Eternity Can Wait

By Paula Bell

Jilted by her boyfriend and abandoned by her best friend, Jenny’s summer is shaping up to be a complete disaster. Even her college plans have been wrecked by her ex-boyfriend and the blonde cheerleader he dumped her for. Jenny is facing the prospect of not only a miserable summer, but also a long and unexpected gap year alone.
The only thing that gets her off the sofa and out of the house is the thought of visiting her aunt, and meeting up with some old friends out of town.
Jenny’s journey doesn’t run smoothly. With her car abandoned at the roadside in the middle of nowhere, she faces a choice. Does she head back home, or should she take a risk and continue on foot through the notorious woods she’s grown up hearing so many eerie stories about?
A mysterious stranger steps in to help her. When Jenny finds out who, and what he really is, nothing will ever be the same for her again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paula Bell
• Release date: Jun 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310865374

Paula Bell

Please feel free to contact me on Twitter @Paula_Bell_69 .

Book preview

Preface

Jenny looked behind herself to make sure that Christian couldn’t see her. Then she took a few steps to a nearby tree and sat on the grass. Sighing wearily, she leaned her back against the trunk and closed her eyes. Jenny wanted everything to be over now, but she knew they would have to walk for two more days through the forest.

She wondered if she had done the right thing, trusting Christian, but she wasn’t sure if she could find the way on her own, and she didn’t want to be alone in the woods. She had no other choice but to follow him, and to trust him.

She had to find the strength within herself to swim across the river, and then she and Christian had to find a place to spend the night. The thought that she would have to swim after the exhausting walk, didn’t bother her as much as the thought that she would be spending the night in the woods.

Suddenly, a strange sound from the forest interrupted her thoughts, startling her. She opened her eyes and looked into the woods, but at first she didn’t see anything. The sound reached her again, this time it was louder and clearer. It sounded like the growl of an animal.

She rose to her feet and stared into the woods. Something dark and huge was moving toward her. The branches of the trees bent and crackled under its weight. Whatever it was, it was enormous.

She saw two, glowing eyes coming closer toward her. The animal took a few more steps and came out of the shade of the trees. When she saw it, her mouth fell open. She couldn’t believe her eyes.

1

Jenny slowly leaned back and looked around. She was still sitting in the small kitchen with light blue walls. There was a half-empty teacup and a half-eaten bowl of oatmeal on the table in front of her. The huge clock was still ticking evenly on the wall opposite her. An hour had passed without her noticing. She was too absorbed in her thoughts to notice how the morning had passed.

In her mind the image of her ex-boyfriend, Brad, constantly surfaced. He was saying: I think it’s time for a change. We’ve been together for too long; then he was hugging Amanda, who was smirking, trying to simulate empathy rather unsuccessfully.

Brad and Jenny had been together over a year, when he dumped her a few days before the prom. He and Amanda had begun dating immediately, without hiding their feelings. Brad was the captain of the football team, and Amanda one of the cheerleaders. Amanda was blonde, beautiful, and shallow. Jenny felt that her life would be easier if girls like Amanda didn’t exist.

After the initial shock, Jenny had become a prisoner in her home. She couldn’t bear watching them together, or the spiteful comments of Amanda’s friends. She didn’t go anywhere because she didn’t want to come across any of them. She also didn’t want to see anyone because she couldn’t bear the humiliation Brad had caused her. She was sure that all her classmates and neighbors knew about it because she was living in a small town.

That was Cle Elum, located in Washington State in a half–hour drive from Seattle. It was so small that all the people knew one another, and everybody knew almost everything about everyone.

Jenny sighed and walked into the living room, dragging her feet. When she reached the couch, she slumped helplessly onto it. She had spent a lot of time lying on the couch and watching TV shows in recent weeks.

She had lost her appetite. At least, she didn’t eat a few buckets of ice – cream a day, like her friends did when they were dumped by their boyfriends.

The only person she needed was her best friend Elizabeth, but she had gone on a trip to Europe. Jenny wasn’t angry with Elizabeth for leaving her alone, because she knew that Elizabeth had been working since she was sixteen to save money for this trip. She had other friends, but they weren’t in Cle Elum either, and she was feeling very lonely. Jenny’s nineteenth birthday was approaching, but she didn’t feel like celebrating.

She wanted to get away from everything, but she didn’t know where she could go. She had been accepted to the Arizona Western College – the same college, where Brad had been accepted on a football scholarship. Last year, when she had applied, the only thing she had wanted was to be with him. After he had left her, behaving like a jerk, she didn’t want anything to do with him. She had decided to take a gap year, but she had no idea what to do for so long.

Jenny sighed again and began to examine the TV Guide magazine. Nothing caught her interest and she threw it on the table. She lay helplessly against the pillow and looked at the bureau. There were a few family photos, carefully arranged by her mother.

Her father had left her and her mother long ago, when Jenny was a child, and she barely remembered him. Her mother had thrown away all his pictures after that.

Jenny’s eyes fell on a picture of her, with her mother and her aunt, the three of them smiling happily. She was nostalgic for those times before she had known Brad when her life had been more carefree.

Jenny hugged the pillow and tried not to cry. She had never cried for a boy in her life, and she had forbidden herself to weep over Brad. Over the past two weeks, she had gone through several stages of breakup depression: from It can’t be true! through How could he dump me! to What a bastard! She hadn’t even cried on prom night when everyone else had gone, and she had remained at home, alone. She had punched her pillow, thinking angrily: I hate him! God damn him! but she had not shed a single tear.

While she was lying on the couch, she noticed a picture of her mother and her aunt, in which they were hugging each other, smiling. Aunt Mary was the older sister of her