only now did she realize that the boy milos had chosen did look just a little bit like mikey. she wondered if milos had chosen him for that very reason. what was it he had said? we could be for each other whatever we need. she wondered if the girl looked like jackin' jill.

"next time, maybe?" said milos with an apologetic grin.

"no," said allie, and took his hands, no longer in passion but in sympathy. "there won't be a next time, milos."

she could not hate him for this. he hadn't forced her-- he hadn't taken advantage. he was just doing what boys do--and he was very good at it.

"too bad," said milos. "i could have walked you down the red carpet at the oscars. i could have danced with you in the white house."

"now who's thinking too big?"

milos sighed. "will you now walk back alone, or may i escort you?"

"well, since we're both going in the same direction, it would be silly to walk alone."

they returned to the highway together, yet apart. it was a long and painfully awkward walk.

"i'm sorry, milos," allie told him, when they were halfway there.

but milos shook his head. "please," he said. "i posed a question, and your answer was no. never be afraid to tell anyone 'no'," he said. "and that includes me." it didn't make it any easier that he was charming even in defeat. she knew she could have fallen for milos had mikey not already been a part of her life, and milos knew it too. never before had allie been put in a position of chosing between two boys. some girls might like such a game--toying with them, playing one against the other. allie thought to the times she teased mikey about milos, and realized that maybe she had done a little bit of that herself. it made her want to see mikey all the more.

the one comfort allie could take from the evening's festivities was that her momentous lapse of reason would go unnoticed and unrecorded. mikey would never know.

except that he did.

in fact, he was standing right beside them when they kissed.

chapter 14 strange winds

when allie and milos returned to the interstate, moose and squirrel were there, but mikey was nowhere to be seen. now that milos's advances had hit a brick wall, he was itching to move on, and didn't appreciate waiting for mikey.

"it is just like him to make the rest of us wait," milos said.

"how do you know what he's like?" allie said, defensively. "you barely even know him."

milos knew better than to argue the point.

allie looked around--to the fields across the interstate, and behind her, to the neighborhood they had just come from. she tried to catch a glimpse of mikey's afterglow, but the moon was too bright; everything seemed to be glowing.

"wherever he's gone, he couldn't have gone far," allie told the others. but when mikey wasn't back by midnight, allie began to worry.

"what if something happened to him?"

squirrel stayed silent about it, but moose--probably following milos's earlier cue--was annoyed. "let him catch up with ush." milos, on the other hand, had moved past his irritation, and recognized that mikey's absence was something out of the ordinary. "there will be a sensible explanation," milos reasoned, "and when he does come back, we can all be suitably angry at him. but for now we will wait."

allie kept a vigil all night, her mind filling with all the things that could have happened to him. what if the nashville afterlights kidnapped him? what if he got caught in one of mary's stupid soul traps? yet she knew she was grasping at straws. those nashville afterlights were timid things--and as for soul traps, there was no evidence that mary had ever been this far west.

when dawn came, and mikey still hadn't returned, allie was beside herself. the others kept their distance--not even milos knew how to handle this. it was in that early morning light that she took special notice of squirrel. he had nothing to say about the matter all night long--yet he was even more antsy than usual. he kept bouncing his knee and shifting his weight from leg to leg. he wouldn't meet allie's gaze, and that clinched it. in an instant she had him tried, convicted, and sentenced.

"it was you!" she stormed up to him and pointed an accusing finger. "you did something to him!"

squirrel's jaw dropped open and he shook his head. "not me! not me! i wouldn't do anything to him!" he looked to moose, who backed away, hoping this plague of guilt wouldn't spread to him, but he was too late.

"it was both of you!" yelled allie. "i know it just by looking at you!"

moose's beady eyes seemed to widen within his helmet, like a cornered opossum. she half expected him to suddenly play dead. "we didn't do anything! milosh tell her it wazn't ush!" but milos was not taking sides.

"you're both lying!' allie screamed at them. "tell me what you did, or i'll tear you apart with my bare hands!" in that moment, she believed she could do it, and they believed it too.

"we didn't do anything! i swear, i swear!" pleaded squirrel. "cross my heart and hope to fry! i'd be afraid to do anything to him, honest!"

and that, coming from squirrel, just sounded odd. it was just a further indication to allie that he must be lying.

finally milos stepped in. "afraid of him? why afraid?"

squirrel looked to milos then to moose, and finally to allie. "i think ... i think your friend is some kinda monster." and the expression of horror and hatred that allie gave him made squirrel back away. "it's true, it's true! he's got all these eyes--and tentacles. he hides 'em real good, but i know he's got 'em."

"you're lying!" screamed allie, and she rushed him. "take it back! you're lying, take it back!" she began pushing him, shaking him, hitting him.

it was milos who pulled her away from squirrel, and she collapsed, sobbing like she never had in life. milos tried to comfort her, but she just pushed him away. "he's lying," she said over and over, her voice getting weaker each time she said it. "he's lying... ."

"maybe squirrel saw something else, and thought it was mikey," milos suggested.

"yeah," said moose, butting squirrel in the head with his helmet. "you alwayz shee things that aren't there!"

"but ... but--"

milos put his hand up and silenced him, then he knelt down to allie, who still wept. "i think ... we need ... to consider ... "he spoke slowly, measuring each word like the tick of a metronome, "... that maybe ... mikey took his coin ... and got where he was going."

"he wouldn't do that," said allie. "no. he wouldn't just leave without saying good-bye."

"maybe he did not mean to," suggested milos.

"yeah, yeah--maybe he took the coin out just to look at it," said squirrel, "but once that tunnel opens, there's nothing you can do."

allie still wasn't ready to believe it. "there's got to be another explanation."

then, after a long silence, milos said, "then we will wait."

and so they waited till noon. they waited till sunset. they waited through a second night. mikey still hadn't returned, and allie had to face the very real possibility that he never would.

when the sun peeked over the eastern horizon the next morning, milos finally said, "come; i said i would get you to memphis and i will."

allie shook her head. "i'm not going. i'm staying here."

"let her stay," said squirrel. "it's not our problem."

"shut up!" snapped milos.

allie closed her eyes. things had not gone the way she had planned. in that way everlost was no different than the living world. "you must let it go," milos pleaded with her. "you must get to memphis."

"why? why does it matter?"

milos sighed. "because ... there are things i have not told you."

allie looked at him, a bit disgusted. "more lessons?"

he shook his head, and spoke in a calm, resigned voice. "no lessons. because there are some things every skinjacker must learn for themselves. in this i can't help you. i can only point you in the right direction."

allie wondered if he was just being enigmatic to distract her from thoughts of mikey or if there was something he was truly hinting at. either way, milos was right--she had to move on, because if she stayed here, she would surely let herself sink to the center of the earth.

"all right," she said calmly. "all right, then." she stood, and gathered what fortitude she could. "without mikey, we don't have to walk." she looked at the cars whizzing past on the highway. "we can skinjack a family already driving to memphis, and be there in two hours."

and she hoped that the farther away from here she got, the less it would hurt.

getting to memphis took a bit longer than two hours--but not much. first they had to find a car with four passengers at a nearby rest stop, making sure they were heading to or at least passing through memphis.

then there was the argument with moose and squirrel about how to do it--fully jack the fleshies, or merely hide within them, behind their consciousness, hitching a ride. "hiding is for girls," said squirrel, which just ticked allie off.

the problem was solved when moose confessed, "i don't know how to hide--with me itsh all or nothing." apparently the finer points of skinjacking were beyond moose.

in the end, it was agreed that they would all just skinjack a family in one fell swoop, put them to sleep, and then wake them up again once they had pulled off the interstate and were safe in some parking lot somewhere. the family would have to deal with inexplicably losing a few hours of their lives, but at least they would be closer to wherever they were going.

milos drove, while allie avoided looking in any mirrors, because she really didn't want to be reminded of what she was doing. in the backseat moose and squirrel inhabited a pair of six-year-old twins, and wouldn't stop bickering and picking their noses. they were clearly in their element.

they stopped just east of the city, and woke the family after they had parked, peeling out of them, and leaving them to make sense of the sudden time lapse. allie, however lingered long enough to make her presence known in the woman's mind, telling her that all was well, and not to worry. it was the least she could do.

immediately upon peeling into everlost, they felt the wind that the nashville afterlights had spoken of. it was a stiff breeze coming from the west. while living-world wind passed through them, barely noticed, this wind did not.

"they said it gets worse the closer we get to the river," squirrel said.

"i don't like it," said moose. even milos looked unsettled. "i have heard people say that everlost ends at the mississippi river, but i never believed this. now i think maybe it is true, and this wind is a barrier keeping us back."

"good thing memphis is on this side of the river, then," said allie curtly. she didn't care about the wind. she didn't care about much of anything right now. mikey's departure had left her numb.

so she was here. she had no address to go by, but she was resourceful. finding her family might take some time, but she'd be able to do it. she wished that she didn't have to do it alone, but it wasn't milos's help she wanted. milos must have know that, because here is where he said his good-bye.