Ever Strange

By Jemima Careen

Have you ever been through something that changed you? Ever Rose would have answered that question with a no if you had asked her that in her freshman year of high school. But then her troubling dreams become a reality. Add in that the new guy in class is the literal guy of her dreams, and Ever is uncertain how she is connected to him. Plus, weird changes are happening to both of them. Something strange is going on, and she feels that the darkness closing in will only get worse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638440161

Book preview

1

Seriously! It was the weirdest dream I’ve ever had, I said as I dug my shoe into the sand.

My best friend, Kate, looked at me as we sat on the swings in Abita Park. She had her eyes squinted with doubt. Weirder than the one where your dead basset hound came back as a zombie dog but was too lazy to attack you so he just lay around the house growling and stinking? she asked.

Okay, I conceded, that was weird! I guess this dream may be on par with that one.

Kate kicked back and began swinging. You always have weird dreams.

Just listen! I begged. I was lying in this weird tube, and there was a guy in there with me. He was about my age. I could see that his chest was moving like he was breathing, so he wasn’t dead. And his face was peaceful, so I don’t think he was in pain. Then I saw a masked doctor outside the tube who told me I shouldn’t be awake yet, and he went out of my sight. I felt something like lethargy flood through me, and that’s when I found myself sitting up in bed flailing my arms.

I paused and looked over at Kate who had stopped swinging.

Was he cute? she questioned.

Huh? I was confused.

The guy in the tube with you. Was he cute? She looked at me with this weird grin.

Well, yeah. He seemed tall and had dark hair. I think he was fit, like maybe he played sports. But what do you think of the dream? I wanted to know.

Katherine Staunton and I had been friends since I could remember. She lived next door to me. We shared everything—clothes, books, secrets. She was always over and was practically family.

I think your subconscious wants a boyfriend who can’t run away! she joked.

Very funny. I scowled.

She kicked back and started swinging again. I couldn’t blame her, really. I would have probably commented something just as sarcastic if she had said the same thing to me.

I didn’t want to swing anymore. Want to go down by the river and throw rocks in or sit on the bench and see what animals are out? I suggested.

I guess we could do that for a bit. She jumped off the swing as it was just about to rock back and landed in the sand.

I stood up and walked to join her. We exited the Abita Park and turned up the Trace to walk to the other side of the bridge and then followed the dirt path down to the Abita River. You could walk along the river up to Highway 59; it wasn’t very far. There was also a wooden bench that you could sit on by the river’s edge and just watch nature.

We climbed over trees and threw rocks and sticks in the river until we were a little bored.

Come on, Ever! Let’s get a snowball.

Kate and I got up and walked back out to the Trace. We both lived in the small town of Abita Springs in southeast Louisiana. There weren’t more than 2,500 people who lived here; it was so small that we didn’t even have a traffic light, just a circle in the middle of town to keep the traffic flowing.

We walked past the converted train station, which was now a museum, and along the bike trail that ran by Artigue’s Market, our neighborhood grocery. At this point, we detoured to the left and walked past the full-serve gas station to cross the highway over to Level Street.

She and I walked through the bank parking lot and then crossed Level Street and stopped at the snowball stand next to the Abita Café.

Is that your mom’s car? I asked, pointing at the red four-door Ford Focus.

Yeah, she replied. She’s working today.

Kate’s mom, Rebecca Staunton, waitressed at the Abita Café for extra income. Kate’s parents were both older than mine by about ten years, and they had a lot of debt due to the fertility treatments they went through to have Kate. She was their only surviving baby.

We went up to the small shed-looking building with the sliding glass window and placed our snowball orders. After paying, we went to the yard between the café and the snowball stand. There were picnic tables that you could sit at while you ate your snowball. We took a few bites and then played a couple of rounds on the wooden cornhole game that was out in the yard.

There was a chicken coop in the area as well, and we liked to look at them. Sometimes they’d let them walk around outside. It was funny to see the rooster strutting his stuff in front of the café.

Let’s say hi to your mom, I suggested.

We walked under the metal and wood awning that had misting sprayers running around it and through the wooden door into the café. Abita Café was old and quaint—not as old as the town, but still rich in history. It wasn’t a very big place and had a nice wrapped porch where you could eat outside if you wanted. The inside was pretty tiny. The small wood planks that lined the walls and ceiling were different from the wood strips that were on the floor. The curtain-less windows had white-painted plain wood trim; and each was topped with a homemade-looking shelf that held pancake and waffle mix, fish fry, or Abita Brew Pub beer for sale. Wine racks took up the space between the windows, and on the counter was a coffee grinder with bags of Abita Café Coffee beans for sale on display next to it.

We sat down at the small round two-seat table in the center of the entrance, right in front of the door, to wait for her mom to get a free minute. The smell of coffee permeated the air and made my strawberry cheesecake snowball taste rather interesting.

Hey, girls! Mrs. Staunton called as she walked up to the counter to place an order. She had long wavy black-and-gray hair. Her eyes were a beautiful hazel color. She also had freckles on her face and arms. She was really pretty.

After she had finished, she walked back over to us. Can I get you girls anything? Mrs. Staunton began her typical sales pitch. The fried green tomato sandwich is back on the menu.

No, thank you! we both said together.

We just stopped by to say hello, said Kate.

Okay, well, be careful as you walk home, she mothered. Oh, and I have leftovers in the fridge for your dinner tonight, honey, as I’ll be home late and your father has to work tonight. She patted Kate’s back and then turned to fill up the drinks for the customers whose order she had just placed.

Kate’s dad, Phil Staunton, was a printer and a pizza delivery driver. He worked hard for their family. It didn’t really seem like work to him though, since he loved pizza. He was glad he was able to do something he liked to make money. And all the debt was totally worth having their daughter in their life!

Phil was about 5'9", and he had dark-brown hair and blue eyes. His skin was pretty pale, but it always had splotches of ink from the printshop dotting here and there. Kate got her brown hair from her dad, but her eye color matched her mom.

Kate and I stood up and headed for the door.

We lived about a mile from the circle in the center of town. We continued down Level Street, past the elementary school, and toward our road.

My house was a cute three-bedroom, two-bathroom raised cottage nestled in the woods on Rozalyn Street. Kate’s house was right next to mine. We called it a Happy Home because that was the name of the company that built it, though they’d since gone out of business.

We turned up our gravel drive past the live oaks, magnolias, and pine trees to enter the back door into the kitchen. Our family always used the back door. The front door and porch were more for visitors and packages. I don’t think Kate has ever walked through it!

My mom greeted us, Ever! Kate! and she walked over to give us a hug.

Evangeline Rose was a 5'4" reddish-brown-haired woman with blue eyes and pale skin. She was always worried about getting fat but was more worried about being healthy.

She cooked according to the writing of Dr. Weston Price, a dentist in the early 1900s. Medium-chain triglycerides are the preferred food of the heart, she would say. It wasn’t odd to find chicken feet or animals’ bones and organs in our freezer for Mom to make homemade bone broth. Or a batch of kefir or kombucha brewing on the counter. Sometimes there were jars of fermented vegetables or sourdough starter sitting in the corners of the pantry. She made almost everything from scratch.

My mom wasn’t very old—thirty-three. She had me when she was still eighteen and named me Ever Isabella Rose because she said I was the cutest baby ever! She and my dad married young and had three kids before she was twenty-five years old.

Mom was adding coconut oil and whole milk to a batch of homemade waffle mix. She had a cookbook that she tweaked all the recipes in to make them healthier. Changing various oils to coconut oil or butter, whole milk here, almond flour there, adding in bone broth, and the like.

I looked at the open page in that cookbook. Dad wants breakfast for dinner tonight? I guessed.

She sighed. Yep.

Mom was a good cook! She liked healthy, well-balanced meals with plenty of fats and veggies, but every now and then she would give in and make a not so healthy meal to please my dad.

My dad was pretty young too, thirty-five. He was twenty when I was born, and they had me exactly one year and nine days after their first anniversary. Dad was the total opposite of Mom. He was overweight and didn’t care. He never worked out and only went on diets that he thought would give quick, dramatic results—like the liquid diet. Mom made him quit after a week when she caught him blending a cheeseburger.

Eric Rose was outgoing and would talk with anyone. He had even been in a few local plays at various community theaters in the area. I took after my dad and acted in a few plays for a local director friend of his. She owned the Swan Theatre and gave acting lessons and had plays for the local youth.

In contrast, Mom was only in one play with about three lines. She hated being the center of attention, and crowds. She’d rather cheer us on from a dark corner than stand in the spotlight.

Kate and I will be in my room, I called as we headed through the living room into the hallway.

Kate plopped onto the bottom bunk of my bed. She looked around the room and shook her head. You need to tell your sister to clean up!

I surveyed the demolition that was my room. Books everywhere—on the bookshelf, the dresser, the floor, the bed. Craft supplies littered every surface. And everything was covered by clothes.

I sighed. Alice will be Alice. I’ve given up trying. I stepped over piles and sat down next to Kate.

Alice was three years younger than me. She and I were complete opposites. I was 5' even and wore a size 6 with blue eyes and curly ash-blonde hair. She was only twelve and was already an inch taller than me! She had straight red hair and green eyes and wore a size 0. My mom once said that she had to buy size 0 with a belt, and it was a waste to buy a belt for nothing.

Our room also showed the difference. The only thing we had in common was our love of reading. I had my Hunger Games and Percy Jackson-type books neatly on the shelf, while Alice’s Warrior books were scattered across the room. On the walls were both Doctor Who and Alice in Wonderland posters. My clothes were either in the dresser, the closet, or the hamper while hers were on the floor, clean and dirty alike.

Where is Alice, anyways? Kate asked.

Probably outside with her dog.

Kate shrugged. You realize that today is our last day of summer? We go back to school on Monday. She sighed then looked at me. Did you hear we have a new guy in our class?

No, I said, tilting my head and waiting for more information.

Yeah, I heard the teachers talking about him during orientation. He’s moving in from Mobile.

Kate and I went to high school in the nearby town of Mandeville. Apparently, Abita Springs wasn’t big enough to have its own high school. We had an elementary school and a middle school, but then we all shipped off to Fountainebleau High, home of the bulldogs. I couldn’t complain—it was the best-rated high school in 2014!

His name is Damon Knight, and he’s a sophomore like us.

Just then my dad opened the bedroom door. Hey, kids! How’s it going?

Pretty good, Mr. Rose! Kate replied.

Where’s Alice? Dad asked while peeking onto the top bunk.

I think she’s outside, I responded.

Hmph, he grunted as he looked around at my bedroom. Then he turned and walked out of the room. Next, we heard the back door open and my dad hollering, Alice! Get your butt in here!

Kate looked at me with a grimace, and we listened to him scold her as she ran through the door, That bedroom better be cleaned by tomorrow night! I swear, if your mom trips trying to wake y’all in the morning…

Alice came scurrying through our bedroom door just as Kate was saying, Guess that’s my cue to leave!

She stood and waved as she exited the bedroom.

See ya tomorrow! I called.

Alice and I got down on the floor and started making piles of different types of mess covering our bedroom floor. Books, crafts, clothes, shoes, trash, school stuff, all sorted into piles to make them easier to put away. I figured I’d stack the books on one of the bookshelves while Alice found somewhere to put her crafts. Then I could put the shoes away while she figured out which clothes were clean and which were dirty. That would just leave the trash to throw in an old shopping bag and throw out.

You are the best wife! we could hear Dad telling Mom. He must have just realized we were having waffles for dinner.

Mom has a dry-erase board on the fridge on which she writes what she needs to add to her shopping list. She also writes what’s for dinner that night so she doesn’t have to repeat it all day long. Dad never reads the board.

Hey, buddy! What’ve you been up to? we heard Dad ask. My brother, Robert, had just come through the back door.

I was building a fort in the woods, he explained. If the zombies ever attack, we’ll have a place to hide.

And if zombies never attack? Dad asked.

Then I’ll live there when I get older, Robert replied.

Dad laughed. Well, maybe you should go get cleaned up. We’re having waffles for dinner.

Robert went to grab some clothes from his room and then grabbed a towel from the hall closet and walked into the small bathroom that the three of us shared.

Use soap! Alice hollered as he was closing the door.

Alice and Robert are only two years apart. They had the sibling rivalry down to a fine poison. They both liked the same books. They both liked to be outdoors. And they both loved to roughhouse, play, and blame each other for everything. They could be the best of friends and the worst of enemies!

He was a lot like Kate in body build—tall and skinny. He was only ten and was already 5'2". He had reddish-brown hair and blue eyes, like our mom.

The only difference he had from our entire family was his New Orleans accent. The boy seriously sounded like he grew up in the Ninth Ward! We don’t know where he picked it up from, but he’s had it since he was two. Mom thought it was possibly something with his throat or his hearing, but after a visit to an ENT, they told her it was just the way he talked.

After I had picked my things off the floor and made my bed, I sat down to finish reading the book my mom was forcing me to read. It wasn’t bad—the tale of one man who was destined for the throne but was being hunted by the current king. My mom admired the rogue’s attitude; always teachable moments with her!

Usually I got to pick which books I read. We would go to the library and rent a series or swing by the used-book store and buy one. I liked action, adventure, and romance all combined into one. Robert usually got small books or something with dragons or soldiers. Alice liked animal stories, though she would read my books from time to time.

Just as I finished another chapter, my mom called us all for dinner. I hopped off my bed and ran to the kitchen table. I enjoyed breakfast for dinner just as much as my dad!

2

I had just finished putting my shoes on when my mom walked in to inspect our outfits for the day. My mother was a big believer in modesty! No bottoms too short. No tops too low. And nothing too tight. Look like a lady, she would say.

I always wondered why my parents chose to live in the Deep South. It was hot and humid almost seven months out of the year. Around here it was nothing to see people walking around like they were dressed for the beach.

Before Abita Springs, my parents had lived in Pensacola. They liked the Southern hospitality that reigned in these parts. They’d moved to Louisiana when I was about five to be near my dad’s family right after his father had been diagnosed with cancer. He passed away about a year later.

Not that I’m complaining! There wasn’t another place like southeast Louisiana. Saints were a football team. Spirits referred to liquor. Superstitions abounded on every street. Our parties were large, loud, and long; and any occasion would be met with a parade—even a funeral.

For the most part, the people were really nice, especially on the Northshore of Lake Pontchartrain where we lived. They’d brake to let you in if you were waiting. Call you baby or sugar when you went to the counter to order. And there was almost always someone willing to stop and help if you needed it.

And don’t get me started on the food! We love our food here! Red beans and rice on Mondays. An entire grocery aisle dedicated to sausages. Seafood festivals. Alligator on restaurant menus. We ate things other states’ people fled from or used as bait.

Yep! The South was wonderful! And my mom was doing her darndest to make sure that we grew up as Southern belles and gentlemen. The sir or ma’am added to the end of a sentence wasn’t about age here; it was about respect. We called two-year-olds sir and ma’am! Whenever a person said, Don’t call me ‘ma’am,’ what everyone around here heard was I don’t deserve respect!

Not bad, Mom said as she looked my outfit over. My jean shorts went almost to my knees. I had a T-shirt over the top of a tank top and combat boots to finish my look. I didn’t really fit into any one category of fashion. I wore what I thought to be cute, was comfortable, and would pass the mom inspection.

Alice, Robert, and I grabbed our backpacks and met Kate on the gravel drive. We would all wait together at the end of the street for the bus. Robert and Alice usually got picked up first for middle school. And then Kate and I would leave soon after.

We walked across the small bridge that someone built to span the ditch and sat in the little tin-and-wood shed with a bench at the edge of the woods that someone had built to shelter kids from the sun and rain while they waited for the bus.

As we sat down on the bench, Alice and Robert started squabbling over something. I ignored them and turned to Kate. We had a tradition. Each year before the first day of school, we would set our personal goals for the school year.

What would you like to see happen this year? I asked Kate.

She smiled widely, as she held up one hand, palm forward. Picture this! You and me on the honor roll with cute boyfriends.

I giggled. Yeah, maybe our parents could get one of those bumper stickers to put on the car. I threw a side glance at Kate. She hated those! She thought they were a waste of school funds and that they aided in the destruction of an automobile’s paint job.

Never! She scowled.

I wouldn’t mind a boyfriend, I said, ignoring her glare. But there aren’t really any guys worth dating at our school. Half of them were full of male macho bologna, and the other half my dad would run off after the first meeting.

I loved my dad, but he wasn’t going to make my dating life easy! He had said since the time I was two that we would have family dates; this meant that my entire family would join me and that lucky someone on our excursions.

That part wasn’t too bad; it was his threat to lick my date’s earlobe to see how they’d react that made me think I’d be single for life! I shuddered at the thought.

Kate just laughed. She knew of my dad’s threats, and she fully intended to be present for any and all instances in which they might be fulfilled. What she didn’t ever realize was that she was practically family, and there was a good chance my dad would do the same things to her boyfriend!

Do you want to try out for sports this year? Kate asked me.

After the last time? I looked at her like she was crazy.

I tried out for softball last year. Every time they pitched the ball to me, I missed, except for once. I connected with one pitch, and the vibration that went up the metal bat had me dropping it on the catcher’s head and apologizing as I rubbed my hands on my legs. It was quite discouraging.

Kate giggled remembering. She didn’t fare any better though she hit a few more pitches than I did. They were all in field or foul balls. We weren’t even sorry we didn’t make the roster!

The bus was coming to a stop in front of us. We grabbed up our backpacks and got in line to squeeze our way through the other students and school supplies that littered the walkway. She and I sat in silence watching the trees and automobiles go by until we reached the school grounds, standing slowly to join the procession exiting the bus onto the property.

Fontainebleau High seemed massive to us. It had so many extracurricular programs to choose from! Of course, there were sports. But also choir, band, various clubs, and other social activities. Neither Kate nor I belonged to any. It was all we could do to get our homework done.

The outside of the school was basic brick and stucco with windows. The inside had large hallways with glossy cement painted floors. Each wall had double-stacked white lockers with windows above them to let in natural light. Teal-painted metal beams follow the walls floor to ceiling, and the bulldog mascot outlined in red was decorated between them here and there.

The school was expansive with a gym, a runner’s track around the football field, two baseball fields—one larger than the other, and a junior Olympic-sized swimming pool. So much area to walk through—and I hated walking!

Kate used to mock me because I’d rather ride my bike than walk. I had told her once that I didn’t want to walk if I didn’t have to, and she’d never let it go. She quoted it to me at least twice a week.

I sighed as I located my locker and began unloading the fifty pounds of school supplies from my backpack. I had bought a notebook for each class and a steno pad to