Everlost (Skinjacker 1)

Allie had no answer for him, only that it felt right. It felt natural, and in their unnatural state, anything that felt natural was a good thing. In the end Nick stopped his grumbling, and lay down. “I’ll lie here, but I’m not going to sleep. I’ll stay awake and watch the stars.”

The stars, however, were not sufficiently exciting to keep him awake. In fact, they were sedating. He fell asleep before Allie did, leaving her to ponder their predicament. What if she got home, and her parents weren’t there? What if her father had died in the accident, and her mother had moved away? She wouldn’t be able to ask anyone about it, she’d have no way of finding out. She was thankful when the anesthetic sleep of Everlost finally overtook her.

The ambush came without warning in the middle of the night.

Nick and Allie opened their eyes to four stern, glowing faces looking down on them. In an instant they were grabbed and hauled to their feet, roughed up and manhandled. Allie tried to scream, but a large hand covered her mouth. A hand like that of a monster. Only these weren’t monsters; these were boys no older than she.

“Nick!” she called. But Nick was too busy fighting off two boys who were struggling to hold him as well.

“What’s your problem?” Nick shouted. “Who are you? What do you want? “

“We ask the questions,” said the boy who was apparently in charge. He was smaller than the rest, but clearly the toughest of the lot. He wore baggy knickerbockers, not much different from Lief’s, and from h.is lip dangled a cigarette that never got smaller and never went out. But by far the strangest thing about him was his hands. They were the size of a man’s hands, big and knobby, and when he curled them into fists, they seemed as large as boxing gloves.

“I think they’re Greensouls, Johnnie-O,” said one kid with a weird mop of candy-apple-red hair that made him look like a Raggedy Andy doll. “A week old, maybe less.”

“I can see that,” Johnnie-O said. “I’m not stupid, I know a Greensoul when I see one.”

“We’re Afterlights,” Nick shouted out, “just like you, so leave us alone.”

Johnnie-O laughed. “Of course you’re Afterlights, idiot. What we’re saying is that you’re new arrivals. Greensouls. Get it?”

“They might still got stuff,” said Raggedy Andy. “Greensouls always got stuff.”

“Welcome to Everlost,” Johnme-O said in a voice that wasn’t welcoming at all.

“This here’s my territory, and you gots to pay me for passage.”

Allie gave the boy holding her a punch in the face to get him to let go. “Is this how you always greet visitors?” Allie said.

Johnnie-O took a suck on his cig. “Visitors ain’t always friendly.”

Nick shrugged off the two boys who were holding him. “We don’t have anything to pay you with.”

“Yeah, so I guess you’ll just have to kill us,” Allie said snidely, and added, “Oh, sorry, guess you can’t.”

“Turn their pockets,” Johnnie-O ordered, and his goons reached into Nick and Allie’s pants pockets and turned them inside out. Mostly they got lint, but Nick had a couple of things he had forgotten were in there. There was that old coin, which must have been a nickel, although the face had worn off. The tough kids weren’t interested in it, and flicked it back at him. He caught it and returned it to his pocket.

It was the other object in Nick’s pocket that got their attention.

“Look at this,” said a funny-looking kid with dark purple lips, like he had died while sucking on a grape jawbreaker. He held up a hard little object that had fallen out of Nick’s pocket, which Nick quickly recognized as a piece of what is commonly referred to as “ABC” gum, wrapped up in its original wrapper. His mother always complained that he left his chewed gum in his pockets and it got all over the clothes in the wash.

The purple-mouthed kid held the hard, cold wad of gum and looked over at Johnnie-O, hesitating.

“Hand it over,” said Johnnie-O. His voice was commanding for a boy of his size.

He opened up his huge, beefy hand.

Still Purple-puss hesitated. “We can cut it into pieces,” he suggested.

“I said hand it over.” Johnnie-O held his upturned palm right before the boy.

You didn’t say no to a palm that big. Purple-puss gingerly put the small, round wad into Johnnie-O’s hand.

“Next time I have to ask you twice,” Johnnie-O said, “you’re going down.”

Purple-puss’s Adam’s apple bobbed nervously, like a walnut in his throat. Or a jawbreaker.

Then Allie and Nick watched in utter disbelief as Johnnie-O peeled the paper from the sticky piece of gum and popped it in his mouth.