“He and Will went out of town.”

I’d just seen him this afternoon. “Alone?”

“Yes. Strange, isn’t it? I can’t think of what he’s trying to escape.” Her tone and her pointed look told me she had an idea of who was to blame. I’d run Jack out of town.

“Okay. I guess I should go.”

She nodded, and then she said, “Nikki, please leave my boy alone. He’s been through enough.” She shut the door. Not quite a slam, but almost.

I stared at her door for a long moment, blinking back the tears. What bothered me most was that she was right. Jack obviously couldn’t stand me leaving again. He didn’t want to be anywhere near me when I left, so he grabbed Will and took off.

I felt sick, and I ran to my car so I wouldn’t break down on Jack’s front porch. I couldn’t believe I wouldn’t see him again. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t survive what little time I had left, knowing Jack was out there somewhere, hating me.

It was time for me to do something about it.

TWENTY-SIX

NOW

Home. One and a half weeks left.

I was tired of hurting people. I was tired of hurting myself. When I got home, I went straight to my nightstand and took Cole’s hair from the drawer. Without even stopping to think, I rushed out of the house and drove to the Shop-n-Go.

I blew past Ezra and went straight to the back, to the spot where the Everneath had spit me out.

I brought the hair up to my mouth, opened wide … and froze.

Just do it, Becks, I told myself.

But my hand wasn’t obeying my brain. I was such a coward.

Or maybe I was my mother’s daughter. Our family used to have a dog, a wheaten terrier named Bert. We would joke that Bert was my mom’s lost third child. As he got older, and sicker, none of us wanted to face it. Especially my mom. We all knew he wouldn’t last much longer, and every extra day he lived would be painful, but my mom just couldn’t put him down. One day, he wandered away and never came back.

Here I was in the same situation. My own end was inevitable. And I couldn’t pull the trigger.

I stared at the hair, wedged between my index finger and my thumb. Here it was, my chance to take control of my exit, to stop hurting Jack, to stop hurting my dad and Tommy, to stop the whole damn thing.

I brought the hair to my mouth again, and froze again. My hand wouldn’t move. My breath made the hair flutter. Then I crumbled. The tears came in waves as I sank to the floor, my back against the racks that held the chocolate-covered raisins.

It was the first time I’d cried in more than a century.

Strange that I’d recovered my laughter long before my tears. Now that I’d started, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to stop. I looked helplessly at the hair in my hand, and a couple of wet teardrops splashed in my palm.

The doors to the convenience store slammed open, and I heard frantic footsteps run toward me.

I looked up just as Cole rounded the corner of the last aisle. When he saw me, he let out an audible sigh of relief.

“Don’t scare me like that, Nik.”

I couldn’t answer. I lowered my head and let the tears flow. Cole sat beside me and put his arm around me, and I let him. I cried into the front of his black leather jacket, my tears pooling on the chest pocket.

“Careful. I didn’t bring a life jacket,” Cole said.

I sniffled.

“Shh. It’s okay.”

I guess that was how low I’d sunk, that Cole was the one person who could console me. We sat like that for a few long minutes, and when I finally had composed myself enough to speak, I said into his jacket, “Why won’t you help me? You could be a hero for once.”

He put his lips against my head. “Heroes don’t exist. And if they did, I wouldn’t be one of them.”

My fingers had formed a tight fist around the single strand of Cole’s hair. Cole took my hand and gently worked the fingers open, took the hair out, and put it in his pocket. I let him, and the tears began to flow again.

I shook, and Cole wrapped his arms around me even tighter. I buried my head in his chest, where I would’ve heard a beating heart if Cole were human. Of course there was no sound.

“If I went with you…” I started to say.

Cole tensed and waited.

“If I went with you, would I no longer have a heart?”

“Not inside you. No.”

I sighed. I didn’t want to admit how good the idea sounded right about now. Especially since mine was breaking.

Eventually, I disentangled from Cole. He didn’t put up a fight. Maybe because he sensed victory. Everything was falling apart. What did I have left? A week, at the most? I knew my Return was approximately six months, but the Everneath had its own passage of time. One day soon, I would disappear. Maybe this time, no one would even notice.

Now that I knew I was too weak to go to the Tunnels early, I had two choices left in front of me. Fade into the background until the Tunnels came for me, or take what little knowledge I had about the whole thing and try to find an answer.

Cole had been right that first night he came into my bedroom, although it’d taken me this long to realize it. I did have hope. Somewhere, in the empty pit of my soul, I believed that I could get out of my debt. That I could stay here.

Since Jack had taken himself out of the picture, I knew this residual hope I was feeling belonged to me. I hadn’t skimmed it from him.

I got to school early the next morning and went to Mrs. Stone’s room. She glanced up from her seat at her desk and put down the papers she had been reading.

“Hi, Ms. Beckett. What can I do for you?”

“Have you ever heard of the Daughters of Persephone?”

Mrs. Stone’s brow crinkled. “I’m not aware that she had any daughters.”

“I know, but have you heard of any groups by that name?” I laughed helplessly at how nuts I sounded. “Not real blood daughters. More like … a society.”

“No.” She cocked her head at me. “Why do you ask?”

“Someone mentioned it. She said she was a Daughter of Persephone, and I wondered what she meant by it.”

“Sorry. I don’t know.” She watched me, waiting. “Was there something else?”

“Yes. The Orpheus myth. Are there any other … versions of it? Any different interpretations?”

“What do you mean?”

“Any little ways it could’ve been mixed up or something?”

Mrs. Stone took off her glasses and rubbed them with her handkerchief. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at. But if you’re interested in reading more about it, take this.” Opening one of the drawers on her desk, she brought out a small paperback book about mythology’s greatest love stories.

“Great.” I took the book and put it in my bag. I’d been reading about Orpheus and Eurydice on the internet, so I wasn’t sure if the book could give me any new information. I wished Jack were here, and speaking to me. Maybe he would forgive me. But maybe when someone forgives someone else so many times, he reaches a point when he can’t anymore.

Mrs. Stone leaned forward over her desk and put the glasses that were hanging around her neck back on the end of her nose. “As you read it, take note of the value the Greeks placed on love. Every decision Orpheus makes is based on love. His unwavering love nearly saved Eurydice. Remember that for your paper.”

My paper. As if I’d ever finish it now.

“Thanks,” I said.

She waved in response, not looking up from her desk.

After I left her classroom, I sat in my nook and flipped through the paperback. Much of the first half dealt with the great love story between Orpheus and Eurydice before she ever went to the Underworld. They were husband and wife, at the height of their romance when she was poisoned and went under.

And then, like me, Eurydice had survived.

What did she and I have in common? Cole had said I was different from the Daughters of Persephone because I had relationship ties to the Surface.

Eurydice had a tie to the Surface in Orpheus. I had Jack. Before Meredith had disappeared, she said she had a theory about anchors. What if an anchor was a tie to the Surface?

When I was in the Everneath, I thought about Jack every day. Every minute. Even after I’d forgotten his name, the image of his face made me feel whole again. Was Jack the reason I’d survived? Were our ties to the Surface what somehow kept us whole?

The one problem in the anchor theory was Meredith. She had a connection with her mom, yet she didn’t survive. But then the more I thought about it, the more I realized Mrs. Jenkins didn’t have a similar connection to Meredith. She forgot about Meredith the second the Feed began.

Then it hit me. Orpheus didn’t forget about Eurydice. He loved her the entire time she was gone. Maybe the attachment between Forfeit and anchor worked only when it went both ways.

The drinking fountain next to me shuddered to life as a flash of intuition hit me.

I knew now that Jack never forgot about me. He’d never stopped loving me. He was the anchor that saved me.

And now he was gone.

TWENTY-SEVEN

NOW

Home. One week left.

When I got home, my dad had a “Mayor Bonds with His Wayward Daughter” dinner waiting. Chinese food. He had a few more days until the primary election, and every spare moment was spent on the campaign trail, but his secretary told me he’d scheduled in these dinners.

I followed the smell into the kitchen, where my dad was spreading out the containers from Mountain City Mongolian. “Tommy has Scouts tonight,” he said.

I peeked into a few boxes. “You know there’s only two of us, right?” He dished out a plate—one of everything—and handed it to me. “There’s no way I can eat all that,” I said.

“Nikki, I’ve noticed your appetite isn’t what it used to be. We need to work on that.”

“Sure, Dad.” I scooped a spoonful of rice into my mouth.

“Your mother used to eat like a horse.”

I nearly choked on my rice. He hadn’t mentioned my mother in a very long time. His face told me he hadn’t meant to. Ever since I’d been back, the topic of my mother remained unexplored territory for us. The last time we’d talked about her was the day I left. I wanted to show him he didn’t have to avoid the subject anymore.

“She really did,” I agreed. “Remember when she used to keep the gravy boat right next to her plate, even at family parties?”

My dad chuckled. “Oh yeah. She did that when we were dating. At her first dinner with my family.”

“Grams must’ve been shocked.”

“She was.”

Dad let out a breath, and we ate in silence for a few minutes, enjoying a level of comfort with each other that we hadn’t experienced in a long time.

“How’s the election coming?” I asked. I never watched the news or followed the numbers anymore. The first time he ran, I kept a chart hanging on the wall in my room, with a graph of his polling numbers. Back then he was running as a family man. This time he was a grieving widower, trying to reconnect with a rebel daughter. He was the incumbent, but the in-party challenger was putting up a fight.

“Strong. The numbers are back up.” He meant after the fiasco at the Christmas Dance.

As we sat together, the two of us alone, I realized that this might be my last chance to talk to him before the election. And I might not be here for very long after.

“Dad. In case I haven’t been clear, I’m sorry for all the trouble I caused you. Have I mentioned this before?”

He smiled. “Yes. You have.”

“Well, I am.”

“It never hurts to hear, Nikki.”

After dinner, as the sun dipped lower against the mountains, I was in the driveway getting my backpack out of my car when I heard some kids yelling from up the street. I assumed it was the Scouts, maybe doing a scavenger hunt, and I started walking to the house. But then I heard a terrified scream. Tommy.

I dropped my bag and took off running toward the noise. I couldn’t see very well in the dusk, but it looked like some of the kids were pelting another kid with snowballs. I was sure Tommy was on the receiving end, and it made me furious.

“Hey!” I yelled, but I was still a ways away, and they didn’t hear. Tommy was getting pummeled. All I could think about was how scared he must be, and I couldn’t get to him fast enough. I said a silent prayer that something would happen to distract the kids, so I could stop them before he really got hurt. Why weren’t my legs moving faster?

Suddenly, as if someone had heard my prayer, a tall figure descended upon them from the other direction. He placed himself in front of Tommy and faced the attackers. “Enough!” he said.

I paused for a moment as I registered the voice. Cole’s. I sprinted forward even faster. By the time I reached them, the kids who had been throwing the snowballs were wandering around as if they were lost. Two of the boys bumped into each other. They stayed silent and simply turned around, their faces blank.