Read Online The Eternal Ones by Kirsten Miller - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kirsten Miller
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all he wanted to do was create chaos.”
“Thank you, Haven. Can the rest of you think of another character like that? One who plants evil thoughts in people’s minds? Who pretends to help while he’s secretly undermining them?” She waited. “Oh, come on, you guys, none of you have ever heard of Satan? Is Iago the devil?”
“Ask Haven,” Bradley quipped. He’d had it in for her since she’d spurned his advances. “She’s probably got the devil somewhere deep inside her right now.” The class howled with laughter. Miss Henderson slammed her book closed and dropped down in her desk chair. There was no taking back control. When Haven turned around to give Bradley the finger, she saw there was at least one other person who wasn’t laughing—a smart, mousey girl named Leah Frizzell.
BLUE MOUNTAIN WAS a relatively peaceful school. With fewer than a hundred people in each graduating class, it was too small for the typical cliques and tribes. There was really only one clear way to divide the students: There were those who would stay in Snope City for the rest of their lives and those who would run as far and as fast as possible. In each class, there were no more than a dozen students who fell into the latter group. Among them were the kids from Snope City’s tiny African-American community, who tended to vanish the day after graduation and were rarely seen again. Until that blessed day arrived, they and their fellow outsiders tried their best to blend into the background.
For the most part, the strategy worked. In Haven’s four years of high school, she’d heard tale of only a few troubling incidents. One of Blue Mountain’s three goth kids once let down his guard and drank too much beer at a party held deep in the woods. As soon as he passed out, four football players tied him to a tree, wrapped him in toilet paper, and set it on fire. The kid survived with all of his skin, though it took a full year for his eyebrows to grow back. Then there was the time the captain of the girls’ basketball team called one of her black teammates the unforgivable word and received a broken nose in return. And Dewey Jones went through a phase freshman year when nothing delighted him more than imitating the school’s half-dozen Pentecostal students by rolling around on the cafeteria floor and screaming gibberish. Leah Frizzell had put an end to the displays.
Leah had always been a little unusual. Her body appeared emaciated, though she never seemed to stop eating, and thin red hair clung to her narrow skull. She rarely spoke, and when she did, her drawl couldn’t have been cut with a chain saw. Beginning in the fourth grade, whenever Haven got the feeling that something wasn’t quite right, she would often discover Leah’s light green eyes watching her. It made Haven nervous at first. She’d heard kids gossip about the things Leah carried around in the beaten-up backpack that Haven had never seen her open. Those fears seemed justified when, one afternoon while Dewey Jones writhed around on the floor, Leah stuck a scrawny hand into her bag and yanked out a snake.
“You know, we don’t just talk in tongues—we’re snake handlers, too,” she’d said as she shoved the serpent down the front of Dewey’s football jersey. Unaware that it was nothing but a harmless black-snake, Dewey had soiled his pants in front of the entire school. Leah was suspended for three days, and when she returned, she went right back to lurking in the shadows.
By senior year, Haven barely noticed Leah Frizzell. When the girl was named the school’s valedictorian, Haven had to think for a minute to place the name. It seemed likely that they’d finish high school without exchanging a word—until that day in Miss Henderson’s class, when Haven turned around to see the girl glaring at Bradley Sutton.
“Shut your mouth and leave her alone,” Leah warned Bradley Sutton and the snickering stopped. “Or you’ll wish you had the devil to deal
“Thank you, Haven. Can the rest of you think of another character like that? One who plants evil thoughts in people’s minds? Who pretends to help while he’s secretly undermining them?” She waited. “Oh, come on, you guys, none of you have ever heard of Satan? Is Iago the devil?”
“Ask Haven,” Bradley quipped. He’d had it in for her since she’d spurned his advances. “She’s probably got the devil somewhere deep inside her right now.” The class howled with laughter. Miss Henderson slammed her book closed and dropped down in her desk chair. There was no taking back control. When Haven turned around to give Bradley the finger, she saw there was at least one other person who wasn’t laughing—a smart, mousey girl named Leah Frizzell.
BLUE MOUNTAIN WAS a relatively peaceful school. With fewer than a hundred people in each graduating class, it was too small for the typical cliques and tribes. There was really only one clear way to divide the students: There were those who would stay in Snope City for the rest of their lives and those who would run as far and as fast as possible. In each class, there were no more than a dozen students who fell into the latter group. Among them were the kids from Snope City’s tiny African-American community, who tended to vanish the day after graduation and were rarely seen again. Until that blessed day arrived, they and their fellow outsiders tried their best to blend into the background.
For the most part, the strategy worked. In Haven’s four years of high school, she’d heard tale of only a few troubling incidents. One of Blue Mountain’s three goth kids once let down his guard and drank too much beer at a party held deep in the woods. As soon as he passed out, four football players tied him to a tree, wrapped him in toilet paper, and set it on fire. The kid survived with all of his skin, though it took a full year for his eyebrows to grow back. Then there was the time the captain of the girls’ basketball team called one of her black teammates the unforgivable word and received a broken nose in return. And Dewey Jones went through a phase freshman year when nothing delighted him more than imitating the school’s half-dozen Pentecostal students by rolling around on the cafeteria floor and screaming gibberish. Leah Frizzell had put an end to the displays.
Leah had always been a little unusual. Her body appeared emaciated, though she never seemed to stop eating, and thin red hair clung to her narrow skull. She rarely spoke, and when she did, her drawl couldn’t have been cut with a chain saw. Beginning in the fourth grade, whenever Haven got the feeling that something wasn’t quite right, she would often discover Leah’s light green eyes watching her. It made Haven nervous at first. She’d heard kids gossip about the things Leah carried around in the beaten-up backpack that Haven had never seen her open. Those fears seemed justified when, one afternoon while Dewey Jones writhed around on the floor, Leah stuck a scrawny hand into her bag and yanked out a snake.
“You know, we don’t just talk in tongues—we’re snake handlers, too,” she’d said as she shoved the serpent down the front of Dewey’s football jersey. Unaware that it was nothing but a harmless black-snake, Dewey had soiled his pants in front of the entire school. Leah was suspended for three days, and when she returned, she went right back to lurking in the shadows.
By senior year, Haven barely noticed Leah Frizzell. When the girl was named the school’s valedictorian, Haven had to think for a minute to place the name. It seemed likely that they’d finish high school without exchanging a word—until that day in Miss Henderson’s class, when Haven turned around to see the girl glaring at Bradley Sutton.
“Shut your mouth and leave her alone,” Leah warned Bradley Sutton and the snickering stopped. “Or you’ll wish you had the devil to deal
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