Authors: Neal Shusterman
Moose could have skinjacked his own body if he had chosen to . . . if he had, he would have woken as a quadriplegic with no hope of motion below the neck, and no hope of even breathing for himself. Still, he could have done it, reclaiming some version of his old life. Now, however, that was out of the question.
There were many things that Moose feared: hell, the scar wraith, but God help anyone who witnessed the fury of Mary Hightower. As far as Moose was concerned, her anger was the most frightening thing in the universe—and for the first time ever, he was glad he was wearing a helmet, because he truly believed her rage could make his head explode.
“How could I have been so stupid?” Mary seethed. “How could I have been so blind to not know the truth from the moment Milos lost his ability?”
“Maybe itch a coincidench?” Moose’s eyes were full of tears, but fortunately his face mask hid them, and Mary was not looking too closely.
“If you think that, then you’re a more of a fool than I thought you were.”
He had lost his ability to skinjack only minutes after crashing the tanker truck into the electrical station. And since then he had been hiding, afraid to come back.
Mary paced back and forth in the gazebo. “This is Allie’s doing—I’m sure of it—and it’s all Milos’s fault! He should have sent her down the moment she was captured instead of making her the blasted figurehead of the train. He brought this on all of us!”
“Not really,” said Moose, trying to defend him, because Milos was beyond any ability to defend himself. All of his attention was now on a deck of cards he had taken from one of the other kids. Milos spent all of his time shuffling it, and looking for one-eyed jacks.
“What I want to know is how she found your bodies,” Mary said. “She must have known your true names!”
“Not neshisharily . . . ,” said Moose.
“Stop contradicting me!” Mary paced with such a storm of emotion, Moose half expected lightning to crash all around them. Finally Mary turned to look at Moose and saw the tears in his eyes. She softened just a bit. “I know this isn’t your fault. It’s unfair that you have to be the one to suffer.”
Moose nodded and the tears started to flow more freely, no matter how hard he tried to hold them back.
“You may go now,” she told him. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
He left sobbing in tears that were as great as the day that Squirrel was extinguished. But his tears were not tears
of sorrow. They were tears of joy. Although he was always a team player, the weight of being a skinjacker in the service of Mary Hightower was more than he could bear. He didn’t care if he lost his memories and his mind the way Milos had—in fact, he would prefer it. As he left Mary, he could already feel it all slipping away, so he went forth into the ruins of Eunice, searching among the crossed odds and ends, until he finally found himself a football . . . because the prospect of throwing and catching a football from now until the end of time was Mitchell “Moose” Moessner’s idea of heaven.
Mary gathered the remaining skinjackers. They numbered seven now, including Jill. “We are under attack,” Mary told them, “and we must strike back with full force as quickly and severely as possible. We must find the body of Allie the Outcast, and we must send that body to the grave.”
No one answered immediately. These new skinjackers had no frame of reference, no idea who she was talking about. It just infuriated Mary even more.
“Her coma would have begun after a car accident, north of New York City, not quite four years ago. That is where we will begin our search. I will need a volunteer.”
Rotsie immediately raised his hand, and Jill gave him a look of utter disgust. “Don’t be stupid,” Jill said. “You don’t even know what she looks like.” Then she turned to Mary. “If you need someone to do some pest control, it might as well be me.”
This gave Mary pause for thought. It was out of character for Jill to volunteer for anything . . . but then perhaps
Jill’s hatred of Allie rivaled her own. Or perhaps it was because Jill knew that she would be next on Allie’s list.
“Sorry,” said Rotsie, “but I think I’m better equipped to handle something like this.”
“Yeah, right,” said Jill dismissively, then turned back to Mary. “Even if you wanted to send him, you couldn’t—you need Damon to lead the group, don’t you?”
And suddenly Mary saw Jill in an entirely new light. “Indeed, I do need Damon,” she said, keeping her eyes tightly trained on Jill. “I didn’t know you knew Rotsie’s real name. How ever did you come across it?”
Jill opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Then The Pet politely raised his hand and said, “We told her our names. She said it was important in case we ever forgot it, that someone should know.”
Mary offered a smile that was anything but pleasant. “I wonder why you would say that, Jill, when you know that skinjackers don’t forget their names like other Afterlights.”
“You’re . . . you’re blowing this all out of proportion,” Jill said, looking more and more worried.
“Do you know that I never knew Milos’s and Moose’s real names? I never felt a need. But I’ll bet
you
knew their names, didn’t you, Jill?” This time Jill said nothing. As far as Mary was concerned, her silence convicted her.
“I will ask you this once,” Mary said. “And your answer will determine how you will be dealt with.” She paused, letting the severity of the situation sink in, then she asked, “Did you give Allie the names of my skinjackers?”
“You had Milos flip that boat and sent more than fifty kids down!” Jill accused.
Mary did not lose her cool. “Did you give Allie their names?”
She looked to support from the other skinjackers. “The tanker truck today was no accident either! Ask her!”
Mary couldn’t tell if Jill’s accusations rattled the others, because she wouldn’t take her eyes off of Jill. “Answer the question,” Mary asked calmly, then she waited, knowing that every criminal, if given enough time, will confess. Jill was no exception.
“Yes,” Jill said, in arrogant defiance. “And now that she knows who they are, she’ll pick them off one by one until you have no skinjackers left.”
So there it was: proof positive that Jill was a traitor. Well, if Jill’s accusations had won any points with the skinjackers, she had lost them now.
“Treason,” said Mary, “is the highest crime in any civilized society. I will try to treat you with compassion . . . but it will be difficult, even for me, to show you mercy.”
FROM:
[email protected]
SUBJECT: Returned mail—see transcript for details.
*** ATTENTION ***
Your e-mail is being returned to you because there was a problem with its delivery.
----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
----- Transcript of session follows -----
>>> DATA
<<< 5401 5.8.1 <
[email protected]
> . . . Relaying denied
5401 5.8.1 <
[email protected]
> . . . User unknown
<<< 504 5.0.0 Need RCPT (recipient)
Final-Recipient: RFC8232;
[email protected]
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.1
Remote-MTA: DNS;
gmail.com
Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 5401 5.8.1 <
stopmarynnow@ gmail.com
> . . . Relaying denied
Return-Path: <
[email protected]
>
Received: from
imo-ma04.tx.Odessa-access.com
with ESMTP id MAILSMTPRLYDA051-3bba5bda1598379;
From:
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Subject: Names of the six skinjackers
Status: FAIL
N
othing from Jill.
So far Allie had found only spam at the “stopmarynow” e-mail address, and she was beginning to worry. Had Jill even found Mary? Had she switched sides again? There was no way of knowing. So here they were, sitting in the lobby bar at a Pittsburgh airport hotel, Clarence dressed in his new fancy fashions, and Allie in the body of a flight attendant with big hair. They had no destination, and no way to find out what was going on with Mary and Jill, or with Nick, Mikey, and Jix. Right now, Allie would have settled for those smoke signals Jill had joked about. Even that would be better than nothing at all.
Through all of this Clarence had been a rock to lean on—even if she couldn’t physically lean on him without being extinguished. He was such a troubled, imbalanced person when it came to taking care of himself. Yet when the well-being of others was at risk, he rose to be whatever the occasion needed him to be.
“Seeing Everlost was always a curse,” Clarence had confided in Allie. “Ruined my life. Worse than the scars. A
person can live with scars, but to live with things that no one else can see . . . ?”
Outside flurries had begun to whip across the glass front of the hotel, blown by a bitterly cold wind. Since being in Everlost, Allie had learned to appreciate the things she felt while skinjacking. Cold, heat, comfort, discomfort, hunger, thirst, and even indigestion. After experiencing the painless numbness of Everlost, all the things a living body could feel were a blessing.
“Well,” suggested Clarence, a little sheepishly, “We could go back to San Antonio and find victims of Milos’s accidents that were left in comas. We know the new skinjackers had to come from those accidents.”
“No,” said Allie. “I will not end lives on a hunch. I need to know for sure.” To be honest, a part of Allie was glad that Jill hadn’t responded. She didn’t know if she could steal the life of a stranger. She knew Milos, she knew Moose, and knew the threat they had posed . . . but somehow stealing away the physical life of a total stranger would be much more difficult.
Clarence sighed. “Well, being as we have nowhere else to go . . .” Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “Your friend Jix thinks I have a purpose. I think maybe this might be it.” He handed the paper to Allie. “See, while you were out taking care of business, I was doing my own research—’cause you know what they say about idle hands . . .” The paper had an address scrawled on it. A hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
Allie took a deep shuddering breath. “Who’s at this hospital, Clarence?”
The living half of Clarence’s face puckered into something resembling a smile. “You are,” he said.
Allie had tried to put it out of her mind. The thought of returning to herself, the dream of skinjacking her own body had been there, burning a hole in her mind the way that Everlost coin had sat heavy in her pocket until she gave it away. Since the moment Allie knew that her body was still clinging to life, she knew this day would come, but rather than dreaming of a joyful reunion of spirit and flesh, she feared the moment. She had good reason. Her family had made a life without her, and returning now would be difficult for all of them. The sight of Milos and Moose was disturbing to her as well. Milo’s body had been in a severe state of atrophy, and Moose was completely paralyzed. Even if they could have returned to skinjack themselves, why would they have? An existence as a free spirit was better than being bound to a body with no hope of recovery, wasn’t it?
But what if her body were undamaged?
What if she could just slip back into it and resume her life?
“Once you skinjack yourself,” Jix had told her, “that’s it. You’re bound to your flesh until the day you die.” If she ever did it, she knew there would be no going back . . . so for Allie it was best never to know the state of her body. That way, she would never have to decide.
Yet in spite of all the reasons not to go, she and Clarence boarded a flight to Memphis, and Wolf River Convalescent Hospital.
I
t was decided that sending Jill down to the center of the earth was much too kind a fate for her. Punishment for treason, Mary decided, should include far more suffering than that. As a skinjacker, Jill could experience pain while in a living body, but physical torture was far too barbaric for Mary’s taste. Then it occurred to her that true punishment could only come if Jill was forced to linger within an undesirable host long enough to permanently bond with it.
Standing in the crossed gazebo, with her entire cumulus of Afterlights filling the park around her, a jury of twelve announced their verdict, without the messy inconvenience of an actual trial. Then Mary pronounced the sentence.
“Jackin’ Jill, you have been found guilty of treason and high crimes against the universe,” she proclaimed. “Your punishment is to be bound to the body of a pig for the rest of your natural days.”
Through all of it, Jill had said nothing either in defense or in objection. Primarily because she had been gagged.