The Everafter Read Online Free PDF Page A

Iwish I’d never found the object.
    By then, the object would already be gone from Is.
    The Universe isn’t nearly as generous as I thought it was.
    Or maybe I’m not supposed to be messing around with my original life that way.
    I can’t quite explain what’s happened now that I have changed the outcome in finding my purse, but something’s different. About me. About my life.
    About who I am.
    And I’m not sure I like it.
    When I went back and made myself find that purse, I somehow became a new person. Someone who—first of all—could sense that I was there. That must have been what the creepy feeling was. My intention to change what happened in that moment somehow changed everything. I knew I was there. Well, kind of, anyway. Enough to make the moment feel…spooky.
    But that’s not all. Other things changed, too. I just don’t know what they are. If I never found my purse in the first version of my life, did I go without lunch that day? Did I borrow money from someone else so I could eat? I have no way of knowing, but whatever happened in that first version created a different life than did the results of my second visit to that moment.
    Even being back here in Is feels different than it did before. I’m a whole different dead person than I was.
    It’s hard to describe what all this has done to me, but it’s as if I were listening to a song and when I got back it was playing in a different key. Everything jumped up a half note…or something like that.
    Who knows what I could be messing with going around and changing the way things happened in life?
    Suppose I could keep myself from dying?
    But I can’t possibly know which of these moments can lead to that outcome. At least at this point.
    And what if I end up making myself die sooner?
    Making decisions in death doesn’t seem to be any easier than making them in life: You never know what the outcome is going to be one way or the other.

orchids
    I MISS EVERYTHING about being real. Using these objects to return to life…it’s like an addiction. I have to have another fix. I just can’t decide which object to use next. The keys, buttons, beads, pen, Barbie doll, key chain…
    In the end, I don’t actually get a choice. I come across some orchids, eerie, almost skeletal in their luminescent form, and before I know it, I’m remembering that I wore them in my hair for my sister’s wedding. The memory is enough to carry me home, to the moment when…
    age 16
    I am on my knees in the grass, dark night surrounding me. Gabriel is standing next to me, bent over at the waist, his hand firmly gripping my upper arm.
    “Try breathing deeply,” Gabriel urges me.
    It sounds like a good idea, but I’m gulping more than I’m breathing, and the extra air I’m taking in is making me feel sicker, not better.
    It has been an incredibly long day. I’m now convinced I’ll never consider having a wedding. If I ever want to get married, I’ll elope. What could Kristen have been thinking?
    Her wedding dress was beautiful, but how could she have dressed me in this horrible, full-length strapless dress? If she was going to make me be a bridesmaid (let’s not kid ourselves; I had no choice in this; Mom would have killed me if I hadn’t agreed to do it—or, worse yet, she might have yammered on for days at a time about the importance and meaning of family, about my lifetime relationship with my older sister, etc.), why did she have to put me in such a long dress? I’ve lived in fear all day of tripping over the hem of the gown. That walk down the aisle? Nightmare. I almost stumbled. And how humiliating, having to walk down the aisle on the arm of Gabriel—one of the most gorgeousguys at school, and cousin to the groom! His firm grip on my arm kept me from making a complete fool of myself in front of everyone in the church, but he obviously noticed my clumsiness. He winked at me and everything. Winked! Ohmygod. So unfair. Why couldn’t I have walked down the aisle with