Everneath. Part 2

His smile was dazzling. It always had been, but before, I was just admiring it from afar as he flashed it toward Lacey Greene or one of his other girlfriends.

Tonight it was for me.

"We did it, Becks!" He spun me around.

"Congra-" I couldn't get anything else out, because his lips were on mine. His mouth tasted faintly of salt. The eye black on his cheeks was no doubt smearing onto my face, but I didn't care. We had this moment together, and I knew it would be over too quickly.

After all, he was the hero. Soon his teammates would be carrying Jack off the field on their shoulders. I knew if I wanted to date the quarterback, I'd have to share him on a night like this.

NOW.

My lunch nook.

My knitting needles darted back and forth as they worked. My lunch sack sat untouched on the hard tile floor beside me. The drinking fountain next to my shoulder shuddered to life, cooling the water.

I liked the white noise and solitude my nook gave me.

"Nikki?"

I paused the frantic knitting, but I didn't look up. Maybe whoever it was didn't mean me.

"Becks?"

Maybe not. Two feet appeared next to my lunch sack. How had she tracked me down?

I looked up. The girl looking down at me hadn't changed at all. She was still beautiful, her round face as cherubic as ever, her long blond hair falling in curling cascades over her shoulders. That hair always looked like a snapshot of a waterfall, as if it should be moving.

She was uneasy. I could sense it.

"Hi, Jules-Julianna," I said.

She smiled sympathetically and sank to the ground so she was facing me. I set my knitting down.

"Jules," she corrected. "You call me Jules."

I tapped the floor with my fingers, closing my eyes for a long blink. I felt one of the knitting needles being placed back in my hand, and when I opened my eyes, Jules set the ball of yarn in my lap. She fingered the flowers on the hat I'd nearly finished.

"This is gorgeous, Becks," she said. My nickname felt like warm coffee traveling down my throat, heating my insides. "When did you learn to knit?"

"Two weeks ago." My fingers automatically began their work again.

"You always were a quick study."

I smiled. She used to hate the fact that school came easy to me.

Right then the bell rang, ending the lunch hour. I shot up to my feet, startling Jules. I couldn't help it. Everything seemed louder here.

"Whoa, Becks. We still have five minutes," she said.

"Sorry. I just..." I didn't know how to finish.

Jules squeezed my hand. "It's okay. I can only imagine what you've been through."

She didn't say it, but it sounded like she believed the rumors that I'd run away and ended up in rehab. At least she wasn't asking me for the full story. I'd rather people believed the rumors than have to try to explain that I'd been in some version of the Underworld for a hundred years. I didn't need everyone thinking I was crazy, too.

I didn't speak to anyone else for the rest of the day.

When I got home from school, my dad was in the living room with a woman in a gray suit he introduced as Mrs. Ellingson. She said she was there as my friend. I told her I didn't need friends.

She asked me to pee in a cup.

Later that night my dad called me into his study. I knew whatever he wanted was serious, because the study was where all of our serious talks took place.

He was finishing up an email when I went in, so I sat quietly and looked around. The room smelled like leather. The dark wood walls of the study were covered with pictures of his accomplishments. His graduation ceremony from law school. His inauguration as mayor of Park City. Cutting the ribbon for the renovation project at the Egyptian Theater on Main Street.

There was only one family picture in the study, taken for our Christmas cards two years ago. My mom and dad sitting on a couch holding hands, me and my now ten-year-old brother, Tommy, standing behind them.

Poor Tommy. He was happy I was back, but he didn't know what to do with me. It took him a full week to realize I was in no condition to throw the baseball with him like I used to. He always seemed to be waiting for me to say something. Anything. And then he'd leave disappointed. I loved him, but I didn't know how to fix all of the things that were broken in our family.

My dad's desk was scattered with papers, many of which showed bar graphs of the latest polling numbers for his reelection campaign. I wondered if the mess surrounding me affected those numbers, but I was afraid to ask.

"How's the campaign?" I said.

He held up one finger, eyes still on the monitor. "Just ... one ... minute ... and send." He shut the laptop, and then clasped his hands together and placed them on his desk. "The campaign's fine. It's in Percy's good hands. But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about."

I didn't think so.

He shifted in his chair, and the taste in the air only confirmed what his body language was telling me. My dad was nervous.

"Now that you're back, I thought we could discuss expectations. Specifically, what I expect from you, and what you expect from me."

It couldn't be a coincidence that the first time we talked like this came after a visit from Mrs. Ellingson. She'd probably given him a pamphlet t.i.tled "Defining Expectations: How to Reconnect with Your Strung-Out Teenage Daughter" or something like that. But I'd promised myself to make things easier on my dad, and if this was what he needed...

"I'm listening," I said.

"Good. Here is what I expect from you. Number one: you will attend school, every day, and you will keep up on your studies. Agreed?"

I nodded. "Yes."

"Number two: you will submit to random ... testing from Mrs. Ellingson. Agreed?"

It sounded like he was hesitant to use the actual word drug. Maybe if he didn't say it, it couldn't be true. "Agreed."

"Number three: I've arranged for you to do community service at the Road Home Soup Kitchen, starting next week. You will serve one lunch hour for every day you were gone. Clear?"

"Clear," I said.

"The Trib is sending a photographer."

A photographer? To cover me slopping soup? Percy Jones, my dad's campaign manager, had probably arranged it. "Okay," I said.

"Now your turn. What do you expect from me?"

I smiled and answered as honestly as I could. "Nothing."

Apparently, that option wasn't in the handbook, because my dad looked a little fl.u.s.tered. Before he could recover, I went over and kissed his head. "Good night."

As I walked away, I decided I would try to do everything I could to appease my dad in the little time I had left. I wished my mom were still alive. She would know how to comfort him now, and after I was gone.

The lights in Tommy's bedroom were off, so I crept down the hall to my room. I opened my door as quietly as I could and shut it behind me without turning on the light.

I clicked on the lamp above my desk, illuminating the open English lit book. As I sat down, I thought about how I would be on display at the soup kitchen tomorrow.

"Why are you doing this, Nik?" The deep voice came from inside my room, near my bed. I gasped and shot out of my chair.

Cole.

THREE.

NOW.

My room. Five and a half months left.

He wasn't supposed to be here. I wasn't supposed to see him again.

"Won't you look at me?" he said.

Cole's voice. I'd know it anywhere. The sound of it took me back to those long days in the Everneath, where the only things that existed for me were Cole's voice and his touch.

I felt my pulse quicken all the way to my fingertips as a million questions flooded my head. Why was he here? What did he want?

But before I could say anything, I started toward him. I didn't even realize I was doing it until I had almost crossed the entire room and made it into his now open arms. His presence made me aware of the emptiness inside me, as if the only way we would have a complete soul would be if we were together. A couple more steps and I would feel whole.

I froze.

What was I doing? I couldn't be near him again. I couldn't let myself trust him again. Following him to the Everneath had been my choice, but he'd made me think he would help me.

I hated him for letting me believe I had no other option.

"Strange, isn't it, Nik? The connection between us now." He grimaced and c.o.c.ked his head to one side, as if he were waiting for me to close the distance between us. When I stayed perfectly still, he added, "You don't have to fight it."

Deliberately I placed one foot behind the other and backed up until I was sitting in my chair and gripping the sides to stay in place. I swiveled around so my back was to him and I was facing my desk again. I could think more clearly if I wasn't looking at him.

It scared me that I hadn't noticed him. If it had been anyone else waiting there, I would've been able to sense extra emotions, but Cole survived on stolen ones. Those were harder to sniff out. I listened as his footsteps came closer.

"You're going to ignore me now?" He sighed.

My hands started to shake, but somehow I had the presence of mind to open my book. Running would be pointless. If I could just get through this, then maybe he would leave me alone.

I stayed completely still.

"Mythology," he commented, looking over my shoulder, reading from the top of the chapter. "I could help you with that, you know. If you'd let me."

"I'm sure you could," I mumbled. "You were there."

"Ah, she speaks."

Reluctantly, I turned toward him, and he shifted the guitar that hung from his shoulder to his side. When Cole Stockton had first come to Park City more than a year ago to play at the Sundance Film Festival with his band-the Dead Elvises- the school buzzed with excitement. Especially since the second guitarist, Maxwell Bones, had been dating a senior at Park City High, Meredith Jenkins. I'd met Cole through Meredith.

At the time, I thought he was mysterious and rebellious, but kind too. I knew better now. It was all part of the lie. Concerts were nourishment for Cole and his band. They could snack on the heightened emotions of a captive audience. It was an easy way to steal the energy he needed to survive between Feeds.

"How did you get in here?" I said.

"The window. The lock's broken." He brought his guitar forward then and picked through a haunting melody, as if adding mystery to the broken lock.

"You shouldn't be here."

Cole's lip pulled up in the same smirk that had hundreds of teenage girls swooning last year. "She was the original breath of life, you know."

"Who?"

"Isis." He pointed to the open book behind me.

"I thought Persephone was the first."

"She had a lot of different names. I used to tell you about Isis and Osiris. Don't you remember? Or is it all gone?" He blew out a breath that smelled of ash, and then started to strum background chords. "Osiris was the first man who tried to straddle the line between the mortal and the immortal worlds. The first of the Everliving. The search for immortality nearly killed him."

He struck a minor chord.

"Then along came Isis." He walked over to my open book and ran his finger along a painting depicting a man, naked and lifeless on the ground, and a woman with wings hovering over him. "Isis breathed life back into Osiris." He paused and looked at me. "Just as you did for me."

Cole made eternal life sound as simple as breathing, but I knew better.

I slammed the book shut. "That painting looks nothing like what I went through in the Feed."

"If you think the Feed was bad, wait until the Tunnels come for you."

"It can't be much worse."

He looked at me, his eyes boring into my own. "Yes, it can. I came here to show you. Something I should've done in the Caverns."