For Ever
Authors: C. J. Valles
Tags: #paranormal, #psychic, #immortal being, #teen and young adult romance
For Ever
The Ever Series, Book 1
Smashwords edition
Copyright © 2012 by C. J. Valles
Follow C. J. on Twitter @CJValles_4ever
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of
characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental. The Author holds exclusive rights to this work.
Books and Reading Order of The Ever Series
For Ever (The Ever Series, Book 1)
Never (The Ever Series, Book 2)
Sever (The Ever Series, Book 3)
Ever (The Ever Series, Alternate Point-of-View
Companion to For Ever)
Dan, thank you for believing in For Ever.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Lonely I came, and I depart alone,
And I know not where nor unto whom I go;
But that thou canst not follow me I know.
The Suicide
, Edna St. Vincent Millay
Like I Mean It
This time I can’t stop my eyes from rolling
toward the ceiling. My mom is laughing too much—again—at one of his
absurd jokes. And did he just wink at her? God! Is the universe
punishing me for something? For almost thirty minutes now we’ve
been sitting side by side in those squeaky chairs that are designed
to make delinquent high school kids nervous. I’m not a delinquent,
but the seating arrangement is still making me uneasy. I nudge my
mom’s leg. She tears her eyes away from the vice principal of
Springview High School and looks over at me.
What? He’s kinda cute.
The sound of her rhetorical response echoing
in my head makes me sink even lower into my chair. I look back at
Mr. Chernoff and seriously begin to wonder about my mom’s sanity.
The man has a perpetual smirk, combined with a terrible mustache,
and a head like a cue ball. And I know for a fact that my mom would
have cracked up if she could have heard what he was thinking when
we first walked into his office. But my mom’s taste has been
suspect recently. She jokes that she needs the practice before she
starts dating again. This is high on the list of things I don’t
want to think about.
The thermostat clicks on again, and I hug my
arms as more cold air rushes through the vents … in January. Tuning
out my mom’s nervous chattering, I look past Mr. Chernoff’s shiny
cranium to the window, which comes complete with a metal mesh grate
crushed between two layers of glass. From here, the parking lot
looks monochromatic; or maybe it’s just how I’ve been seeing my
life lately, distorted through the lens of my parents’
self-destruction. The steady rain is blurring everything beyond the
window, making the scenery appear softer, faded, and almost
dreamlike. In contrast, the vice principal’s office is stark and
sharp under the fluorescent lighting—complete with a yellowish
wooden desk, a dying fern, towering metal filing cabinets, and a
poster, curling at the edges, that proclaims:
Learning is fun!
Drugs are not.
I allow my mind to wander down the winding
two-lane boulevard of Topanga Canyon, all the way to the smooth,
liquid-metal waters of the Pacific Ocean in the early morning. Up
until two weeks ago, this had been part of my daily commute to
Palisades Charter High School, where I had attended for two and a
half years. Seeing the ocean every day is something I already miss.
Everything else about my life in California I left behind with
frighteningly little regret. But after only three nights and two
days, I’m not sold on the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, either.
The sound of papers shuffling from the
opposite side of the desk causes me to refocus. I catch Mr.
Chernoff watching me. His voice in my head makes me flinch.
These test scores. … And this kid’s creeping
me out. Hasn’t said a word. Maybe she’s a little slow. What is the
PC term? Learning disabled?
I’m getting used to it, but sometimes I think
it would be easier not to hear the things people are too
embarrassed to say to your face. Still, it’s better to know upfront
that the vice principal has written me off, thanks to a horrible
math score that I got on a placement exam at the end of sixth
grade. Well, that, and the fact that I spent junior high in adapted
PE thanks to my coordination, which was declared “remedial” by the
special education teacher.
I know this for a fact: nothing makes you
feel more special than your classmates asking,
What’s wrong with
you?
Repeatedly. It got old fast. Mr. Chernoff glances at me
again, only to find I’m already staring back at him.
Jerk
, I
think. He reddens and sits up straighter. He’s wearing a tweed coat
and a ridiculous clip-on bowtie, which only makes me like him less.
He picks up where he left off, sifting aimlessly through my
academic records like he’s hoping to find a winning lottery ticket
hidden somewhere within them.
I’ll admit that I’m awful at math—and my
coordination is so bad that I can’t kick a soccer ball to save my
life. But I’m not a slacker. I work hard for the A’s and B’s I get,
and I ran on the cross country team for two seasons. I mostly did
this to avoid two additional years of “special” PE when I got to
high school. Luckily, it turned out that I liked running, even if I
never won a race. Not even close.
It’s a Monday morning two weeks into the
spring semester. Today is supposed to be my first day at my new
high school. But classes are impacted, and I’m transferring late.
As a result, enrollment isn’t going smoothly. We would have waited
until the end of my junior year, but my mom got a job offer she
couldn’t pass up. Now, here we are. Nine hundred sixty-seven miles
north.
My mom looks over at me again and smiles
nervously. I feel the corners of my mouth turn up, but I can tell
that my face doesn’t feel like being in on the lie this morning. I
keep telling her that I didn’t mind moving, and it’s true. I wanted
to start over as much as she did, maybe more. But she still feels
guilty. Like it’s her fault that Thomas Sullivan, her ex-husband—my
father—is a cheating liar.
Turning back to the window, I study the giant
evergreens surrounding the parking lot. People who have never lived
there might think that the place where I grew up and Portland,
Oregon are interchangeable. Both have trees and hills, but that’s
about where the similarity ends as far as I can tell. The green
here is brighter than the high desert chaparral of the Santa Monica
Mountains which form Topanga Canyon.
The starkest difference is the unending rain,
delivered by the permanent layer of gray that makes up Oregon’s
skies. In Southern California, it had been rare when the rain
lasted past noon. In fact, if the rain happened to stubbornly
overstay its welcome, the local weather people would have an
absolute fit like it was the end of the world. At the moment, I
don’t mind the grayness. It’s a relief in a strange way. In the
months before we moved, there had been something about blue skies
and eighty-degree weather in the middle of winter that had started
to make me feel wrong, like something about
me
was wrong.
Then again, it’s been a long time since I’ve felt right.
According to the clock on the wall, it’s
almost ten-thirty. We’re operating on my mom’s schedule, which is
later than the rest of the world’s. At this rate, it’s completely
possible that I’ll miss the entire school day, and I’m okay with
that. I look back when Mr. Chernoff clears his throat again,
apparently a nervous tic of his.
“Well, Mrs. Sullivan—”
“Caroline, please,” my mom says.
My mouth twitches.
“Given your daughter’s IEP scores for
physical education,” he sighs, addressing her like I’m not in the
room, “I would recommend another year of adapted PE. With average
English second period, I think we can fit in the other requirements
to finish up her junior year.”
Let’s just see if she can handle it.
My cheeks redden despite the frigid
temperature in the office. There is absolutely no way I’m going to
sacrifice everything my junior year because of one apathetic high
school administrator. I sit up straight and lean forward.
“Is PE required for juniors?”
Mr. Chernoff looks over at me, his expression
startled, bordering on annoyed.
“It is recommended,” he says
sanctimoniously.
…
for someone with your deficits
, he
finishes in his head.
I watch him, picking through his thoughts for
the real answer. The school’s administration needs another body in
its second section of special PE to justify a full-time teacher. I
smirk.
“If it isn’t a requirement to graduate, I’m
not taking it. And I want Honors English Lit and advanced placement
U.S. History—”
“An AP class?” he sputters. “Well, our
curriculum … We usually offer priority to our seniors, and a few
exceptional juniors.”
“I was enrolled in AP U.S. History with an A
average,” I point out since he managed to ignore any part of my
transcript that didn’t fit in with his assumption that I wasn’t
all there
.
My blood boils when he looks at my mom, like
he’s searching for assistance in handling her weirdo daughter.
“You heard her,” she says mildly with a
smile.
Caroline Sullivan to the rescue. Finally. I
exhale. The vice principal goes back to reviewing the master
schedule of classes, muttering under his breath. He looks up and
then back down as he scribbles in my file. He’s writing a memo
about my math score, and that I’m opting out of PE, a class that I
consider an exercise in torture for people like me. He’s also
writing a note about my attitude.
“You can pick up your schedule from Mrs.
Heinz in the front office.”
“Thank you.” I smile sweetly with the hope
that I never have to deal with him again.
Standing, I feel my sense of triumph fade.
The thought of walking into a strange classroom mid-period makes my
palms sweat. I have a flashback to the first day of first grade,
the year we moved to Topanga. I still remember the pressure of my
mom’s hand, cool and smooth, on mine as she walked me to the
playground. And the fear as she nudged me toward a group of
unfamiliar children. Now I’m older, and I should be less afraid of
starting a new school. Unfortunately, I’m not.
As I cross the vice principal’s office, an
unseen ripple in the flecked linoleum trips me. I catch myself,
turning just in time to see Mr. Chernoff look over at me while
exchanging the requisite pleasantries with my mom.
Kid’s a pill, but the mom’s hot. And no
wedding band.
Gross. That’s it. If my mom gives him her
number, I’m going to wretch. I jerk open the door and stalk toward
the outer office, which consists of a pod of four desks. A girl
about my age is hunched over a box of files. She looks over at me,
but doesn’t stop what she’s doing. Across from her, a plump,
grandmotherly looking woman with short, silver hair peers over her
bifocals.
Another California transplant. What was her
name? Something peculiar—I swear, parents these days.
I bite my lip, wondering for the millionth
time why my mom had felt the urge to join the
Parents-Who-Give-Their-Kids-Strange-Names Club.
“
Wren
Sullivan?” she asks, looking
down at a sheet of paper.
I nod. When she looks up at me, I say, “Yes.”
My throat is dry, so I nod again for emphasis.
“I’m Mrs. Heinz.”
Poor thing looks terrified.
Strangers have always assumed a lot about
me—that I’m worried, frightened, or surprised—even when I’m not
thinking anything at all. I get “
Are you okay?
” a lot.
Without any effort on my part, my olive-green eyes are always a
little too wide, and my eyebrows are permanently arched in a way
that makes people uneasy. My pale, bordering on ghostly, complexion
doesn’t help.
My mom is my polar opposite. She is uniformly
tan with almond-shaped blue eyes. And she wears her naturally wavy
golden hair short. She looks like she belongs in Southern
California. I don’t. My unrelentingly straight chocolate-colored
hair that hangs halfway down my back is from my father’s side. That
and the light spray of freckles across my nose. The shape of my
face and small, heart-shaped lips are what make me look
unmistakably related to my mom.