Читать книгу Ever Lasting - Odessa Gillespie Black - Страница 7

Shelby

The day Cole stopped trying to torch Allie’s dolls and hide all her toys, my twin sister Kaitlyn and I knew our children had begun a change. It was one we’d foreseen but weren’t prepared to handle. There were so many unknowns in their futures. With a little help from a friend, we’d guided Cole and Allie’s souls into artificially inseminated fetuses, and carried and nourished them as if they were our own naturally born children—even though they were of no blood relation to us or each other.

When Cole and Allie reached puberty, Cole would remember his century of past lives. Allie would only have hints of déjà vu. Luckily, Kaitlyn and I had a few years before we’d have to explain the curse laid upon them by Allie’s older sister in the 1800s.

When the kids reached age nine, I had almost completely shut down my mental ties with their thoughts.

Cole’s thoughts might have helped me be prepared when the time came to tell him about his past, but Cole’s thoughts were his own, and the motherly side of me—which surprised me more and more every day—didn’t want to meddle.

I was in denial most of the time though. I stayed away from his thoughts so I didn’t have to face what was coming.

When Cole began stealing long, wistful glances at Allie, it should have been a hint that there was a memory forming behind those normally curious eyes.

When Allie noticed, she always stuck out her tongue or called him some harmless name she expected would fend off a pending attack on her possessions, but his stares weren’t that of a mischievous little boy plotting the destruction of her dolls and dollhouses.

If he wasn’t kept under tight supervision, Cole’s transition from my little boy to something more mysterious and dangerous might scare him more than the prospect terrified me.

As the days sped by, the looks were longer and the torturous attacks on all things girly waned. This was the time a mother would start considering having “The Talk” with her little man, but the talk that I had to consider was much more burdensome than what normal mothers had to contend with.

Kaitlyn had it easy.

Her talk with Allie was going to be much more ground shaking, but she had the opportunity to put it off until it was absolutely necessary because in all likelihood, Allie wouldn’t recall that she’d lived past lives.

Cole’s dark hair was usually mussed up and his dark green eyes bright with curiosity about the world around him. But as of late, his dark expressions and glints of lime green in his gaze would surely lead to a shift that would scare the hell out of him.

I had to make a decision. Soon.

Tell him now?

Or wait?

I stretched longer on a lounge chair beside the pool.

Off somewhere in the middle of the Rose Maze, Cole and Allie chased each other.

“If you could run faster, you could catch up,” Allie said.

“You’re younger than me, so I always let you win.” Cole’s voice was a little deeper. Or maybe that was my imagination. Some days he seemed to have aged a thousand years in less than ten.

In previous lives, most spats only lasted a few minutes. No more than an hour or so, if they were over something serious, such as what flowers they were going to plant in the gardens or changing the design of a room in the house from archaic to something more modern.

Cole was always so old-fashioned, whereas Allie’s tastes were more artsy. Don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t like Ava, whose only concern was the extravagance of her home.

I think, looking back, that Allie tried to separate herself from the couple’s painful past in simple gestures such as doing away with some ratty piece of old furniture that Cole considered a treasure to cleave to forever. Though the previous people they’d been had been about as compatible as a tornado and a trailer park, they’d never fought over anything that would have rocked their marriage or shaken their love for one another. Now, as children, the last spat ended because a new one had started.

Cole called for Allie around the side of the house. His voice was mischievous—again.

* * * *

When Cole was twelve years old, he became withdrawn. He avoided Allie and upon accidental encounters with her, his thoughts were so loud that I couldn’t block them.

I used to torture you. Now you torture me. And you don’t even know it.

He sounded so much older.

I decided two weeks into his twelfth year that it was time. He had become a total recluse. His spirit seemed broken.

He stood on the lookout for Allie from the balcony of his room on the first floor. His thoughts took a downward spiral.

I can’t be normal. I’m supposed to want to play video games, go fishing, swim, hang out with other kids my age, but all I can think about is some guy I’ve never met hugging some really pretty girl that for some reason I feel like I’m supposed to know. Then when Allie’s around, I can’t think, I stutter, I get hot, then cold, then sweat, and then I feel like I’m going to pass out. Or throw up. Or both. And Mom would probably think I was crazy if I told her. She’d probably make me a doctor’s appointment.

Cole couldn’t go on thinking something was wrong with him.

And Allie couldn’t continue to think that she was the reason for Cole’s behavior. She’d approached me many times in the last few weeks to tell me she couldn’t get Cole to come down from his room.

I assured her I’d speak with him.

Her hazel eyes had glistened with hope and her caramel and golden locks shined as she nodded.

* * * *

I knocked on Cole’s bedroom door after dinner, which had been especially quiet.

“What, Mom?” he said.

“How did you know it was me?” My heart stopped. What if he’d heard my thoughts?

“I know your knock.” His voice was solemn.

I took a deep breath. Good. We needed to talk, but I wasn’t quite ready for the whole shebang. I went in and leaned on the door. It clicked shut.

“The whole shebang, huh? I’d wondered if you knew or if I was going crazy. Have a seat.” Cole sighed and sat Indian style on his bed, offering the spot in front of him. He stared at me expectantly.

I was at a loss for words. I landed into a seated position on his bed. My legs were spongy.

He shoved a book aside. Since when had he started reading?

“Why don’t you start with telling me what you know?” I said, trying to take the awkwardness out of the situation, but that was downright impossible.

“Where do I start?” Cole leveled me with an even stare.

Staring from behind his eyes was no longer my little boy.

Tears filled my eyes.

Cole’s eyes dashed to a poster on his wall, but he looked back to me with a wince and took my hand. “Mom, I’ll always be your little boy, no matter what I remember.”

Despite all the times we’d argued in the past, we’d grown close quickly, but I’d never imagined he’d be my son. A brother figure, but never my son. Now the prospect of losing him was even more painful.

“When did you know?” I said.

“I honestly don’t know. I’ve been getting little glimpses of the past since I can remember, but I just never paid attention to them. Not until recently.” His voice had changed to that of a more educated person with more wisdom under his belt than any other sixth-grader. Two weeks had matured Cole by years.

“Until recently? What happened?” I steeled myself for the memory he would recite.

“It comes in bits and pieces, but the most important thing was I remembered that I loved her.” Cole stared at the Batman blanket on his bed.

Wow. What could you say to that?

“There’s not a lot you can say. You couldn’t exactly come to me and say, ‘Son, you have died so many times now, I’ve lost count. What do you want for dinner?’”

“Do you realize the broad spectrum of what we need to talk about? I don’t know where to start. I mean, there’s the sex talk, the Allie talk, the Grace talk. Do you know how complicated you are?” The humor in my voice blanched behind the seriousness of the matter.

“I’m beginning to see.” Cole sounded so wise. “And please. No sex talk. I think I remember enough to have that covered.”

“Oh, my.” My voice cracked. “Where did my son go?”

Cole squeezed my hand then released it. His face pinched in deep thought. His dark red lips opened then shut.

“It’s okay. I know I’m your mom, but I was your best friend at one point. You can talk to me.” The tension in my back subsided a little now that we were finally talking. Really talking.

“How do I live around her and know the things I know about us? I feel like I am keeping a huge, double-barrel secret from her that’s getting ready to go off with the next word I say. I don’t know how to deal with that. I have all these emotions running through me that have no place right now. I feel this huge need to protect her from all things bad. I remember.… Shelby, I remember holding her in the dark when I was in my mid-twenties. I remember things a twelve-year-old shouldn’t.” Cole laughed incredulously, and for the first time the old Cole Kinsley’s impish grin aged his face.

“Okay, so this is a little weird. I thought I could get past the you-being-my-little-boy aspect of this situation, but this is a bit much,” I said.

“Hey, you said I could talk. I have to have an outlet.”

I closed my eyes. “I knew this day was coming, but how could I ever have prepared for it. I don’t understand. You realized in the other lives when you hit puberty.”

“Seriously, I’m twelve, not five.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Help me get away from it.” Cole leaned toward me, forcing my gaze to his.

I would have sworn he was thirty.

“I can’t be around her when I know what she looks like naked. And in case you haven’t noticed the changes in other children at our school, puberty comes a little sooner than it used to. Why do you think I’m having such a difficult time?”

“We are going to get through this.”

“But what if she detects that something is different? What do I say when she asks me what’s wrong?” Cole’s voice squeaked in distress.

“She’s going to know something is wrong if you keep acting as though she’s contracted the plague. You have to pretend you don’t know. When the time is right, Kaitlyn will tell her. Just go about your life as if nothing ever happened. If you can. And stop talking like you have three college degrees.”

“I’ll do my best,” Cole said.

“You can talk to me anytime. You know that.” I got up.

“You were always a good friend.”

It shocked me. The way he stated it was so mature, so not my son—so Cole Kinsley the old soul.

“Hey, Shelby. If my memory serves me correctly, I’m still the boss of you, so I’m changing my bedtime.”

“You keep talking like that, and I’ll move it up two hours.” I pulled the door behind me.

“Love you, mom.” Cole’s thoughts filtered into the hall.

“Love you too, sweetie.”

* * * *

Once in my room, I shut the door.

Every mother dreads the day her little boy officially grows up, but who could you cry to when your boy grows older than you? Though he was just down the hall tucked under his favorite Batman blanket, I felt as though I had lost him in some strange way.

“I can hear you all the way down the hall, Mom. Stop that. I haven’t gone anywhere. You will always have me. Remember, I never die. I keep going on. When I leave this body, I will find you. Allie isn’t the only one I am connected to anymore. I love you. More than any other mama I’ve had. Now laugh, because you know that in some other plane, some alternate reality, this is funny. I used to infuriate you. Now you’re crying over me.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do just yet. Hush and go to sleep,” I said.

“I’m still the boss of you.”

“Are not.” I grinned.

He remembered our playful banter so many years ago.

“Are too.”

“Go to sleep, Cole Kinsley.”

“Edwards, not Kinsley. I’m not ready to completely move into that identity just yet. Let me be a kid while I can, for heaven sakes.” He sounded like my little boy again.

As I tugged my own blankets up and rolled to face my husband Trevor, I couldn’t conceal my joy. Cole had had twelve mothers, and I was his favorite. Cole never said anything just to make someone feel better. He’d had trouble with honesty in his past lives due to his severe obsession with Allie’s safety.

I hoped now that he had learned some of who he was that, that wouldn’t change.

* * * *

Cole

Though I still had the body of a little boy, I was Cole Kinsley on the inside. I had corrected Shelby to make her feel better. The complete transformation from the me I knew to some guy who haunted my dreams would happen someday, and there was nothing I could do about it. She would have to have time to adjust, just the same as I would. It would have been different if only my voice had changed and new hair had grown in strange places. An alternate personality had begun revealing itself little by little since I’d been old enough to talk.

Suddenly, just as I was about to pull the covers up to my chin the way I did when I was little—which had been only two weeks ago—I decided that I wanted to sprawl out on the top of the blanket. I didn’t want the comforting sensation of confinement that the blankets normally offered, which also two weeks ago felt like protection from the big, strange world.

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 came 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.