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What was her plan, really? She would get home, but then what? She would see if her father survived the car accident. She would spend a little time watching her family’s comings and goings. She would try to communicate with them—maybe she would even find a neighbor willing to be skinjacked, and then talk to her family, convincing them it was her by telling them things that only she could know. Allie would tell them she was all right, not to worry and not to mourn.
But then what?
It was now that Allie figured out something she should have figured out a long time ago: Home was no longer home. She had denied it, refused to think about it, pretended it didn’t matter, but she couldn’t pretend anymore. If her great victory was going home, then her victory was an empty one.
“I asked you a question,” said Mikey. “What will you do after you go home?”
Since Allie had no answer, she threw it back in his face. “That’s my business,”
she said. “What about you? Are you going to make yourself into the One True Monster of Everlost again?”
Mikey gently kicked his heels into Shiloh’s side to remind the horse to keep pulling his hooves out of the ground, so they didn’t sink again. “I’m done with being a monster,” he said. Then he reached into his pocket and threw something to Allie, and she caught it. It was a coin.
“What’s this for?”
“You can use it to get you where you’re going.”
Allie looked at the coin, so similar to the one she had tossed into Mary’s fountain. Did he mean what she thought he meant? To get where she was going—it was terrifying yet enticing. Electrifying. She stared at the coin, then looked back up at Mikey. “Is that what you’re doing, then? ‘Getting where you’re going’?”
Allie thought she read some fear in his face at the suggestion. “No,” he said.
“I don’t think I’m going anywhere good. I’m in no hurry to get there.”
“Well,” said Allie, “you can probably change where you’re going, don’t you think?”
Mikey didn’t seem too convinced. “I was a pretty nasty monster,” he said.
“Were,” reminded Allie. “That was then, this is now.”
Mikey seemed to appreciate her practical, logical view of things. “So then, how long do you think it would take to make up for being a monster?”
Allie thought about the question. “I have no idea. But some people believe that all it takes is a sincere decision to change, and you’re saved.”
“Maybe,” said Mikey. “But I’d rather play it safe. I was a monster for thirty years, so I’d say I need thirty years of good deeds to wipe the slate clean.”
Allie smirked. “Is Mikey McGill even capable of good deeds?”
Mikey frowned. “Okay, then. Sixty years of halfway-decent deeds.”
“Fair enough,” said Allie. She looked at the coin in her hand. It was lukewarm.
She suspected if she held it long enough it would get her where she was going, but just because she was ready to go, it didn’t mean she had to just yet. It was a matter of choice.
What was it her fortune had said? “Linger or light. The choice is yours.”
Allie chose to put the coin in her hip pocket for now. She always had been good at saving her money.
Mikey held out his hand to her, ready to lift her up on the horse.
“Home?” he asked.
But suddenly it didn’t seem all that urgent. There were still plenty of unknowns to explore here in Everlost. She could squeeze a lot of them in between here and home. “There’s no hurry,” she told him, but Mikey wasn’t pleased.
“Taking you home,” he said, “was going to be my first halfway-decent deed.”
“I’m sure you’ll find another one.”
Mikey sighed in frustration. “This is not going to be easy. I’m good at being bad, but I’m bad at being good. I don’t know the first thing about good deeds.”
