He had died about two years earlier, and, having lost his way to the light, he slept for nine months, then had woken up in Everlost. The boy was a wanderer, solitary and silent, hiding from others who crossed his path, for fear of what they might do to him. Without camaraderie and friendship to remind him who he was, he forgot his ident.i.ty more quickly than most.
On the occasions that he did come across packs of other Afterlight kids, he would listen to them from his hiding spot as they shared with each other the rumors of monsters, so he knew as well as any other Afterlight what lay in store for the unwary.
When the boy had first crossed into Everlost, his wanderings had a purpose. He had begun in search of answers, but now he had even forgotten the questions. All that remained was an urge to keep moving, resting only when he came across a deadspot-a solid, bright patch of earth that had, like him, crossed into Everlost. He had learned very quickly that deadspots were unlike the faded, unfocused world of the living, where every footfall pulled you ankle-deep, and threatened to take you all the way down to the center of the earth if you stood still for too long.
On this day, his wanderings had brought him to a field full of deadspots-he had never seen so many in one place . . . but what really caught his attention was the bucket of popcorn. It just sat there on a deadspot, beside a huge Everlost tree, like it had no better place to be.
Somehow, the popcorn had crossed over!
The dead boy had not had the luxury of food since arriving in Everlost-and just because he didn"t need to eat anymore, it didn"t mean the cravings ended-so how could he resist that popcorn? It was the largest size, too-the kind you order with big eyes in the movie theater, but can never finish. Even now the corn inside glistened with b.u.t.ter. It seemed too good to be true!
Turns out, it was.
As he stepped onto the deadspot and reached for the tub, he felt a trip wire against his ankle, and in an instant a net pulled up around him, lifting him off the ground. Only after he was fully snared within the net did he realize his mistake.
He had heard of the monster that called itself the McGill, and his soul traps-but he had also heard that the McGill had traveled far away, and was now wreaking fresh havoc across the Atlantic Ocean. So then, who had set this trap? And why?
He struggled to free himself, but it was no use-his only consolation was that the bucket of popcorn was trapped in the net with him, and although half of its contents had spilled onto the ground, half still remained. He savored every single kernel, and when he was done, he waited, and he waited. Day became night, became day over and over, until he lost track of time, and he began to fear that his eternity would be spent strung up in this net. . . . Until he finally heard a faint droning sound-some sort of engine approaching from the north. The sound was echoed from the south-but then, as both sounds grew louder, he realized it wasn"t an echo at all. The sounds were different. He was being approached on two sides.
Were these other Afterlights coming for him, or were they monsters? Would he be freed, or would he become the victim of fresh havoc himself? The faint memory of a heart pounded in his ghostly chest, and as the whine of engines grew louder, he waited to see who would reach him first.
The View on High Miss Mary, one of our lookouts spotted a trap that"s sprung."
"Excellent news! Tell Speedo to bring us down close, but not too close-we don"t want to frighten our new friend."
Mary Hightower was in her element this far from the ground. Not so high as the living flew, where even the clouds were so far below, they seemed painted on the earth, but here, in that gap between earth and the heavens, is where she felt at home. She was queen of the Hindenburg, and she liked that just fine. The ma.s.sive silver airship-the largest zeppelin ever built-had gone up in a ball of flames way back in 1937, leaving the living world and crossing into Everlost. Mary, who believed all things happened for a reason, knew why it had exploded: It had crossed into Everlost for her.
The Starboard Promenade, which ran the full length of the pa.s.senger compartment, was her plush personal retreat, and her center of operations. Its downward-slanted windows gave her a dramatic view of the ground below: the washed-out hues of the living world, speckled with features both man-made and natural that stood out more boldly than the rest. Those were the places that had crossed into Everlost. Trees and fields, buildings and roads. While Afterlights could still see the living world, it was blurred and faded. Only things and places that had crossed into Everlost appeared bright and in sharp focus. Mary estimated that one in a hundred things that died or were destroyed crossed into Everlost. The universe was very selective in what it chose to keep.
Only now, as she spent her days riding the skies, did she realize she had stayed put for way too long. She had missed so much up in her towers-but then the towers were a citadel against her brother, Mikey-the monster who called himself the McGill. Mikey had been defeated. He was harmless now. And now Mary no longer had to wait for Afterlights to find her. She could go out and find them herself.
"Why are you always looking out of those windows?" Speedo would ask her, when he took a break from piloting the airship. "What do you see?"
"A world of ghosts," she would tell him. Speedo had no idea that the ghosts she spoke of were the so-called living. How insubstantial that world was. Nothing in it lasted, not places, not people. It was a world full of pointless pursuits that always ended the same way. A tunnel, and surrender. Well, not always, she thought happily. Not for everyone.
"I"d still rather be alive," Speedo would say whenever she spoke of how blessed they were to be here in Everlost.
"If I had lived," Mary would remind him, "I"d be long dead by now . . . and you"d probably be a fat, bald accountant."
Then Speedo would look at his slight physique, dripping wet-always dripping wet in the bathing suit he died in-to rea.s.sure himself that he"d never have grown fat and bald, had he lived. But Mary knew better. Adulthood can do the most horrific things to the best of people. Mary much preferred being fifteen forever.
Mary took a moment to gather herself and prepare to greet the new arrival. She would do it personally. It was her way, and it was the least she could do. She would be the first out of the ship-a slender figure in a plush green velvet dress, and with a perfect fall of copper hair, descending the ramp from the impossibly huge hydrogen airship. This is how it was done. With cla.s.s, with style. The personal touch. All new arrivals would know from the first moment they met her that she loved each and every child in her care and they were safe under her capable protection.
As she left the Starboard Promenade, she pa.s.sed other children in the common areas of the ship. She had collected forty-seven of them. In her days at the towers, there had been many, many more-but Nick had taken them from her. He had betrayed her, handing each of her children the key to their own undoing. He had placed a coin in each of their hands. The coins! Those horrid little reminders that a true death did await all of them if they were foolish enough to seek it-and just because there was a light at the end of the tunnel, it didn"t mean it was something to be desired. Not the way Mary saw it. Heaven might shine bright, but so do flames.
As the ship descended, Mary went to the control car-the ship"s bridge which hung from the belly of the giant craft. From there she would have the best view as they descended.
"We should touch down in a few minutes," Speedo told her, as he intently piloted the sleek silver beast. He was one of the few Afterlights to refuse to take a coin on the day Nick betrayed her. That had earned him a special place. A position of trust and responsibility.
"Look at that field." Speedo pointed it out. "Do you see all those deadspots?"
From the air it looked like a hundred random polka dots on the ground.
"There must have been a battle here once," Mary suggested. "Perhaps the Revolutionary War."
There was one Everlost tree, standing on its own dead-spot. "The trap is in that tree," Speedo told her as they neared the ground.
It was a grand tree, its leaves full of rich reds and yellows, set apart from the greener summertime trees of the living world. For this tree it would always be the early days of fall, but the leaves would never drop from its branches. Mary wondered what had caused it to cross over. Perhaps lovers had carved their initials in it, and then it was struck by lightning. Perhaps it was planted in someone"s memory, but was then cut down. Or maybe it simply soaked up the blood of a fallen soldier, and died years later in a drought. For whatever reason, the tree didn"t die entirely. Instead it crossed into Everlost, like so many things that the universe saw fit to preserve.
The foliage of the tree was so dense, they couldn"t see the trap, even after they had touched down.
"I"ll go first," Mary said. "But I"d like you to come too. I"ll need you to free our new friend from the net."
"Of course, Miss Mary." Speedo smiled a smile that was slightly too large for his face.
The ramp was lowered, and Mary stepped from the airship to the earth, keeping the grace of her stride even as her feet sank almost to her ankles in the living world with each step.
But as she got closer to the tree, she saw that something was terribly, terribly wrong. The net had been taken down, and there was no Afterlight inside. All that remained was the empty popcorn tub on the ground-the bait she had left, just as her brother used to-but while the McGill offered his captives slavery, Mary offered them freedom. Or at least her definition of it. But there was no Afterlight in the net to receive her gift today.
"Musta gotten out," Speedo said as he came up behind her.
Mary shook her head. "No one gets out of these nets."
And then a scent came to her from the tree. It was a sweet, heady aroma that filled her with a rich blend of love, swirled with loathing.
The aroma was coming from a brown handprint on the trunk of the tree. A handprint left there to mock her.
"Is that dried blood?" Speedo asked.
"No," she told him, maintaining her poise in spite of the fury that raged within her. "It"s chocolate."
Here"s a sneak peek at From 1 Connor "There are places you can go," Ariana tells him, "and a guy as smart as you has a decent chance of surviving to eighteen."
Connor isn"t so sure, but looking into Ariana"s eyes makes his doubts go away, if only for a moment. Her eyes are sweet violet with streaks of gray. She"s such a slave to fashion-always getting the newest pigment injection the second it"s in style. Connor was never into that. He"s always kept his eyes the color they came in. Brown. He never even got tattoos, like so many kids get these days when they"re little. The only color on his skin is the tan it takes during the summer, but now, in November, that tan has long faded. He tries not to think about the fact that he"ll never see the summer again. At least not as Connor La.s.siter. He still can"t believe that his life is being stolen from him at sixteen.
Ariana"s violet eyes begin to shine as they fill with tears that flow down her cheeks when she blinks. "Connor, I"m so sorry." She holds him, and for a moment it seems as if everything is okay, as if they are the only two people on Earth. For that instant, Connor feels invincible, untouchable . . . but she lets go, the moment pa.s.ses, and the world around him returns. Once more he can feel the rumble of the freeway beneath them, as cars pa.s.s by, not knowing or caring that he"s here. Once more he is just a marked kid, a week short of unwinding.
The soft, hopeful things Ariana tells him don"t help now. He can barely hear her over the rush of traffic. This place where they hide from the world is one of those dangerous places that make adults shake their heads, grateful that their own kids aren"t stupid enough to hang out on the ledge of a freeway overpa.s.s. For Connor it"s not about stupidity, or even rebellion-it"s about feeling life. Sitting on this ledge, hidden behind an exit sign is where he feels most comfortable. Sure, one false step and he"s roadkill. Yet for Connor, life on the edge is home.
There have been no other girls he"s brought here, although he hasn"t told Ariana that. He closes his eyes, feeling the vibration of the traffic as if it"s pulsing through his veins, a part of him. This has always been a good place to get away from fights with his parents, or when he just feels generally boiled. But now Connor"s beyond boiled-even beyond fighting with his mom and dad. There"s nothing more to fight about. His parents signed the order-it"s a done deal.
"We should run away," Ariana says. "I"m fed up with everything, too. My family, school, everything. I could kick-AWOL, and never look back."
Connor hangs on the thought. The idea of kicking-AWOL by himself terrifies him. He might put up a tough front, he might act like the bad boy at school-but running away on his own? He doesn"t even know if he has the guts. But if Ariana comes, that"s different. That"s not alone. "Do you mean it?"
Ariana looks at him with her magical eyes. "Sure. Sure I do. I could leave here. If you asked me."
Connor knows this is major. Running away with an Unwind-that"s commitment. The fact that she would do it moves him beyond words. He kisses her, and in spite of everything going on in his life Connor suddenly feels like the luckiest guy in the world. He holds her-maybe a little too tightly, because she starts to squirm. It just makes him want to hold her even more tightly, but he fights that urge and lets go. She smiles at him.
"AWOL . . ." she says. "What does that mean, anyway?"
"It"s an old military term or something," Connor says. "It means "absent without leave.""
Ariana thinks about it, and grins. "Hmm. More like "alive without lectures.""
Connor takes her hand, trying hard not to squeeze it too tightly. She said she"d go if he asked her. Only now does he realize he hasn"t actually asked yet.
"Will you come with me, Ariana?"
Ariana smiles and nods. "Sure," she says. "Sure I will."
Ariana"s parents don"t like Connor. "We always knew he"d be an Unwind," he can just hear them saying. "You should have stayed away from that La.s.siter boy." He was never "Connor" to them. He was always "that La.s.siter boy." They think that just because he"s been in and out of disciplinary school they have a right to judge him.
Still, when he walks her home that afternoon, he stops short of her door, hiding behind a tree as she goes inside. Before he heads home, he thinks how hiding is now going to be a way of life for both of them.
Home.
Connor wonders how he can call the place he lives home, when he"s about to be evicted-not just from the place he sleeps, but from the hearts of those who are supposed to love him.
His father sits in a chair, watching the news as Connor enters.
"Hi, Dad."
His father points at some random carnage on the news. "Clappers again."
"What did they hit this time?"
"They blew up an Old Navy in the North Akron mall."
"Hmm," says Connor. "You"d think they"d have better taste."
"I don"t find that funny."
Connor"s parents don"t know that Connor knows he"s being unwound. He wasn"t supposed to find out, but Connor has always been good at ferreting out secrets. Three weeks ago, while looking for a stapler in his dad"s home office, he found airplane tickets to the Bahamas. They were going on a family vacation over Thanksgiving. One problem, though: There were only three tickets. His mother, his father, his younger brother. No ticket for him. At first he just figured the ticket was somewhere else, but the more he thought about it, the more it seemed wrong. So Connor went looking a little deeper when his parents were out, and he found it. The Unwind order. It had been signed in old-fashioned triplicate. The white copy was already gone-off with the authorities. The yellow copy would accompany Connor to his end, and the pink would stay with his parents, as evidence of what they"d done. Perhaps they would frame it and hang it alongside his first-grade picture.
The date on the order was the day before the Bahamas trip. He was going off to be unwound, and they were going on vacation to make themselves feel better about it. The unfairness of it had made Connor want to break something. It had made him want to break a lot of things-but he hadn"t. For once he had held his temper, and aside from a few fights in school that weren"t his fault, he kept his emotions hidden. He kept what he knew to himself. Everyone knew that an unwind order was irreversible, so screaming and fighting wouldn"t change a thing. Besides, he found a certain power in knowing his parents" secret. Now the blows he could deal them were so much more effective. Like the day he brought flowers home for his mother and she cried for hours. Like the B-plus he brought home on a science test. Best grade he ever got in science. He handed it to his father, who looked at it, the color draining from his face. "See, Dad, my grades are getting better. I could even bring my science grade up to an A by the end of the semester." An hour later his father was sitting in a chair, still clutching the test in his hand, and staring blankly at the wall.
Connor"s motivation was simple: Make them suffer. Let them know for the rest of their lives what a horrible mistake they made.
But there was no sweetness to this revenge, and now, three weeks of rubbing it in their faces has made him feel no better. In spite of himself he"s starting to feel bad for his parents, and he hates that he feels that way.
"Did I miss dinner?"
His father doesn"t look away from the TV. "Your mother left a plate for you."
Connor heads off toward the kitchen, but halfway there he hears: "Connor?"
He turns to see his father looking at him. Not just looking, but staring. He"s going to tell me now, Connor thinks. He"s going to tell me they"re unwinding me, and then break down in tears, going on and on about how sorry sorry sorry he is about it all. If he does, Connor just might accept the apology. He might even forgive him, and then tell him that he doesn"t plan to be here when the Juvey-cops come to take him away. But in the end all his father says is, "Did you lock the door when you came in?"
"I"ll do it now."
Connor locks the door, then goes to his room, no longer hungry for whatever it is his mother saved for him.
At two in the morning Connor dresses in black and fills a backpack with the things that really matter to him. He still has room for three changes of clothes. He finds it amazing, when it comes down to it, how few things are worth taking. Memories, mostly. Reminders of a time before things went so wrong between him and his parents. Between him and the rest of the world.
Connor peeks in on his brother, thinks about waking him to say good-bye, then decides it"s not a good idea. He silently slips out into the night. He can"t take his bike, because he had installed an ant.i.theft tracking device. Connor never considered that he might be the one stealing it. Ariana has bikes for both of them though.
Ariana"s house is a twenty-minute walk, if you take the conventional route. Suburban Ohio neighborhoods never have streets that go in straight lines, so instead he takes the more direct route, through the woods, and makes it there in ten.
The lights in Ariana"s house are off. He expected this. It would have been suspicious if she had stayed awake all night. Better to pretend she"s sleeping, so she won"t alert any suspicion. He keeps his distance from the house. Ariana"s yard and front porch are equipped with motion-sensor lights that come on whenever anything moves into range. They"re meant to scare off wild animals and criminals. Ariana"s parents are convinced that Connor is both.
He pulls out his phone and dials the familiar number. From where he stands in the shadows at the edge of the backyard he can hear it ring in her room upstairs. Connor disconnects quickly and ducks farther back into the shadows, for fear that Ariana"s parents might be looking out from their windows. What is she thinking? Ariana was supposed to leave her phone on vibrate.
He makes a wide arc around the edge of the backyard, wide enough not to set off the lights, and although a light comes on when he steps onto the front porch, only Ariana"s bedroom faces that way. She comes to the door a few moments later, opening it not quite wide enough for her to come out or for him to go in.
"Hi, are you ready?" asks Connor. Clearly she"s not; she wears a robe over satin pajamas. "You didn"t forget, did you?"
"No, no, I didn"t forget. . . ."
"So hurry up! The sooner we get out of here, the more of a lead we"ll get before anyone knows we"re gone."
"Connor," she says, "here"s the thing . . ."
And the truth is right there in her voice, in the way it"s such a strain for her to even say his name, the quiver of apology lingering in the air like an echo. She doesn"t have to say anything after that, because he knows, but he lets her say it anyway. Because he sees how hard it is for her, and he wants it to be. He wants it to be the hardest thing she"s ever done in her life.
"Connor, I really want to go, I do . . . but it"s just a really bad time for me. My sister"s getting married, and you know she picked me to be the maid of honor. And then there"s school."
"You hate school. You said you"d be dropping out when you turn sixteen."
"Testing out," she says. "There"s a difference."
"So you"re not coming?"
"I want to, I really, really want to . . . but I can"t."
"So everything we talked about was just a lie."
"No," says Ariana. "It was a dream. Reality got in the way, that"s all. And running away doesn"t solve anything."
"Running away is the only way to save my life," Connor hisses. "I"m about to be unwound, in case you forgot."
She gently touches his face. "I know," she says. "But I"m not."
Then a light comes on at the top of the stairs, and reflexively Ariana closes the door a few inches.
"Ari?" Connor hears her mother say. "What is it? What are you doing at the door?"