Ever Lasting Read online

  Another thought mingled with that one.

  I remembered Allie’s long beautiful legs folded as she lay on her side of the bed. I had rolled over to her, placed everything on the front of me to the back of her and held on as if I never wanted to let go.

  My twin bed was too small for anyone else to fit, so at least I didn’t have to stare at a vacant spot beside me.

  I tried to close my eyes and block out all the stupid memories.

  Bad idea.

  When my eyes closed, the memories advanced and my hands were moving over her.

  I felt like a restrained animal. Since two weeks ago, I felt as if I was on the edge of some huge precipice when I was in the same room with Allie, as if I was going to fall off it and flip head over feet into a ravine of the unknown.

  I hadn’t asked Mom why that was.

  I needed to learn the rest on my own. I could tell tonight that she really hadn’t been ready to give me the talk, much less, The Talk.

  It was funny how, in two weeks’ time, the embarrassing moment every kid was supposed to have with his or her mother had escalated to a whole new level.

  My father, Trevor Edwards, an attorney she’d met when they’d bought a house a few miles from Rollins Estate, had always seemed to know just what to say when Mom got especially neurotic over me. Even in the years before my recent birth, neuroticism had always been a part of her personality.

  Early in my eleventh year, Dad told her after she’d almost had a nervous breakdown over me using words bigger than I should have for my age, “He’s Cole. Everything is always going to be more complicated with him than any other kid.”

  I had taken it as an insult at the time and had forgotten it shortly thereafter, but it hadn’t been a jab at my personality, it had been the truth.

  For the first time ever, I decided to go against the rules. I wasn’t allowed out of the house after dark. Tonight, I needed air.

  The night air. The breeze blowing through my hair. Twigs breaking under my feet as I walked. Or ran.

  I needed to run.

  I padded softly down the corridor to the stair well. Though the house was gargantuan in size, the walls seemed to close in. All I could think about was outside.

  It was odd, but when I was outside, all the stomach churning, nausea, and feeling caged in alleviated as soon as I took a deep breath. For the last fourteen days, I had come outside at night when the thoughts of Allie made me tremble and my stomach feel as though it had been turned inside out. I thought it was those weird hormones so many other kids talked about and that we were being taught about in school, but tonight there was more than hormones at work inside me.

  Uncontrollable trembling and a throbbing ache in my joints had begun around the same time Allie had started developing and budding in places. I tried not to stare, thinking it had merely been a reaction to seeing her change.

  Tonight, the fire that ran through my veins and the strength that felt as though it could explode like fireworks out of my muscles at the thought of her was different. Amazing, but different.

  I was powerful.

  Dangerous.

  And very unable to sleep with such an adrenaline rush.

  The trembling intensified and a strange pain originated in my joints.

  Whoa. That was more than uncomfortable.

  More changes took place.

  Both my arms stretched, and my spine grew longer.

  I clenched my eyes against the next wave of pain.

  My skin seared as it stretched over the new shape of my bones.

  This was not puberty. “Mom!” I thought-yelled.

  “I’m on my way. Keep thinking. I’ll find you.”

  “I’m pretty sure you won’t. At least not in the way you left me. Why am I in the shape of a big … yep, I’m black. A black cat?” I hadn’t been angry at her or—wait. How many of the people in the house knew I was like this? A freak. Was that why they’d been staring at me as if they’d been afraid that at any minute I’d grow two heads? Because it was a possibility? “I had better not be stuck like this!”

  “Calm down. It’s not as bad as it looks. Something triggered it. You have to think back to what you were thinking about when you turned. Then when you remember what it was, from here on out work on controlling it. Honey, I’m sorry. I thought you knew. This is where I said it was hard to know where to start.” She sounded breathless.

  “Hell yeah, it’s hard to know where to start. This is messed up on so many levels. I’m standing in the back yard, it’s not even completely dark yet, and I just switched from a human to a huge cat!” I finally exploded. I could handle a lot, but I couldn’t handle this. “And you have got to be kidding me. I was thinking about Allie. You mean to tell me that every time I think about her, this is going to happen? And you want me to pretend that nothing is wrong? Can someone just kill me now and get it over with?”

  “Okay, enough. You are overdramatizing this, and the longer you stay mad, the longer you are going to be an animal,” Mama said. “Now shut up and count to twenty. But get out of sight before you do it. Go into the maze, and for god’s sake don’t get shot.”

  “Not funny. You wanna call me overly dramatic! You’re not the one whose body just turned into another species.” I wobbled as I controlled the long legs of the cat. It was hard considering they bent differently than those of a human. Every powerful stride almost sent me onto my side.

  I counted to twenty. My skin and bones regrouped and adjusted back into the form in which I was most definitely more comfortable.

  “Shelby Edwards. You have a lot of explaining to do.” I stalked toward the opening to the Rose Maze.

  Around the first bend, I met my mother or best friend or psycho staff member or whoever she was.

  Her face was paler in the moonlight. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I need to sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.” I started past her, but stopped. “Unless there’s more you need to warn me of before I go to sleep.”

  “I think that’s about it. And again, I’m sorry I didn’t forewarn you.” Shelby’s shoulders were limp.

  I stomped back into the house and up the stairs. My bedroom door slammed with a deafening boom.

  “I take it you don’t remember the curse?” Mama’s soft thoughts found their way to me after a few minutes. After I’d yanked the covers back over me, jerked my pillow over my head and tossed at least ten times.

  “Just stop. I can’t handle any more of this crap tonight. I’m going to fall asleep and try to pretend that my life doesn’t suck on an extremely ludicrous level.”

  I was numb. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want this life. And here she was talking about some curse that just by the sound of her voice was a lot worse than the prince guy that got turned into a frog and had to be kissed by a princess to be turned back.

  I would probably wish I was a frog when she finished telling me.

  Could this get any worse?

  * * * *

  In the library, I flipped through the story of my first life in a journal I had supposedly written in 1879. Mama had given it to me and told me to come talk to her when I was finished.

  “Okay, I’ve had enough. What’s going on?” Allie sneaked up behind me.

  I jumped. Fear that I would give away my feelings for Allie, that I was hopelessly in love with her, wasn’t my only concern. I had to worry that a glance at her might change me into an animal right before her eyes and not of the erotic kind.

  I had been sitting on the brown leather sofa with my elbow on the armrest and my cheek in my hand looking at the gangly legs that made up my lap.

  The book lay there open.

  To divert her attention from the book, I slapped it shut as if I were annoyed with her interruption. “What are you talking about?”

  Did she have to smell like honeysuckle and look like a ray of sunshine all the time?

  I
wanted to jerk her over into my lap and— Stop, Cole, I told myself. Remember what Mom said.

  “I know something’s wrong. You won’t even speak to me. What did I do?” Her voice pleaded with me and her hazel eyes shined with curiosity. Her soft green shirt clung to her new shape nicely.

  Why did I have to notice?

  Why couldn’t she have been born a guy?

  “Seriously. It’s so boring around here without someone to talk to.” She plopped down on the seat across from me and crossed her arms.

  I guess the fact that I had never gone more than two days without tossing at least one insult in her direction must have really gotten under her skin.

  Animalistic urges turning me into another species wasn’t her fault. I was angry that my mother hadn’t warned me of the changes to come, but I wasn’t mad that Allie was part of them. I didn’t want her to think I was. I would lighten up with her. What could it hurt?

  “You really want to know?” I decided on an ingenious way to talk to her about what was bothering me without actually telling her.

  “Sure.” She sat up and dropped her folded arms. She scooted to the edge of her chair.

  “Okay. It’s a girl.” Any second she would break into a teasing singsong.

  “Really?” Her brow perked then she narrowed her eyes.

  “Yeah.” I sank further into the old leather sofa.

  Allie twisted a straw-colored curl around her finger as she regarded me. She was so pretty, a brat, but pretty. Allie took her hazel gaze from mine and stared at the curl. “Do I know her?”

  Guilt for telling a partial lie curdled in my stomach, but now that I’d started, I had to see where the conversation would take us.

  “Maybe.” I shifted in my seat.

  Allie dropped the curl and gave me an even stare. “Is she pretty?”

  “She’s very pretty.”

  An incensed glare followed. “Prettier than me?”

  “No one is prettier than you.” Heat prickled my kneecaps and elbows. Then it dawned on me. I had to calm myself. I couldn’t believe her presence had this effect on me.

  “Hmmm, Cole Jensen and mysterious. I like it.” Her white teeth gleamed as she smiled.

  “You like it?” I asked too quickly. I wanted her to like me. I wanted that so much, but I didn’t know how we could move from the two kids that terrorized each other to what I wanted us to be.

  “You’re always so boring with your nose all stuck in books most of the waking day.” Allie sounded like a friend for the first time ever. “You need some excitement. But I’m not sure that I like you having a crush.”

  My hopes lifted even more at that statement.

  “I mean I don’t want you to get hurt.” Allie straightened her capri pants.

  “You say things to hurt me every day. Why would you care if someone else hurt me?” Hmm. So she did care. At least a little.

  “I do say a lot of mean things but like I said. Only I can.” She lifted her chin and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Hey, by the way, don’t be mad if I do a little digging to find out who she is.” Allie stood and started to leave me for the first time without a mean thing to say.

  I was almost amazed.

  “And that shirt—” She pointed to the dark purple shirt that I had thrown on this morning and pinched her gorgeous face into a wince. “It makes you look like an eggplant. It’s nauseating.”

  Allie waited for my reaction, but I couldn’t find a good comeback in the smart-aleck banks of my mind.

  “I can change my shirt.” Normally, I would have bounced back with a reply about how she couldn’t change some body part of hers that was revolting. It had been my all-time comeback.

  “I know, I know, but I can’t change ugly.” Allie rolled her eyes.

  “You didn’t let me finish.” I looked back down to the book.

  “What then?”

  “I was going to say, but you shouldn’t change a thing.” I don’t know what possessed me to say it out loud, but in some weird way, I felt better, even though I figured, given our past, she would take it as derogatory.

  “Ha, ha, ha. Only you could find a way to give a compliment and turn it into an insult,” Allie slapped the back of my chair jarring my book off my lap.

  I could have added that I loved her and that I was going to marry her someday, but she probably would have slapped me. She’d take my honesty as an insult. “You should learn how to take compliments better than that.” I had played that one off perfectly.

  “There’s no way you could give me a compliment and still be in your right mind.” Allie shut the library door behind her. Hard. Not really a slam but not in the way a library door should have been shut according to our librarian at school.

  I opened my journal and began reading again, wondering how we would ever be the two people in the book considering how far away from that we were right now.

  After reading the last page, I remembered Allie in a recent lifetime tell me that she had always felt drawn to me. I hoped that would be true. Until then, I might have found a way to deal with my feelings about her.

  I would be honest. Sort of.

  When I could no longer bear to hold back the crazy feelings I held in for Allie, I would just let them out, and as always, she would take the sincerity of my words as sarcasm.

  I was a genius.

  I could even find a way to harass her the way I used to but now with compliments.

  She thought I was a weirdo before; now she would think I was off my rocker.

  With the book tucked under my arm, I stood from the chair. After a long stretch, I turned around to walk to the door.

  With slumped shoulders and red eyes, Allie stood in the doorway.

  Her icy stare held me motionless.

  “Did you kill my hamster?” Her voice was cold, but her gaze a fiery blaze. Her question sent a jolt of pain through me.

  “Of course not. How could you ask me that?” Two weeks ago I might have considered the boy in me capable. But even then I had never killed an animal. A bug maybe. An animal, no.

  “You killed my bug collection.” Allie’s voice cracked.

  I had been terrible to her. I could see how she might hate me. But no, I hadn’t killed her hamster. “Allie, I was a kid.”

  “That was only a year ago.”

  “Well, I would never kill an animal. I sorta like them,” I brushed a tear off her cheek. “Where is he?”

  She stepped from my reach.

  “Come on, seriously. I’ve been down here all day.” I waved my arm at the room as if the books could give me a verbal alibi. God, when had I learned all these words?

  “He’s upstairs. Still in his cage. Stiff and cold.”

  “He probably just died of old age. These things happen.” I started to take her hand, but fear of an impending shift caused me to rethink it.

  “No. Just wait. You’ll see.” Her cheeks reddened and her eyes sparked as she turned to lead me up to her room.

  We approached the cage. In the bottom was her hamster, Gabe, that she later found was a girl. He was lying on his back, definitely not dead from natural causes.

  A very sharp object had caused the incision in Gabe’s stomach. Yet there were none inside the cage or even close by he could have used to cut himself.

  This was done with malicious intent and there was no one in this house who would hurt Allie in such a way.

  Allie was the most loved of all the people in the whole house besides me.

  All the staff members treated us as if we were their own.

  “She was so sweet. Who could have done such a thing?” Allie took my hand the way she would have when were younger. When we were off on an adventure in the woods or when something alarmed her. I squeezed her hand.

  The animal just under my skin threatened a change, but I chided him away.

  This was a bad time.

  Allie had held it together very well when she cam
e down to question me about it, but her voice broke into sobs. It was a natural reaction for me now to want to hold her, to soothe her, so I turned and pulled her to me. At first she was stiff in my arms, not used to me being affectionate in any way. She gazed into my eyes, our faces close, as our heights were still close to the same. When she saw I was sincere, she laid her head on my shoulder and cried.

  “I’ll find out who did this.” I smoothed her hair down and déjà vu hit. I’d held her and soothed her so many times before. “I swear.”

  After that, it was years before we touched again.

  And try as I might, I never learned who killed her hamster.

  And try as Allie might, she never learned who the mysterious girl was who kept my emotions in such a turmoil.

  Chapter 2

  Allie

  Since Cole stopped killing my dolls and burying my stuffed animals up to their necks in the back yard, all he seemed concerned with was whether I was going to stump my toe or if I was going to fall to my death out one of the windows of the house. The weirdness started when we were ten. Cole said he didn’t know why he felt so worried about me. But the older we got, the more he hovered over me like a weird bodyguard or something.

  I was tired of answering to him.

  It was as if I had been born with the most irritating cousin a girl could ever have, but we were of no blood relation. He harassed me about every choice I made in school, probably even more so because none of those choices involved him. When my friends invited to the movies, to the mall, or to the Shake Shop after school Cole always watched the doors behind us, scanned the room, and gave off this weird vibe that kept me from having any fun. He was such a downer.

  So I never told him they’d invited him.

  “You know he’s head over heels for you, right?” Frankie Frank stared past me toward the gym where the guys would soon come out after football practice. And yes, that was her real first name and last name. Everybody always asked her that.