Everlost (Skinjacker 1)

“Can you just calm down for a second?”

“I am calm!” Nick screamed.

Allie knew there was something…off…about the whole situation. Whatever it was, it all seemed centered on this oddly dressed, freckle-faced boy.

“Can you take us to your home? We can call the police from there.”

“I don’t got a telly-phone.”

“Oh, that’s just great!” said Nick.

Allie turned on him. “Will you just shut up — you’re not helping.” Allie took a good long look at the freckled boy again. His clothes. The way he held himself.

She thought about the things he had said—not so much what he said, but the way he had said it. This is my place… now it’s your place, too. If her suspicions were correct, this situation was even weirder than she had thought.

“Where do you live?” Allie asked him.

“Here,” was all he said.

“How long have you been ‘here’?”

The Freckle-boy’s ears went red. “I don’t remember.”

By now Nick had come over, his frustration defused by what he was hearing.

“And your name?” Allie asked.

He couldn’t even look her in the eye. He looked down, shaking his head. “I haven’t needed one for a long time. So I lost it.”

“Whoa …” said Nick.

“Yeah,” said Allie. “Major whoa.”

“It’s okay,” said the boy. “I got used to it. You will, too. You’ll see. It’s not so bad.”

There were so many emotions for Allie to grapple with now—from fear to anger to misery— but for this boy, Allie could only feel pity. What must it have been like to be lost alone in the woods for years, afraid to leave?

“Do you remember how old you were when you got here?” she asked.

“Eleven,” he told them.

“Hmm,” said Nick. “You still look eleven to me.”

“I am,” said the boy.

Allie decided to call him Lief, since they had found him in the forest, and he blushed at the name as if she had kissed him. Then Lief led them up the steep stone slope to the road, climbing with a recklessness that not even the most skilled rock climbers would dare show. Allie refused to admit how terrified she was by the climb, but Nick complained enough for both of them.

“I can’t even climb a jungle gym without getting hurt!” he complained. “What’s the point of surviving an accident, if you’re going to fall off a mountain and die?”

They reached the road, but found very little evidence of the accident. Just a few tiny bits of glass and metal. Was that a good sign or bad? Neither Allie nor Nick was sure.

“Things are different up here,” Lief said. “Different from the forest, I mean.

You better come back down with me.”

Allie ignored him and stepped onto the shoulder of the road. It felt funny beneath her feet. Kind of soft and spongy. She had seen road signs before that said SOFT SHOULDER, so she figured that’s what it meant.

“Better not stand in one place too long,” Lief said. “Bad things happen when you do.”