Everwild (14 page)

When she turned her eyes back to Milos they were all sympathetic again, and Mikey just couldn't stand it. He stood up and strode away.

“Where are you going?” Allie asked.

“I don't know,” he said. “Maybe I'll catch up with Jackin' Jill.”

Allie started after Mikey, but snared herself on a barbed wire fence that, for reasons unknown, had crossed into Everlost. A sharp steel barb tore a deep gash on her arm that felt momentarily weird before it zipped itself closed. By the time she looked up, Mikey was gone.

“Let him go,” said Milos, coming up behind her. “Clearly he has … what is that expression?‘Skeletons in his closet.' “

“Yeah, and bats in his belfry,” Allie said.

Milos looked at her, puzzled. “This expression I do not know.”

“Never mind,” she said, not wanting to get into it. Mikey's temper tantrums had gotten fewer and further between, but they never went away completely. His moodiness always surfaced in the company of other Afterlights. Social skills were never his strong point. As for “skeletons in his closet,” that implied he had secrets Allie didn't know— but she knew all his secrets, didn't she?

“Whatever bee he's got in his bonnet, he'll get over it,” Allie said.

Milos smiled. “Bats in belfries, bees in bonnets—this is why I love English.”

Allie turned to return to their campsite on the highway, but then Milos said something that stopped her.

“You know … I could teach you things.”

She slowly turned back to him. “What do you mean?”

Milos sauntered closer to her, hands in his pockets. “If you came skinjacking with us, there are many things I could teach you. Skinjacking is more than just climbing inside fleshies and putting them to sleep.”

“If you're talking about your little business of delivering messages to the living, no thank you. I don't want to be a part of … of DeadEx.”

“This is not what I mean,” said Milos, his voice brimming with hushed excitement. “I am talking about the
joy
of it!”

Allie immediately thought to the time she had gone out into the rain. She understood the joy he was talking about, but it was always overshadowed by the guilt she felt stealing moments that weren't hers.

“Have you never dreamed of being someone else?” Milos asked. “Someone rich, or beautiful, or powerful. Have you never longed, if only for a few minutes, to live someone else's life?”

“Of course I have… .”

“And yet you do not do it? Why is this?”

“Because it's wrong!”

“Who told you it was wrong? Was it Mikey?”

“No!” said Allie. “I don't need him to tell me the difference between right and wrong.”

Milos took a long look at Allie. “Skinjackers are not like
other Afterlights, Allie, and we all must learn to accept this. Because not only are we given this power, but also a powerful hunger to use it.”

“A hunger that we should resist!” insisted Allie.

“Resist our nature? Do you not think
that
would be wrong?”

Allie found that Milos was standing just a bit too close, and she took a step back. He was making far too much sense, and it troubled her. She had wanted another skinjacker to talk to—someone who could understand the things she felt. She thought it would be a case of misery-loves-company. She never expected to find a skinjacker who reveled in possessing the living, turning it into an art form. A way of life. What if he was right, and resisting that powerful pull to flesh was the wrong thing for her to do?

“Flesh and bone deserves to be appreciated,” Milos said. “Those who have it take it for granted, but not us! We appreciate every breath, every breeze, every beat of the heart. And so, by borrowing their flesh,
we
are the ones who give their bodies the dignity they have lost.”

All the reservations that held Allie back—that slapped her down every time she skinjacked—were beginning to feel insignificant, and she was torn. If skinjacking truly was her nature, shouldn't she embrace it?

“Please,” said Milos, “let me teach you. Let me show you some of the things I know. I promise you will not be disappointed!”

Allie shook her head, then nodded, but then shook her head again. Finally she settled on telling him, “I'll think about it.”

Then she turned and hurried back to the others, for once glad to be in the company of Moose and Squirrel.

It was hard for Afterlights to hide at night. Their afterglow always gave them away. Mikey just wanted some time alone, to brood, maybe sit on a rock, look at the moon, and let all those unpleasant feelings work themselves out, if indeed they ever would. The problem was, the only rock large enough to sit on was living-world, and Mikey had to continually pull himself up out from it. It was annoying.

Then, the last person he wanted to see emerged through a tree trunk, easily finding him by his glow. Mikey wasn't sure whether to stare Milos down or just ignore him. So he did one, then the other.

“Allie is worried about you,” Milos said.

“I really don't care,” grumbled Mikey.

“This does not surprise me.”

“Why is it your business anyway?” Mikey snapped. When Milos had no response to that, Mikey said, “Tell her I'm fine, and I'll come back when I feel like it.”

Milos lifted his feet to keep himself from sinking, but didn't leave. He just regarded Mikey with a detached kind of curiosity.

“Why do you hold her back?” Milos asked.

“Excuse me?”

Milos took a step closer. “She could go so much further. She could be so much more. But you—you keep her from using her skills. You are very much an anchor around her neck. This is very selfish.”

Mikey came off of his rock to face him. “You don't know what you're talking about!”

But Milos remained calm, and sure of himself. “Is it my words that anger you,” he asked, “or is it because you know I speak the truth?”

If there was any hope that Mikey might warm to Milos— maybe even become a reluctant friend, that hope was now gone. “Allie and I … Allie and I care for each other. We've been through a lot together—you have no idea!”

“You are right,” said Milos, “but I do know that she bears a certain sadness. You must see it.”

Yes, of course Mikey had seen it, but he wasn't about to admit it to this skinjacking outsider. “Like I said, you don't know anything.”

“You claim to care for her, but I do not see this. If you cared for her, perhaps you would see that your destinies now lie on different paths.”

“Do not anger me!”
Mikey roared. “
I am not to be trifled with!”
And he heard in his own voice a roughness and a rawness he hadn't heard in a long time. Overtones of the McGill.

Milos put his hands up in surrender, as if he were backing down—but Mikey knew this was just another calculated move. “Then pardon me.” Milos said, “I meant no disrespect.”

“You say that a lot,” Mikey pointed out, looking him right in those weirdly distracting speckled eyes. “But I think disrespect is
exactly
what you mean.”

“I am only thinking of what is best for Allie,” said Milos with a gaze that penetrated uncomfortably deep. “Are you?”

Then he left Mikey alone with his rock, his thoughts, and the moon.

* * *

The next day, they came to the town of Lebanon, Tennessee, and again Milos asked Allie if she wanted to come skinjacking with him. She broached the topic as gently as she could with Mikey.

“There are things he can teach me about skinjacking,” Allie told him. “Things that could probably help us.”

“Why are you telling me?” Mikey snapped. “If you want to go, then go. Why should I care?”

“I'd feel much better about it if you weren't acting so childish.”

“Maybe I don't want you to feel better about it.”

Allie clenched her fists and growled in frustration. “I swear, Mikey, sometimes …“

“Sometimes what? Sometimes you wonder why you put up with me?”

Allie took a moment to calm herself down. “I know why I put up with you. What I don't understand is why you don't trust
me
.”

Mikey looked down and aimlessly kicked the ground. The living world rippled like waves in a pond. “I trust you,” he said, his voice a low grumble. “Go learn something useful.”

“Thank you.” She gave him a gentle peck on the cheek, then went off to join Milos.

Once they were gone, Moose and Squirrel approached him.

“Why don't you come with ush, Mikey?” Moose asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Squirrel. “Skinjacking can be fun to watch, too. Especially the way we do it.”

And although tagging along with the two of them was
the last thing he wanted to do, he went along, because it was better than spending the day thinking of Allie in the company of Milos.

Mikey had to admit, watching Moose and Squirrel skinjack that day was entertaining, in a blood-sport sort of way. The were both ingeniously inventive, and decidedly deranged.

First they skinjacked two older teens who were on their way to summer school, but instead used them to get into an R-rated movie. Then, when they got bored with the movie, they skinjacked two policemen and took their squad car for a joyride, leaving the policemen and the car in a ditch, to wonder how they had gotten there.

Each time they skinjacked, they left their fleshies stuck with whatever bad situation they had created, and walked away scott-free.
Hit-and-run jackers
, he dubbed them.

“We're just having fun,” they complained, when Mikey suggested that their activities were depraved. But then, who was he to talk? He had been the McGill—yet even though he had perpetrated a good many mean-spirited, spiteful things, his depravity had a little more class.

Next, Moose and Squirrel went into a bar, got two middle-aged fleshies exceptionally drunk, then peeled out of them just before they were ready to puke.

“No harm, no foul!” said Squirrel. “Right? Right?”

“Yeah,” added Moose, “They were gonna do it anyway.”

Mikey concluded that these two were the lowest bottom-feeders he'd ever had the misfortune to know. “Does Milos know you're abusing fleshies?”

“Milosh and ush got a ‘don't ashk don't tell' polishy,” said Moose.

“Yeah, yeah—and anyway, we don't abuse no one—we just play hard, that's all.”

Mikey only hoped that when it was finally their turn to go into the light, their pit would be deeper than his.

When Moose and Squirrel skinjacked a couple of nuns, and took them on a shoplifting spree, Mikey decided it was time to call it a day. He crossed through a forest that he hoped would take him back to their makeshift campsite by the highway. The forest had quite a few trees that had crossed into Everlost, and so provided him with spots to rejuvenate, and maybe regain some self-respect. His spirit felt greasy after the way he had spent the day.

There was a house in the woods—a shack, really, but sturdy and cared for. Evidence of ash in the living world suggested it had burned down, but whoever lived there must have loved the place, because it had crossed into Everlost. The sight of it filled Mikey with sorrow. A ghost house with no ghost. What could be sadder? Then he realized why the house bothered him. This shack was him without Allie. Solitary and unvisited. An unknown artifact waiting for eternity to free it from its vigil.

It was at that moment he realized that his spirit was truly human once more. For he no longer remembered how to be alone without being lonely.

In her days on the
Sulphur Queen
, Allie had pretended to teach the McGill how to skinjack. Of course her lessons were bogus—skinjacking can't be taught—but it
can
be perfected, and Milos was a master. He could do things Allie had never even thought to do. Things she never dared to do!

At first, he just showed off. They came across a basketball court where a choose-up game was in full swing. He skinjacked the player with the ball, then passed to another player—but Milos got to the other player before the ball did, skinjacked him, and caught his own pass. Allie watched, laughing in spite of herself, as he bounced himself around the court, becoming one player, then another, then another, passing the ball to himself, stealing the ball from himself, shooting and scoring. Allie got dizzy trying to keep track of where and who he was.

By the time he was done, the players were all a bit dazed and confused, not quite sure what had just occurred.

“Jill and I would play many sports together,” Milos
told her. “We would jump from player to player—that was always part of the game.” The memory brought a smile, but a measure of pain to Milos's expression.

“Did you love her?” Allie dared to ask.

Milos took a few moments before answering. “We came upon a wedding once,” he told her. “We skinjacked the bride and groom.”

“You didn't!”