The Eternal Ones Read Online Free Page B

visit the preacher in his office after school. She often brought a few of her latest drawings to show him, which he dutifully examined before announcing that Haven was bound for great things. Sometimes he asked if she’d had any visions, but she always assured him they had stopped. Instead, the two of them talked about the world beyond Snope City. Dr. Tidmore had grown up just north of New York, and he enjoyed recounting his days at college in the city. Haven was astonished to find that she knew when the preacher mixed up his Greenwich Village streets or got his subway stops wrong, but she was very careful not to correct him.
    After each visit, Haven would leave Dr. Tidmore’s office with the feeling that there was a life waiting for her outside of the mountains. Once the preacher even gave her a postcard—an aerial view of Manhattan with its dazzling forest of concrete and steel. Haven pinned it to her bedroom wall and studied the picture every night before she went to sleep. As she examined all the buildings and followed all the streets, her sense of certainty grew. Behind one of the windows—or inside one of those cars—was someone or something she needed to find. At times the urge to begin the search was almost impossible to resist, and she prayed that whatever it was would still be waiting when she finally escaped from Snope City. At the age of ten, Haven started counting down the days. When she turned eighteen—when no one could stop her—she would find what was waiting for her among the skyscrapers.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    Even with the town preacher as Haven’s confidant, it would have been a lonely eight years if Beau Decker hadn’t shown up in the school cafeteria with a Barbie lunch box. Back then he was one of the popular kids—so good-looking, even at that age, that girls blushed and giggled when he glanced in their direction. Everyone knew that his family had fallen on hard times. His clothes were a few years out of date—patched-up hand-me-downs from older cousins. But the pink lunch box with Barbie astride a glittering unicorn was a pristine treasure. Some of the girls watched with envy as Beau proudly opened it and pulled out a sandwich. The rest of the kids knew something was wrong, even if most of them couldn’t have named it. Remarks were made. Haven heard the word faggot . Someone got pushed. Then a melee of epic proportions broke out.
    Beau took down three older boys with perfectly aimed punches before a group of seventh graders overwhelmed him. Teachers dragged them off Beau, whose face was bloody and eyes wild. As the combatants were escorted to the principal’s office, Haven crawled through the slurry of spilled milk and trampled food to retrieve the Barbie lunch box from beneath a table. She rinsed it out in the bathroom sink, carefully dried it, and fixed the dents as best she could.
    When Beau’s father arrived to collect his son from the principal’s office, Haven was waiting. She held out the lunch box to the tall boy with two black eyes and blood caked in the corner of his mouth. He smiled at her as he took it, and Haven’s heart started beating for the first time in months. Whatever he’d done, (and Haven couldn’t figure it out), Beau Decker was not ashamed.
     
    AFTER THAT, HAVEN and Beau became inseparable, and her friendship with Dr. Tidmore slowly faded away. The preacher counseled Haven to keep her distance from Beau. He wasn’t a good influence, Dr. Tidmore insisted, and he shared his opinion with Imogene Snively, who lectured Haven on rotten apples and bad seeds. But Haven refused to be swayed. Once she’d found Beau, she wasn’t about to let him go. And she spent the next eight years trying to convince herself that one loyal friend was all she needed.
    But there was still something missing. Something that nagged at her—an emptiness she couldn’t explain. There were mornings she woke with her heart pounding wildly and the sensation of arms wrapped around her. But the