Everneath (5 page)

Cole was right about my mark. I hadn’t noticed before, but it was getting bigger. What if it wasn’t just a scar? What if it
was
an actual Shade inside of me? A tracking device, growing, counting down the time I had left.

And there was nowhere I could hide.

The soup kitchen. Five months, one week left.

I
tried to forget about Cole’s visit. He didn’t come back the rest of the week, and I thought maybe he would give up. At least, I hoped.

That Saturday, my shift at the soup kitchen started. I was relieved to be put to work. There was no way to make up for all the pain I’d put my family through, but service to others was a start—my last chance for any sort of redemption, if it existed.

When I got to the shelter, the manager of the soup kitchen met me outside the doors, and another a man with a serious camera was there. I felt like turning and leaving, but I couldn’t disappoint my dad anymore. I had to get through it.

The manager came toward me, hand extended. “Nikki, right? Your dad told me to expect you. I’m Christopher.” Smile.
Click.
The flash of the camera went off as Christopher took my hand.

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

Christopher leaned in and said in a quiet voice, “Just ignore this guy. What matters is that you’re here to do some good.”

I immediately liked Christopher. His breath smelled like peppermint and tobacco, and tattoos of vines and wire crept out from underneath the collar of his shirt and snaked along his neck. He ignored the photographer and led me inside to the dining hall, which smelled like a cafeteria mixed with a thrift store.

It wasn’t hard to learn the ropes at the soup kitchen, and after ladling the first few bowls, I hit a groove. The photographer took the required pictures of me with a ladle in my hands. Then he took off.

As the line of people grew, I could no longer study faces and wonder how they ended up waiting for handouts at a soup kitchen. I just slopped chili and tried to keep my ladling hand from shaking.

Most of the people trudged along silently, which is why I was surprised when I heard an older woman say to me, “You are absolutely beautiful.”

I looked up from the vat of soup. “Me?”

“Yes,” the old woman said. Deep wrinkles filled every inch of her face. The skin around her eyes was pinched in the corners, as if she’d spent years squinting. Despite this, her eyes looked clear and fresh. Her withered hands reached out to take the soup; they seemed so brittle I worried the bowl would be heavy enough to snap them. “You’re not old,” she said.

“Oh,” I said, a little puzzled. “I guess not. I’m seventeen.”

“I’m eighteen,” she said. She straightened up as she spoke, making herself a little taller.

Christopher, who was standing next to me, dealing out the bread, chuckled. “Hi, Mary. How are you today?”

The woman—Mary—kept her eyes on me when she answered. “Just fine. Can you believe how young she looks?”

I turned to Christopher, who winked at me reassuringly. “Yeah, she looks seventeen.”

A loud crash made us both whip our faces toward Mary, who had thrown her bowl of soup to the linoleum floor.

“I’m eighteen.” Her lower lip trembled. “I’m eighteen, I’m eighteen … or maybe I’m nineteen. Wait, who’s the president?” Her words melted into sobs, and she seemed to forget where she was. “Who’s the president?!” she wailed. Then she jerked her head up and looked at me with clear, dry eyes, and out of nowhere she said, “You broke a heart.”

My breath caught in my throat. She said it with such conviction, for a moment I had a hard time believing it was just a random comment. It was like she could see inside me, to the guilt that was there. But she couldn’t know. It wasn’t possible.

Christopher made his way around the counter and put his hand on her shoulder.

“C’mon, Mary,” he said. “Let’s go sit down and have some lunch. Together.”

One of the other volunteers—a girl maybe a few years older than me, with two French braids on the sides of her head—handed me a couple of rags, and we mopped up the floor.

“Don’t worry about her,” the braid girl said.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Dementia or something. The first time I met her, she kept saying she was lost. Asked me over and over to help her find someone’s daughter. I had no idea what she was talking about.”

“Someone’s daughter?” I asked.

“Yeah… Penelope or Priscilla or something.” She made one last swipe at the floor and then gathered up the rags into a big ball in her hands. “She wouldn’t stop talking about it.”

“Who is Penelope’s daughter?”

She shrugged. “She never said. Maybe it’s a friend she used to know. Poor woman.”

Penelope’s daughter.
Strange. Maybe the braided girl was right, that it was an old friend. Or maybe it was nonsense.

Once the lunch was over and the chairs were stacked away, Christopher told me that Mary had been coming to the shelter for about a month and she seemed to be suffering from dementia.

I guess I sort of knew how she felt. But I decided if I saw her again, I’d ask her about Penelope’s daughter. Maybe I could help her figure out what she was looking for.

There was nothing I could do to make up for everything I’d done, but if I could help just one person finish these next six months better off than she started them, that would be something.

Home.

My mother used to make pancakes every Sunday morning. After she died, my dad avoided the kitchen each week. Now that I was home, I decided to reinstate the Sunday tradition.

I put a kettle of water to boil on the stove and then I looked out the window. Tommy was sitting in the chestnut tree, holding a fishing pole.

Tommy. I thought of all the things he’d been through in his short life and all the loss he’d experienced. He was so confused about where I’d gone and why I was suddenly back. I owed him more than I was giving him. Maybe not an explanation, but I had to try to make it better.

I watched as he balanced on a thick branch, raising his fishing pole and swishing it forward and back. Ten o’clock to two o’clock. I smiled. He was giving his latest batch of homemade flies a “test run.”

I put a tea bag in my mug and set it on the counter. Then I went outside, creeping around the side of the house to where the chestnut tree towered over our tall wooden fence.

Tommy didn’t see me at first. I watched him send a cast out, expertly avoiding branches and flowers. I couldn’t think of any other ten-year-old who would consider this a fun Sunday morning, but Tommy always was different from other kids in the neighborhood, and sometimes those other kids teased him for it.

I looked at the rough bark on the tree and the wooden slats nailed into the trunk for climbing. I used to climb the tree too, with Jules. We would sit at the top, where the summer pruning created perfect flat seats. We’d pluck the spiky chestnuts, leaving their green outer shells intact, and throw them at the neighbor boys.

I always took particular care in aiming for Jack’s head. He told me later that he rode his bike by my house on purpose. I asked him if he liked pain.

Jack, Will, Jules, and I became inseparable. Stayed that way for a long time, until Will left for the war right before Christmas.

A fishing fly landed at my feet.

“Hey, Nikki,” Tommy called out from his perch. “What do you think? Would you take the bait?”

I picked the fly up and squinted one eye as I examined it. My hand started to shake, and the fly slipped from my fingers. “Definitely. She’ll fly true.”

“Wanna come up and cast with me?”

I thought about my trembling hands and the spasms that had plagued my weak muscles since my Return. Hanging from branches wasn’t a good idea. “Thanks, buddy, but I don’t think I’m much for climbing trees lately.”

“You’re no fun anymore,” Tommy said, sounding disappointed.

“I’m sorry, Tommy.”

“Everyone says sorry,” he said. “I’m tired of everybody being so sorry. I just want things to be normal.”

I didn’t say anything, because my first instinct was to apologize again.

“Now that you’re home, can we be normal again?”

How was I supposed to answer that truthfully? I knew my Return would be difficult, but as I watched Tommy playing in the backyard, hoping for something that could never happen, I was struck by how painful it had become. It hurt to see the life I’d never have.

“Can’t we, Nikki?” Tommy pressed. “Be normal?”

“Yeah.”

I’d started to walk away when he added, “You can pick a fly. From my personal collection in my room.”

I knew how precious his collection of favorites was. I forced a smile. “Thanks, Tommy. How about I pay you for it?”

He smiled wide, then started to reel in the line as I turned to go.

After school in Mrs. Stone’s classroom. Five months left.

A
week passed and my mark doubled in size, to two fingers wide. One morning, Mrs. Stone offered to help me catch up since I’d started school almost a month later than everyone else.

She’d assigned the class thirty-page “practice thesis” papers, due in the spring. I decided the finished paper would go to my dad, to give him some sort of physical evidence that for six months I was here and making an effort.

When I showed up in her classroom after school, she was talking to a student at her desk. I didn’t get a good look because I kept my head down and went directly to my normal seat in the back, even though every chair was empty.

I pulled out my textbook, ignoring the conversation at the front. Until I heard Jack’s voice.

“The deadline’s not for a couple of months,” he said.

My heart sputtered. I glanced up. Jack’s back was to me, so I watched, grateful for the chance to stare at him.

“That’s fine,” Mrs. Stone answered. “I stay late most days, so you’re welcome to work here—then I can help you when you need it. But don’t you have football?”

“Practice doesn’t start until three thirty. So that’ll give me an hour.” Jack peeked toward the back of the room and I ducked my head. “I really appreciate your help.”

“I’m happy to see you taking more of an interest in English,” Mrs. Stone said. “Those competitive college programs are looking for well-rounded applicants. Too much math and science isn’t nourishing to the soul.”

I smiled at her enthusiasm, flipped through the pages of my book, and took my notebook out of my bag.

I didn’t hear his footsteps, so his voice startled me.

“Hi,” he said.

I dropped my notebook.

Jack sat down beside me in the same seat he used during class. I couldn’t move. He reached to get my fallen notebook and held it out for me.

“Thanks,” I said. This time there was a little sound behind the word.

I should have asked him about his project. Or his football. Or the weather. That’s what old friends would do. But the words weren’t there, so I turned back to my open lit book.

“You missed the big game Friday,” he said.

Was he expecting a conversation? I couldn’t do it. I knew he didn’t have feelings for me anymore. It was one of the reasons—the main one—I’d gone with Cole. At the time, his betrayal shattered me, but the Feed had since taken away the hurt. It didn’t matter anymore. But did I dare let him in again?

I could feel his eyes on me as he waited. The wait seemed very long, to the point where it would have been uncomfortable for anyone else.

And yet he sat, watching me.

Waiting.

Patient.

Still.

By this time, I’d almost forgotten what he said. Something about missing something.

“Yes,” I said.

“Now you’ve done it.” His tone was quietly playful.

I couldn’t help it. I looked up at him questioningly.

“You’ve added a third word to your repertoire.
Hi, thanks,
and now
yes.”
His lips turned up at the corners, and the heat rushed to my face. He noticed. “At least that much hasn’t changed.”

I turned back to my notebook, my hands trembling.

He leaned toward me. “Now that we have our first conversation out of the way, do you want to tell me where you’ve been?” From the way he spoke I knew his smile was gone.

I could feel little beads of sweat form on my forehead.

“You left me. Without a word,” he said. He sounded tentative, as if he were trying to keep his voice even. I took in a deep breath, but I couldn’t figure out what he was feeling. There wasn’t one singular emotion that was stronger than the others. “Don’t you have anything to say to me?”

He waited. My heart felt like it would burst through my chest into a million little pieces, and I could see this wasn’t going to work.

I started to close my book.