Everlost (Skinjacker 1)

Nick looked to the city again. “I don’t care what you say. I’m taking a detour.”

This time Allie didn’t argue.

Night had fallen by the time they reached the Manhattan side of the bridge. It took the whole night without rest to make it to the heart of the city.

The towers of midtown Manhattan would have taken Lief s breath away, if he indeed had breath to be stolen. But the most wondrous sights of all were the two silver towers he saw glimmering in the light of dawn as they neared the southern tip of the city. The two towers were identical monoliths, steel and glass twins reflecting a silvery light of daybreak.

“I never knew buildings like that existed,” Lief said.

Allie sighed. “They don’t exist,” she said. “At least…not anymore.”

Lief could tell the sadness in her voice went straight down to the center of the Earth.

PART TWO Mary, Queen of Snots Everlost CHAPTER 7

The Forever Places In the course of time and history there are certain places that can never truly be lost. The living world by its very nature moves on, but some places are forever. The boy now called Lief had the good fortune to stumble upon such a place many years before: a lush mountain forest that had once been the inspiration for poets. The place brimmed with such warmth and good feeling, it inspired countless young men to propose marriage beneath its canopy, and countless young women to accept. The woods caused stiff-collared people to lose their inhibitions and dance among the leaves, wild with joy, even though they knew such dancing could have them condemned as witches.

The forest was a fulcrum of life, and so when it grew old, and a beetle infestation routed bark and bough, the forest did not die. Instead it crossed.

Its life persisted — not in the living world, but in Everlost. Here it would be eternally green, and on the verge of turning, just as the poets themselves would have liked to see it, had they not gotten where they were going.

It can be said, then, that Everlost is heaven. Perhaps not for people, but for the places that deserve a share of forever.

Such places are few and far between, these grand islands of eternity in the soupy, ever-changing world of the living. New York had its share of forever-places. The greatest of these stood near Manhattan’s southern-most tip:

the two gray brothers to the green statue in the bay. The towers had found their heaven. They were a part of Everlost now, held fast, and held forever by the memories of a mourning world, and by the dignity of the souls who got where they were going on that dark September day.

The three kids approached the great twin towers in silence. What they saw as they neared them was not at all what they expected.

There were children there. Dozens of Afterlight kids playing on the grand marble plaza: hopscotch, tag, hide-and-seek. Some were dressed like Allie, in jeans and a T-shirt. Others were more formal. Still more had clothes that seemed more from Lief’s time, all coarse and heavy. A few kids wore the gaudy bright colors of the seventies, with big hair to match.

They hadn’t been noticed yet, as they stood just beyond the edge of the plaza.

Allie and Nick were almost afraid to step onto it, as if doing so would cross them into yet another world. They stood there so long they sank to their ankles, even with their road-shoes on.

As Lief’s sense of awe did not have history nor context for this place, he had no problem moving forward. “C’mon,” he said, “what are you waiting for?”

Nick and Allie looked at one another, then took that first step forward, onto the very solid marble of the plaza that no longer existed. After the first step it became easier. It felt strange beneath their feet, so much solid ground. A team of girls playing double-dutch jump rope noticed them first.

“Hi!” said an African-American girl in drab clothes and tight cornrowed hair.

“You’re Greensouls, aren’t you?” All the time, she never stopped spinning her two ropes. Neither did the girl on the other end, who seemed entirely out of place there in the plaza, dressed in teddy-bear pajamas. Other girls skillfully jumped in and out of the arc of their spinning ropes. One girl took enough time away from the game, though, to size them up. She wore a sparkling silver halter top, and jeans that were so tight, she looked like a sausage bursting out of its skin. She looked Allie over, clearly unimpressed by Allie’s non-glittering wardrobe. “Is that what they wear now?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

Then the girl in tight jeans looked at Lief, examining his clothes as well.

“You’re not a Greensoul.”

“Says who?” said Lief, insulted.

“He’s new to the city,” Allie said. “He might have crossed a long time ago, but he’s still kind of like a ‘Greensoul.’”

A big red handball came flying past, chased by a group of younger kids. The ball flew out of the plaza and into the street, crowded with the living. “Hurry,” one little boy yelled, “before it sinks!”

Another boy raced out into traffic, grabbed the ball that was already beginning to sink into the pavement, and disappeared beneath a city bus and two taxis. He paid them no mind, passing through the trunk of the last taxi as he stood up with the ball, and happily ran back to the plaza.

“You remember all those things your momma told you not to do?” said the girl with the corn-rows. “Like not running out into traffic? Well, you can do them here.”