Everneath (2 page)

It was a store—a convenience store, probably—and despite the brightness of the place, it was the middle of the night. I realized how dark the Feed cavern must’ve been if even the middle of the night was too bright for me here.

I shifted, and a sharp pain shot through my shoulder, still tender from where the Shade had stabbed me.

I closed my eyes and pictured the boy with the brown hair, and as I took in my first really deep breath of Surface air, a name to match the face came to me. A name I’d been trying to cling to for a century.

“Jack.”

Park City High School.

Five and a half months of my Return left.

I
t was too soon.

But, really, I’d been gone for a hundred years. Everything about my old life would feel like it was coming at me too soon. Especially high school. I stepped through the doors of Park City High and nearly choked on the smell of fresh paint. I glanced around. None of the other students seemed to be affected by it, but it made my eyes water.

The halls of the high school looked the same, reminding me that aboveground—far above the Everneath—only six months had passed while I was away. Time moves differently in the Everneath. One hundred years to me was just months on the Surface. Everything was the same. And everything was different.

A banner hung above the entrance to the upper-class hall.
PARK CITY HIGH: HOME OF THE MINERS.
Right then a few large boys dressed in football jerseys and jeans ran under the sign, jumping and high-fiving the Miner’s chisel as they went.

Junior year. A waste of time in one respect, considering I’d never make it to the end of the year, let alone graduation. I only had six months before the Tunnels came for me.

But I needed to be here. Needed to glimpse, for a moment, the life I had before. The year I should’ve had. To see Jack one last time, despite how we left things. To see my family again.

This was my chance to say good-bye. It was a chance I didn’t get last time.

I scanned the hallway, searching for his face, but looked down quickly after catching a few questioning stares. I knew he was here somewhere in the building. The thought gave me goose bumps.

At least I had enough emotions left inside me to even get goose bumps. Blushes and chills didn’t take much— I’d recovered them about a week ago, along with all of my memories. But it was the stronger emotions, the ones that produced laughter and tears, that eluded me still.

I glanced down at my schedule. First-period English literature. As I checked the room numbers at the tops of the doors, curious whispers floated along the hall behind me, hanging in the air above my head.

Isn’t that Nikki Beckett? She looks awful….

Is she still using?

Has to be…. What else would do that to a person?

Poor Jack.

Does he know she’s back? Does he know she’s strung out?

When I found the right room, I clutched my books to my chest, lowered my head, and walked through the door.

Someone—probably the new English teacher—called from near the front of the classroom. “Miss Beckett, is it?”

Hearing my own last name did strange things to my heart. Made it beat a little faster. A little harder. It had been so long since I’d had a last name. For a hundred years, Cole had called me only by my first name. It was how the Everliving treated their Forfeits—if you didn’t have a last name, you didn’t have a life outside the Everneath. Nothing to want to come back to. Maybe that was why he was so surprised that I chose to Return.

I stopped just inside the doorway and lifted my head toward the teacher, keeping a few strands of hair in front of my eyes as I nodded in response.

“Welcome.” She hesitated as she took in my appearance. People did that a lot. My dad told me it was because I looked like a malnourished animal, ready to sprint. I’d lost a lot of weight, and my dark hair no longer held any curls. “The principal told me to expect you. I’m Mrs. Stone. I see you have the textbook.”

I nodded again.

“There’s an empty chair in the back there, and here’s a supplemental book on mythology.” She pointed toward the rear of the classroom, but I kept my gaze on her. “You’ll have to work hard to catch up with the rest of the class.”

I turned and shuffled down the middle row until I reached the empty place at the back. Once seated, I took out my notebook and pencil and leaned forward over my desk so my hair created a curtain on either side of my face.

I could do this.

But I could taste the curiosity in the air. Literally. Cole used to tell me that the Everneath would change me—make me more in tune with the emotions of others because I was so empty of my own. Now that I was back, I could “taste” emotions hanging around me.

Certain emotions were stronger than others, and would hit me when I wasn’t ready. Like when my dad told me he was so happy I was back and that he didn’t blame me, but his disappointment in the air tasted as strong as a clump of salt.

It wasn’t so easy to identify most of them, except when an entire group was feeling the same thing.

Like now. Thirty people in a room, all curious.

But as the class settled in for the lecture, one emotion, separate from the curiosity, floated to the top of the rest. I couldn’t figure out what it was. It would’ve been easier if I’d been prepared.

“Hi,” a familiar voice said from the desk next to mine.

I startled.

It was him.

Jack.

The boy who had gotten me through hell.

I wasn’t expecting him to be in my first class of the day. Here he was, my reason for Returning, but any words I used to know got caught in my throat. I wanted to run toward him and away from him at the same time, laugh and cry at the same time. Instead I froze.

All this way, just to see him, and I’d never planned for what to do next.

Jack’s voice sounded flat. Or more that he tried to make it sound flat. Maybe I was the only one who would’ve picked up on that.

I kept my head down, took a deep breath, and picked the easiest of the words that were stuck in my throat. I exhaled as slowly as I could, and the word slipped out. “Hi.”

The word had no accompanying voice to it. Just the escaping air behind my lips.

He turned away from me to focus on Mrs. Stone. I wondered how I was going to get through the hour.

I took notes furiously, transcribing every word Mrs. Stone said. Since my Return, my emaciated muscles made my hands shake, and I looked for ways to keep them busy. It was part of the reason I took up knitting. In the two weeks that had passed since I walked out of the Shop-n-Go and back through the door of my father’s home, I had knitted an entire wardrobe’s worth of clothes, a few dog sweaters for my neighbor, and a handful of toaster cozies.

Mrs. Stone spoke animatedly about the role of the hero in mythology. When she asked the class for their favorite stories or figures from myths, several students raised their hands. A large kid in the back said, “Hercules.” Another boy, wearing a
MATHLETES ARE ATHLETES TOO
shirt, said, “Aphrodite.”

People laughed. I didn’t know why. It seemed to be an inside joke and I was an outsider.

Then a blond girl in the front row raised her hand and said, “Hades and Persephone.”

I couldn’t help flipping forward in the textbook to the story. I didn’t know why it would be anybody’s favorite. According to myth, Hades, the god of the Underworld, fell in love with Persephone, kidnapped her, and tried to make her his queen. When he tricked her into eating six pomegranate seeds, she was bound to the Underworld for six months out of every year.

Kidnapping and imprisonment. It was a horrible myth. I wondered where her hero had been.

Jack’s leg bounced up and down, distracting me. I wanted to reach over and put my hand on his knee and tell him everything would be okay.

But that was impossible. I stared harder at my paper and tried not to think about Jack’s leg.

The bell to end class startled me, and I dropped my pencil. It bounced on the floor, toward Jack’s desk. I froze. Maybe he hadn’t noticed. I’d wait and get it when the rest of the class left. I stayed perfectly still. The room cleared out, but I couldn’t sense any movement from the desk next to mine.

Before I could stop myself, I looked up.

He was there, motionless, holding my pencil in his hand, watching me. My eyes drank in the sight of him, even as my body fought the urge to bolt. His hair was the same rich brown color, but it was longer and shaggier than before. And his face had lost any signs of baby fat, making me think his mom had stopped forcing meatball sandwiches down his throat like she used to during football season.

His eyes were exactly as I’d remembered, exactly as I’d pictured every day for the past hundred years. Chocolate. But there was one difference: a single steel post pierced one of his eyebrows.

It wouldn’t have belonged on his face a year ago, but it somehow fit the face looking at me now. This face was edgier. This face had been through something.

He was beautiful.

I started to tremble. It took all of my strength, which wasn’t very much, not to run out the door.

He’d obviously waited for me to look at him. Like his voice, his face held no easily identifiable emotion to pinpoint. No love, no hate. He held out my pencil for me.

I reached over and grabbed it, my fingers brushing lightly against the palm of his hand. I could hear my own intake of breath. He didn’t flinch in the slightest. He didn’t draw his hand back.

“Mr. Caputo? Miss Beckett?” Mrs. Stone called from the front of the classroom. “Are you waiting for something?”

“No, Mrs. Stone,” Jack said, keeping his curious eyes on mine. “Just saying hi to an old … friend.”

I gathered up my books and tried not to think about how it used to be.

September. Six months before the Feed.

Six months before I went under.

“Hey, Becks!” Jules, my best friend, called out to me from the end of the hallway. Most of the students clearing their lockers for the day turned to look. Jules had a way of grabbing attention. “You going to the game tonight?”

I was about to answer, but another voice rang out from just behind me.

“She’d better,” Jack said as he wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me back against him. I could smell the fresh leather on his letterman jacket as I crunched against it.

“Why is that?” I asked, smiling and instantly warm in his arms. I still couldn’t get over the fact that Jack Caputo and I were … together. It was hard to think the word. We had been friends for so long. To be honest, he had been friends with me and I had been secretly pining for him since … well, since forever.

But now he was here. It was
my
waist he held. It didn’t seem real.

“I can’t carry the team to victory without you,” he said. “You’re my rabbit’s foot.”

I craned my neck around to look at him. “I’ve always dreamed of some guy saying that to me.”

He pressed his lips to the base of my neck, and heat rushed to my cheeks. “I love making you turn red,” he whispered.

“It doesn’t take much. We’re in the middle of the hallway.”

“You want to know what else I love?” His tone was playful.

“No,” I said, but he wasn’t listening. He took his fingers and lightly trailed them up my spine, to the back of my neck. Instant goose bumps sprang up all over my body, and I shuddered.

“That.”

I could feel his smile against my ear. Jack was always smiling. It was what made him so likable.

By this time, Jules had snaked her way through the throng of students. “Hello, Jack. I was in the middle of a conversation with Becks. Do you mind?” she said with a smirk.

Right then a bunch of Jack’s teammates rounded the corner at the end of the hallway, stampeding toward us.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

Jack pushed me safely aside just before they tackled him, and Jules and I watched as what seemed like the entire football team heaped on top of their starting quarterback.

“Dating Jack Caputo just might kill you one day.” Jules laughed. “You sure it’s worth it?”

I didn’t answer, but I was sure. In the weeks following my mother’s death, I had spent nearly every morning sitting at her grave. Whispering to her, telling her about my day, like I used to each morning before she died. Jack came with me to the cemetery most days. He’d bring a book and read under a tree several headstones away, waiting quietly, as if what I was doing was totally normal.

We hadn’t even been together then.

It had been only five months since my mom died. Five months since a drunk driver hit her during her evening jog. Five months since the one person who knew all my dreams disappeared forever. Jack was the reason I was still standing.

Yeah, I was sure he was worth it. The only thing I wasn’t sure about was why
he
was with
me.