Everwild (The Skinjacker Trilogy)

by Neal Shusterman

  "We're just having fun," they complained, when Mikey suggested that their activities were depraved. But then, who was he to talk? He had been the McGill--yet even though he had perpetrated a good many mean-spirited, spiteful things, his depravity had a little more class.

  Next, Moose and Squirrel went into a bar, got two middle-aged fleshies exceptionally drunk, then peeled out of them just before they were ready to puke.

  "No harm, no foul!" said Squirrel. "Right? Right?"

  "Yeah," added Moose, "They were gonna do it anyway."

  Mikey concluded that these two were the lowest bottom-feeders he'd ever had the misfortune to know. "Does Milos know you're abusing fleshies?"

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  "Milosh and ush got a 'don't ashk don't tell' polishy," said Moose.

  "Yeah, yeah--and anyway, we don't abuse no one--we just play hard, that's all."

  Mikey only hoped that when it was finally their turn to go into the light, their pit would be deeper than his.

  When Moose and Squirrel skinjacked a couple of nuns, and took them on a shoplifting spree, Mikey decided it was time to call it a day. He crossed through a forest that he hoped would take him back to their makeshift campsite by the highway. The forest had quite a few trees that had crossed into Everlost, and so provided him with spots to rejuvenate, and maybe regain some self-respect. His spirit felt greasy after the way he had spent the day.

  There was a house in the woods--a shack, really, but sturdy and cared for. Evidence of ash in the living world suggested it had burned down, but whoever lived there must have loved the place, because it had crossed into Everlost. The sight of it filled Mikey with sorrow. A ghost house with no ghost. What could be sadder? Then he realized why the house bothered him. This shack was him without Allie. Solitary and unvisited. An unknown artifact waiting for eternity to free it from its vigil.

  It was at that moment he realized that his spirit was truly human once more. For he no longer remembered how to be alone without being lonely.

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  In her groundbreaking book on skinjacking You Don't Know Jack, Allie the Outcast writes:

  "Forget all you've heard about skinjackers; forget the idiotic ramblings of other so-called sources of Everlost information. Skinjackers are just like any other Afterlights. They can be honorable or dishonorable, smart or stupid-- it all depends on the individual. There are two things that hold true for all skinjackers, though. The first is a driving, almost instinctive need to skinjack. The second is the overwhelming burden that such a power puts on us. With such a power, the potential exists for incredibly good deeds, and for acts of unthinkable evil. I think it's fortunate for both the living and the dead that most skinjackers are too clueless to do much of either."

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  CHAPTER 11 Surfing Tennessee

  In her days on the Sulphur Queen, Allie had pretended to teach the McGill how to skinjack. Of course her lessons were bogus--skinjacking can't be taught--but it can be perfected, and Milos was a master. He could do things Allie had never even thought to do. Things she never dared to do!

  At first, he just showed off. They came across a basketball court where a choose-up game was in full swing. He skinjacked the player with the ball, then passed to another player--but Milos got to the other player before the ball did, skinjacked him, and caught his own pass. Allie watched, laughing in spite of herself, as he bounced himself around the court, becoming one player, then another, then another, passing the ball to himself, stealing the ball from himself, shooting and scoring. Allie got dizzy trying to keep track of where and who he was.

  By the time he was done, the players were all a bit dazed and confused, not quite sure what had just occurred.

  "Jill and I would play many sports together," Milos

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  told her. "We would jump from player to player--that was always part of the game." The memory brought a smile, but a measure of pain to Milos's expression.

  "Did you love her?" Allie dared to ask.

  Milos took a few moments before answering. "We came upon a wedding once," he told her. "We skinjacked the bride and groom."

  "You didn't!"

  "Well, I skinjacked the groom, but Jill's legs were cold."

  Allie looped that back through her mind. "Do you mean she got cold feet?"

  "Yes, she got cold feet. Instead of the bride, she went to hide in the flower girl. That should have told me something, you think?"

  "I'm sorry, Milos." Then a silence fell between them that was decidedly awkward.

  They made their way to the heart of the town, and found a street fair in full swing taking up all three blocks of Lebanon, Tennessee's main street.

  "For your first lesson, I think I will teach you to surf."

  Allie laughed. "Well, as the nearest beach is hundreds of miles away, I sincerely doubt that."

  "Not that kind of surfing," he told her. Then in a flash he was gone. Allie thought she saw him leaping into a kid eating ice cream, but the kid just continued on.

  "Milos?"

  "Over here!" His voice was coming from somewhere far away. She looked down the street, and finally caught sight

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  of him--he wasn't skinjacking now, he was just standing in the middle of the street fair, two whole blocks away, waving at her. How on earth had he done that?

  Then he vanished again, and a few seconds later, there he was standing right beside her.

  "Boo!" he said, and she jumped in spite of herself.

  "Did you just ... teleport?"

  "More like tele-phoned," Milos answered. "Wires conduct electrical impulses, yes? Well, the living conduct us."

  "I don't understand."

  "I call it soul-surfing. It is a very good way to travel, when there are many people nearby." When Allie first learned to skinjack--before she knew what it was called-- she had called it body-surfing. But this feat of relaying oneself across a crowd in seconds--this truly deserved to be called surfing. She wondered if it felt as invigorating as riding a wave. Milos looked around at the modest crowd of the little street fair. "Okay, your turn."

  "Wh-what?" Allie sputtered. "I can't do that! I wouldn't know where to start."

  "Start with her." Milos pointed to a woman sitting on a bench, reading a newspaper.

  "Make as if you mean to skinjack her, but don't take full control. Instead, you must use her to slingshot to the next person, then the next, then the next. Once you get a rhythm, you can work your way to the end of any crowd in seconds."

  He climbed into a passing pedestrian, vanished, then a few seconds later appeared across the street.

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  "Try it!" he called. "From there to here. Short hop."

  Allie leaped into the woman on the bench, but lingered too long, and had to peel herself out, which never happened quickly--it was like peeling off a glove. Since Allie didn't immediately put her to sleep, the woman knew something funny was going on. She stood up, looked around, and walked away, unnerved.

  Milos had already surfed back and was beside her.

  "Well, that didn't work," said Allie.

  "Because you took hold. Do not stay long enough to hear the thoughts--just long enough to get a small glimpse through the eyes, then push off."

  Allie tried it again with a different person, but still stayed an instant too long, and got drawn in. Milos was patient with her, and encouraging. "Think of Tarzan," he said. "It is like Tarzan swinging on ropes." Then he beat his chest and made a Tarzan yell that made Allie laugh. She tried it again, and the third time was the charm. She began to jump out before she was done jumping in, and it worked! She pushed off from one person to another. Images passed before her like snapshots, but all unrelated and random. Every fleshie was looking in a slightly different direction, and saw things differently. Colors changed, eyesight changed. Each person she surfed was focusing on something different within their field of vision--but now that Allie had the rhythm she could keep herself moving. She began to feel dizzy, and finally took ro
ot in a fleshie to stop herself, and--

  --nagging nagging nagging--if she doesn't stop nagging I'll go crazy--nagging nagging nagging--

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  She found herself sitting in a restaurant, holding a spoon and looking across the table at a very old woman.

  "Harold? Harold? How's the soup, Harold?" the old woman said to her.

  Allie, in the body of the woman's elderly husband, tried to speak, but could only burp.

  "Too spicy. I knew it!" Then the old woman called for the waitress.

  Allie peeled herself out of Harold the Henpecked Husband, and when she was back in Everlost she made her way out into the street. Once outside, she got her bearings, and realized she had crossed the avenue, turned a corner, and had unexpectedly bounced herself into a delicatessen. Milos found her a few moments later.

  "What happened?"

  "I guess I got lost."

  Milos laughed. "It happens. It is hard to keep a sense of direction, yes? You will get better, it just takes practice."

  And so they practiced. It got a bit harder once the crowd thinned, but it just served as a challenge to her. She found that if she pushed off hard enough, she could leap from one person to another who was about ten feet away.

  "Moose and Squirrel have been doing this for years, and they can not jump that far," Milos told her. "You are, as they say, a natural!"

  After a couple of hours Allie was exhausted. She had surfed her way through hundreds of people--some of them several times, and she had begun to recognize the "signature" of their bodies.

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  "Do they know we're here?" Allie asked Milos. "We're only in them for an instant, but still ... can they sense us the way we sense them?"

  Milos raised his eyebrows. "Do you remember when you were alive," he asked, "and you suddenly forgot what you were about to say?"

  "Yes ..."

  Milos smiled. "Perhaps someone was surfing through you."

  The thought gave Allie a shiver. Even though she was no longer in flesh, having surfed through so much of it, her spirit held onto some phantom physical feelings. One of those phantom feelings echoed within her when she looked at Milos, and she shivered again. She resisted the urge to move closer to him, and feel his afterglow mingle with hers. It was, after all, just a phantom feeling, easy to dismiss, wasn't it?

  "Congratulations," he said gently. "You are one of the Deadlies now. You are one of us." His smile became wider, and that made her all the more uncomfortable. She turned away.

  "In any case, soul-surfing is good for crowded places, and big cities," he said. "I can get through a city faster than anything." Then, with a gentle toss of his head, he said, "Although sometimes I prefer to drive if I can skinjack a good-looking man, with a Ferrari."

  Allie shook her head, warding off an unpleasant memory. "I tried to jack and drive once. It didn't end well."

  Milos puffed out his chest. "So then I do the driving. You ride shot put."

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  "Shotgun," Allie corrected. His butchered expressions always made her smile, but the smile faded quickly. "I still think it's wrong to skinjack people just for fun."

  "What makes fun wrong?" he asked. And when she didn't have an answer for him, Milos said, "What we do is right. It is natural--or else why would we be able to do it? If we are skinjackers, we are meant to skinjack."

  "We provide a link between Everlost and the living world--perhaps the most important one," Allie insisted. "Maybe we were meant to use it for something important."

  "Maybe we were meant to simply enjoy it."

  She wanted to argue, but between his easy logic, and his easier smile, she found her argument had no teeth. She looked down to see that, while Milos had continued to shift his feet to keep from sinking, Allie had not, and had sunken into the sidewalk to her ankles. She pulled her feet out, feeling embarrassed that he had caught her ankle-deep.

  "In life did you ever do something just for fun?" asked Milos.

  "Yes ..."

  "So why not be as you were in life? And if it hurts no one, why is it wrong to enjoy skinjacking? This is what we are."

  "No, it's what we do!"

  "No, Allie, it is what we are." Milos gently put his hand on her shoulder. "It is what you are."

  "So was it fun?" Mikey asked.

  Allie shrugged, trying, for his sake, to hide how much she had enjoyed the soul-surfing lesson. "It was tiring. I

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  prefer being me, rather than the crowd. What did you do?"

  "I took a walk."

  "Through town?" She wondered if he had been downtown, and had seen her with Milos. If she were a fleshie she would have flushed at the thought, then she got mad at herself. She had nothing to feel guilty for.

  "I went into the woods," he told her. "There's an oak grove where half the trees have crossed over. And in the middle of it I found a house that crossed over too. It would be a nice place to live. That is ... if you wanted to."

  "We can't 'live,' "she reminded him.

  "No, but we could enjoy our existence here. I'm tired of being a finder. I'm tired of moving around. I'm tired of everything."

  Allie considered this, noting the slight lavender tinge to his afterglow. Perhaps there was a different meaning for it. "Then maybe you're ready," she said.

  "Ready for what?"

  "To move on."

  What Allie meant as a simple observation hit Mikey like a fist on flesh. He took a step back, reeling from the blow, but tried not to show how deeply it hurt him.

  "Maybe I am," he said.

  She turned from him. "If you're ready, Mikey, then I won't stop you."

  No, of course you won't, he wanted to say. Because then I wouldn't be an anchor around your neck anymore. But instead he said, "Tell me to stay, and I will ..."

  But Allie shook her head. "That would be selfish of me."

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  * * *

  Once upon a time, Mikey McGill had a bucket of coins. He collected them from every Afterlight he brought to his ship--whether they became a part of his crew, or went to the chiming chamber to hang upside down from their ankles. Why did he take their coins? Because everyone and everything he captured was his property. That's the way he saw things back then. But why did he keep the coins in a bucket, locked safely away? The answer was simple, although he couldn't admit it to himself.

  He kept them because he knew.

  He knew what the coins were for, just like every Afterlight knows, without ever knowing that they know. It's the memory of a dream lost on waking; it's a name on the tip of your tongue. But if you're an Afterlight, the truth will someday come to you, and you'll realize that you've always known. Sure, for the longest time, the coin was simply standing on its edge in your mind, just a dull metallic sliver, so very hard to see ... but look again--now it's full and round and shining in your palm. It is your proof of something beyond the Everlost, and your fare to get you there.

  Once upon a time, Mikey had a bucket of stolen coins, but now he only had one, and since the moment he admitted to himself what the coin was for--the same moment that Allie made the choice to join him--he was always conscious of that coin in his pocket.

  Now it felt heavy, like an entire purse full of coins. All he had to do was pull it out and hold it in his hand. Would it be hot for him now? Would it cause space to part before

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  him, revealing the tunnel to the great beyond, which would suck him out of Everlost, sending him to wherever he was going?

  And where was he going?

  What if he still hadn't redeemed himself? What if he'd been a monster for so long, he hadn't been able to undo all the dastardly deeds of the McGill?

  Well, so what if he hadn't! If that tunnel drew him in, then dropped him into a pit, so be it! He had endured the center of the earth, hadn't he? He could endure that place as well.

  But he'd be lying if said he wasn't scared.

  He didn't fear anguish--there had been enough of that in his afterlife
to last an eternity. He feared ... nothingness. He feared being nothing. And yet, that's exactly how he felt now. Here, among skinjackers, he felt inferior, and that was a feeling he could not abide.

  No! He would not go down the tunnel with his head hung low. He was once great--he had to remember that. He once inspired fear and respect, but he gave that up for Allie. Because he loved her. And although he still loved her deeply, it wasn't the same as it had been, and he marveled at how love could have so many hidden textures ... for the feeling that once cushioned his heart now chafed at it.

  The five of them walked through most of the night to make up for lost time, then early the next morning, Milos took Allie out for more skinjacking lessons. Today Milos taught her the skills of "justicing," and "terminizing."

  Justicing involved skinjacking the incarcerated. There

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  was a penitentiary halfway between Lebanon and Nashville, and that's where Milos took her.

  "I know it is not a romantic place for a date," he had joked.

  "Good thing it's not a date," she reminded him.

  While the electrified gate of a high-security prison kept the living from escaping, it was little more than an annoyance for an Afterlight. Allie felt the current as she passed through the gate, and it left her with a passing feeling that resembled indigestion, if one could feel indigestion throughout one's entire body.

  Once inside the prison, they proceeded to skinjack various prisoners, with the specific goal of determining if they were guilty of the crime they were imprisoned for.

  "That's impossible," Allie had told him before they began. "Sure, we can hear their thoughts, but only the things they happen to be thinking about--and if we get too close, they know we're there, and they freak out."