Juliet Immortal

lover to sacrifice the other for the boon of eternal life.
    It might not be long. He excels at his work.
    Either way, Ariel Dragland will wear this shell again. Until then she’ll wait in the realm where I’ve spent most of my eternity, in the mists of forgetting, that place outside of time where the gray stretches on forever.
    I’ve been assured by my contact in the Ambassadors of Light that there are worse places, realms of torment where the boy who bartered our love for immortality will suffer someday. Nurse never uses the word
hell
, but I like to imagine that Romeo will number among hell’s inhabitants. Of course, she never mentions heaven, either, or whether I might go there when my work is finished … 
if
it is ever finished.
    There are a lot of things Nurse sees fit not to mention. Including the exact workings of the magic that pulls me from the mist again and again, now more than thirty times in seven centuries. All I know is life comes suddenly. One moment I’m numb and bodiless, the next I’m slipping into another’s skin, another’s life—the ultimate, dreadful disguise.
    I shiver as the memory of Ariel’s last moments sweeps through me. I watch her snatch the wheel from the driver’s hands before a deadly turn in the road and pull hard to the right, hoping the dive into the ravine will kill them both—her and the boy who hurt her. My eyes flick to the driver’s seat. The boy—Dylan—slumps forward, the downward tilt of the car making his limp body curl around the wheel. He is still, not a puff of breath escaping his parted lips.
    It seems one half of Ariel’s wish has been granted.
    I shiver again, but I can’t say I’m sorry. I know what he did, can feel Ariel’s shame and rage rush inside me as the rest of her life pours in to fill the empty corners in my mind.
    Behind my eyes flash images from her eighteen years. I focus, sucking in every detail, taking her memories as my own.
    Tiptoe, tiptoe, always on tiptoe. Up the stairs, across the kitchen, down the hall to the room where the crayons live and I can breathe. Where she isn’t watching. My mother, with her sad, sad eyes
.
    Seven, ten, fifteen, eighteen years old and still there is nothing finer than a blank sheet of paper, the white promise that the world can be what I make it. A magical place, an adventurous place, a possible place. Erasers take away the mistakes. Another coat of paint to cover them up. Black and red and purple and blue. Always blue
.
    Mom sees in blue. She sees the scars she made. I was six. She sees Gemma, my one friend, as a mistake, not a lifeline. She sees my hours alone and feels more powerfully every hour she’s wasted. I am the waste, the thing that’s eaten her youth alive. Refused to cough up the bones
.
    Sometimes it seems all I have are bones, scraps, a frame with nothing to fill in the empty space. Sometimes I hate her for it, sometimes I hate myself, sometimes I hate everyone and everything and imagine the world melting the way the grease melted my skin
.
    Skin and bones. Mom and I are both so thin. Hugs hurt, but there aren’t many. Not for years. There are surgeries and pain and bright lights and then days trapped in the house with the shades drawn on our shame. There is the darkness inside, that baleful intruder that comes just when I dare to believe I might one day be whole
.
    There is school and the misery of being a person unseen, the jealousy that I can’t be wild and beautiful like Gemma, that I am always an audience, never a player. There is the frustration of words that won’t come out of my mouth no matter how hard I try. A D in public speaking. The one step up to the podium is an impossible climb
.
Everest. Higher. I hate Mr. Stark for his frustrated sighs, hate the class for their muffled laughter. I want to hurt them, to show them how it feels to have your insides twisted into knots you can’t unravel
.
    Gemma doesn’t care, tells me to get over it, stops sharing her adventures, closes the window into her vibrant world, forgets to pick me up for school at least twice a week. I’m losing everything. My only friend, my perfect GPA, my mind. How much longer can I live like this? Can I make it four more years, sleeping in that room, commuting to the nursing college in Santa Barbara, learning to live with more sickness and pain, when all I want to do is escape?
    But then … there is him. His smile, his voice singing so strong, cutting through the curtains where I hide with my