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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.
"We'll be heading north," he told her, his voice raised against the whistling wind. "The Afterlights in Nashville heard rumors of a skinjacking girl up in Illinois."
"Jackin' Jill?"
"One can only hope."
Behind them, Moose and Squirrel milled around impatiently, but Milos took his time. "I hope you find your family," he told Allie. "And once you do, you will see things in a whole different light." Then he kissed her hand, and turned to go.
Moose and Squirrel both gave her quick, obligatory waves good-bye. Then the three of them skinjacked some random fleshies, and they were gone.
Later that day, in a Memphis church, Kevin David Barnes, twenty-four, married Rebecca Lynn Danbury, twenty-two. The groom, a bit scruffy in real life, was quite handsome in his tuxedo, and everyone agreed the bride was the most perfect vision of a bride that anyone had ever seen.
