Juliet Immortal

pelvic bones shift as it runs, swiftly closing in on my old self.
    I don’t know why he’s chasing her if Romeo is the one he’s been sent for, but I’m not going to let him have her. My mind tells me I should fear the soul specter sent to claim me, but my gut screams for me to help her, to protect her, to go to her. Now.
    “Ariel! Where are you going?” Mike calls after me, confusion in his tone. Whether it’s real—and he honestly can’t see or hear what I do—or for the benefit of those listening, I don’t care.
    All that matters is that I reach myself in time.
    I sprint across the sodden school grounds, arms working, fists flying up beside my eyes, feet skipping from one patch of grass to another. Faster and faster, until my legs cramp and my stomach knots, but I don’t stop, I don’t falter. I run straight for the creature scampering up the hill, this time the hunter instead of the hunted.
    The rain comes harder, making it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead, but I keep going. I hear her cries and the eager snarls from the beast as it closes in. It’s drawing out the chase, torturing its prey, feeding on her fear as surely as it will feed on her blood.
    I fall, my sweater snagging on a twisted branch and holding tight. Instead of fighting to free myself, I tug the sweater off and leave it, running on in my brown tank top. The skin on my arms puckers in the cold and my teeth chatter so loudly I can no longer hear her screams.
    My
screams. Hers. Mine. Hers.
    I don’t know anymore. I don’t know what’s real or true. I only know that as I reach the end of the trees and the land opens up onto a vast vineyard, a part of me isn’t surprised tosee my body and Romeo’s waiting for me. They stand hand in hand, as if the chase has been a game for them both, as if they own the world that slopes in graceful folds all around them. My old dress is still soaked and bloody, and Romeo is a slack-jawed horror, but the two figures are united in a way Romeo and I haven’t been for centuries.
    “Run away,”
the Romeo creature groans. I brace myself, thinking it intends to chase me back through the woods, but then my old body laughs.
    “Don’t
run away
,” she says.
“Love.”
My eyes meet hers and once again I sense a hollowness inside her, a feeling that something necessary is missing.
    “What do you mean?” I ask, voice shaking. “I can’t love Romeo. I just—”
    “Love,”
she repeats, as if she hasn’t heard me, and before I can say another word, they’re gone. Vanished in a blink. My eyes sweep along the rows of vines in every direction, but there is nothing. They’ve disappeared and I’ve lost her again. I’ve lost myself.
    I should be glad. According to Romeo, that body is a psychic manifestation sent to consume me. But I’m not glad. A wounded sound tears from my throat as I fall to my knees. I can’t do what she says. I can’t love Romeo. I can’t. I hate him. I will always hate him. My heart squeezes in my chest, trying to collapse into itself and disappear, to escape this strange agony.
    Love. Hate. Love
.
    I feel as if I’m being torn apart. My stomach lurches and the world tilts unsteadily on its axis, and I find myself wondering if maybe this is all in my head.
All of it
.
    What if everything I believe to be real is simply a creationof my mind? Maybe I was never Juliet. Maybe I never died in a tomb or fought my ex-love through the ages. Maybe I’m just Ariel Dragland, eighteen, a girl who’s suffered a head injury and is now certifiably insane.
    “No. I’m not mad, I’m not,” I sob, only realizing that tears are streaming down my face when the words come out more gurgle than shout.
    I suck in a breath and choke on it, swiping at my running nose and dripping eyes, angry at the nose for its pert, upturned slope, hating these big blue eyes and the rough scars that mark my stolen skin. I hate this body—not because of the scars, but because it isn’t
mine
. It
isn’t
. I’m not crazy, not yet. I’m simply sick to the bone of having nothing that is
mine
, not my mission, not my choices, not even my own flesh and blood. I
hate
it.
    I hate traveling through time, watching the world transform so radically yet stay so much the same. I hate the world for creating monsters like Romeo and the greed and fear and evil that give him and people like him something to kill for. I hate the Mercenaries for stealing my brief flash of happiness. I hate Nurse for not telling me