borrowed" people, wearing their bodies for a short time--and only when absolutely necessary.

  They made their way down the quaint main street of Cape May. The living went about their blurred, muffled business. Cars passed through Allie and Mikey, but they had grown accustomed to the flow of the living world through and around them so they barely noticed it anymore. Not even their horse did.

  "Turn left here," Allie told Mikey at the next corner, and as they turned onto the street where she once lived, a sense

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  of dread began to fill that place that ought to be filled with great joy and anticipation... .

  ... For what if her father hadn't survived the crash after all?

  What if he went down that tunnel into the light in that terrible head-on collision, leaving her mother and sister to mourn for both of them?

  "Are you okay?" Mikey knew something was wrong. Perhaps it was the way she sat so stiffly on the horse behind him, or perhaps their spirits had become so in tune, he could sense the things she felt.

  "I'm fine."

  She also had another reason for her reluctance, and her mind was drawn to her coin. It had been cold in her hand, which meant she was not ready to leave Everlost. She was not ready to move on. Now, as she thought about it, she realized why. She would never be ready for that final journey until she went home, and saw the truth with her own eyes. Her whole Everlost existence had been leading to this--and yet she had stalled for as long as she could.

  Because going home meant completion.

  Once she learned what had become of her parents, there would be nothing holding her to Everlost. Her coin would grow warm, and although she could resist it at first, she knew she wouldn't be able to resist it for long. She would hold it in her hand, she would make the journey.

  And she would lose Mikey.

  For this reason, her return to Cape May was both something she longed for, and something she dreaded--but she would not share such private feelings with Mikey.

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  When they stood on her street, a pang came to her chest. She knew she shouldn't be able to feel pain, but sometimes emotions could coalesce into phantom aches when they were strong enough.

  "There it is," she said. "The third house on the right."

  Home. Even in the faded tones of Everlost, it looked just the same as she remembered. An unassuming Victorian house, white with blue trim. Her parents had moved to Cape May to capture some rustic charm in a modern world, so they bought an old house with plumbing that rattled, and thin wiring that could never quite grasp the concept of computers and high-voltage appliances. Circuit breakers were constantly popping, and Allie had complained endlessly about it when she was alive. Now she longed for the simple act of turning on a hair drier and plunging the house into darkness.

  "Wait here," she told Mikey. "I need to do this alone."

  "Fair enough."

  She hopped down from the horse, already feeling an uncertainty in the ground beneath her. It felt less like tar, and more like Jell-O just before it sets. She had to move fast.

  "Good luck," Mikey said.

  She crossed the street toward her home, not looking back at Mikey for fear that she might change her mind-- but rushing headlong to her front door was not wise either. With the threat of sinking so very real, she needed someone who could carry her home safely.

  Someone like the UPS man.

  The brown truck turned onto the street, and stopped at a neighbor's house. The deliveryman pulled a package from

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  the back of the truck, and carried it toward the neighbor's front door. Allie followed him, preparing to make her move before he rang the neighbor's bell.

  Skinjacking was not a pleasant sensation. It was like diving into water that was too cold, or stepping into a tub that was too hot. Even though Allie had gotten much better at it, the sudden sensation of flesh, and all that went with it, was always a shock. She took a moment to brace herself, then she stepped inside the UPS man--

  --Three more hours--I should just quit--I can't quit but I wish I could--three more hours--can't quit--wife would be furious--but there's got to be more work out there--I never should have taken this job--three more hours to go--

  The chill of the air, the pumping of a heart, the sudden brightness--solidness--of the living world around her. She was in! The volume of his thoughts was painful--like they were being blasted through a megaphone.

  --Three more hours--but wait--wait--I don't feel right-- what's this? Who--huh--what--?

  Allie quickly clamped her spirit down, taking control of his flesh, and at the same instant she forced his unsuspecting consciousness deep down into the limbic system--that primordial part of the human brain where consciousness retreated during the deepest of sleeps. It was easy to put him to sleep; he wasn't all that conscious to begin with.

  She turned back to Mikey, but he was invisible now, as she knew he would be. She was seeing through living eyes now, seeing only the things that living eyes could see. As long as she stayed inside the delivery man, Everlost would be hidden from her.

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  Once the initial shock of the skinjack had faded, she took a moment to enjoy it, luxuriating in the warmth of the sun on this warm June day. Even the heaviness of the package in her arms was a fine thing; yet another memory of the wonderful limitations of being alive.

  She lingered at the neighbor's door a moment more, then left, taking the package with her to the front door of her own home. Then she stood at her own front door, frozen, just as she had been frozen at the city sign. This was the moment she had waited for. All she had to do was ring the bell. All she had to do was lift her finger--his finger--and do it. Never had a living hand felt so heavy.

  Then, to her surprise, the door opened without her ever ringing the bell.

  "Hi, is that package for us?"

  The woman who opened the door was not her mother. She was a total stranger. She wa
s in her twenties, and had a baby on her hip, who was very excited by the prospect of a large box.

  "Just bring it in, and put it by the stairs," the woman said. "Do I have to sign for it?"

  "Uh ... uh ... It's not for you." Allie cleared her throat, startled by the way she sounded. She could never get used to the masculine timbre of her voice when she cross-jacked. It was one of several troubling things that came with being temporarily male.

  "Well, if it's not for us, then who is it for?"

  "The Johnson family."

  "Who?" she asked, then realized. "Oh, right. We got

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  things for them every once in a while, once the forwarding order expired."

  They had moved--but that could just be her mother and sister, who weren't in the car. She still had no way of knowing if her father had survived.

  "Any idea where they went?"

  "No," the woman said.

  "Wasn't there an accident?" Allie asked. "I heard about it--they lost a daughter."

  "I wouldn't know about that. Sorry."

  And then Allie asked the big question. "How long have you been living here?"

  "Almost three years now."

  Allie closed her eyes, and tried to take that in. She had been in Everlost for three years. Unchanged, never aging. Still fourteen. How could so much time have passed?

  "Wait a second," the woman said. "Of course, I can't be sure, but I seem to recall something about Memphis. I think that's where they went."

  It made sense--her mother had family there ... but did that mean her father had died in the crash, and her mother had sold the house? There were so many questions still unanswered.

  The woman shifted the baby to her other hip, getting impatient. "The neighbors might know more, but then a lot of them are just summer renters."

  "Thank you. Sorry to have bothered you."